100 books every journalist must read
A Bintel Brief, Isaac Metzker (ed.)
Those who criticize some of today’s Spanish speakers in America for failing to become “real” Americans fail to realize that the nation’s immigrants traditionally held onto their language and looked to their own media for support and comfort. “A Bintel Brief” — a bundle of letters — was a column in the Jewish Daily Forward starting in 1906. It gave Yiddish speakers a way to understand their strange new land. It’s fascinating to see what the concerns of these immigrants were — especially how universal they were. Journalists of today often need reminding that there is very little new in our craft. Take, for example, interacting with our audience. Some new artifact of the digital revolution? Tell that to the editors who responded to thousands of readers, one at a time, through the Bintel Brief.
Other voice: Jennifer Siegel, Jewish Daily Forward. “Through the column, relatives were reunited, orphans found new homes and difficult communications were proffered under the cover of anonymity. Among the first three printed letters was a missive from a woman who suspected that her desperately poor neighbor had stolen and pawned her son’s beloved pocket watch.”
My dearest friends of the Forward,
I have been jobless for six months now. I have eaten the last shirt on my back and now there is nothing left for me but to end my life . . .
Answer: This is one of hundreds of heartrending pleas for help, cries of need, that we receive daily. The writer of this letter should go first to the Crisis Conference [address given], and they will not let him starve. And further we ask our readers to let us know if someone can create a job for this unemployed man.
Boss, Mike Royko
The politics of Chicago are not the same as the politics of other places. The politics of today’s Chicago are not even the same as they were in the era of Mayor Richard J. Daley. But all politics is local, and there is no finer account of local politics than Mike Royko’s masterful profile of Hizzoner (that’s “His Honor,” in Chicagoese). Remember the anecdote that leads off this post, about the editor who recommended the Bible and Shakespeare? My contribution to the discussion was to recommend “Boss.” If you grew up in Chicago during this period, you knew the things Royko described were going on, or at least you guessed. But you almost never read about it in the news. Royko’s column was an exception. He was a sharp and persistent thorn in Daley’s side. All the more astonishing, then, that he was able to get the cooperation of the sources needed for this book.
Other voice: Studs Terkel, New York Times. ” The revelations are, in telling detail, astonishing. His sources, I suspect, are equally startling; among them, the Mayor’s intimates as well as the walking wounded. … It is a stunning portrait of a clod, his resistable rise, and fortuitousness; of that psychic frontier where the man leaves off and the machine begins. Daley’s pomp and presence are a tribute to doggedness, good bookkeeping and, most important, being around. Of clean habits and a clean constitution, he outsat others, who, were it not for bad livers and worse driving, might have themselves presided under the Great Seal. No wonder he prays regularly and works hard.”
The papers like him. If something has gone well, he’ll be praised in an editorial. If something has gone badly, one of his subordinates will be criticized in an editorial. During the 1968 Democratic convention, when their reporters were being bloodied, one of the more scathing newspaper editorials was directed at a lowly Police Department public relations man.
The Boys on the Bus, Timothy Crouse
After the 1960 election, there was “The Making of the President” by Theodore White, a literary account that made campaigning the stuff of drama. White continued the series through 1972. But that campaign also produced two other books — Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: 1972” and “The Boys on the Bus.” And it would be hard to look at campaigns as drama again; what they were, was farce. Crouse’s book focuses on the reporters, rather than the candidates. For some politics reporters I know (and, I’m pretty sure, for many others I don’t), “Boys on the Bus” formed their expectations of what it would be like to cover a campaign. Indeed, the book’s so influential that it may bear some responsibility for keeping the atmosphere of those ’72 campaigns alive through today.
Other voice: Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post. “Crouse understood some essential but little-known truths about journalists and journalism: that journalists are deathly afraid of being ‘wrong’ and thus tend to stay within parameters set by the pack; that journalists want ‘to be on the Winner’s Bus’ because ‘a campaign reporter’s career is linked to the fortunes of his candidate’ and they don’t ‘like to dwell on signs that their Winner [is] losing, any more than a soup manufacturer likes to admit that there is botulism in the vichyssoise’; that ‘journalism is probably the slowest-moving, most tradition-bound profession in America,’ refusing ‘to budge until it is shoved into the future by some irresistible external force.’ ”
Even in 1973, [Timesman Bob] Semple did not feel compelled to apologize for the gentle treatment he had given [Bob] Erlichmann. He had been writing about the ‘substance of ideas, pieces of legislation’ rather than about Ehrlichmann’s character, he said. He had avoided denigrating Ehrlichmann’s character in order not to affront Ehrlichmann. ‘I had to keep lines open to Ehrlichmann to find out what the hell Nixon was doing.’
Brave Men, Ernie Pyle
If World War II truly was the “Good War,” men like Ernie Pyle helped make it so. His reports make every American soldier a humble hero, or at least a good old Joe. They all believe in what they’re fighting for, they have wise leadership, and, aw shucks, they’re just trying to do their best. Even near the end, when he could admit his own weariness, he insisted the troops were uniformly brave, righteous and determined. Yeah, I’m not Pyle’s biggest fan. He’s on the list because he’s an iconic war correspondent and I am occasionally wrong.
Other voice: From accounts in The New York Times after his death in combat. “For three years these writings had entered some 14,000,000 homes almost as personal letters from the front. Soldiers’ kin prayed for Ernie Pyle as they prayed for their own sons. In the Eighth Avenue subway yesterday a gray-haired woman looked up, wet-eyed, from the headline ‘Ernie Pyle Killed in Action’ and murmured ‘May God rest his soul’ and other women, and men, around her took up the words. This was typical.”
I do not pretend that my own feeling is the spirit of our armies. If it were, we probably would not have had the power to win. Most men are stronger. … For them death has a pang, and victory a sweet scent. But for me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.
Busted, Wendy Ruderman & Barbara Laker
Like “All the President’s Men,” “Busted” is both a report of public misdeeds and an account of how those misdeeds were uncovered by a pair of reporters. But Wendy Ruderman — the voice of the book — has less ego and more writing skill than Woodstein. She and her partner went after crimes of much less import, and in the end their reporting achieved little. Those are not weaknesses here; they make this book a far better picture of what reporting is like. Still, there is something sadly metaphorical: Ruderman and Laker used classic reporting tactics: digging through records, ringing doorbells blind, coming at sources again and again to get them to open up. They even bought groceries and other things for their key source — the kind of thing that would have been no big deal in the Front Page era, but causes noses to sniff in today’s uptight journalism world. They got the goods on nefarious schemes in the local police department. And in the end … no one even got indicted. The travails of the Philadelphia Daily News newsroom — and Ruderman offers the best look ever at what newsrooms are like in the middle of financial turmoil — got even worse, with owners battling each other in court. Just to add that final element of farce, Sarah Jessica Parker plans to star in a TV series based on the book.
Other voice: Rosella Eleanor LaFevre, Philadelpha Magazine. “It’s a personal journey through the newsroom, and Philly’s drug war-torn streets. And because it is so personal, the reader really gets to see the journalists, warts and all. … It’s a captivating story that I tore through in two days. There are moments that inspire riotous laughter and quiet awe, and some that will make your skin crawl.”
At first the merchants were reluctant to trust Barbara and me. … They were scared of retaliation. They were willing to eat the loss, chalking up the cop robberies as a Philly street tax. But little by little, as the merchants realized they weren’t alone, the tide shifted. Every time Barbara got another merchant on board, she euphorically zipped through thenewsroom looking for me, even hunting me down in the bathroom. She looked under each stall until she spotted my kid-size sneakers. ‘Whendy, I just got another one!’ Barbara whooped. We’d have entire strategy meetings in the bathroom with Barbara yelling ideas at me over the stall door.
Cissy: The Extraordinary Life of Eleanor Medill Patterson, Ralph G. Martin
Cissy Patterson was the first woman in America to edit and publish a major newspaper (the Washington Times-Herald). In this list, she represents a particular kind of publisher that had faded away, but seems to be making a comeback as newspapers again become playthings for the rich: a wealthy publisher-owner who mixes with the powerful on a equal basis and uses the newspaper as a personal weapon. Media conglomeration had left only a few behind — John Robinson Block and the late Richard Mellon Scaife in Pittsburgh among them. The industry’s decline is bringing them back, so it’s worthwhile to focus on Patterson for clues to what these solo publishers may do.
Other voice: Decora, Not Too Bad. “This book was like a car crash on TV – I didn’t want to watch it exactly, but I got sucked in, and felt compelled to watch the whole thing.”
Harold Ickes, Cissy’s closest friend in the Roosevelt Administration, remarried suddenly in 1938. Cissy had the news early, but the bride-to-be tearfully pleaded with her not to print the story until they were ready to announce it. She promised ‘with all my heart’ that Cissy would have an exclusive release on the wedding. When Cissy saw the story printed in a rival paper, she told her managing editor, ‘We deserved it. You see what happens when you don’t print the news?’
Citizen Hearst, W.A. Swanberg
When a reviewer calls a book “exhaustive,” he is trying to indicated both that it exhausts all there is to be said about the subject and that it is exhausting to read. Swanberg’s lengthy biography is both. There are other books about Hearst that could have made this list, and other media titans who could show up — Pulitzer, Newhouse, Beaverbrook et al. Hearst has the most dramatic life, however. In an age when we wonder about what Jeff Bezos will do with the Washington Post and bewail what sleazy Sam Zell did to the Tribune holdings, it’s worthwhile to put all that in the context of an age when newspaper barons held real power over the public’s information and dug their fingers deep into the guts of the newsrooms.
In November, 1934, two young men called on Professor John N. Washburne, who taught economics at Syracuse University, saying they were interested in enrolling for his courses. … A few days later, the Syracuse Journal, a Hearst paper, carried a front-page story under the headline, ‘Drive All Radical Professors and Students From the Universities,’ quoting Washburne as having made radical utterances. … The angry professor, realizing that he had been duped by Hearst reporters, repudiated most of the alleged statements. … The Journal came back with a demand that eight professors be discharged as Communists.
City Editor, Stanley Walker
Walker was city editor of New York’s Herald Tribune, which makes a fair claim to being the best dead newspaper in America. “City Editor” only covers a slice of the paper’s history, but Walker captures that particular moment with two-fisted writing. In most newspaper newsrooms, the city editor is at the center of those stories most likely to hit the front page, most likely to sell papers (at least back in the day when an individual story actually could sell papers). City editors are not necessarily chosen for their panache or writing skills, however. Thankfully, Walker has plenty of both.
Other voice: George H. Douglas, “The Golden Age of the Newspaper.” “To get the spirit and the tempo of the New York Herald Tribune in the 1920s and 1930s, one can hardly do better than consult Stanley Walker’s ‘City Editor.’ By no means is it a history of the Tribune; rather it is a compendium of newspaper practices and culture of the golden age and a splended guide to the city rooms of New York.”
He invents strange devices for the torture of reporters, this mythical agate-eyed Torquemada with the paste-pots and scissors. Even his laugh, usually directed at something sacred, is part sneer. His terrible curses cause flowers to wither, as the grass died under the hoofbeats of the horse of Attila the Hun. A chilly, monstrous figure, sleepless, nerveless, and facing with ribald mockery the certain hell which awaits him.
Close to Home, Ellen Goodman
Somewhere in the ’70s or so, male newspaper editors discovered women. Yes, there had been outliers like Dorothy Thompson before appearing on editorial pages, but only if they wrote about man stuff, like politics and war. Ellen Goodman brought traditional women’s page topics — family, love, diets — to the editorial pages (along with much more). It was the realization that men might want to read about the same things that interested women which made the Women’s Section largely extinct. Read Goodman to see where that started.
Other voice: Ellen Goodman herself, in her last column: “Looking backward and forward. I began writing my column when my daughter was 7, and I leave as my grandson turns 7. I began writing about Gerald Ford and end writing about Barack Obama. I celebrated my lucky midlife marriage in these pages, sent my daughter to college, welcomed my grandchildren, said farewell to my mother. I upheld Thanksgiving traditions in this space and celebrated them with a family that evolved far beyond my grandparents’ idea of tradition. I wrote about values and pushed back against those who believe they own the patent on this word. It has been a great gift to make a living trying to make sense out of the world around me. That is as much a disposition as an occupation.”
Having just passed the halfway mark of my fourth decade (the number 35 still sticks in my throat, but I’ll be all right in a week or two), I am beginning to give up on the idea of ever being one. A grown-up, that is. It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I’m going through.
The Complete Works of Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly pretended to be insane, got herself committed, and wrote about she saw inside New York City’s Insane Asylum for the New York World. Today’s degree-bearing Guardians of Journalism Ethics would no doubt insist she could have obtained her story instead by diligent interviewing, patient attempts to be allowed to visit the facility, and a close reading of official documents. Bull feathers. Read “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” the first selection in this compilation, and understand why journalism is about getting the truth more than anything else.
Other voice: Maria Popova, Brain Pickings. “What she witnessed there — cold baths, forced starvation, beatings, the hovering threat of sexual assault, and a general atmosphere more akin to a concentration camp than to a healthcare establishment — is a timelessly tragic parable for what happens when largely arbitrary circumstances render one group of people helpless and another in power, a heartbreaking real-life enactment of the Stanford Prison Study revealing just how much cruelty humans are capable of when they assume positions of authority, however minuscule, over those less fortunate.”
At 10 o’clock we were given a cup of unsalted beef tea; at noon a bit of cold meat and a potato, at 3 o’clock a cup of oatmeal gruel and at 5:30 a cup of tea and a slice of unbuttered bread. We were all cold and hungry. After the physician left we were given shawls and told to walk up and down the halls in order to get warm.
I’d add “The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune,” by Richard Kluger. The Trib was the great newspaper of the mid-’60s, with an oversized impact on our notions of quality — and effective — journalism. Too bad the numbers didn’t add up.
Thanks for commenting, Ed. I do have Jim Bellows’ book on the list, which includes his take as editor of the Trib. And Stanley Walker’s City Editor.
Some good books here, but some glaring omissions that I didn’t immediately find: Hiroshima by John Hersey, The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn, A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. Something from Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane.
Good choices, Chris. I decided I covered Harding Davis with The First Casualty, and I think I remember him being in the Treasury of Great Reporting. I was a bit concerned about over-representing war reporting.
“Precision Journalism”, by Phil Meyer. This 1972 book launched the idea that reporters should use social science methods like polling and statistical analysis, and led to the widespread adoption today of data journalism in newsrooms around the world.
Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I read that back in journalism school when I considered applying my computer science minor to a newsroom job. I went with the Data Journalism Handbook for the list, but you’re right, Meyer’s book launched the era of data journalism.
I agree about omitting Gellhorn.
Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me, given the preponderance of women in this industry, Nellie Bly onward. How about Marguerite Higgins?
Or the extraordinarily brave war reporter Marie Colvin or Janine Giovanni?
http://www.amazon.com/On-Front-Line-Collected-Journalism/dp/0007487967
I did the same count you did, Caitlin. It’s a concern. Some of the collections that are edited by men do, however, include women as contributors, so it’s not as lopsided as the count suggests. I considered adding a collection devoted solely to female journalists — the one already on my shelves is “Brilliant Bylines” by Barbara Belford, which includes short biographies. I wondered, though, if that might seem tokenism.
I would add my Ohio Wesleyan journalism professor’s book – Edwards, Verne. 1970. Journalism in a Free Society, Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers.
I add the Journalist Code I once read – “If your Mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Thanks, Ann. That quote, by the way, comes from the (former) City News Bureau of Chicago (says this Chicago kid).
I’d certainly rethink In Cold Blood, given later information on how Capote cooked some of it. Ditto All the President’s Men, which played a little loose with narrative fact as a way to tee up the movie deal. And some of those j-school textbooks are by people who never wrote more than a memo or a term paper in their lives? No way do they belong. And lots of those books on this list are woefully out of date.
It Happened One Night, the Titanic book, deserves a mention. It was very early quality non-fiction narrative. And doesn’t anyone even remember Psmith: Journalist by Wodehouse, a classic in the genre?
James, I’m not sure who you’re referring to regarding the textbook authors. I explain my decisions regarding In Cold Blood and all the President’s Men in the list: Knowing those books, it seems to me, is essential to understand their impact on the craft.
I would add:
“Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties” – collects much of Esquire’s landmark journalism from that decade by Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others.
“America: What Went Wrong?” by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele – the only book I can think of that became an issue in a presidential campaign, in 1992, over its analysis of how the American middle class was losing out. (The same authors revisited that theme a couple of years ago in “The Betrayal of the American Dream.”)
“The Selling of the President 1968” by Joe McGinniss – the first book to look behind how candidates are packaged and marketed, as they’ve been ever since.
“What Liberal Media?” by Eric Alterman – the first book that really pushed back against the conservative meme that “the media are all liberals.”
Anything by Roger Angell, whose New Yorker reporting on baseball is unparalleled.
Michael, thanks for commenting. Esquire writers are already well represented on the list — not counting Mailer, who’s not one of my favorites. I admire Bartlett and Steele, but I couldn’t find a place for them on the list; worth thinking about again.
I’d have to add William Shirer’s Berlin Diary. He was in the belly of the beast, reporting on Hitler’s rise to power — he even accompanied the Wehrmacht on their drive into France — and then he joined Murrow in the early days of radio news. And his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich showed that some journalists do recognize the need to go back and do a much deeper version of their initial reporting.
Hmm. I recently reread Shirer’s Rise and Fall and was put off by his homophobia.
Give Berlin Diary a try. It’s “pre-history” in that while we know what all of this means and how it will turn out, Shirer doesn’t, so you get a great sense of how difficult it was for journalists on the scene and everyone else to understand where Hitler was headed.
What’s missing from Berlin Diary are the actual stories Shirer wrote. He’s there at all of the major Nazi rallies, at every step in Hitler’s rise to power, he repeatedly describes the look on Hitler’s face as he is standing a few yards away, but he has to deal with Goebbels and the censors, so while we read what he is thinking, we don’t know what he is telling his readers. He’s aware that Jews are in trouble and trying to get out of Europe, but you don’t know if he ever wrote about, e.g. He eventually leaves, a year before Pearl Harbor, in part because he realizes he can’t tell his readers what is happening (and in part because he fears the Germans are about to arrest him as a spy).
Thanks for a heroic achievement in concocting this list. I haven’t had the time to truly digest, analyze, contemplate specific trade-offs, etc., but off the top here are some things I would have considered.
Edmund Wilson, “The American Earthquake.” Remarkable reporting and writing about the 1920s and 30s Saturation reporting and New Journalism decades before they came into fashion.
“Speaking of Journalism,” ed. William Zinsser. Corby Kummer’s relatively brief piece “Editors and Writers” is one of the single best things I’ve ever read on the craft of editing, a much tougher topic to talk about than how to write well.
Norman Mailer, “Miami and the Siege of Chicago.” You don’t like Mailer? Tough. Too influential and important to ignore. This is his best non-fiction.
Joan Diddion, “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” (anthology)
Nan Robertson, “The Girls in the Balcony.” History of discrimination against women at the NYT.
Kenneth Tynan, “Profiles.” Master of the form.
Jack Newfield, “The Education of Jack Newfield”
“The New Journalism,” ed. Tom Wolfe; “The Literary Journalists,” ed. Norman Sims. Two fine anthologies. Repeats stuff on your list but worth owning.
“The Reporter as Artist: A Look at the New Journalism Controversy,” ed. Ronald Weber. Fantastic overview, valuable not only for examples of personal journalism but for discussions, critiques, interviews and dissents.
John Reed, “10 Days that Shook the World.” Classic all the way around.
Seymour Krim, “Missing a Beat.,” ed. Mark Cohen. A highly influential and original voice growing out of the beat generation who was already forgotten by his death in 1989. This is a recent anthology but I’d encourage folks to scour used book stores for Krim’s own collections like “Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer,” “Shake it For the World, Smartass,” etc.
Ralph Ellison, “Shadow and Act.” OK – Ellison’s essays aren’t conventional reporting, but no book will teach you more about the American experience, culture and race and therefore no book is more important for those who need to understand American culture, which is to say journalists.
Roger Angell, “Game Time.” An A+ anthology by the best baseball writer ever. Period. Full Stop. (Coda: Tom Boswell of the Washington Post is equally great on baseball and golf and it’s worth looking for his collections “How Life Imitates the World Series,” “Strokes of Genius” and “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”
Solid choices, Mark. Thanks.
The “old editor” was right when he recommended the Bible and Shakespeare. Whether you’re an atheist or devout believer, every journalist should be up to speed on the literary and cultural allusions that have come into the language from the Bible: 40 days and 40 nights, manna from heaven, etc. Same goes for Shakespeare. And I would add Greek and Roman mythology. Too many journalists seem clueless at basic references.
In terms of books, I’ve recommended to many young (and not so young) journalists William Manchester’s “The Glory and the Dream,” a political AND cultural history of the United States covering the 1920s to early ’70s. I don’t know about anybody else’s high school education, but too often history classes ran out of time as they approached the World Wars and shortchanged all but the most basic stuff. The result: a relative “black hole” of knowledge on anything from that period on until the person was old enough to follow “current events.”
Don, I agree that journalists should have a basic cultural awareness. I don’t agree that such requires reading the Bible and Shakespeare. Knowing chapter and verse for manna from heaven won’t improve anyone’s writing or reporting. But I might even go along with the suggestion — if older journalists would agree that they must keep up to date with youth culture as well. For every young reporter who doesn’t know enough about post-War history, I can match you with older journalists who are still peppering their copy with allusions drawn from movies, songs, TV shows and books that are unknown to readers under 35.
An excellent suggestion, John. As an older journalist (23 years in the biz), I still try to read at least two books on the bestsellers list, see most of the major blockbuster films in the theater and listen to the songs that go viral. As for TV, I can’t stomach the reality shows, but the rest I watch on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/YouTube/iTunes. Now I just need to find a way to become immortal, so I can find the time do even more.
Before you say, oh, Jesus, who let Hunter S. Thompson in the room, please consider Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist / Gonzo Letters Volume II 1968-1976. These are the personal correspondences of a journalist at the height of his craft, committed to his craft at all costs, battling for truth and expenses.
Ed, I let Hunter in the room with “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,” already. The Gonzo Letters are interesting, though.
Love your list. I am not a journalist, only a reader who is fascinated by reporting, a gift from my parents who let me listen to Morrow when I was but a boy and got me hooked on new for life. Thanks for including Mencken, introduced to me by my uncle, a journalist, whose collection of Mencken I have in addition to my own copies. And thanks for Liebling, whose Earl of Louisiana was my young introduction to my own home state and city, and whose writing showed me what great expository, lively prose was all about.
So glad you included Edna Buchanan, Mike Royko, Studs Terkel and Ernie Pyle. These were the people I idolized when I first entered the field. Others I would recommend:
“Front Row at the White House: My Life And Times” by Helen Thomas
“Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers” by Alana Baranick, Jim Sheeler and Stephen Miller
“Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook” by A. Merriman Smith
“City Room” by Arthur Gelb
“Late Edition: A Love Story” by Bob Greene
“Deadline” by James Reston
and
“My First Year as a Journalist: Real-World Stories from America’s Newspaper and Magazine Journalists” by Dianne Selditch
Thanks for the suggestions, Jade. And on behalf of my former colleague at The Plain Dealer, Alana Baranick, special thanks for mentioning Life on the Death Beat.
Alana is amazing, and her co-authors are award-winners as well (Jim even won the Pulitzer). If any young journalist wants to learn how to become an obit writer, this is the book to read first.
Disappointing that Dick McCord’s The Chain Gang didn’t make the list. A great read into Gannett’s shady history of crushing independents.
I’d never heard of McCord’s book before, Patrick. Which is a surprise, because my mom grew up in Peshtigo, north of Green Bay, and I spent a lot of summers up there so I’m somewhat familiar with the saga of the Green Bay papers. I’ll give it a look. Thanks!
No love for Charles Kuralt? It was Kuralt, not Woodward or Bernstein, who made me want to become a journo.
Thanks for the comment, Sam. I’m a print guy, myself, and had to fight that bias in assembling the list. Also had some concern about tilting the broadcast focus too much toward CBS, same reason I bypassed Cronkite’s autobiography. But worth a second thought.
As soon as you listed an SND annual, I gave up on this list.
The SND annual is the museum of modern journalistic decay. Your description of the “evolution” of design is laughable. What actually happened: A bunch of people who couldn’t hack it as editors came up with a way to redefine the work and to make editing of lower priority.
The result: A 40-year con game in which papers continue to claim they “attract” readers with their design, even though all circulation and sales numbers indicate otherwise. Some might call this “lying.”
The credibility of your list dropped to zero with that inclusion. I’m sure many pseudojournalists and others trying to cling to a level of self-importance will ruminate deeply about this list, but I’ve seen what I need to see.
In addition:
“Of your 100, only 18 are written or edited or about women. This seems unbalanced to me …”
Quotas as a guideline for quality — mmmkay. Someone must not have read much Ray Bradbury.
The call for quotas — another example of the total failings of modern journalism.
Hi, Bob! I feel honored to get my very own Robert Knilands trolling comment. This blog has made the big time, apparently. (For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Knilands is a frequent sniper on Internet forums about journalism, particularly about design.)
That’s a pretty weak counterargument. I had expected better, but I guess anyone who includes an SND annual in a list of must-reads has some issues.
Back to the oh-so-horrible-omissions, aka any book a self-important journalist DEMANDS inclusion for: I actually fished Roger Angell’s “Late Innings” out of the pile just a couple of weeks ago. There was time only to flip through a few random pages, but I remember it being an above-average read years ago. The big disappointment today was seeing the “circle the wagons” mentality that plagues far too much of what passes for sportswriting today. Nevertheless, I plan to get the book out again in the future, as I fully expect it will be several levels above the sewage that flows through today’s “sports” sections, many of which have sold out to weak social commentary and lame comedy routines.
Also, the page designers who are blissfully ignorant about yellow journalism and what it entailed should read:
“Emery, Edwin. The Press and America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1962.”
Stunning omission: ‘Byline: Ernest Hemingway’ – any journalist who wants to learn how to tell great stories can learn something here.
Bob, comments like yours are a good reason for lists like this — I’m finding out about great reads I haven’t seen on any similar lists. Thanks!
Homicide by David Simon is vital. So is The Word by Rene Capon–it is the single best book for a fledgling journalist–or any writer–to read. And Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is overrated from a journalistic perspective. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is much better. McGovern’s campaign manager called it the least factual and most accurate depiction of the campaign for good reason.
I’ve heard a lot of support for Homicide. I’d never heard of Capon’s book. Regarding Fear and Loathing — I take your point, and comparing Boys on the Bus with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail would be interesting. Thanks for your suggestions, Bruce.
How many of the books on this list are still in publication? I was searching for books on Nellie Bly a few years ago, and I never saw that one. I’m interested in picking up some of these.
Christie
All the books that have a “Find in my store” link underneath are available as new copies (or Kindle copies) from Amazon. For other books, the “Find on Biblio.com” or “Find on AbeBooks” links to send you to search results on those used-book sites. Using any of those links will earn me a small commission on books you purchase, helping cover the costs of assembling this list.
Indispensible Enemies by Walter Karp
Karp was Lewis Laphams right hand guy at Harpers.
Bill Moyers said he was one of the six greats whom
Molly Ivins would have joined by now.
Karp divides the world of politics into hacks and reformers
and shows the hacks of both parties colluding to keep
all reformers out of power. Karp also shows us the role
of dummy candidates and thrown elections.
Nothing in American politics makes sense before Karp
Everything in American politics makes sense
after you’ve read Karp.
Also Gothic Politics in the Deep South by Robert Sherrill.
Sherrill was an emeritus editor at the Nation and Ivins mentor
at Texas Monthly.
And George Seldes. And Molly Ivins.
Thank you all for your suggestions, which i will
print out and read.
How about Night of the Gun by David Carr?
Wonderful list. Thank you for sharing the wealth. I’m not a journalist (I used to teach English Lit and currently run workshops on Innovation) but I’m fanatical about journalism. I particularly loved William E. Blundell’s “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide”. It’s a wee bit stodgy but it nails the vital importance of a clear underlying structure.