- published: 25 Sep 2012
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William R. Finnegan (June 29, 1928 – November 28, 2008) was an American television and film producer whose well known credits included The Fabulous Baker Boys, Hawaii Five-O and the cult hit, Reality Bites. he was a five time Emmy Awards nominee.
Bill Finnegan was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 29, 1928. He enlisted and served in the United States Navy during World War II.
Finnegan initially launched a career as a newsman in 1950 when he began writing for the Associated Press, CBS and the Hollywood Citizen News.
Following his stint as a journalist and newsman, Finnegan began working as an assistant director and production manager in the television industry. Finnegan founded Finnegan-Pinchuk Company, a production company, with his wife, Patricia Finnegan, and their business partner, Sheldon Pinchuk. Their company, which was headquartered in Studio City, California, became one of the entertainment industry's leading leading suppliers of network and cable television movies by the late 1970s and 1980s.
William Finnegan (born 1952) is a staff writer at The New Yorker and well-known author of works of international journalism. He has specially addressed issues of racism and conflict in Southern Africa and politics in Mexico and South America, as well as poverty among youth in the United States, and is well-known for his writing on surfing.
Finnegan was born in New York City in 1952. He was raised in Los Angeles and Hawaii. He graduated from William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California and received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974 with a degree in Literature. During his youth he took up surfing, which became a life-long passion he still practices off Long Island when at home. Finnegan spent the next four years taking seasonal jobs and working on an MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana. Finnegan then spent four years abroad, traveling in Asia, Australia, and Africa. He supported himself with freelance travel writing and other odd jobs, but upon reaching Cape Town, South Africa, Finnegan was in need of a job. He found a position as an English teacher at Grassy Park High School, a school for "coloured" students. Finnegan’s teaching experience coincided with a nationwide school boycott, giving him fodder for his first book, Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid, which was published in 1986 and was selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best nonfiction books of the year.