Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps

ISBN-13: 9780195308921 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 432 str.

Donald A. Ritchie

Opis

Donald Ritchie offers a vibrant chronicle of news coverage in our nation's capital, from the early days of radio and print reporting and the heyday of the wire services to the brave new world of the Internet.
Beginning with 1932, when a newly elected FDR energized the sleepy capital, Ritchie highlights the dramatic changes in journalism that have occurred in the last seven decades. We meet legendary columnists--including Walter Lippmann, Joseph Alsop, and Drew Pearson --as well as the great investigative reporters, from Paul Y. Anderson to the two green Washington Post reporters who launched the political story of the decade--Woodward and Bernstein. We read of the rise of radio news--fought tooth and nail by the print barons--and of such pioneers as Edward R. Murrow, H. V. Kaltenborn, and Elmer Davis. Ritchie also offers a vivid history of TV news, from the early days of Meet the Press, to Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, to the cable revolution led by C-SPAN and CNN. In addition, he compares political news on the Internet to the alternative press of the '60s and '70s; describes how black reporters slowly broke into the white press corps (helped mightily by FDR's White House); discusses path-breaking woman reporters such as Sarah McClendon and Helen Thomas, and much more.
From Walter Winchell to Matt Drudge, the people who cover Washington politics are among the most colorful and influential in American news. Reporting from Washington offers an unforgettable portrait of these figures as well as of the dramatic changes in American journalism in the twentieth century.

Recenzje

"Donald A Ritchie's Reporting from Washington is an impressive blend of authority and style, telling the history of the modern Washington press corps with a journalist's knack for the arresting detail and a scholar's concern for context and meaning. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of a central force in American public life, and will prove an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand how the United States is governed." —Evan W. Cornog, Publisher, Columbia Journalism Review, and Associate Dean for Planning and Policy, Columbia Journalism School

O autorze

Donald Ritchie has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for almost three decades. A past president of the Oral History Association, he is the author of Doing Oral History, American Journalists: Getting the Story, and Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents. He is a popular public speaker and a frequent commentator on C-SPAN.