The Great Reporters - Softcover

Randall, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745322964 ISBN 13: 9780745322964

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

'Entertaining, amusing, even inspirational. Above all, what every good reporter aims to deliver, a great read.' Peter Cole, Professor of Journalism at the University of Sheffield 'American newsrooms need to buy this inspiring book by the carton. David Randall's gripping collection of profiles in inky courage demonstrates that our current malaise amounts to ignorance of the perpetual siege of newsrooms by the powerful and the parsimonious. "The Great Reporters" is rich with the kind of lore that needs to inform the culture of newspaper journalism." Dean Miller, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies Who are the greatest reporters in history? This unique book is the first to try and answer this question. Author David Randall searched nearly two centuries of newspapers and magazines, consulted editors and journalism experts worldwide, and the result is The Great Reporters - 13 in-depth profiles of the best journalists who ever lived. They include nine Americans and four Britons, ten men and three women, whose lives were full of adventure, wit, and the considerable ingenuity required to bring the story home. Among chapters are those on the reporter who: • Booked himself onto a ship likely to be sunk by the Germans so he could report its torpedoing • Was called out to a multiple shooting, who interviewed 50 witnesses, went back to the office, and wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning story of 4,000 words in two and a half hours • Was deemed useless by her teacher but who went on to become the greatest crime reporter in history • Wrote a story that changed the map of Europe • Out-bluffed a top Soviet official to get into Russia so he could cover the appalling famine there • Feigned madness to get herself locked up in an asylum so she could expose its terrible conditions • Was the best ever to apply words to newsprint • Became a national hero in America because he stood up for the little guy and his war reporting t

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Randall is a British journalist and author who was chief news writer of the Independent on Sunday and has been news editor of three national newspapers.

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The Great Reporters

By David Randall

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2005 David Randall
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2296-4

Contents

Introduction How the great reporters were chosen The World of the Reporter How, when and where the job has changed in 150 years, 1, 
1. William Howard Russell The man who invented war corresponding, 17, 
2. Edna Buchanan The best crime reporter there's ever been, 33, 
3. A.J. Liebling The most quotable wit ever by-lined, 51, 
4. George Seldes A reporter who got up the noses of the high and mighty, 71, 
5. Nellie Bly The best undercover reporter in history, 93, 
6. Richard Harding Davis One of the best descriptive reporters ever, 115, 
7. J.A. MacGahan Perpetrator of perhaps the greatest single piece of reporting ever, 133, 
8. James Cameron The definitive foreign correspondent, 141, 
9. Floyd Gibbons The supreme example of a reporter in pursuit of an assignment, 159, 
10. Hugh McIlvanney The best writer ever to apply words to newsprint, 179, 
11. Ernie Pyle The reporter who never forgot who he was writing for, 201, 
12. Ann Leslie The most versatile reporter ever, 223, 
13. Meyer Berger The reporter's reporter, 247, 
Index, 263, 
Photograph acknowledgements, 280, 

CHAPTER 1

William Howard Russell 1820–1907

THE MAN WHO INVENTED WAR CORRESPONDING

The year is 1854, and Britain is unchallenged as a world power. It rules an empire that includes Canada, India, the West Indies, Australia, and it will soon begin annexing large parts of Africa. The majority of its people believe in God, country and the right of the monied and well-born to buy their way into, and out of, the officer class of the army.

A threat is perceived. It is several thousand miles away from the homeland, but, if unchecked, the government fears it will jeopardise the prosperity and security of the nation. So old obligations and new alliances are invoked, flags are waved, and the army is sent off to deter an ambitious empire. This is Russia, a land ruled by a royal dictator where serfdom still exists and which seems, in some indefinable way, a challenge to the civilised, democratic values of the homeland. The battleground is the Crimea, a place few back home could find on the map. But nevertheless, they wave their flags, and wait for news of the victories that they, being citizens of the most powerful nation on earth, expect as of right.

Into these circumstances there came a bearded, dishevelled figure called William Howard Russell. He was the correspondent for The Times, and the stories he wrote from that conflict shocked Britain as no reporting has done since. Middle- and upper-class readers read his despatches and were shaken to their complacent roots to learn that the army sent into the field by their own pre-eminent nation was poorly supplied, woefully organised, led by incompetent aristocrats, managed by an inefficient government and, worst of all, was so careless of its soldiers' welfare that thousands of them died not in battle but in the filthy hovels that passed for hospitals. Russell's reporting was, in every sense, a shock to the system for Victorian England; and, not least, because no one had ever written like this before. It was small wonder. To uncover these shortcomings, Russell had to endure nearly two years of fending for himself in the field without any assistance, face almost constant hostility from military authorities unused to the very concept of a meddlesome reporter, and throughout all this he knew that, back home, his honesty and patriotism were being vilified. But, as every line he wrote was picked over for faults by the highest in the land, he held his nerve. That took skill and care, but most of all, it took the guts, after learning awkward truths that conflicted with popular orthodoxies, to report them, and go on reporting them in the face of public attacks. This is the reason why a man born almost a generation before the Victorian age began, and who wrote in a leisurely prose that seems now like a foreign language, can stand comparison with the sharpest of modern operators, and be in this book.

However, he nearly didn't make it into anyone's book. In 1844, on his first major reporting assignment, Russell made such a fearful hash of it that only the charity of The Times editor saved him from the sack. He had been sent by the paper to Dublin to cover the trial of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell for sedition, one of that year's big stories. Since this was the days before the telegraph, the only way news of the verdict was going to get speedily back to London was if someone took it there in person. Thus the two big papers, The Times and the Morning Herald, had made elaborate arrangements to get reporters to the mainland, hiring steamers, special trains and cabs. These conveyances were all standing by when, late one August Saturday, the jury retired. The rest of the press, anticipating a long wait, left to get refreshments, and Russell was sitting outside the court, thinking what best to do, when his messenger boy rushed up and told him the jury was returning. Russell went back into court, heard the foreman deliver a verdict of guilty, and dashed off determined to be first back to London with the news. He jumped in a carriage, then on a special train to the port of Kingstown, boarded the Iron Duke, the boat hired by The Times, and, within half an hour it had got up sufficient steam to start heading for the Welsh coast. As it left, Russell noted that the Herald's steamer was still lying peacefully at anchor. He arrived at Holyhead, caught the special train to London, tried to sleep but couldn't because of his tight boots, took them off, reached London after seven hours, flung himself bootless into the waiting cab, and finally, with one boot on and the other under his arm, ran lopsidedly into the precincts of The Times building. Years later, he described what then happened: 'As I entered Printing House Square, a man in shirt sleeves I took to be the Times printer came up and said: "So glad to see you safe over, sir. So they've found him guilty." "Yes, guilty my friend," I replied.'

Unfortunately the man he met was not a Times printer, but a reporter working for the Morning Herald. Thus did the young Russell present the paper's rival with a scoop on a plate, which it duly published. Something of the kerfuffle that ensued within The Times can be judged from the two angry notes sent him by Moberly Bell, the paper's manager. The first read, ominously: 'You managed very badly ... This must be enquired into.' The second, penned after the editor saved his young reporter's neck, began: 'You have very nearly severed your connection with us by your indiscretion,' and went on: 'Let me warn you to keep your lips closed and your eyes open ... We would have given hundreds of pounds to have stopped your few words last night.' Admonished, but spared, Russell went on to cover pretty much every major story of the high Victorian age: the railway mania, the Irish Famine, the Great Exhibition, Wellington's funeral, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the American Civil War, the coronation of Czar Nicholas, the Paris Commune, the Franco-Prussian War, the first attempt to lay a trans-Atlantic cable, the Sudan and the Zulu Wars.

The man who was to have this ringside seat at the nineteenth century was born the son of a manufacturer's agent near Dublin on 28 March 1820. He was fascinated as a child by the soldiers drilling near his home, and, while...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745322964
• ISBN 13: 9780745322964
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland