100 books every journalist must read
Stick it Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the ‘Sun’ Newspaper, Peter Chippindale & Chris Horrie
Harold Evans’ “Good Times, Bad Times” portrays Rupert Murdoch’s impact on British journalism from the inside of his most prestigious titles. “Stick it Up Your Punter” focuses instead on the decidedly down-market Sun, a “red-top” — so called for the blocks of burning red ink from which the loudest Brit tabloids reverse-print their names. You may think you know tabloid journalism if you’ve seen Murdoch’s New York Post, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. What happened to the Sun may startle you or appall you, but, like the paper itself, it won’t put you to sleep.
Other voice: John Lanchester, London Review of Books. “Sex was absolutely central to [Editor Larry] Lamb’s idea of what he wanted to do with the Sun – central to the notion of the kind of young reader, bored with propriety and circumlocution, whom he wanted to attract. Features, articles and bogus stories on the subject of sex fountained forth from the pages of the paper: the second issue carried the first ever British newspaper picture of a model with exposed breasts, nipples and all; the third carried, on the front page, the howling headline, ‘MEN ARE BETTER LOVERS IN THE MORNING – OFFICIAL’. Lamb hired a team of female journalists, the ‘Pacesetters’, to write sexy features, like the one about Casanova Girls, which featured an interview with a 21-year-old woman who had had 789 lovers. … The only sex-related subject not permitted in the paper was homosexuality. Murdoch was against it: ‘Do you really think the readers are interested in poofters?’ ”
Murdoch and Lamb, way back in the ’70s, had devised the Sun as a paper for the ‘television age’, realising that the mass audience was spellbound by the medium. The Sun’s role had been to provided material such as soft porn, wall-to-wall football coverage and wild political bias, which were absent from British television before its ’80s deregulation.
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, Robert McKee
“Story” is a bible for the creation of movie screenplays. So why put it on a list of must-read books for journalists? First, because journalism is at its heart two things: finding the truth and telling stories. Elsewhere on this list you’ll find books by journalists about how to adapt the techniques of fiction to the truth. “Story” takes you to the source to see those techniques in their natural habitat. Second, because preserving the storytelling function of journalism will be a challenge in an age of listicles. I want to drive the importance of that deep into the minds of journalists. Third, because the vastly expanded palette of storytelling tools that we gain by going online gives journalists the opportunity to tell stories better than ever. Reading a book like McKee’s may open your thoughts to new approaches. “Story” and McKee’s approach have been criticized (see the “other voice” below) for being formulaic and dogmatic. For purposes of this list, that’s not a problem, because the key is that his formulae are different from those you’ll learn in journalism school.
Other voice: Jason Zinoman, Vanity Fair, after attending a McKee seminar. “He’s been criticized for turning the creative process into a series of rules, but this misses the real problem with his course, namely that the rules themselves are often banal and arbitrary. The emperor here is not naked, but he is showing some skin through his loosely tied robe, and when the subject turns to horror, the silky-smooth garment collapses around his ankles.”
A Turning Point is centered in the choice a character makes under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of desire. Human nature dictates that each of us will always choose the ‘good’ or the ‘right’ as we perceive the ‘good’ or the ‘right.’ … Therefore, if a character is put into a situation where he must choose between a clear good versus a clear evil, or right versus wrong, the audience, understanding the character’s point of view, will know in advance how the character will choose.
Succeeding Against the Odds, John H. Johnson
John Johnson rose from poverty to become a wealthy mogul presiding over an empire of cosmetics and insurance and — most significantly for this list — Ebony and Jet magazines, powerful voices in the African-American community. His autobiography does not betray any false modesty.
Other voice: Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune. “When John H. Johnson talks, people listen. So, when John H. Johnson finally sits down after all these years to write his own life story (with the help of friend and employee Lerone Bennett, Jr., a distinguished author and Ebony staff historian), people have good reason to wonder if it is worth reading. Happily, it is. It is interesting to see Johnson as he sees himself. And it should surprise no one that he sees himself in glorious terms.”
Most important of all, and most frightening of all, would I disgrace my mother before her friends? The magazine I published on that far-away November day opened a vein of pure, black gold. And in tribute to the god of November, I made November my signature month. On November 1st, 1945, I started Ebony. On November 1st, 1951, I started Jet. … Today, I own the biggest black-oriented corporation in America.
Talk, Susan Stamberg
In the beginning, there was “All Things Considered.” It was the first news program on NPR, and as such it established a tone for the network that continues today. And the tone of “All Things Considered” was set, for many of us, by two voices: Susan Stamberg and Bob Edwards. They weren’t the first two hosts, but they early and distinctive. This book collects chunks of Stamberg’s wonderful interviews. I’d recommend you first seek out her voice online or on the radio, though, so you can hear as you read. You may also want to listen to Stamberg talking about good and bad questions in this clip from the Third Coast Conference.
Other voice: Neil A. Grauer, Baltimore Sun. “Ms. Stamberg’s skill as an interviewer in ‘Talk’ and the astonishing scope of her work shine through, triumphing over the obstacles she faces in attempting ‘to catch back [from the air] some of what’s been said.’ In doing so, Ms. Stamberg gives the reader a smorgasbord of bite-sized morsels that form a substantial intellectual feast. The breadth of her subject matter ranges from interviews with Lord Snowden on photography to Harold Stassen (!) on why he still was running for president when nearly 80.”
You [Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter] write that doing this book together is the hardest thing you’ve ever done in forty years of marriage. Why? I mean, a woman who can offer her husband Life Savers in the middle of an interview … (Laughter)
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Lawrence Block
The sneaky truth about many books of writing advice is that they’re not so much guides to how to write well as they are fuzzy teddy bears for writers to cuddle while facing the fear of failure. This collection of essays may be guilty of that. What appeals to me is that Block is not a fancy writer. He churns out books, mostly in series, often under a variety of pseudonyms. His writing advice is about getting the job done and getting an audience, not appealing to high-toned literary critics. The journalism equivalent of the writing for the critics is reporting for the awards, leading to the annual ritual of jamming massive series into the end of the year to qualify for the Pulitzers. It’s valuable for journalists to remember that their work only matters if a lot of people pay attention to it. As with Robert McKee’s “Story,” also on this list, Block believes in basic formulae. And also as with “Story,” what matters for journalists is not accepting his formulae as the final word, but seeing them as more alternatives to the moss-covered traditions of our own craft.
Other voice: heidenkind, Truth, Beauty, Freedom & Books. “Block himself says he sometimes contradicts himself (he does), and there are things I find hard to believe or just didn’t agree with (no rewriting Block, really?), but agreeing or disagreeing isn’t really the point of the book. Nor does Telling Lies for Fun and Profit aspire to teach anyone HOW to write a novel, though Block does offer his own ideas about that. Instead, as Sue Grafton puts it in the introduction, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is a comfort read for writers–just like any of his fictional characters, Block makes his own experiences relatable and universal. A lot of books about writing only address the difficulties, with the end result of making aspiring writers eager to get a job in a retail or accounting. Block doesn’t ignore the difficulties at all, but he does make them seem completely normal and, thus, surmountable.”
There are … risks involved in departing from straightforward chronological narration. A major one is confusion. When you play games with the temporal order of things, you run the risk of leaving the reader wondering just what the hell is going on.
This Is London, Edward R. Murrow
I was hesitant to include this book — not because the reporting and writing isn’t brilliant and worth knowing, but because Murrow’s delivery of these words and his use of ambient sound were essential to the power of his World War II reporting. You are strongly encouraged to seek out recordings of his broadcasts online. This book does capture far more of his reporting than is easily available otherwise. And, if nothing else, reading it will whet your appetite for the real thing.
Other voice: D.R., Harvard Crimson. “The remarkable thing about Murrow as a news broadcaster is that he never was a newspaperman. Practically every commentator nowadays is or was a well-known journalist, but Murrow’s only news experience has been at a London microphone. Yet Murrow can describe a diplomatic treaty as well as the bombing of London’s East Side.”
It was like a shuttle service, the way the German planes came up the Thames, the fires acting as a flight path. Often they were above the smoke. The searchlights bored into that black roof, but couldn’t penetrate it. They looked like long pillars supporting a black canopy. Suddenly all the lights dashed off and a blackness fell right to the ground.
1001 Afternoons in Chicago, Ben Hecht
Have you seen a movie version of “The Front Page”? That’s Ben Hecht (and Charles MacArthur). But before Hecht went to Hollywood, he was a Chicago journalist. “1001 Afternoons” collects 64 of his unusual columns for the Chicago Daily News — slices of city life that have been compared to Charles Dickens’ articles on London. Reading these pieces is a good antidote to the illness of meeting-room journalism, in which reporters find their stories through the lens of government rather than on the streets.
Other voice: Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times. “The young Hecht … was so avid for story he learned not to sleep. And because he saw ‘people shot, run over, hanged, burned alive, dead of poison, crumpled by age,’ he didn’t record those stories like O. Henry. Hecht’s style was garish, breezy, lyrical, a mixture of cynicism and sentiment that felt fresh back then and is still pretty irresistible today. He possessed, moreover, the essential gift of any would-be chronicler of urban life: empathy.”
Here the city kind of runs over at the heel and flaunts a seven-year-old straw hat. Babylon mooches wearily along with a red nose dreaming in the sun, and Gomorrah leans against an ash can. It is South State Street below Van Buren. The ancient palaces of mirth and wonder blink with dusty lithographs.
Towards the End of the Morning, Michael Frayn
It is 1950s London and a newspaper very much like the real Observer (where Frayn worked) is muddling toward the end of an era of British journalism. This novel is placed on a par with Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop” by many English reviewers, but is little known in America (at least if I’m any barometer).
Other voice: Kim Forrester, Reading Matters blog. “While it’s a story about journalism and its struggle with changing work practises and the emerging “glitterati” of television broadcasting, it’s essentially a comedy of manners. I laughed out loud a lot while reading this one!”
Various members of teh staff emerged from Hand and Ball Passage during the last dark hour of the morning, walked with an air of sober responsibility towards the main entrance, greeted the commissionaire, and vanished upstairs in the lift to telephone their friends and draw their expenses before going out again to have lunch. Furtively among them came a short, rather fat man in a shapeless raincoat and a shapeless tribly hat. … He was the sort of man who calls at newspaper offices carrying sheaves of brown paper on which he has written down messages from God or outer space setting forth plans for the spiritual regeneration of the world.
A Treasury of Great Reporting, Louis L. Snyder & Richard B. Morris (eds.)
A doorstop of a book crammed with news stories written or spoken from 1587 to 1948. It’s the best source I know of for such a comprehensive recording of how what we now call journalism changed — and stayed the same — over time. Certainly by this point in reading my list you’ve realized that I believe journalists must immerse themselves in the craft’s history; we can’t move forward wisely unless we trace the steps of those who came before.
Along the burning banks of the distant Euphrates, between sultry Mesopotamia and the Badiet-esh-Sham, the desolate desert of Syria, are encamped the several thousands of departed Armenians who have escaped the great massacre.
24 Days, Rebecca Smith & John Emshwiller
Rebecca Smith and John Emshwiller tell the story of the Enron scandal and how they uncovered it, working for the Wall Street Journal. A very good reporter I know said this book inspired her to become a business journalist, and that’s a high enough recommendation for me. Around the time of Enron’s collapse, journalists came in for criticism for failing to protect the public from the misdeeds of financial titans, by not uncovering their sins soon enough. I never accepted that. The resources that corporations can put into hiding their shenanigans far outstrip what newsrooms can afford to put into investigating them, and journalists lack subpoena powers and other levers of government regulators and law enforcement. Instead of getting angry when journalists fail to spot problems, the public should be grateful that some of them still have the savvy to sniff out financial sleight-of-hand and can put in the time and effort required to prove it.
Other voice: Holly Hubbard Preston, New York Times. “Smith and Emshwiller, veteran Wall Street Journal reporters, are credited by their publisher — and by a host of less biased observers, including Enron executives and the Securities and Exchange Commission — with first exposing the energy company’s failings, in August 2001. The reporters, unlike much of the rest of the market, were not willing to buy the explanation that Enron’s chief executive then, Jeffrey Skilling, was resigning for “personal reasons” after less than a year in his post. In their search for a more plausible reason for Skilling’s departure, the two journalists unwittingly grabbed a thread that would ultimately unravel the complex and mostly corrupt business dealings previously unknown to all but Enron’s inner circle.”
Appropriately enough for a company that aspired to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day trading powerhouse in every corner of the world and the far reaches of cyberspace, Enron took advantage of a new electronic filing feature at the New York bankruptcy court and sent in its bankruptcy petition on a Sunday. Smith was home when she got a phone call confirming that the filing had been made, and she quickly turned on her computer to see if she could download a copy of it. Another Sunday fire drill, she thought, wondering how she was going to get what was surely a massive document downloaded on a plain old copper telephone line and wondering if she should go into the office and work from there.
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.