Negative Space: journalism
- ABC refutes journalism’s layers of quality
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Which is worse? Making up words or just using them willy-nilly?
- All the President’s Men
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Probably one of the most influential events in journalism history made into one of the best films of the seventies.
- All the President’s Men
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Supposedly written because Robert Redford wanted to base a movie on the book, this is a great memoir of two journalists wondering what the hell was up after a failed burglary on an office in the Watergate Building.
- Are these stories true?
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We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Reader.
- As reporters grow dependent on their regular drug-crisis fix
- Adam Paul Weisman writes about the “journalistic dream-world” where he “can write almost anything” and “nobody is going to call him on it”. From the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, September 26, 1986, p 21A.
- Black is White
- Have we finally flipped the switch into full Orwell mode?
- Call Northside 777
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A journalism noir starring Jimmy Stewart as the crusading reporter who frees an innocemnt man while arguing with his editor, smoking, drinking, and walking the streets of Chicago.
- Confirmation journalism and the death penalty
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Iterative journalism is like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Sentence first, verdict after.” The Elements of Journalism praises David Protess’s project that railroaded a mentally disabled man into prison for fourteen years, because it served their bias.
- Deadlines & Monkeyshines: The Fabled World of Chicago Journalism
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The past is a dark place to look into; despite all of the paeans to a golden age of journalism, John J. McPhaul describes a world very much like our own, but without the Internet to shine a light on journalism’s monkeyshines.
- The Elements of Journalism
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Now that the Internet empowers readers to check the veracity of news reports, journalists need to come up with more and better justifications for their bias.
- Evil and religion in the modern media
- The press betrays its religion in its choice of news sources.
- Fighting for the American Dream
- Joe the Plumber writes about his experiences at the center of one of the most vicious smear campaigns in recent memory.
- The First Casualty
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This book is a great collection of war reporting anecdotes from the Crimean War up to Vietnam. It also attempts to be an analysis, and pretty much fails to not only come to any conclusion, but to decide what its goals ought to be.
- Fit to Print: A.M. Rosenthal and His Times
- Abe Rosenthal ran the New York Times from the late sixties to the mid eighties. He made lots of enemies, took sides in New York’s elections, and treated people as if only he were real. But he also turned the Times into a more profitable entity that reported news instead of press releases and stories instead of raw data.
- Follow the Other McCain for excitement in New York!
- The Other McCain is gonzoing forward in New York 23.
- Inside the Beltway: A Guide to Washington Reporting
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Don Campbell’s guide to the craft that is reporting in Washington, DC.
- It is widely believed that the news media is clueless
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I believe that the news media is clueless over the sales records of Sarah Palin’s bestseller “Going Rogue”. Because they’re clueless, they’re flailing about madly for a narrative that fits the book into their uninspired, factless world view.
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker (TV Series)
- Whistling his way into the office, alone, late at night, he tosses his straw hat so nonchalantly it goes into the wastebasket, starts typing a story—a scoop! A conspiracy so dark, no one can tell it but him, the intrepid, insightful big-city journalist.
- Letters to a Young Journalist
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This pocket hardcover is ostensibly a series of letters to a young, but unnamed, journalist. Sort of an anonymous anti-source. Which makes sense, because Freedman is a very conflicted journalist.
- Mike Royko: A Life in Print
- Mike Royko, according to author and fellow newsman F. Richard Ciccone, was the heir to the Mencken responsibility of satirizing the powerful and protecting the weak. I believe he came close, but Ciccone’s book doesn’t show it.
- Murrow: His Life and Times
- Edward R. Murrow inspired generations of journalists with his reports from the London blitz on radio and, later, his reports on McCarthyism on television.
- The President’s freelancers
- If the president told you that he could get the press gunning for you, would you believe him?
- The Prince of Darkness
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Robert Novak’s memoir covers his life from 1957 working for the Associated Press, through his 30-year partnership with Rowly Evans, and is bookended by the Plame affair. It’s very engaging, making you feel as much an insider as he dared as a conservative writer in a congenitally liberal town.
- Release: The Dream of Poor Bazin
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A great journalistic adventure in the style of Dumas or Waugh, four hard-drinking reporters taking on the corruption, toadying, and even murder in America’s beltway.
- A Reporter’s Life
- Walter Cronkite’s autobiography is an odd beast. He seems to have little introspection; his stories read like urban legends. On the other hand, he’s lived through some amazing times, and has seen dominance in journalism move from newspaper to radio to television.
- Resistance to media bias is unexpected
- It’s amazing how unprepared the biased media is when people don’t play along with their bias.
- Scoop
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In 1935, Evelyn Waugh traveled to Abyssinia to cover the Second Italo-Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail. He found it absurd enough, up to a point, to be the basis for a satire and combined some of his colleagues into William Boot of the Beast.
- Tanning bed media returns
- Looks like the tanning bed media are back, so I’ve temporarily moved Conservatives4Palin to the main blogroll.
- The Walkerville Weekly Reader
- Editor Carolyn Purcell’s vision is continued by friends Sam Lee and Shaheen Hamedi.
- Why I don’t write about people not writing about Sarah Palin
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Yeah, Palin Derangement Syndrome is a real bitch.
- The World of Mike Royko
- Doug Moe’s “The World of Mike Royko” is not as deep as Ciccone’s “A Life in Print” tries to be, but it does what it does very well.
