Portal:Journalism/Selected article/5

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" is a profile of Frank Sinatra written by Gay Talese for the April 1966 issue of Esquire. Talese had spent the first ten years of his career at The New York Times. Talese felt restricted by the limitations of newspaper writing and began searching for jobs with magazines. In 1965 he signed a 1-year, 6-story contract with Esquire magazine. His first assignment from Esquire's editor Harold Hayes was to write a profile of Frank Sinatra. It was a difficult assignment; Sinatra had turned down interview requests from Esquire for years. The piece employed techniques like scenes, dialogue and third-person narrative that were common in fiction, but still rare in journalism. The article is one of the most famous pieces of magazine journalism and is often considered not only the greatest profile ever written of Frank Sinatra but one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written. The profile is one of the seminal works of New Journalism and is still widely read, discussed and studied. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire magazine in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the "Best Story Esquire Ever Published."