Reliable Sources

Gil Klein

Description

An excellent 90-year history book, edited by former National Press Club president, John Cosgrove, which depicts the rich heritage that has established the National Press Club as the leading news organization in the world. Founded in 1908, the National Press Club has served as host to hundreds of world leaders and celebrities. Hundreds of historic photos from the NPC archives highlight this book. Read about visits from Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Other guest speakers have included Lech Walesa, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhamed Ali, and many more!

Sujets

• Histoire
• John Cosgrove
• History of the United States
• National Press Club
• History
• Elizabeth Taylor
• Mohamed Ali
• Lech Wa??sa

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781681623801
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

RELIABLE SOURCES
100 Years at the National Press Club

Centennial Edition
RELIABLE SOURCES
100 Years at the National Press Club

Centennial Edition
Turner
Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee Paducah, Kentucky
T URNER P UBLISHING C OMPANY
Nashville, Tennessee
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 2008: National Press Club
Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors and the publisher
ISBN: 978-1-59652-211-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007940975
Photo this page: The National Press Club occupies the top two floors of this 14-story office building at 14th and F Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. Equipped with state-of-the-art communications, the building is open 24 hours a day. It shares a city block with the National Theatre, shops ami offices and the J.W. Marriott Hotel. It lias its own postal zip code-20045. Opened in 1927, it was renovated in 1985. Tenants are only an elevator ride away to the National Press Club s forum of national and international leaders .
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The World s Forum
Chapter 2 - At the Creation
Chapter 3 - In the Saddle of the Century
Chapter 4 - Down from the Balcony: The Women s National Press Club
Chapter 5 - Providing Information to the Information Providers
Chapter 6 - Building a Professional Organization
Chapter 7 - 14th and F NW, Washington, D.C. 20045
Chapter 8 - Into the 21st Century
National Press Club Presidents
Washington Press Club Presidents
Fourth Estate Award Winners
National Press Club Members
Index
F OREWORD

Gil Klein
New National Press Club presidents soon realize they stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, who for 100 years have volunteered their time to build, maintain and expand the Club. It has been a remarkable achievement.
And anyone who writes a history of the National Press Club realizes how much debt is owed to previous chroniclers. The Club s lore has been passed down from generation to generation, updated every couple of decades with a new book. To prepare myself to be Club president in 1994, I read every one of those books to gain an appreciation for the job I was undertaking.
The 20 th Anniversary Yearbook in 1928 was the first to capture the Club s founding saga. Twenty years later, Dateline: Washington expanded the history through World War II and placed the Club in the context of Washington journalism. What was most remarkable about that book was its authors. Chapters were written by legendary New York Times bureau chief Arthur Krock; Bruce Catton, who went on to write a best-selling Civil War narrative history; and Fletcher Kneble, who later wrote several popular novels. For the Club s 50 th birthday, it produced Shrdlu, a title that every newspaper reporter in 1958 would understand but few journalists would in the 21 st century. As typesetters keyed in copy on the old Linotype machines in the 1950s, they would sometimes make errors. To note where the errors were, they would run their hand down the left side of the keyboard that would type shrdlu.
This book draws heavily from Reliable Sources, the history produced a decade ago through the effort of 1997 President Richard Sammon of Congressional Quarterly . That book had been written haphazardly over more than a decade before Sammon organized a final effort to get it out in time for the Club s 90 th birthday. For this book, we not only updated the history since 1997, but we went back through all of the old histories to make sure we are presenting the full flavor of the Club s lore. It is substantially a different book, but we retained the title Reliable Sources, not only because we thought it was a good title but also because this book s foundation rests on its immediate predecessor.
Working on this book has been a cadre of devoted Club members.
John Cosgrove has been a member since the 1940s and was one of the authors of Shrdlu. He served as president in 1961 when he worked for Broadcasting Publications, and the account of President John Kennedy attending Cosgrove s inauguration is included here. Cosgrove s service to this book was invaluable. He can look at a picture from a half century ago and identify everyone in it. He remembers details of decades-old events and can pick out factual errors in copy that no one else would catch.
David Hess was Club president in 1985 when he was White House correspondent for Knight-Ridder Newspapers. As a Board member, he worked on the gargantuan task of reconstructing the National Press Building, and as president, he not only presided at ceremonies rededicating the building but also finished the agreement that merged the Washington Press Club and the National Press Club, burying the enmity between women and men journalists.
Ken Dalecki served on the Club s Board of Governors when he worked for Kiplinger Washington Editors and has been active in the Club for years, serving as chairman of several committees and on the National Press Building Corp. board.
Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette has been secretary of the Club since 2000. She has been an integral part of the many of the changes in the Club during the past few years, and she employed her fine copy editing skills in service to this book.
Christina Zamon, the Club s archivist, holds a master s degree in history and a master s degree in library science from the University of Maryland, and she is accredited through the Academy of Certified Archivists. But most important for the book is that she kept a cheerful yet professional demeanor while finding information and photographs, even as she was responding to all of the other requests for help in the year leading up to the Club s centennial.
All of these people came into the Archives on Saturdays and labored during their evenings and vacations to plan, research and write this book, to cull through photographs and write captions, and to edit each other s copy. That is the kind of loyalty the National Press Club engenders.
Gil Klein
Media General News Service
Club President, 1994
Editor of Reliable Sources: 100 Years at the National Press Club

John Cosgrove

Ken Dalecki

David Hess

Sylvia Smith

Christina Zamon
I NTRODUCTION

Llewellyn King
Journalists by their nature are not joiners. They are neither club people nor members of boards or fraternal organizations.
These cats, these men and women of the Fourth Estate, walk alone. Except, that is, when it comes to the National Press Club.
The National Press Club is not the world s only press club, but it is the largest, best known and the most durable. Since 1908, it has overcome the pervasive individualism of journalists to provide them a professional organization, a sanctuary and a refuge. It is a place where the tired editor, the weary foreign correspondent and the bruised reporter can come in from the cold. Come in to warm at the fires of camaraderie; to be soothed by conviviality; and to talk and talk and talk to people who know exactly what is being talked about.
When the National Press Club was founded in 1908, news was transmitted by telegraph, and the Linotype (the technological marvel that revolutionized the production of newspapers) had been invented fewer than 20 years earlier. Afternoon newspapers dominated journalism, and many cities had half a dozen newspapers; some had many more. The newsmagazine, the glossy magazine, newsletters, radio and television were still in the future.
At that time, ours was a profession with no formal rules of entry; no training; hardly a college graduate; and only the ability to do the job, learned on the job, counted.
Like boxing, it was often a way out of the ghetto, a way for a bright boy to leave the manual work that had sustained his father.
They were a rough-hewn lot. They ranged from the just adequate to those who have yet to see a peer, such as H.L. Mencken. Writing counted, and speed was often a physical function - as in running back to the office.
Today we are trained and educated, yet surprisingly similar to the journalists at the time of the Club s founding. We are good, and we are bad; some write like angels, others are simply craftsmen.
For 50 years the National Press Club was a professional organization and a crucible of ideas. But it was also a drinking club. As late as the 1960s, it was still a drinking club with the patrons often three deep at the bar. Lore and law contributed to this. Strong drink and journalism were a tradition, and government policy abetted drinking at the Press Club. The National Press Club served during Prohibition, and for nearly four decades afterward it was the only place where you could get a drink on Sunday. Its two famous bars were, for nearly 40 years, the only places in Washington, D.C., where it was legal to stand up and walk around with a drink.
The law changed, society changed, journalists changed, but the Club continues to thrive. It thrives because it is an adaptive institution, correcting for the sins of the past, such as racial segregation and the exclusion of women, while striving, like the news business itself, toward the future.
The National Press Club of 2008 is a different place from the Club I joined in 1966; and yet it is the same place. It is multi-faceted; it is about journalism, about journalists, about fraternity, about the past and for the future.
The work binds us, so we remain unchanged at our core, while always changing. We venerate our little traditions; from voting in person for Club leaders to the lovely, touching but unsentimental memorial gatherings for those who have left us.
The tradition of speeches from the most important podium in the free world continues unabated. A ve