SOURCE: "The Paragon of Reporters," in Newsweek, Vol. CXX, No. 6, August 10, 1992, pp. 53-4.

In the following essay, Jones briefly summarizes Mitchell's career, discussing his style, the subjects of his profiles, and his association with the New Yorker.

One recent balmy summer afternoon, Joseph Mitchell stood in the middle of New York's Fulton Fish Market and grinned like a schoolboy playing hooky. "As soon as I came down here in the '30s as a reporter, I felt at home," he said. Over a half century later, he is still prowling the market's cobbled streets. "It's so exciting, with the colors, the smells, the noise as the background to all that trading," he said. "Most markets now are abstract. It's stocks and bonds. But this is the real thing that those old Dutch painters painted. I think of it as the Dutchness of New York. I like that aspect...