Losing Your Religion And Reputation: How Far Can You Fall?

Heard this interesting interview by Jennifer Ludden on NPR radio last night with the Esquire writer, Bill Zehme, who just won an award for a piece he did about Bill Greene, a Chicago Tribune reporter dragged down by allegations of sexual misconduct. You can read it here on Esquire's site, The Confessions of Bob Greene:

All you've got is your name, the lost man said in a lost voice. Things for which his name had once stood would never entirely be the same things again—that is what he told himself, that is what he wished not to believe while believing it nonetheless. The weight of penance hung about him, and he wore it calmly, if uncomfortably. He was still the same man he had been before he fell—he looked the same, his feelings and beliefs were still his own, he possessed the same talents—but now he was a fallen man and he had never fallen before and everything was different because he fell.

Congratulations to Zehme, who won the 2004 National Magazine Award for Best Profile Writing with this piece.