Scott Turow: Shadow Chicago Bureau Chief for The New York Times

Best-Selling Legal Thriller Scribe Nails Down Two Stories in One Day for Gray Lady

Every newspaper relies more heavily on freelancers nowadays. Nature of the beast in the business nowadays, such as it is.

But not every newspaper is able to attract and pay best-selling authors to write for them. Thankfully, The New York Times is not every newspaper.

In today's edition, author-lawyer whirlwind Scott Turow appears not once, but twice. The first appearance is a book review of The Third Coast, which Turow describes as an "engrossing, wide-angled cultural history" of Chicago in the mid-20th century by Thomas Dyja.

Not to be outdone by himself, Turow then appears in the sports section, for an essay on why it was probably a good if not popular idea for Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls to not play during the playoffs and not risk coming back too soon from A.C.L. surgery. If that meant the Bulls would succumb to the Miami Heat in the playoffs--and they did--so be it for the longer-term payoff.

Turow, as you can surmise, is from Chicago. Sure, there are other qualified people who can write reviews and essays about all things Windy City. But they haven't written 10 books that have been translated into 20 languages and sold 25 million copies and spawned a few movies.

Nothing like a little star power to keep people from turning the pages so fast.