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A sweeping behind-the-scenes look at the last four turbulent decades of “the paper of record,” The New York Times, as it confronted world-changing events, internal scandals, and faced the existential threat of the internet “An often enthralling chronicle [that] delivers the gossipy goods . . . Like Robert Caro’s biographies, [The Times] should appeal to anyone interested in power.”—Los Angeles Times A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it chronicles—a newspaper read by millions of people every day to stay informed about events that have taken place across the globe. In The Times, Adam Nagourney, who’s worked at The New York Times since 1996, examines four decades of the newspaper’s history, from the final years of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger’s reign as publisher to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. Nagourney recounts the paper’s triumphs—the coverage of September 11, the explosion of the U.S. Challenger, the scandal of a New York governor snared in a prostitution case—as well as failures that threatened the paper’s standing and reputation, including the discredited coverage of the war in Iraq, the resignation of Judith Miller, the plagiarism scandal of Jayson Blair, and the high-profile ouster of two of its executive editors. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents and letters contained in the newspaper’s archives and the private papers of editors and reporters, The Times is an inside look at the essential years that shaped the newspaper. Nagourney paints a vivid picture of a divided newsroom, fraught with tension as it struggled to move into the digital age, while confronting its scandals, shortcomings, and swelling criticism from conservatives and many of its own readers alike. Along the way we meet the memorable personalities—including Abe Rosenthal, Max Frankel, Howell Raines, Joe Lelyveld, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, Punch Sulzberger and Arthur Sulzberger Jr.—who shaped the paper as we know it today. We see the battles between the newsroom and the business operations side, the fight between old and new media, the tension between journalists who tried to hold on to the traditional model of a print newspaper and a new generation of reporters who are eager to embrace the new digital world. Immersive, meticulously researched, and filled with powerful stories of the rise and fall of the men and women who ran the most important newspaper in the nation, The Times is a definitive account of the most pivotal years in New York Times history.
A sweeping behind-the-scenes look at the last four turbulent decades of “the paper of record,” The New York Times, as it confronted world-changing events, internal scandals, and faced the existential threat of the internet “An often enthralling chronicle [that] delivers the gossipy goods . . . Like Robert Caro’s biographies, [The Times] should appeal to anyone interested in power.”—Los Angeles Times A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it chronicles—a newspaper read by millions of people every day to stay informed about events that have taken place across the globe. In The Times, Adam Nagourney, who’s worked at The New York Times since 1996, examines four decades of the newspaper’s history, from the final years of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger’s reign as publisher to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. Nagourney recounts the paper’s triumphs—the coverage of September 11, the explosion of the U.S. Challenger, the scandal of a New York governor snared in a prostitution case—as well as failures that threatened the paper’s standing and reputation, including the discredited coverage of the war in Iraq, the resignation of Judith Miller, the plagiarism scandal of Jayson Blair, and the high-profile ouster of two of its executive editors. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents and letters contained in the newspaper’s archives and the private papers of editors and reporters, The Times is an inside look at the essential years that shaped the newspaper. Nagourney paints a vivid picture of a divided newsroom, fraught with tension as it struggled to move into the digital age, while confronting its scandals, shortcomings, and swelling criticism from conservatives and many of its own readers alike. Along the way we meet the memorable personalities—including Abe Rosenthal, Max Frankel, Howell Raines, Joe Lelyveld, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, Punch Sulzberger and Arthur Sulzberger Jr.—who shaped the paper as we know it today. We see the battles between the newsroom and the business operations side, the fight between old and new media, the tension between journalists who tried to hold on to the traditional model of a print newspaper and a new generation of reporters who are eager to embrace the new digital world. Immersive, meticulously researched, and filled with powerful stories of the rise and fall of the men and women who ran the most important newspaper in the nation, The Times is a definitive account of the most pivotal years in New York Times history.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the coverChapter 1
A Man of His Times
It was December 17, 1976, a cool and cloudy day in New York. Jimmy Carter would be sworn in as the thirty-ninth president in just over a month. There were threats of a destabilizing oil-price war in the Middle East. The nation was emerging from a three-year economic downturn that had been particularly debilitating for New York City, which was struggling through its own financial crisis, as employees of The New York Times were reminded when they walked to work through Times Square, with its boarded-up stores, pornographic movie theaters, and street-corner drug dealers. A revival of Fiddler on the Roof, directed by Jerome Robbins and with Zero Mostel reprising his role as Tevye, was about to open at the Winter Garden Theatre. Rupert Murdoch had just purchased the New York Post, and the newsstands offered a morning tabloid splash of headlines about crime, sex, and the fiscal crisis, including the latest cuts in subway and bus service. This was the season of the Son of Sam shootings, and New York was on high alert.
On this day, A. M. Rosenthal wrote a note to his staff about his future, and the future of his newspaper. It was slipped into mailboxes and posted on bulletin boards in the fifteen-story building off Times Square that had been the headquarters of The New York Times since 1913. Abe Rosenthal, as he was known, was fifty-four years old and had joined the Times in 1943 as its campus correspondent at City College of New York. He had covered the United Nations, Japan, India, and Poland, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for his “perceptive and authoritative” coverage of the Communist regime. He had been a metropolitan editor, associate managing editor, assistant managing editor, and managing editor. No one defined The New York Times—and by virtue of that, American journalism—as much as Rosenthal. A package of brilliance and insecurities, a remarkable foreign correspondent and editor, he paraded both his love of journalism and his contempt for reporters and editors he considered mediocre or politically suspect. His Times was read by presidents, cabinet secretaries, mayors, foreign leaders, members of Congress, Hollywood directors and theater producers, university presidents, scholars, publishers, business executives, television news executives, and rival editors.
You have to understand this, Rosenthal once said to a young reporter in his office, his vibrating, nasal voice resonant of his years growing up in the Bronx. When an educated, important person anywhere in America runs into another educated, important person anywhere in America, each will have assumed of the other that they have read The New York Times.
Rosenthal held the newspaper in the highest regard. “I do believe this would be a lesser country without The New York Times,” he said in an oral history in 1986. And he held himself in just as high regard. “I’m a very good editor,” he once said. “I know that. And that’s putting it mildly.” Few would dispute either of those assertions. Rosenthal took over the newsroom in 1969, after James B. Reston, the paper’s chief Washington columnist, served a brief and unsuccessful turn as executive editor. Reston would not give up his column or his home in Washington, making a weekly commute to New York, and those distractions were reflected in his performance. “A disaster,” Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Sr., the publisher, later said of Reston’s time as executive editor. But Punch Sulzberger was loyal to Reston, a family friend and himself an institution in journalism...
Reviews-
September 4, 2023 New York Times journalist Nagourney (Out for Good) offers a fly-on-the-wall history of his workplace focused on the paper’s struggles between 1976 and 2016 “to come to grips with a changing business model and a changing world.” During this period, the Times had to adjust to the rise of the internet (its business model shifted from advertising- to subscriber-based), diversify its staff after two discrimination lawsuits, and adapt to evolving journalistic norms and expectations (Nagourney tracks how competition from the Drudge Report and other blogs during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal taught the Times it needed “to be part of a world where stories were being published as they happened”). Among other journalistic scandals that rocked the newspaper, Nagourney recounts Judith Miller’s overly credulous acceptance of U.S. intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the discovery in 2003 that Jayson Blair was fabricating his articles. Drawing on extensive research and original interviews, Nagourney provides astute insight into leadership under crisis as well as a window onto recent decades of polarizing politics. The result is both a valuable case study of an industry in flux and a unique angle on American history.
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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