Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media [Paperback]

Seth Mnookin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812972511 | ISBN-13: 978-0812972511 | Publication Date: August 9, 2005

On May 11, 2003, The New York Times devoted four pages of its Sunday paper to the deceptions of Jayson Blair, a mediocre former Times reporter who had made up stories, faked datelines, and plagiarized on a massive scale. The fallout from the Blair scandal rocked the Times to its core and revealed fault lines in a fractious newsroom that was already close to open revolt.

Staffers were furious–about the perception that management had given Blair more leeway because he was black, about the special treatment of favored correspondents, and most of all about the shoddy reporting that was infecting the most revered newspaper in the world. Within a month, Howell Raines, the imperious executive editor who had taken office less than a week before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001–and helped lead the paper to a record six Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the attacks–had been forced out of his job.

Having gained unprecedented access to the reporters who conducted the Times’s internal investigation, top newsroom executives, and dozens of Times editors, former Newsweek senior writer Seth Mnookin lets us read all about it–the story behind the biggest journalistic scam of our era and the profound implications of the scandal for the rapidly changing world of American journalism.

It’s a true tale that reads like Greek drama, with the most revered of American institutions attempting to overcome the crippling effects of a leader’s blinding narcissism and a low-level reporter’s sociopathic deceptions. Hard News will shape how we understand and judge the media for years to come.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Seth Mnookin is one of the best and brightest journalists of this ominous post-American century. And here he’s written the book that’s the answer to the question I’ve been wondering about for a long time: How could something like this happen at The New York Times, a paper the country desperately needs to survive.”
–HUNTER S. THOMPSON

“I read Hard News in a single sitting, long into the night. Seth Mnookin has written a gripping narrative, a thoughtful media study, and a fascinating portrait of some very strange characters. This book is undoubtedly the last word on a low moment in the history of a great institution.”
--JEFFREY TOOBIN

“This is two terrific books in one: a riveting thriller, starring a heroic Dirty Dozen team of reporters risking their careers to unearth dangerous truths, and a Shakespearean tragedy about hubris and race and good intentions and self-destruction featuring a pathetic, half-mad villain and a noble, deluded king. Seth Mnookin has written the definitive chronicle of this extraordinary upheaval at the most important newspaper on earth. But Hard News is also a heartening reminder that some powerful institutions take virtue seriously, and can right themselves quickly when things go awry.”
–KURT ANDERSEN

“In Hard News, a con man is the center of attention, but the ideal of ‘getting it right’ is the book’s true heart. This is a juicy morality tale for the information age.”
–SARAH VOWELL


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Seth Mnookin is a former media columnist for Newsweek, where he also covered politics, crime, and popular culture. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Spin, and elsewhere. A 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, he lives in New York City.


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 9, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812972511
• ISBN-13: 978-0812972511
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #927,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Seth Mnookin is the author of Feeding the Monster, a book about the John Henry-Tom Werner ownership group of the Boston Red Sox. It will be published by Simon & Schuster on July 11, 2006. In 2004, he published Hard News, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he's written about Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, the Judith Miller controversy at The New York Times, and the Red Sox's 2004 World Series run. In 2002 and 2003, he was a senior writer at Newsweek, where he wrote the media column 'Raw Copy' and also covered politics and popular culture. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Spin, Slate, Salon, and other publications. A former music columnist for The New York Observer, he began his journalism career as a rock critic for the now-defunct webzine Addicted to Noise and has also worked as a crime reporter at The Palm Beach Post, a city hall reporter at the Forward, a presidential campaign reporter at Brill's Content, and a jack-of-all-trades at Inside.com. He graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a degree in the History of Science, and was a 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, he currently lives in Manhattan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The New York Times....between the lines, January 23, 2005

By 

Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media (Hardcover)

Seth Mnookin has written a sensational book regarding the downfall of two employees of the New York Times in 2003 and the sullied reputation for which the Times has fought hard to atone. The story revolves around an aspiring reporter, Jayson Blair, who finally got caught plagiarizing many columns while inventing others, and Howell Raines, the Darth Vader of the journalism world. If there ever was a boss one wouldn't want to have, Mnookin shows us that Raines was that man.

The larger element is the world of the Times, the most important and influential newspaper in the world. Mnookin has a way with narrative and for those of us who have grown up with the Times he reveals the underside of a finished product. Like the old saying, "the two things no one wants to see made are laws and sausages", the author spins a chilling tale of how the incidents with Blair and the heavy-handedness of Raines brought the Times to its knees. When you read the Times on a daily basis it's sometimes hard to believe what goes on behind their closed doors. Mnookin takes us inside that world and reveals a site of petty politics, bruised egos, ambitious reporters and a workplace that often borders on the chaotic. There are good and bad people in this book.


I highly recommend "Hard News". It's so good that once you get into it, you'll find it hard to put down.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pleasantly surprised, November 10, 2004

By 

John Braith (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media (Hardcover)

I have to admit, I was less than enthusiastic about reading what I assumed would be yet another sensationalistic account of the Jayson Blair scandal. I had always felt that the Blair scandal, though it clearly captivated the media world in New York, had received coverage out of proportion to its actual significance. It was beaten to death: a story told ad nauseam simply because a) the media was obsessed, much more than the average citizen was, with such lunacy at an august institution like the New York Times, b) the Blair story contained so many lurid, tabloid-style details.

But a friend who had received an advance copy of the book recommended it to me, and, despite my reservations, I picked up a copy. From the first page, I was captivated. Mnookin is a truly special writer, blending pithy, relevant reportage with suspenseful plotting and effortless style. More importantly, it was refreshing to see that Mnookin had removed the Blair story from the center of the narrative, focusing instead on the much more interesting issue of the New York Times as an institution: its history, its philosophy, and the internecine struggles that created an environment conducive to error and failure. This book offers a fascinating window into the heart of American media. This is what the Jayson Blair story SHOULD have been about from the beginning: though Blair's individual case is certainly eye-catching, and though he deserves blame for his completely irresponsible actions, Mnookin makes the case that his failures were symptomatic of much more serious issues at the nation's paper of record. It is a fascinating, well-constructed, and well-argued thesis, and in the process of making it, Mnookin reveals much about the nature of journalism and truth-telling in America.

This is an engrossing book with great significance for our country and culture, and it would be a shame if it were dismissed, wrongly, as just another reheated retelling of an overheated scandal.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a nervy thriller set in a newsroom, December 2, 2004

By 

mr_bookman_the_librarian (Los Angeles, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media (Hardcover)

I'd followed the Jayson Blair saga and Howell Raines's resignation pretty closely, and I didn't think I needed to know any more about the scandals at The Times. But still I picked up Hard News, and I surprised myself by finishing it in two sittings. Mnookin has an easy, effortless style, and he tells a fast-paced tale we haven't heard before -- what happened inside The Times as it was chasing one of the most important news stories in its history. Hard News is really a detective story with a cast of characters -- Times reporters -- who make you feel that the paper as an institution will long survive. My only quibble is with the subtitle -- this book doesn't tell us what the scandals' meaning is for American media. And it doesn't need to. It stands on its own as a smart, well-researched and above all entertaining story about an exceptional American institution.