Jim Schifrin, who passed away at age 86 on Oct. 20, was the man who made Cincinnati flinch with his Whistleblower newsletter.

He fed a backyard pet raccoon and wore a lapel pin that displayed a rude, one-finger salute. During a visit to the Cincinnati Enquirer editorial department in the early 1990s, he almost set himself on fire by absentmindedly stuffing a lit pipe in the pocket of his sport coat giving a literal definition to "smoking jacket."

In his imagination, he was Charles Foster Kane in the classic movie "Citizen Kane." (He had the physique to play Orson Wells in his epicurean “no wine before its time” years).

His daily Whistleblower newsletter uncoiled from fax machines like a pit viper, slithering into newsrooms, law offices, corporate headquarters, and throughout City Hall and the Hamilton County Courthouse, spreading panic, anger, and embarrassment among powerful politicians, reporters, executives, and local celebrities.

The playground nicknames he pinned on his victims could be a badge of honor, a needle-sharp ego deflator, or a scarlet letter. But they stuck like gum on a shoe in August. Mine, as associate editor and columnist at The Cincinnati Enquirer, was "Repeat Bronson" (why, why, why?). The Enquirer was "The Daily Borgman," meaning cartoons by Jim Borgman, not news, were the paper’s main attraction.

He was called a racist and a right-winger (synonyms in lazy left-handed dictionaries), a gossip monger, and unprintable words that would defy the...

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