For this week's episode in the city, back of my neck getting dirt and gritty.

For this week's episode in our Summer Listen series, we picked the very first piece I reported for on the media.

On Thanksgiving Day of 2000, I hung out with Mark Stamey as he reported the day's mayhem in the city for the New York Post.

Prepare for the historic Summer Listen Number 3.

There are five-star generals of newspaper journalism.

Big book writers like Bob Woodward and star columnists

with postage stamp pictures like Jimmy Breslin. And then there are the infantrymen, grunts

who pound the pavement on dreary stories for undistinguished papers, like Mark Stamey of the New

York Post. Stamey is short and square-faced, a middle-aged man from a broken home in Syracuse, New York. He ran his own business for a while, salvage diving. Then he went to college, earning master's degrees in sociology and journalism. He was already 45 by the time he became a reporter, freelancing first for the New York Times before landing the job at the New York Post.

At the post, he's covered fires, injured horses, fires, homicides, West Nile virus, evictions, and fires.

Staney was working the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade the day I spent with him.

He pulled a sour face as Mickey Mouse, four stories high and six stories long, floated down Broadway.

I mean, that's it.

The guy owns town here, Mickey Mouse, took over 40 seconds street.

That's more than any gangster could ever do.

Stamy is cooling his heels at the parade, interviewing kids until something bigger happens.

It does, and he's summoned back to the office a short walk away.

As a foot soldier, he rarely writes a story by himself.

In fact, he rarely writes a story.

His job is to cover the story, go to the scene while another reporter's dispatch say to the press conference, and phone

the facts, the quotes, and the color he gathers.

He nurses a healthy resentment for his white-collar bosses back at the desk.

...