The Great Reporters

David Randall

Description

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.



Each profile tells of the reporter's life and his or her major stories, how they were obtained, and their impact. Packed with anecdotes, and inspiring accounts of difficulties overcome, the book quotes extensively from each reporter’s work. It also includes an essay on the history of reporting, charting the technologies, economics, and attitudes that made it the way it is - from the invention of the telegraph to the Internet. The Great Reporters is not just the story of 13 remarkable people, it is the story of how society's information hunter-gatherers succeed in bringing us all what we need to know.
Introduction

How the great reporters were chosen

1. The World of the Reporter

How, when and where the job has changed in 150 years

2. Meyer Berger

The reporters’ reporter

3. Nellie Bly

The best undercover reporter in history

4. Edna Buchanan

The best crime reporter there’s ever been

5. James Cameron

The definitive foreign correspondent

6. Richard Harding Davies

One of the best descriptive reporters ever

7. Floyd Gibbons

The supreme example of a reporter in pursuit of an assignment

8. Ann Leslie

The most versatile reporter ever

9. AJ Liebling

The most quotable wit ever by-lined

10. JA MacGahan

Perpetrator of perhaps the greatest piece of reporting ever

11. Hugh McIlvanney

The best writer ever to apply words to newsprint

12. Ernie Pyle

The reporter who never forgot who he was writing for

13. William Howard Russell

The man who invented war corresponding

14. George Seldes

A reporter who got up the noses of the high and mighty

Index

Sujets

• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Journalism
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716272
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Great Reporters
The Great Reporters
David Randall
First published 2005 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © David Randall 2005
The right of David Randall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN    0 7453 2297 2 hardback ISBN    0 7453 2296 4 paperback ISBN    978 1 7837 1627 2 ePub ISBN    978 1 7837 1628 9 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Randall, David, 1951–     The great reporters / David Randall.         p. cm.     ISBN 0–7453–2297–2 (hardback) — ISBN 0–7453–2296–4 (pbk.)   1. Journalists—United States—Biography. 2. Reporters and reporting—United States—History—19th century. 3. Reporters and reporting—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.   PN4871.R38 2005   070.92′273—dc22
2005006707
 
 
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Gutenberg Press, Malta
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.
William Howard Russell The man who invented war corresponding
2.
Edna Buchanan The best crime reporter there’s ever been
3.
A.J. Liebling The most quotable wit ever by-lined
4.
George Seldes A reporter who got up the noses of the high and mighty
5.
Nellie Bly The best undercover reporter in history
6.
Richard Harding Davis One of the best descriptive reporters ever
7.
J.A. MacGahan Perpetrator of perhaps the greatest single piece of reporting ever
8.
James Cameron The definitive foreign correspondent
9.
Floyd Gibbons The supreme example of a reporter in pursuit of an assignment
10.
Hugh McIlvanney The best writer ever to apply words to newsprint
11.
Ernie Pyle The reporter who never forgot who he was writing for
12.
Ann Leslie The most versatile reporter ever
13.
Meyer Berger The reporter’s reporter
Index
Photograph acknowledgements
To all the fixers, drivers and translators who, invariably unsung and often at some peril, helped reporters get the story out
Introduction
HOW THE GREAT REPORTERS WERE CHOSEN
S o how do you go about selecting the best reporters who ever lived? Well not, if my experience is anything to go by, with all that much difficulty. The key, I suspect, was going for such a small number. It set the bar very high. The top 40 would have been a different matter: all kinds of very good reporters would have been in with a shout. But a dozen or so? Relatively easy. And why 13? Because that’s the number of them who I reckon occupy that tallest of journalistic plinths.
The first thing I did was decide to confine myself to press reporters. Radio and television reporting depends on a team effort; relies on sound and pictures – more, sometimes, than the reporter’s words – and it often needs, for its sense and completeness, an introduction from an anchor or newscaster. The rule on teamwork ruled out Watergate’s Woodward and Bernstein (and their almost equally crucial editors, Ben Bradlee and Howard Simons). Also out were those whose reporting was done for books, on the grounds that they have length, deadlines expandable by weeks, if not months, and besides, how do you compare work written in two years with that turned out in 45 minutes? Out, too, were those who were essentially columnists or roving commentators. That meant no H.L. Mencken, an exclusion I felt would look eccentric until I scanned his greatest pieces for what you might – at a stretch – call reporting, and found surprisingly little.
Having set these boundaries, I then chose the reporters the only way that, as someone who had news edited three British national newspapers, I could: I imagined I was running a celestial newsroom and could pick my staff from all the reporters who had ever lived. Most of the people profiled here went down on my rota within half an hour, and the only reporter hitherto unknown to me that I ‘discovered’ during my research was Meyer ‘Mike’ Berger of the New York Times .
Those who came close, but didn’t quite make it onto the roster, were: I.F. Stone (I preferred George Seldes as a member of the awkward squad); Lincoln Steffens; Marguerite Higgins (great story-getter, shame about the writing); Ida Wells-Barnett (her exposé of lynchings was historic, but she spent too little of her life reporting); Gloria Emerson of the New York Times ; Winifred Bonfils; Marvel Cooke; Gay Talese; John Pilger of the Daily Mirror ; and Robert Fisk of the Independent . Maybe next time…
Finally, some will point out that there are no representatives of minorities here. The explanation is simple: no one in this book is representative of anything other than their own talent and work. Their sexuality, physical appearance, gender and cultural antecedents played no part in their selection. While I can defend this utterly, I was much troubled by the fact that the faces in this book are all white ones. So I searched and searched the journalistic record for an exception who could be included. It was when I was on the verge of putting in Marvel Cooke at the expense of someone whose researching and writing was, to my mind, far better, that I realised this was patronising and wrong. So I stopped. If anyone can suggest a non-Caucasian reporter whose life’s work is the equal of those here, I’ll be delighted to hear about it and will include them in any future edition.
Having selected my greats, I then had to put them into some sort of order. What should it be – alphabetical? Too boring. Chronological? Ditto. So I decided to put them in my own rank of merit, partly out of a sense of mischief, but also in the hope that my selections, and ordering of them, would provoke some debate, not only about names, but also about the criteria for greatness in reporting. What I was looking for in reporters who could be included was: the driven curiosity to research – on paper, screen and in person – to the maximum depth and detail possibly in the time available; the determination to accept no barriers to the pursuit of the story (or the wit and slipperiness to evade them); a considerable intelligence brought to bear on the material (not thinking about what the story really adds up to is still the greatest failing of the average reporter); a sense of perspective, of context, and of how what has been uncovered may not be the whole story; and a fresh, imaginative way with words (cliché-wielders need not apply). The combination of these talents is rare in journalism (although not as rare as some critics think); and the possession of them all, in high degree, is what sorted the wholegrain wheat of my selection from the general chaff.
Which leads me, finally, to why this book was written. First, because for many years I had wanted to salute in print the best of a breed – reporters – whom I think represent the most useful part of journalism. Without reporters, newspapers (and society) would merely be conjecturing and commenting and rumour-mongering. Reporters are our hunter-gatherers, out looking for fresh information while the rest of us merely sit round the campfire chewing last week’s fat until they return. Second, I hoped that a book attempting to identify the greats might give reporters a set of role models; or, at least, some sense that such paragons might exist somewhere beyond their own offices, or even beyond their own times. And, third, I’d like to think that the people included here are, for new generations of reporters, not just benchmarks to be admired and learnt from, but, as they would be in sport, previous record-holders to be equalled and maybe even surpassed. After all, no age needs outstanding reporters more than the present. For the benefit of the future, reporters may, as the truism goes, compile the first rough draft of history; but to the here and now they provide something even more valuable than that: the raw material with which we judge our world and those who seek authority within it. And our best defence against demagogues, charlatans, rabble-rousers, smooth operators and all the lies and half-truths they peddle is reporters, especially the great ones.
The World of the Reporter
HOW, WHEN AND WHERE THE JOB HAS CHANGED IN 150 YEARS
E ach generation of journalists, at least until its muscles start to sag, assumes it is unique in having to face challenges unknown to previous generations. History, for people geared to thinking of the day before yesterday as dead meat and next week as long-term planning, is not generally thought to offer much in the way of instruction. The reporters of the past, especially those of more than 50 years ago, are seen as generally verbose characters who had it easy – not, like our contemporary selves, having to contend with competition from many other media, the sophisticated wiles of spin-doctoring sources, ever more complex technologies, and the uncertainties of modern life.
How very silly; and, as I discover in scores of conversations every year, how very common. Hence this brief effort to set out how the world of the reporter has changed in the period covered by this book. If nothing else, it might provide a few chronological bearings and make the less historically literate realise why, for instance, reporters covering the American Civil War did not simply pick up the phone, call their offices collect and file. (For why not, see the date of the invention of the telephone, below.)
The first person in this book, historically speaking, is William Russell of The Times , whose fame is based on his reporting of the