In the News

This book provides rare and candid insights by those who experienced the reality of meeting a deadline and the pressures of space limitations and access to information. Knudson has crafted a seamless narrative of journalism in America by tying together his own keen commentary on the evolution of news reporting with brief excerpts from those who actually did the reporting, from colonial times through the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Students will hear what the following notable journalists had to say about their craft and the coverage of contemporary events:
Benjamin Franklin's ambivalence about the colonial press: extolling the 'watchdog' concept of newspapers, while abhorring the rough-and-tumble personal journalism of his day;

Frederick Douglass's vivid and literary description of his 1847 interview with John Brown;

Ida B. Wells' account of how her small newspaper, a beacon for many African Ameri-cans, was destroyed by an angry mob in 1892;

Ida Tarbell's description of her meeting with John D. Rockefeller;

Richard Harding Davis's 1911 Collier's excerpt, in which he laments the shift from the resourceful and ingenious traditional correspondent to the thundering mob of reporters who descended on any event of significance;

Martha Gellhorn's experiences as a journalist who covered World War II for Collier's;

Ernie Pyle's portrait of what it was like to be a correspondent slogging with the troops through the Italian campaign in World War II;

David Brinkley recounting what it was like to be a veteran reporter during the JFK assassination and funeral;

The Washington Post's Vice President and Executive Editor Ben Bradlee discussing the impact of Watergate on news reporting;

Molly Ivins, a Texas journalist whose first collection of columns remained on The New York Times bestseller list for over 12 months, writes about media criticism

The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin's examination of the O.J. Simpson trial and the phenomenon of selling 'information' to the tabloids.

This book is an excellent text for courses on the history of journalism and American social and cultural history.