{"product_id":"news-is-a-verb-isbn-9780345425287","title":"News Is a Verb","description":"LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT\u003cbr\u003e\"When screaming headlines turn out to be based on stories that don't support them, the tale of the boy who cried wolf gets new life. When the newspaper is filled with stupid features about celebrities at the expense of hard news, the reader feels patronized. In the process, the critical relationship of reader to newspaper is slowly undermined.\"\u003cbr\u003e--from NEWS IS A VERB\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNEWS IS A VERB\u003cbr\u003eJournalism at the End of the Twentieth Century\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With the usual honorable exceptions, newspapers are getting dumber. They are increasingly filled with sensation, rumor, press-agent flackery, and bloated trivialities at the expense of significant facts. The Lewinsky affair was just a magnified version of what has been going on for some time. Newspapers emphasize drama and conflict at the expense of analysis. They cover celebrities as if reporters were a bunch of waifs with their noses pressed enviously to the windows of the rich and famous. They are parochial, square, enslaved to the conventional pieties. The worst are becoming brainless printed junk food. All across the country, in large cities and small, even the better newspapers are predictable and boring. I once heard a movie director say of a certain screenwriter: 'He aspired to mediocrity, and he succeeded.' Many newspapers are succeeding in the same way.\"Pete Hamill has been a newspaperman for almost four decades. Starting at the New York Post in 1960, he has worked at several newspapers as a reporter, rewriteman, war correspondent, and columnist. Most recently, he served as editor in chief of the New York Daily News. He has also written for almost all major American magazines. In addition to his journalism, he is the author of eight novels, including the bestselling Snow in August, two collections of short stories, two anthologies of his journalism, and the memoir A Drinking Life. He also has written many screenplays. Hamill is married to the Japanese journalist Fukiko Aoki and is the father of two daughters. He lives in New York City.This is not an objective or neutral essay. The subject is so deeply \u003cbr\u003eentwined with my life that I can't write about it in a cold, detached \u003cbr\u003emanner. Quite simply, I love newspapers and the men and women who make \u003cbr\u003ethem. Newspapers have given me a full, rich life. They have provided me \u003cbr\u003ewith a ringside seat at some of the most extraordinary events in my time \u003cbr\u003eon the planet. They have been my university. They have helped feed, house, \u003cbr\u003eand educate my children. I want them to go on and on and on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe newspaper that gave me my life was the \u003ci\u003eNew York Post,\u003c\/i\u003e as \u003cbr\u003epublished by a remarkable, idiosyncratic woman named Dorothy Schiff and \u003cbr\u003eedited by a tough, smart, old-style newspaperman named Paul Sann. I \u003cbr\u003estarted there on June 1, 1960, working the night side as a reporter. The \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePost\u003c\/i\u003e was then, and is now, a tabloid. That blunt little noun \u003cbr\u003ehas a pejorative quality these days, but \"tabloid\" really is a neutral \u003cbr\u003eword, describing the shape of the page. \"Tabloid\" can't, with any \u003cbr\u003eaccuracy, describe the style, content, or intentions of \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNewsday,\u003c\/i\u003e  the \u003ci\u003eNational Enquirer,\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eRocky Mountain News,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eBoston Herald,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eStar,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eNew York Post,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Daily News,\u003c\/i\u003e or the \u003ci\u003eGlobe.\u003c\/i\u003e All are published in tabloid format. But the \u003ci\u003eStar,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eNational Enquirer,\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eGlobe\u003c\/i\u003e are supermarket weeklies, whose basic goal is to entertain their readers, usually with tales of celebs-in-trouble. The rest are dailies, engaged in the \u003cbr\u003etraditional effort to inform their readers about their city, their nation, \u003cbr\u003eand the world. All tabloids are different, shaped by separate traditions \u003cbr\u003eand geographies. The daily newspapers that have endured--tabloid or \u003cbr\u003ebroadsheet--are those that best serve the communities in which they are \u003cbr\u003epublished. But the supermarket weeklies don't serve communities; they are \u003cbr\u003enational publications driven by an almost primitive populism. Like the \u003cbr\u003emass-circulation Fleet Street tabloids that are their models, they are \u003cbr\u003ereally about class. Their unsubtle message is as primitive as an ax: \u003cbr\u003eDon't feel so bad about your life, lady, these rich and famous people are \u003cbr\u003eeven more miserable than you are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo there are tabloids, and there are tabloids. I'm proud to have spent \u003cbr\u003emost of my working life as a tabloid man at the \u003ci\u003ePost,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNew York Newsday\u003c\/i\u003e. At the \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePost,\u003c\/i\u003e  I served my apprenticeship--covering fires and murders, \u003cbr\u003eprizefights and riots--and did so in the best of company. Reporters in \u003cbr\u003ethose days were not as well educated as they are now. Some were \u003cbr\u003edegenerate gamblers. Some had left wives and children in distant towns, \u003cbr\u003eor told husbands they were going for a bottle of milk and ended up back on \u003cbr\u003enight rewrite on a different coast. Some of them were itinerant boomers \u003cbr\u003ewho worked brilliantly for six months and then got drunk, threw a \u003cbr\u003etypewriter out a window, and moved on. Some were tough veterans of the \u003cbr\u003edepression and World War II and were sour on the whole damned human race. \u003cbr\u003eBut all of them were serious about the craft. And oh, Lord--were they fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was their pride that they could turn out a fine, tough, tight newspaper \u003cbr\u003ewith a fifth of the staff of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times,\u003c\/i\u003e and do it \u003cbr\u003ewith great style. Let the \u003ci\u003eTimes\u003c\/i\u003e be the New York Philharmonic; \u003cbr\u003ethey were happy to play in the Basie band. They understood, and accepted, \u003cbr\u003ethe limitations placed upon them by the tabloid format. Because space was \u003cbr\u003every tight, every word must count. The headlines must sparkle. The \u003cbr\u003ephotographs must add to the story, not simply illustrate it. And every \u003cbr\u003estory must have a \u003ci\u003edramatic\u003c\/i\u003e point. There was no room for \u003cbr\u003edetailed analysis of the collapse of manufacturing in New York; you had to \u003cbr\u003efind a factory that was closing and a proud man or woman who might never \u003cbr\u003ework again. You couldn't just report a fire; you had to tell us about the \u003cbr\u003epeople whose baby pictures and wedding albums had gone up, literally, in \u003cbr\u003esmoke. You had to look for good guys and bad guys, whenever they existed, \u003cbr\u003eand then save them from being cartoons with skepticism and doubt. \u003cbr\u003eSometimes they slopped over into sentimentality or its twin brother, \u003cbr\u003esensationalism, by expressing emotions they didn't feel. Most of the \u003cbr\u003etime, they were content to adopt a hard-boiled cynical manner, accompanied by a \u003cbr\u003ewink.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll of them were conscious of their limitations; they knew that they never \u003cbr\u003eonce had turned out an absolutely perfect newspaper, because the newspaper \u003cbr\u003ewas put out by human beings. But in their separate ways, they tried very \u003cbr\u003ehard never to write anything that would bring the newspaper shame. They \u003cbr\u003ewould be appalled at the slovenly way the word \"tabloid\" is now used. \u003cbr\u003eThey didn't pay whores for stories. They didn't sniff around the private \u003cbr\u003elives of politicians like agents from the vice squad. Even in large \u003cbr\u003egroups, on major stories, the photographers didn't behave like a writhing, \u003cbr\u003esnarling, mindless centipede, all legs and Leicas, falling upon some poor \u003cbr\u003ewitness like an instrument of punishment. Somehow, they found ways to get \u003cbr\u003ethe story without behaving like thugs or louts.","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304420528357,"sku":"NP9780345425287","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345425287.jpg?v=1767733684","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/news-is-a-verb-isbn-9780345425287","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}