Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"Hard News" is an unstoppable account of an editor's abuse of power and a reporter's abuse of trust. People may say that a book was "hard to put down." In the case of "Hard News," I picked it up, read for a few hours, went to bed, and then actually woke up at 4 a.m. thinking about the book and had to read it to the end. That has never happened to me before. Mnookin's feats of reporting, fast-paced style, and gripping and insightful yarn are impressive, but not what makes the book stand out. Rather, what kept me turning the pages was the way the characters of Jayson Blair and Howell Raines emerged, developed and then seemed to coalesce into two sides of the same coin of egomaniacal dysfunction. Subtle, devastating, and incredibly fun to read.

Yes, Hard News tells the story of the Jayson Blair scandal, but that's really not the most interesting part of the book. What's more interesting -- and more the point -- is getting to see inside the institution that defines East-Coast intelligentsia, scares politicians, and produces Sunday Styles. And what better time to peek behind the curtains than when the editorial staff is slinging mud and the paper is in shambles?

It's weirdly suspenseful, too, for a book whose ending you already know (hint: Blair made up sources). In the end, the book begs the question of whether the Times' handling of the crisis was a staff revolt against a tyrannical editor, an exercise journalistic navel-gazing, or a fight for the standards of media integrity. It's a pretty juicy read for a book that's also thought-provoking.

Amazingly detailed read. I was furiously flipping pages. Furiously. I burned my copy of "The Curse of the Bambino" and replaced it with this book. If you want to get to the bottom of what happened at the NYT, grab this book. A sabermetric review of everything that happened, focusing on Jayson Blair, the journalistic equivalent of Alex Rodriguez. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

"Hard News," Seth Mnookin's fascinating and well-researched account of the now-infamous Jayson Blair scandal that shook the foundations not only of the New York Times but also the way journalists do business, is a crisp read. The author is always objective, and his sourcing would seem to be impeccable. For the most part he uses sources who will speak on the record, and when they would not he claims to have verified what they've said with others. And source notes and a bibliography are provided.

In Mr. Mnookin's version, the story focuses on what happens to people who make wrong choices that they easily could have avoided--that is, if they were not the prisoners of their own ideology and life experiences. The account starts with the misguided notion of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. that the head of the op-ed page, Howell Raines, a narcissistic, inflexible left-wing ideologue best known for his invective-laden editorials against, mostly, conservatives, but also Bill Clinton, could function as the newspaper's executive editor, in which position he would be in charge, not of a small group of like-minded ideologues, but of a newsroom with hundreds of employees of varying opinions and, of course, abilities.

Generalissimo Raines couldn't function in that job, and in the process of failing he managed to alienate most of the staff while turning the newspaper into the journalistic version of a banana republic, led of course by himself.

Then, the author moves on to the equally bizarre decision by Raines and his no. 2, managing editor Gerald Boyd, to send Jayson Blair out on big stories (the DC Sniper, Jessica Lynch). Blair, a dimestore sociopath, fantasist, and substance abuser, had already been warned by his direct supervisors about his job performance, but Raines and Boyd would eventually claim, improbably, not to know of this when the scandal broke.

And scandal there would be. Blair would repay their trust in him with plagiarism, after which he graduated to fabrication, and ended up writing stories with out-of-town datelines without ever having left the Times Building on West 43rd St. in New York. (In the process, as Mr. Mnookin outlines, he demonstrated creative uses for cell phones and photo archives.)

When Blair was exposed and forced to resign, the Times assembled a group of reporters and editors to investigate every story Blair had written, and the result was the sensational report that appeared in the paper one fateful Sunday in May 2003.

That report made the Times the butt of jokes, and within two months Raines and Boyd were fired; then, after a brief interregnum in which the previous executive editor, Joe Lelyveld, who Raines disdained, returned to pick up the shattered pieces, Sulzberger selected Bill Keller, who had been passed over in favor of Raines two years before. Keller moved rapidly to restore order and institute changes, among them the hiring of the Times's first public editor.

As for Mr. Sulzberger, he escaped unscathed--which is unsurprising: his family owns the New York Times Corp.

The book is compulsive reading. Even though the outcome is known, "Hard News" nevertheless has the feel of a police procedural. Maybe you'll start imagining who might be cast as the principals if (or should I say when) there's a movie made of this cautionary tale.

Read it. It's a great book. Five stars.

Hard News has three parts (Before, Spring 2003, and After), and provides a good overview of the history of The Times, the workings of the newsroom, Blair's quick rise as a reporter, details of the Blair fiasco, and how the Times dealt with it.

Mnookin concludes the book with a thoughtful Note on Sources, more than 250 source notes, and a good bibliography.

If this is a topic you followed, or you are a journalsim junkie or a Times-ophile, this book is a must read.

I literally could not put this book down. Seth Mnookin's Hard News is absolutely captivating. Even though we all know the outcome of Jason Blair's enormous fraud by now, Mnookin manages to make the tale so engrossing that you find yourself enmeshed in it right from the start. Mnookin's prose is like looking into a perfectly clear pool of water, and his honest, in-depth portrayal of the embattled Times manages to be both sympathetic and critical. I look forward to reading anything Mnookin chooses to write, but I hope he continues to tackle the biggest issue facing our ailing media today - telling the truth.

The story of Howell Raines' rise and fall as editor of the New York Times says a lot about the state of journalism, but it is, before everything, a classic tale of hubris and disaster. Seth Mnookin is a writer of considerable gifts who wisely decides to get out of the way of this modern morality play and let it tell itself. There is, at the same time, a lot of craft behind his sleek, no-nonsense style. Mnookin knows precisely which details will propel his narrative to its conclusion and which ones will hinder it. The result is a speeding bullet of a book, which I read almost all at one sitting. The thoroughness of the investigation and the deftness of the exposition are together a tribute to the journalistic values that Raines' regime did so much to damage.