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More copies of this ISBN:

Hard News the Scandals At the New York Times & The

by Seth Mnookin

Hard News the Scandals At the New York Times & The Cover

ISBN13: 9781400062447
ISBN10: 1400062446
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
All Product Details

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Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"A former Newsweek reporter who covered the Blair scandal at the time, Mnookin provides an admirably full account of this ultimate crash-reporting assignment and the foxhole mentality it bred among the investigative team....It's compulsive bedside reading for journalism junkies." Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

On May 11, 2003, The New York Times devoted four pages of its Sunday paper to the deceptions of Jayson Blair, a mediocre former Times reporter who had made up stories, faked datelines, and plagiarized on a massive scale. The fallout from the Blair scandal rocked the Times to its core and revealed fault lines in a fractious newsroom that was already close to open revolt.

Staffers were furious — about the perception that management had given Blair more leeway because he was black, about the special treatment of favored correspondents, and most of all about the shoddy reporting that was infecting the most revered newspaper in the world. Within a month, Howell Raines, the imperious executive editor who had taken office less than a week before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — and helped lead the paper to a record six Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the attacks — had been forced out of his job.

Having gained unprecedented access to the reporters who conducted the Times’s internal investigation, top newsroom executives, and dozens of Times editors, former Newsweek senior writer Seth Mnookin lets us read all about it — the story behind the biggest journalistic scam of our era and the profound implications of the scandal for the rapidly changing world of American journalism.

It’s a true tale that reads like Greek drama, with the most revered of American institutions attempting to overcome the crippling effects of a leader’s blinding narcissism and a low-level reporter’s sociopathic deceptions. Hard News will shape how we understand and judge the media for years to come.

Review:

"Seth Mnookin is one of the best and brightest journalists of this ominous post-American century. And here he's written the book that's the answer to the question I've been wondering about for a long time: How could something like this happen at The New York Times, a paper the country desperately needs to survive." Hunter S. Thompson

Review:

"The rightful protagonist of Mnookin's book, and the person whose downfall lends most of its drama and significance, isn't Blair. It's Howell Raines, the Times executive editor....Only when Raines is at the center of the action does Hard News come fully to life." Timothy Noah, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"In Hard News, a con man is the center of attention, but the ideal of 'getting it right' is the book?s true heart. This is a juicy morality tale for the information age." Sarah Vowell

Review:

"I read Hard News in a single sitting, long into the night. Seth Mnookin has written a gripping narrative, a thoughtful media study, and a fascinating portrait of some very strange characters. This book is undoubtedly the last word on a low moment in the history of a great institution." Jeffrey Toobin

Review:

"Seth Mnookin...has done something that's hard to do: He has written a book about journalism that is hard to put down. Hard News reads like a thriller, a fast-paced novel unfolding inside a newspaper long viewed as the gold standard of American journalism." The Washington Post

Review:

"This is two terrific books in one: a riveting thriller, starring a heroic Dirty Dozen team of reporters risking their careers to unearth dangerous truths, and a Shakespearean tragedy about hubris and race and good intentions and self-destruction featuring a pathetic, half-mad villain and a noble, deluded king. Seth Mnookin has written the definitive chronicle of this extraordinary upheaval at the most important newspaper on earth. But Hard News is also a heartening reminder that some powerful institutions take virtue seriously, and can right themselves quickly when things go awry." Kurt Andersen

About the Author

Seth Mnookin is a former media columnist for Newsweek, where he also covered politics, crime, and popular culture. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Spin, and elsewhere. A 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, he lives in New York City.

Product Details

ISBN:
9781400062447
Author:
Mnookin, Seth
Publisher:
Random House
Subject:
Popular Culture - General
Subject:
Media Studies - Print Media
Publication Date:
October 2004
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
352
Dimensions:
9.34x6.46x1.20 in. 1.33 lbs.
Notes:

Hard News: the scandals at the New York Times & the future of American Journalism.

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