Journalist, newspaper editor and publisher. He was considered by many to be a great storyteller and he made no secret of his deep love for Detroit and his commitment to improving the community. He was born Cornelius James Shine to Patrick and Mary Ellen Shine who were east-side Detroit Irish immigrants. He attended St. Rose of Lima Grade and High Schools and graduated in 1948. In 1950, as a junior in college, he joined the Detroit Free Press as a copyboy. He graduated from the University of Detroit in 1952. In 1953, he married Phyllis Knowles whom he had met earlier at St. Rose Catholic High School. They had 6 children. In 1953, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Army Medical Corps in Austria. Upon his return to Detroit and the Free Press in 1955, he became a city desk reporter and covered the police beat and the eastern suburbs. He became assistant city editor in 1963, city editor in 1965, managing editor in 1971, and senior managing editor in 1982. In 1989, after two years of legal disputes, the U.S. Justice Department approved the Free Press-Detroit News joint-operating agreement which merged the two newspapers' business and production operations. He was instrumental in implementing this controversial merger. That same year, as senior managing editor and columnist, he retired from the Free Press. Retirement did not last long as he continued to write his popular column twice a week and then returned nine months later to become the publisher and to help smooth the joint-operating agreement (JOA) transition between the two newspapers. In 1995, the two Detroit newspapers and their unions were involved in a bitter strike. It is considered the longest strike in American journalism and divided his newspaper. He retired again at the end of 1995, but he continued to teach journalism ethics and feature writing classes at Oakland University. Years earlier he taught journalism classes at University of Detroit-Mercy and Wayne State University. Between the three universities, he taught journalism classes for 30 years. He worked at the Detroit Free Press for 45 years and received numerous awards. In 1959, he won a Page One award for public service reporting on mishandled cases in Macomb County Juvenile Court. In 1968, while he was city editor, the Free Press received a Pulitzer Prize award for its coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots. In 1986, he received the Pierrot Award for his outstanding contributions in journalism, and the Polk Award in 1970 for the Free Press investigation of the shootings at Kent State University. He also received honors from the March of Dimes, the American Lung Association, the Catholic Association of School Administrators, the Poletown Churches, the Pallotine Fathers, and the Boys and Girl Clubs of Southeastern Michigan. He began the Children First Campaign and the Gift of Reading Program. He served as president of the Detroit Press Club, and hosted and moderated "Detroit Week in Review" for the public television station in Detroit. In 1993, he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and overcame it. In the spring of 2007, tests revealed the lymphatic cancer had returned. He also developed pneumonia. He died at Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, from respiratory failure. He was 76 years old. A funeral Mass was celebrated by his eminence, Cardinal Adam Maida, at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Grosse Pointe Park. It was a few miles from the Detroit neighborhood where he grew up and also raised his six children. In keeping with his love of Detroit and things of Detroit, some of the funeral luncheon included Better Made potato chips, Vernors Ginger Ale, coney dogs, Sanders chocolate, Irish whiskey, and Stroh's beer.