The Kingdom And The Power – Gay Talese, 1969 ★★★★★

Gray Lady Meets Young Turks 

Journalism is an institution in constant flux. Its truths are relative, its practitioners come and go, its one constant is change. That temporal quality is front and center in this piercing, sardonic look of a moment in time at the most venerable newspaper in America, The New York Times.

The year was 1969. The Times found itself at a crossroads. Younger writers chafed at the strictures of a century-old tradition that prioritized basic information over vividness and flair. Older executives held the line to maintain the paper’s preeminent status, however sedate.

Something had to give. But what?

In Search Of History: A Personal Adventure – Theodore H. White, 1978 ★★★

Prioritizing the Political Over the Personal

Tragedy nearly struck journalist Theodore H. White twice in November 1963. Right after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, White’s aged mother suffered a heart attack while White was visiting her in Massachusetts.

At that very moment he had a summons from the President’s widow, Jacqueline. She wanted White’s services immediately for an article to honor her husband’s legacy in the next issue of Life magazine. He asks: “[I]f the widow of my friend needed me and my mother needed me, what should I do?”

The answer: He left Mom to await a doctor with his wife, and sped off to Hyannis Port where Jackie told him how her husband’s Presidency reminded her of the popular musical Camelot. White dutifully made the comparison in his article; a myth was born.

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway – Ernest Hemingway, 1967 ★★

Artist on a Deadline

For generations, Ernest Hemingway was like a patron saint of newsrooms. Reporters aspired to be like him in manner and style. His writing persona was whittled down to a few essentials, whispered like rosaries: Write what you know. Eschew verbiage. Direct is better.

But what is his legacy? Today we know him for his books, fact-based but usually fictional. Yet articles he actually wrote for newspapers and magazines do exist, and were collected by William White in this collection published six years after Hemingway’s death.

As pieces of writing, Byline: Ernest Hemingway showcases much of that lean, terse style reporters once held dear, for better and for worse. As reportage, however, they are often bloated, meandering, and focused to a fault on a single subject, Papa Hemingway himself.

Suez To Singapore – Cecil Brown, 1942 ★★★½

Making Waves, On and Off the Air

When the H. M. S. Repulse was sunk by Japanese aircraft near Singapore less than a week after the Pearl Harbor attacks, not everyone was happy American journalist Cecil Brown was one of its survivors.

The news correspondent for CBS Radio had made plenty of enemies in Singapore, including its British commander, Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival. The officer in charge of Percival’s press office made himself conspicuous by his cold silence when Brown reported back to duty.