R.I.P. Pulitzer-winning TV critic Tom Shales

Tom Shales has died. As a professional TV critic for The Washington Post for more than 30 years, Shales was one of the leading voices in pop culture criticism in the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond, winning the Pulitzer Prize For Criticism in 1988 for his work. His death was made public on social media on Saturday by fellow author James Andrew Miller, with whom Shales wrote two books: Those Guys Have All The Fun, an oral history of ESPN published in 2011, and Live From New York, a massive 800-page oral history of Saturday Night Live that still stands, more than 20 years later, as one of the definitive texts on the show’s history. Shales was 79.

Born in Illinois, Shales started his career in radio, working as a disc jockey and reporter, before moving into print, securing his spot as the Post’s chief television critic in 1977. Syndication brought Shales more widespread fame and recognition, and he would hold his position at the paper until 2010, departing in an acrimonious split in which he posted on social media that he was being “handed his hat” by the paper’s leadership.

In terms of reach and influence, Shales likely hit his heights in the late 1980s, when his coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of Reagan Supreme Court pick Robert Bork created a strange alchemy between political coverage and TV spectacle. Shales’ writing seemed to presage much of the reality television/24 hour news eras to come, evaluating figures like Bork and Joe Biden—who comes in for harsh criticism for efforts to appear even-handed in the contentious hearings—not so much on their political stances, but on whether they made for good TV. He also mixed some undeniable pettiness in to his sharp, wittily written analyses of political theater as theater: At one point, in his Pulitzer-winning coverage, Shales writes of Bork, “If he can’t grow a better beard than that, one wonders, why does he wear one at all?”

Which was, undeniably, part of the Shales appeal: Raised on TV, and coming to prominence in the burgeoning era of cable, his writing was relentless in its castigation of what he perceived as laziness by creators and executives, pulling zero punches on any perceived faults. (In a very funny bit from a 2003 episode of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, O’Brien read Shales back his review of O’Brien’s first, stumbling days in the job, including descriptions of his “dark, beady little eyes, like a rabbit.”) Much of it reads like the early days of online pop culture blogging—at least in part because Shales’ syndicated pulpit had set so much of the tone for what was to follow in his footsteps. Some of it is unfairly mean, or unhelpfully focused on physical traits, but Shales’ wit is undeniable—and all of it is shot through the critic’s most common lament: “You could be making something better, if you only tried.”

In terms of lasting influence, Shales’ biggest legacy will most likely be Live From New York: He and Miller interviewed an enormous cross-section of cast, crew, guests, writers, producers, and more from the long history of Saturday Night Live for the book, working to build a coherent narrative of one of TV’s longest success stories. Released in 2001, and updated in the years since, it remains essentially mandatory reading for anyone interested in the history of TV sketch comedy—or just why so many people in the industry absolutely loathe Chevy Chase.

Shales largely stepped back from writing after his departure from the Post, although he continued to be prominent on social media. (Unsurprisingly, he was a regular on Twitter.) His death, reportedly of complications from COVID-19, has been confirmed by his former colleagues at the Post.