After a scathing two-part documentary by Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline in October (The Facebook Dilemma, discussed in a JPROF.com post a couple of weeks ago), Facebook’s reputation as an idealist company that wants to change the world and do go continues to deteriorate. Here’s the lead paragraph from a New York Times story (Facebook Used • Read More »
Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg
Caricature is fairly common today (even amateurs like me try their hand at it), but in the late 18th century, it was a newly developing form of art, as well as social and political communication. And no one was better at it — a set a higher standard for others of his and those who • Read More »
Tags: James Gillray, Jim Sherry, Matthew Crowther
Some people spend hours a day on Facebook; others have never seen it and actively avoid it. Some people have strongly partisan views, one way or another, which may color their view of Facebook. In my view, it doesn’t matter whether or not you “like” Facebook, or whether you are red or blue or any • Read More »
Tags: Facebook, Frontline, Mark Zuckerberg, PBS, The Facebook Dilemma
Journalist Jason Fagon, when he set out to write a biography of the extraordinary Elizebeth Friedman, America’s chief codebreaker during World War II, had an obstacle to overcome that most biographers don’t face: He had to learn cryptology, the art and science of secret writing. Fortunately, Fagon had a good teacher: Elizebeth Friedman herself. Friedman • Read More »
Tags: cryptology, Elizebeth Friedman, FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, Jason Fagon, reporting
It’s been almost two decades now (really? that long!), and the impeachment of Bill Clinton still rubs up against raw feelings on the part of Clinton’s supporters and opponents. And even if you don’t have feelings about it that were generated at the time (maybe you weren’t old enough to really remember), you should list • Read More »
Tags: . Bill Clinton, impeachment, Leon Neyfakh, podcasting, Slate.com, Slow Burn
Our recent trek to the West took us along the old Route 66, nicknamed the Mother Road for its role in getting people to a new life during the Depression and giving people the pleasure of a road trip in the two decades after that. All along Interstate 40 — some of which was built • Read More »
Tags: George Meharis, Get Your Kicks on Route 66, Martin Milner, Route 66, television, The Great American Road
If you were an African-American in the 1940s and you wanted to participate in state and local politics, rural Georgia was not a kind or forgiving place. In fact, it could be very dangerous. That’s the story told by Hank Klibanoff, a journalist and now faculty member at Emory University in Atlanta, in the Buried • Read More »
Tags: Buried Truths, Dover Carter, Hank Klibanoff, Isiah Nixon
Good journalism saves lives. In this Age of Hyperbole, that’s no exaggeration. A couple of weeks ago in the newsletter, I mentioned John Carreyrou, investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and the book he has written title Bad Blood. The book tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes. the wunderkind of Silicon Valley, and her • Read More »
Tags: Bad Blood, Elizabeth Holmes, John Carreyrou, journalistic narrative, Theranos, Wall Street Journal
Courtroom sketch artists are people who can draw (or paint) quickly, accurately depicting what they see and unafraid to allow others — maybe millions of others — to see what they have done. They work under seemingly impossible deadlines, sometimes only a few minutes, at best a few hours. There’s very little chance of editing or • Read More »
Tags: art, artists, courtroom sketch artists, covering trials, drawing, Time magazine
My Lai. If you know anything at all about the war in Vietnam, you know this word. It was the village where more than 100 unarmed civilians were killed by American soldiers during a 1968 offensive. The word has taken on literal and symbolic meaning. We might not know the word at all if it • Read More »
Tags: My Lai, Rachel Cooke, Seymour Hersh, The Guardian, Vietnam
Proof of the government’s lies about Vietnam can be found in many people, most notably a set of documents that government officials put together while the war was still being fought that we know as the Pentagon Pap
At no time did Cronkite express opposition to the war. He merely described what he saw and what people on the ground had said to him.
Tags: CBS, Mark Bowden, New York Times, Vietnam, Walter Cronkite
The mountain exploded in August 79 AD. The ensuing lava flow engulfed two entire cities (Herculaneum and Pompeii) and smothered a third, Stabiae, with poisonous gas. The darkness that the clouds of dust and smoke created was, in the ones of an eyewitness, “. . . not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.”
Tags: eyewitness, Herculaneum, Mt. Vesuvius, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Pompeii, Stabiae
More than 50 years ago, the Alabama-Georgia matchup resulted, not in a national championship, but in a legal ruling that expanded the First Amendment protections we now enjoy.
Tags: actual malice, Bear Bryant, Ed Krzemienski, First Amendment, football, Frank Graham Jr., George Burnett, Joe Namath, libel, public figure, Randy Roberts, Rising Tide, Roger Kahn, Saturday Evening Post, The Story of a College Football Fix, Wally Butts
Was she the mother of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s — the movement that showcased the deep reporting of people like Truman Capote and Gay Talese? Many people thought so. Lillian Ross, who died Sept. 20, 2017, at the age of 99, was doing that kind of reporting and writing for the New • Read More »
Tags: Ernest Hemingway, Gay Talese, Lillian Ross, New Journalism, New Yorker, William Shawn
In doing some research in 19th century newspapers recently, I found this clever little poem: THE NEWSPAPER MAN Little they know. or even think, Of the work there is in shedding Ink By the busy wielders of pencil and pen, Generally known as newspaper men. “Jottings,” “In General,” “Spice of Life,” “Variations,” and rumors rife, • Read More »
Tags: 19th century, newspapers
A lot of buzzing and scoffing these days in the world of independent publishing about the “fact” that ebook sales are down. Blogger Nate Hoffelder tries to set the facts — the real facts — about ebook sales straight. Source: Damn the Facts: The “Ebook Sales Are Down” Narrative Must be Maintained at All Costs • Read More »
Tags: digital publishing, ebooks, journalists, Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader
What’s the biggest different between writing journalism and writing fiction? Since the publication of Kill the Quarterback, I have been asked that question more than once. For an old line journalist like me (when I started in the business, they still used typewriters and pastepots), writing a novel had one big advantage: You could make • Read More »
[button link=”http://dl.bookfunnel.com/iygwd1dtrg” style=”tick” color=”silver” bg_color=”#adadad” border=”#080708″ window=”yes”]Free ebook: KILL THE QUARTERBACK[/button] Fifty years ago when the Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, politics — not merit — kept Harrison Salisbury from winning the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. This week’s announcement (see below) of the latest prizes brings this sad tale to mind. Salisbury was a • Read More »
Tags: Hanoi, Harrison Salisbury, Lyndon Johnson, New York Times, Pulitzer Prize, surgical bombing, Vietnam, war in Vietnam
In 2006 Cramer sold both his publisher and his subject on a book about Alex Rodriguez, the star of the New York Yankees who was recently banned for a year by Major League Baseball for taking banned substances. The book had the title, The Importance of Being Alex: A Life with the Yankees. He had a $550,000 advance from the Hachette Book Group. Rodriguez had agreed to cooperate fully. In fact, he welcomed Cramer into his entourage. What happened after that is a sad tale but, unfortunately, not unique.
Listen to an audio introduction to this post:
Tags: A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, baseball, books, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, Edmund Morris, Hachette Book Group, journalists, magazines, New York Yankees, performance enhancing drugs, Richard Ben Cramer, Ronald Reagan, S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated, writers