The Great Reporters


Book Description

Profiles the greatest journalists in history & their best stories -- chosen by David Randall of the Independent on Sunday.




Reporter


Book Description

"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." —John le Carré From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and preeminent investigative journalist of our time—a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a decades-long career breaking some of the most impactful stories of the last half-century, from Washington to Vietnam to the Middle East. Seymour Hersh's fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the free world, honors galore, and no small amount of controversy. Now in this memoir he describes what drove him and how he worked as an independent outsider, even at the nation's most prestigious publications. He tells the stories behind the stories—riveting in their own right—as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horrors at Abu Ghraib. There are also illuminating recollections of some of the giants of American politics and journalism: Ben Bradlee, A. M. Rosenthal, David Remnick, and Henry Kissinger among them. This is essential reading on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.




The Universal Journalist


Book Description

This is a new edition of the world's leading textbook on journalism. Translated into more than a dozen languages, David Randall's handbook is an invaluable guide to the "universals" of good journalistic practice for professional and trainee journalists worldwide. Irrespective of language or culture, good journalists share a common commitment to the search for truth, often in difficult circumstances. David Randall emphasizes that good journalism isn't just about universal objectives: it must also involve the acquisition of a range of skills that will empower journalists to operate in an industry where ownership, technology and information are constantly changing. This acclaimed handbook challenges old attitudes, procedures and techniques of journalism where they are seen as cynical and sloppy. This fully updated edition contains scores of new anecdotes and examples, drawing on the author's own experience as a national newspaper reporter and columnist.




The Story


Book Description

Judith Miller—star reporter for The New York Times, foreign correspondent in some of the most dangerous locations, Pulitzer Prize winner, and longest jailed correspondent for protecting her sources—turns her reporting skills on herself in this “memoir of high-stakes journalism” (Kirkus Reviews). In The Story, Judy Miller turns her journalistic skills on herself and her controversial reporting, which marshaled evidence that led America to invade Iraq. She writes about the mistakes she and others made on the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. She addresses the motives of some of her sources, including the notorious Iraqi Chalabi and the CIA. She describes going to jail to protect her sources in the Scooter Libby investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and how the Times subsequently abandoned her after twenty-eight years. Judy Miller grew up near the Nevada atomic proving ground. She got a job at The New York Times after a suit by women employees about discrimination at the paper and went on to cover national politics, head the paper’s bureau in Cairo, and serve as deputy editor in Paris and then deputy at the powerful Washington bureau. She reported on terrorism and the rise of fanatical Islam in the Middle East and on secret biological weapons plants and programs in Iraq, Iran, and Russia. Miller shared a Pulitzer for her reporting. She describes covering terrorism in Lebanon, being embedded in Iraq, and going inside Russia’s secret laboratories where scientists concocted designer germs and killer diseases and watched the failed search for WMDs in Iraq. The Story vividly describes the real life of a foreign and investigative reporter. It is an account filled with adventure, told with bluntness and wryness.




Reporting from the Front


Book Description

When the war was declared in August 1914, one of the first acts to be implemented by the politicians and military was a strict censorship on the newspapers. As the poacher turned gamekeeper, Winston Churchill said: The war is going to be fought in a fog and the best place for correspondence about the war is London, The military sought to have one of their officers, dubbed “Eyewitness”, to be the official spokesman to enable them to control what the newspapers could print. In the early stages of the war, there were many reporters on the Continent who were evading military arrest and sending back reports about the reality of the situation. Several volunteered with the various ambulance services just to disguise their real purpose, but all were eventually banished. Having finally cleared all reporters from fighting area, the military was persuaded to allow a small number of accredited war reporters to be chaperoned around the battle fronts. They were closely watched and their reports thoroughly scrutinised, until they eventually became almost a part of the Headquarters hierarchy. Later, diaries and letters revealed how many of them really felt and they had to bear the post-war shame of not writing the truth. The Western Front was not the only front in this world war. Reporters found censorship less rigidly applied on the Eastern Front, Palestine and Italy. One correspondent, whose reports famously brought about the sacking of the campaign commander and the ending of the fruitless and bloody Gallipoli Expedition, bravely broke ranks and was finished as a war reporter. War reporting was not confined to print. The emergence of photographers and cinematographers on the battlefield has left us with an extraordinary record. Unlike their writing brothers, the photographers could get close to the action and shoot what they liked. The resultant film was, of course, censored but thankfully nothing was discarded and museum archives are full of their stunning work. Having been the pre-war stars of their newspapers, the war reporters experienced a post-war wave of anger and cynicism which took years to overcome.




The Reporter's Kitchen


Book Description

For the first time, Jane's beloved food pieces from The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1964, are arranged in one place. A collection of definitive chef profiles, personal essays, and gastronomic history that is at once deeply personal and humane




American Journalists in the Great War


Book Description

When war erupted in Europe in 1914, American journalists hurried across the Atlantic ready to cover it the same way they had covered so many other wars. However, very little about this war was like any other. Its scale, brutality, and duration forced journalists to write their own rules for reporting and keeping the American public informed. American Journalists in the Great War tells the dramatic stories of the journalists who covered World War I for the American public. Chris Dubbs draws on personal accounts from contemporary newspaper and magazine articles and books to convey the experiences of the journalists of World War I, from the western front to the Balkans to the Paris Peace Conference. Their accounts reveal the challenges of finding the war news, transmitting a story, and getting it past the censors. Over the course of the war, reporters found that getting their scoop increasingly meant breaking the rules or redefining the very meaning of war news. Dubbs shares the courageous, harrowing, and sometimes humorous stories of the American reporters who risked their lives in war zones to record their experiences and send the news to the people back home.




Citizen Reporters


Book Description

A fascinating history of the rise and fall of influential Gilded Age magazine McClure’s and the two unlikely outsiders at its helm—as well as a timely, full-throated defense of investigative journalism in America The president of the United States made headlines around the world when he publicly attacked the press, denouncing reporters who threatened his reputation as “muckrakers” and “forces for evil.” The year was 1906, the president was Theodore Roosevelt—and the publication that provoked his fury was McClure’s magazine. One of the most influential magazines in American history, McClure’s drew over 400,000 readers and published the groundbreaking stories that defined the Gilded Age, including the investigation of Standard Oil that toppled the Rockefeller monopoly. Driving this revolutionary publication were two improbable newcomers united by single-minded ambition. S. S. McClure was an Irish immigrant, who, despite bouts of mania, overthrew his impoverished upbringing and bent the New York media world to his will. His steadying hand and star reporter was Ida Tarbell, a woman who defied gender expectations and became a notoriously fearless journalist. The scrappy, bold McClure's group—Tarbell, McClure, and their reporters Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens—cemented investigative journalism’s crucial role in democracy. From reporting on labor unrest and lynching, to their exposés of municipal corruption, their reporting brought their readers face to face with a nation mired in dysfunction. They also introduced Americans to the voices of Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and many others. Tracing McClure’s from its meteoric rise to its spectacularly swift and dramatic combustion, Citizen Reporters is a thrillingly told, deeply researched biography of a powerhouse magazine that forever changed American life. It’s also a timely case study that demonstrates the crucial importance of journalists who are unafraid to speak truth to power.




Confessions of an Investigative Reporter


Book Description

"A fascinating look behind the media mirror that reflects celebrity and power ... incredible." --Bob Dotson, New York Times bestselling author, former national correspondent, the Today show Award-winning investigative reporter Matthew Schwartz was ordered to lie on TV in the name of sensationalism. He was arrested for trespassing on the property of a business he exposed for committing fraud. A target of one of his investigations swung a baseball bat at his head. He's been shoved, sued, and cursed out. He caught a car dealership rolling back odometers and selling used cars as new. In Confessions of an Investigative Reporter, this veteran journalist reveals his inner thoughts and the inside stories viewers never saw. Confessions of an Investigative Reporter is funny, fast-moving, and dishy. It provides a rare look inside the world of local news from someone who spent four decades in it. It's not only for news viewers. It's for anyone who cares about justice and their community. And about that time he was ordered to lie? His answers lie within.




What are Journalists For?


Book Description

He traces the intellectual roots of the movement and shows how journalism can be made vital again by rethinking exactly what journalists are for."--Jacket.