Jerry Flint

In 1980, when the rest of the media had dismissed Chrysler Corp. as down and out, the contrary Jerry Flint of Forbes wrote an optimistic story detailing how the automaker would revive. The story was so controversial that the magazine included a note saying the opinion was that of Mr. Flint's.

Chrysler battled back, and in 1997, Forbes picked the carmaker as Company of the Year.

A native of Detroit, Mr. Flint is one of the most tenured and respected automotive business writers in the country. He has worked from the Motor City for both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, serving from 1967 to 1973 as the Times' Detroit bureau chief.

"The folks in Detroit often disagree with Flint, but they never fail to read him," wrote William Baldwin, Forbes editor in the Oct. 4, 1999, issue.

The oft-quoted Mr. Flint, a 1953 graduate of Wayne State University, joined the Journal in 1956, then moved to the Times in 1967 - "just in time to run out on 12th Street to cover America's bloodiest racial riot. With The Times in Detroit there was race, politics - I broke the George Romney 'brainwashed on Vietnam' quote - automobiles and Walter Reuther," Mr. Flint said in Forbes.

The lure of reporting on the economy from the nation's capital brought him to Forbes in 1979, and he headed up its D.C. bureau for four years. He also wrote a book, "The Dream Machine: The Golden Age of American Automobiles, 1946-65." It was published in 1977.

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