This book is written in spirit of an old-time newspaper man regaling cackling, amused, red-nosed patrons in a smoke-filled, dimly-lit bar with personaThis book is written in spirit of an old-time newspaper man regaling cackling, amused, red-nosed patrons in a smoke-filled, dimly-lit bar with personal and singular stories of powerful forces arrayed against a humble man who plays it as though his power is negligible. David E. McCraw may be a down-home guy…as Trump says, he has a soothing, bedroom manner…but his reach is hardly negligible. Don’t be fooled.
Reading this book is every bit as fun as finding oneself under the influence…of a world-class raconteur. We get the inside story on the early days of Trump, when in 2005 Tim O’Brien, then an editor at The New York Times, published TrumpNation and got sued for it. That book is funny and as good a read as this, so get both. In hiring practice, The New York Times must adhere to the No-Asshole Rule (it’s a real thing—look it up).
McCraw goes through the thought and research processes of releasing the couple pages of Trump’s tax returns from 1995, and finding the NYT and Fox News agreeing for what seemed to be the first time in history. He discusses the bizarre beginning to the Trump presidency during which Spicer sought to limit the access of newspapers, certain reporters, and insisted on telling lies about the size of crowds at the inauguration.
When Trump declared the NYT to be “failing,” the senior management couldn’t resist bragging that Trump was doing more for their bottom line than a war. And McCraw doesn’t make any bones about the fact that he stood for press freedom no matter which party The Times was talking to. Hillary Clinton “had a hostility to openness that doesn’t befit a public officeholder…” Truer words were never spoken.
What I admired most about the tone in this book is the big-brain reasonableness of the whole thing. I mean, here we have one of the premier newspapers in the world, with all kinds of talented reporters doing important work, but McCraw recognizes each as individuals and sees the need to tamp down their rage, at times, with the lies and shenanigans happening in the White House and the reporters impotence, in the end, to do anything but report on it.
McCraw tells the story of Stanley Dearman, a newspaper editor in Philadelphia, Mississippi when three civil rights workers went missing in 1964. For 40 years after, Dearborn kept reminding citizens in print of the unsolved case of the mens’ disappearance, ignoring those who told him to “drop it.” McCraw tells us Dearborn’s work was an example of showing the difference between serving the people and catering to them.
When a reporter wrote a story trying to explain the phenomenon of an ordinary-seeming midwest young man expressing adherence to the philosophies of Hitler, the outrage visited upon the paper led to threats against the reporter’s person and livelihood.
“Dealing with threats against journalists had become a sadly routine part of my work life, but each time a new one surfaced a feeling of discouragement about what the country had become would come over me again.”
I hear that. But perhaps the country has always been this way, that even NYT readers are quick to show their [lack of] understanding about enormously important subjects that reach to our makeup as humans.
McCraw also discusses the case of David Sanger writing a book about cyber warfare based on, it was argued in court, leaks of classified documents from high-level government insiders. This is intensely interesting stuff for those who ever wondered how reporters manage to report on closely-held high-level secrets. Probably most of us would agree with McCraw that “the real problem for America was not the unauthorized revelation but an excess of secrecy.” Later he argues "Secrecy breeds absurdity."
The whole book is a feast of huge stories reaching right into the psyche of America’s collective past, nearly twenty years now of stomach-churning days for someone in McCraw’s position. High stakes, for everyone. I will end before McCraw’s account of the Weinstein story, finishing with the decision to publish the 2010 Wikileaks cache and Greenwald & Poitras’ decision to bypass the NYT to have Snowden’s secrets published by The Washington Post and The Guardian instead.
McCraw sounds disappointed that The Times was bypassed on the Snowden story, and I remember well the criticism of them at the time.
“Maybe we should be better at inculcating all citizens—now all potential publishers—with a sense of social responsibility…I continued to believe the risks that came with freedom were worth the price…I also believe The Times had been right, in its North Korea reporting and other sensitive national security stories, to give the government a chance to responds before publication. Many readers saw that process as a surrender…
“…It was important to debate whether The Times had been timid then or at other times, but context was important: our newsroom regularly decided that the government’s objections were too abstract, not believable, insufficiently weighty, or given by officials too far down the food chain to know, and then resolved to move ahead with publishing. But it’s not a science. Editors sometimes get it wrong. National security is intrinsically the hardest of the calls they have to make…If we are ever forced to defend against a criminal charge, I wanted our legal narrative to be one of responsibility, serious deliberation, and a demonstrable concern about the public’s best interests.”
McCraw ’s book raises some thorny ethical questions and answers one newspaper’s take on many more....more
Rebecca Mead manages to sort George Eliot’s personal life from her fiction, enlightening us on both:
"[Eliot’s] most straightforwardly autobiographica
Rebecca Mead manages to sort George Eliot’s personal life from her fiction, enlightening us on both:
"[Eliot’s] most straightforwardly autobiographical character is Maggie Tulliver, and as a grown woman Eliot discussed with a friend the ways in which The Mill on the Floss was inspired by her own history. Everything in the novel was softened, she said; her own experience was worse."
This nonfiction is a hybrid of criticism and biography, but I argue it may be best viewed as a series of connected essays. It can’t be strictly chronological but at the end of each chapter Mead leaves us with a large conclusion and insight that would stand alone but only leaves us wishing to know more.
Mead was able to lay out with ravishing clarity the twists and turns of a long-ago life, pair it coherently with the novels that were the result of that life, while at the same time making us interested in the life and work of Mead herself. Many of us have a favorite novel, but perhaps not so many of us revisit it at different stages in our life to see how our perceptions have changed and what it means for our understanding, and for our judgment. One of the loveliest true things Mead shares with us is how her distaste for the "sad, proud, dessicated" Middlemarch character of Casaubon waxed and waned through the decades she revisited the book:
"He is a frail creature tortured by his own insufficiencies…Once Eliot was asked whom she had in mind as the original Casaubon; in response, she silently tapped her own breast. As I read Middlemarch in middle age, [Casaubon’s] failures and fears no longer seem so remote or theoretical to me as they once did, when I was in my Dorothea youth."
Mead begins by telling us she wanted to understand why some people considered it the greatest novel in the English language, but she was also simply captured by its relevance and urgency though written nearly one hundred years before her birth. She wanted to see how Eliot’s life shaped her fiction, and how that fiction might have shaped Mead herself, it being a lens though which she looked at life time and again. What a large task for even an experienced biographer! But Mead was a journalist, and this may have been her salvation: "how to ask questions, how to use my eyes, how to investigate a subject, how to look at something familiar from an unfamiliar angle." Even so, what Mead has done is nearly mystical in its containment and inclusion.
When describing Eliot’s beginning consciousness of an artistic life, Mead tells us Eliot
"greatly admired the novelist George Sand: 'I shall never think of going to her writings as a moral code or text book,' [Eliot] wrote to a friend…'I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results…that one might live a century with nothing but one’s own dull faculties and not know so much as those six pages will suggest.'"
Yet in the very next paragraph Mead admits she’d never read George Sand. I haven’t either, though I have tried in youth and again lately as an adult…I just couldn’t manage it. The experience reminds me that all of us find our inspiration in such disparate and (can I say?) unlikely places. We are all working within our own limited spheres and with "dull faculties" but it turns out finding inspiration has as much to do with the inspired as it has to do with the object of that inspiration.
Much has always been made of Eliot’s looks and yet she managed to make a life so full of love she wondered if she had enough in her. In middle age (when she was thirty-two), she was pursued by George Henry Lewes, a man married in law only, and moved in with him, adopting his name to fit in better with society. She was brave in spite of social constraints, and had enough fierce intelligence to know that her life was her own to live. "One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy," Eliot wrote to a friend. Her long liaison with George Henry Lewes ended only when he died twenty-four years later. Such boldness and intellectual courage Eliot displayed in her unconventional life.
Eliot, born in 1819, died in 1880, only eight years after finishing the fourth book of Middlemarch. It had been published in eight five-shilling installments from December 1871 to December 1872 and was received with great acclaim among the general populace. The critics were, well, critical. Lewes died in November 1878, and seventeen months later Eliot married John Walter Cross, a man younger by twenty years. Both Lewes and she had known Cross since 1869 and had addressed him as "nephew." She had her reasons, she told a friend, and once again proved her independence of thought and great social courage.
Now for my admission: I have never read Middlemarch, though I think I might try now. I especially liked the final sentence of that novel, which Mead tells us was not always as it appears in the books. It went through drafts until finally Eliot thought she said what she’d intended. Below, it reads to me like a sad but painfully true kind of epitaph:
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been in half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
I listened to the Blackstone Audio of this, very well read by Kate Reading. I filled in parts I remembered with the hardcover, published by Crown....more
Was able to connect accounts, use hashtags, add widgets, set up desktop clients, understand the business uses of Twitter. Most basic questions answereWas able to connect accounts, use hashtags, add widgets, set up desktop clients, understand the business uses of Twitter. Most basic questions answered reasonably clearly. I have to admit to a prejudice against "For Dummies" books for years. It is only when I absolutely cannot find another alternative will I pick one up. However, some of them, perhaps even many of them, are done well. They are clearly written and answer the questions I need answered. Why the prejudice? Can you guess? Vanity, ah vanity....more
This was very, very useful in basics for building a website. I'm not saying that this is the only book one would need--in fact, I would suggest readinThis was very, very useful in basics for building a website. I'm not saying that this is the only book one would need--in fact, I would suggest reading several others to see what you're missing. I learned useful things from other books, but realized that without the background given in this book, I would have been lost, or struggling. Good job, great background, thanks to the author, and the editors....more
For some time now, I've made a big effort to understand the changes in the publishing industry. I must admit I was terrified to think that "news" woulFor some time now, I've made a big effort to understand the changes in the publishing industry. I must admit I was terrified to think that "news" would be left to fingernail blurbs on the Yahoo homepage. I was equally terrified to think that I would have to use my extensive education and valuable time to search a variety of sources for news, recent books, or publications that interest or inform me. I can do it, I know, but how many others will? And what does this mean for an informed electorate in a democracy? I was afraid, but I am much less so now. The changes are taking us to a new place. Gomez plants us firmly in the debate about book publishing, articulating the pressures on those currently producing and selling the book as product. He discusses the electronic updates that are rocking the industry and the changing publicity and marketing avenues. Things are changing so fast, it is amazing his observations are not out of date already. I found the book immensely useful for stimulating fruitful discussion and thought...and hope.
A detailed, thorough, experienced guide to book promotion. A must-read and great reference for authors getting ready to launch. Though written for theA detailed, thorough, experienced guide to book promotion. A must-read and great reference for authors getting ready to launch. Though written for the age of "dead trees" press, the medium may change, but the "savvy" part remains. The author has great examples of successes and failures in book promo that could save an author from costly mistakes. Not just for first time authors, this has a lifetime of lessons....more
Somewhat helpful. The best part for me were "best of" blogs at the end. Gave me a real feel for what to look for in this new medium. New to me, that iSomewhat helpful. The best part for me were "best of" blogs at the end. Gave me a real feel for what to look for in this new medium. New to me, that is....more
I'm formulating my review. Chewing the cud, greasing the wheels, spinning the dial...you get the picture.I'm formulating my review. Chewing the cud, greasing the wheels, spinning the dial...you get the picture....more
At first I wasn't sure what the point of the book was, but then I got the gist of it. A little, perhaps, like reading and writing blogs for the first At first I wasn't sure what the point of the book was, but then I got the gist of it. A little, perhaps, like reading and writing blogs for the first time. At first I just didn't get it. But then I did. Liked the listing at the back of all the blogs they think worthwhile. Made it easier to get a grip....more
Published in 2004, it already feels a little dated, but it is good background for a beginner like myself. I really liked the bit about using some basiPublished in 2004, it already feels a little dated, but it is good background for a beginner like myself. I really liked the bit about using some basic HTML to fix up the writing style when writing blogs....more
Epstein, former Random House editorial director among other things in his long and illustrious career, treats us to reminiscences about the past and rEpstein, former Random House editorial director among other things in his long and illustrious career, treats us to reminiscences about the past and ruminations about the present and future of book publishing. Especially delicious are recollections of Doubleday's suppression of Drieser's novel Sister Carrie, the first appearance of Nabokov's Lolita, and the genesis of The New York Review of Books.
For me though, Epstein's long experience in book publishing is most interesting when applied to how the industry changed, and continues to change, over the years. I am reassured by his insistence that bookstores, like cinemas, will not entirely disappear in this new world of digital access. Years ago Epstein did not recommend to his children nor their friends to enter the publishing industry because it was an industry in decline. Today he would have encouraged them because publishing is an industry in the middle of enormous changes. I agree. There are opportunities to be seized.
A further thought. The book was published in 2001. The book is dedicated to Judith Miller. Epstein tells a little anecdote about his involvement with the CIA in Africa. Somehow it gets the mind whirling...
Loading...
