Appreciation: John M. Higgins

It’s not possible or fair to summarize someone’s life in a few hundred words. It’s even more difficult when the person in question was as complex and large as B&C’s John Higgins.

Still we know John Higgins, who died suddenly Nov. 20 of a heart attack, would have done his best to chronicle the exploits of a fallen colleague if he had to, and he would have done it so much better than the rest of us. 

Yes, he was the best financial reporter in the cable trade world, but he was much more. If you needed insight on a story or about a person or issue, John was your man. Need an introduction at a party, a good joke or some gossip, you went to Higgins. Sure he was a competitor, but, as we said, he was very big. He was too large to concern himself with the etiquette of trade journalism, which frowned on nearly everything Higgins did.

The thing is, of course, whatever he did each week it worked. Nearly everyone in cable could attest to that on Monday mornings, when the ritual trade read would reveal  the latest Higgins scoop or his surgical dissection of an issue or a company that common knowledge said was off limits. Was he like Ted Williams? Did he just see things clearer than the rest of us?

Like Williams and his sweet swing, Higgins made it look very easy, tossing off statistics, ironic jokes and saucey comments with what seemed to be very little effort emanating from his trademark dark suit and white shirt. Losing him at 45 makes the cable industry less colorful, more confusing and far less fun.For more tributes, please click here.