Matt Beer, 50 - ex-Detroit News columnist
Kathi
Ex-Detroit News columnist dies at age 50
October 8, 2003
There was no Michigan journalist in the 1980s more flamboyant than
Matt Beer.
As a caustic Detroit News gossip columnist, a features writer at
Detroit's slick monthly magazine and co-editor of the entertainingly
subversive Orbit magazine, Beer pushed the boundaries of good taste
and the First Amendment.
He even collaborated on a made-for-TV movie. It was about his father,
a controversial Oakland County Circuit judge who led a secret life
married to one woman and raising three children in Oakland County
while having nine kids with another woman in Detroit.
Leaving journalism, Beer became a lawyer but lost his license in 1995
after he defrauded clients. He blamed his troubles on severe
depression.
Beer moved to San Francisco just as the dot-com revolution evolved
and, in serial fashion, produced a technology show for the fledgling
MSNBC; was a project manager for the highly praised Web-culture site,
SUCK .com, and wrote about technology for the San Francisco Examiner,
Business 2.0 magazine and Agence France-Presse.
Beer died apparently of natural causes Monday in Cambodia, his
brother-in-law Peter Logan Jr. of Grosse Pointe Park said Tuesday.
Beer had arrived in Cambodia on Sunday to take over as editor of an
English-language newspaper and to mentor journalists. He was 50.
"He liked the adventure of new things. He was so bright that he could
do all of them," Logan said.
Beer blazed a high-profile trail as a writer for the Detroit News'
Yours Truly gossip column from 1982-1984.
"Matt Beer was a delightful, engaging rascal," said Ben Burns, the
News' former executive editor who is now a Wayne State University
journalism professor. "He had an incredible ability to prick the
balloons of the pompous and self-important."
Susan Wyland, a former features editor at the News, worked with Beer
there and later hired him to write for Detroit Monthly magazine.
"I think of Matt and I think of hellfire," said Wyland, now a magazine
consultant in New York City.
Beer chronicled raucous evenings at a Downriver bar where male patrons
shot water guns at women in panties and the exploits of Detroit Tigers
Kirk Gibson and Dave Rozema as they courted their future wives in
strip clubs. At Detroit Monthly magazine, he was a senior editor who
won awards for feature writing. His facile touch as a writer led to
assignments with several national publications.
Richard Rollins, a Farmington Hills attorney who owned two discos
where Beer parked himself every Saturday night during his gossip
column run, said "He didn't care who he offended, but it was all
truthful."
Beer's own life could have produced some grist for his mill. In 1983,
it was revealed that his father, longtime Oakland County Circuit Judge
William Beer, had led an elaborate double life. Matt Beer belonged to
the judge's Detroit family.
"Because of his past with his family, he had a lot of hidden demons
inside him," Rollins said. Rollins shared a law practice with Matt
Beer before Beer lost his law license in 1995 for repeated misconduct,
including taking clients' money without doing the work.
Beer graduated from East Catholic High School, served four years in
the U.S. Air Force and then graduated from Northern Michigan
University. He was on the law review before graduating from Detroit
College of Law.
Survivors include his mother, Barbara Beer; five sisters, Deborah Beer
Raptoplous, Mary Beer Omundson, Anne Lemaire, Patricia Logan and Amy
Beer; two brothers, Christopher Beer and Paul Beer, and 12 nieces and
nephews.
The family will receive visitors from 5-9 p.m. Thursday at Verheyden
Funeral Home, Mack at East Outer Drive, Grosse Pointe Park. There will
be a memorial service at 7:30 p.m.
Bob Flaminio
> Matt Beer: Journalist was feisty and clever
Yes, he had a real good head.
--
Bob
Bill Schenley
> Yes, he had a real good head.
Is that what you meant to write ... or was that just your
first draft?
churcht
He was a stout fellow for sure.
Tim "What the 'Ale" Churchill
Brigid Nelson
Tapped by Death, he won't be boch.