Keith Kelly, the widely read and much-feared media reporter and columnist for the New York Post, is planning to retire on July 23 after more than two decades at the tabloid. Kelly confirmed the news in a text to TheWrap.
Since joining the Post in 1998 after stints at Magazine Week, Advertising Age and the New York Daily News, Kelly has been a key figure breaking scoops on the media beat — which he once compared to “patrolling a small town. You’ve got to get to know who the good guys are (and) who the bad guys are.”
“There’s one thing that I get paid for at the Post is scoops, if you’re gonna give scoops to someone else, you’re taking food off my kids’ dinner table,” he told MarketWatch in a 2010 interview. “I resent it from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.”
Kelly also developed a reputation for ruthlessness when sources crossed him — or handed scoops to competitors. “One time, there was somebody giving what I call the gift-wrapped scoop to one of my friendly rivals at a broadsheet paper. And I said, ‘Look, I was on that story and you gave it to them,’” he told MarketWatch. “Here’s what I’m going to do. Every story from now on, every cockamamie rumor that comes out of your company is going in my paper. I’ll call you at the end of the day and say you deny the report … and then you deal with the consequences.”
The journalist also gained notoriety for his annual Kelly Gang dinner that has raised more than $1 million for various charitable causes. The campaign was launched in 2000 with an informal holiday meal that also included Ed Kelly, then CEO of American Express Publishing, Mike Kelly, then the publisher of Entertainment Weekly, then-TIME Magazine editor Jim Kelly and author Tom Kelly. (The group expanded to include others, including former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.)
Sharon Waxman contributed to this report.
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