Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life [Hardcover]

Dave Kindred (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 20, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0385523564 | ISBN-13: 978-0385523561 | Edition: 1St Edition

An in-depth look at the Washington Post from a Pulitzer Prize–nominated Post veteran. Morning Miracle definitively answers the question “Do newspapers still matter?” with a resounding yes.

What The Kingdom and the Power did for the New York Times, Morning Miracle will do for the Washington Post. A reporter for more than forty years, Dave Kindred takes you inside the heart of the legendary newspaper and offers a unique opportunity to see what it really takes to produce world-class journalism every day.

Granted unprecedented access to every nook and cranny of the paper, including candid exchanges with its most celebrated journalists, such as Bob Woodward, Sally Quinn, David Broder, and former executive editor Ben Bradlee (who gave the book its title), Kindred provides a no-holds-barred look at the twenty-first-century newsroom. As it becomes more difficult to maintain journalistic integrity, stay relevant in the age of blogs, and meet Wall Street’s demands for profits, the newspaper—more than any other medium—also shoulders the tremendous responsibility of acting as a watchdog for democracy.

Perhaps no one sums up the overwhelming challenges that face the Post and its power to endure better than the author himself: “It is still a miracle that you can put 700 overcaffeinated misfits in a newsroom, on deadline, adrenaline running, secrets to spill, and before midnight a messenger delivers a smoking-hot city edition to Don Graham’s manse in Georgetown.”

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Despite its storied history—award-winning coverage of Watergate and of the abuses of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital—the Washington Post has been subject to the same challenges that are killing newspapers across the nation: plummeting circulation and loss of revenue to Internet advertising. What’s worse for the Post is that in the mid-1990s, at a pivotal point before the Internet became widely public, a brave few of its staff pushed management to consider a major investment in going digital. The moment passed as management pressed ahead with the old model of print journalism, still winning Pulitzers as it lost readers. Kindred, with 45 years experience reporting for newspapers and magazines, brings passion, insight, empathy, and a critical eye—as well as great access to Post reporters and management, including Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, David Broder, and Dana Priest—to this completely engrossing look at the decline of a great newspaper. Reporters recall the golden moments of their careers when the risks to life and limb were justified by spectacular reporting that proved the higher aspirations of journalism. They also recall newsroom turmoil as management struggled to stay ahead of the inevitable in the most chaotic period in American journalism. Sad and delightful at the same time. --Vanessa Bush

Review

"[Kindred] brings passion, insight, empathy, and a critical eye—as well as great access to Post reporters and management, including Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, David Broder, and Dana Priest—to this completely engrossing look at the decline of a great newspaper.... Sad and delightful at the same time."
—Booklist, starred review

"A fine piece of writing and reporting."
—The Atlantic

"Maybe it's only a newspaper, but Morning Miracle is one of those wistful love stories filled with as much foreboding as tenderness."
—Frank Deford, NPR commentator, "Morning Edition"
 
"This is a book about reporting and reporters. The best reporter involved in it is the one writing it. Through his talent, his wit, and his uncommon humanity, Dave Kindred demonstrates a love for journalism as a job, as a craft, and, above all, as a calling. In fact, he loves it more than it probably deserves to be loved anymore."
—Charles P. Pierce, author of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of The Free  

"There's always some guy in the newsroom who knows the real story."
—Roger Ebert

“Kindred’s book is the miracle, making this old New York Times man wish he had spent at least one shining moment in the heartbreaking romance of the Washington Post.”
—Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sports columnist and author of An Accidental Sportswriter 

"Dave Kindred combines a deep love of daily journalism with a sports writer’s narrative skill to tell a powerful story of one newspaper struggling to keep its trademark standards and values intact into the Internet era.  If the time comes for the final obit to be written for print-on-paper newspapers, Kindred proves that he’s the guy who should write it."
—Bill Kovach, former New York Times Washington Bureau Chief

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1St Edition edition (July 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385523564
• ISBN-13: 978-0385523561
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #854,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Whither the Washington Post? July 25, 2010

By olingerstories

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dave Kindred's THE MORNING MIRACLE doesn't compare with Gay Talese's THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER, and isn't even the best book on the Washington Post (Katharine Graham's PERSONAL HISTORY), but it is a first-rate account of a venerable institution struggling to survive in the 21st century. The heroes are Post writers Dana Priest, Annie Hull, Anthony Shadid, Sally Jenkins and Gene Weingarten, individuals who see journalism more as a calling than a career. Walter Pincus is the old truth-telling prophet. Len Downie is revered as the near perfect editor. Ben Bradlee is almost made to walk on water. And yet, despite such talent, the Post is losing money on newsprint and the direction forward is murky, so much so that one Post writer suggests Kindred's title should be DYING WITH DIGNITY.

As Kindred focuses the story on the period of time between 2005-2008, the staff knows that beloved publisher, Don Graham, will do anything to keep the print side of the paper afloat. But, in seeing his personal (a divorce settlement) and professional (age) life slipping away, he believes that the only hope is to turn to youth for leadership, particularly niece Katharine Weymouth. Understanding the business side of the Post, and more aware of the importance of its online future, Weymouth is the logical successor. But, Kindred is not placated with the choice. He finds her oblivious to the decline of the quality of the Post as the staff shrinks through forced buyouts. And, worse still, he knows that she has no ear for words, no sense of the history of print. She quotes Metro Columnist Marc Fisher as putting forth the Post's objective in a tidy fashion when he writes it is "to speak truth to power, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Kindred's scorching reaction, "The words were written by Finley Peter Dunne almost a century ago. Old news to people who know newspapers." But, such tough talk belies the reality that without Weymouth's bottom line agressiveness, the Post might fold altogether like the Seatlle Post-Intelligencer or the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Kindred grudgingly knows that the Post must adapt or die.

Weingarten turns out to be Kindred's sage. He pinpoints the critical difference between reading a newspaper and something online. With a newspaper, you never read what you think you will. You see different headlines and pictures and end up reading somethng you otherwise would have bypassed. Online, you pick out what you read. You confirm what you already know and you never expand.

Weingarten also provides the most laugh out loud moments in the book, such as when making a graduation speech to journalism majors and telling them that the business is changing so radically that it is hard to tell what future journalists will look like. Weingarten exclaims, "I mean literally. For all we know, they might have gills and three buttocks. That's how fast things are changing. But rest assured that, however dizzying the rate of change, when what's at stake is the sacred art of truth-telling, there is always one constant. One thing that will always be the same: Your editor is going to be an idiot."

In the end, Kindred concludes that the Post will no longer be the paper of excellence that the Grahams, Bradlee and Downie created anymore than today's world can be the same as the world of a generation past. But, he does take comfort that there will always be journalists who love to get the story right and won't rest until they do.

For those who love words, and print, and might even still walk out into their driveway every morning to pick up the Post, this is a great book to read.

4.0 out of 5 stars A great newspaper doing its damnest to get out of this mess alive April 20, 2013

By Barry Sparks VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In 2008, San Francisco Chronicle managing editor Robert Rosenthal said the newspaper industry and the institution of journalism was caught up "in the greatest upheaval they had ever known."

The internet had started the greatest revolution in communications since the Guttenberg press. From 2004-2008, 100,000 newspaper jobs were lost and 10 newspaper chains declared bankruptcy.

From 2007-2009, the Washington Post lost $359 million. It's against this backdrop that Dave Kindred, a former Post sports columnist, wrote Morning Miracle, which he describes as a book "about a great newspaper doing its damnest to get out of the mess alive."

Four years before the Internet became a widely used public tool, reporter Bob Kaiser issued a memo in 1992 to all the Post leaders that reflected the new-found belief that newspapers must join the electronics revolution immediately. It became known as the "boiling frog" memo.

In 1994, the Post's circulation dropped for the first time in 40 years. The newspaper's glory days were starting to end. The days of 700 reporters on staff, a $100 million budget and news bureaus around the world were about to become a thing of the past.

In June 1996, almost four years after the "boiling frog" memo, the Post launched www.washingtonpost.com. The website was a high stakes gamble, one that required $200 million to gain profitability.

Steve Coll, one of the paper's top editors, wrote in 1999 that the biggest challenge for reporters and editors "involves adapting our work to www. formats that emphasize speed, active interaction with readers and a new synthesis of words, pictures and sounds." He termed the Post, as it existed, to be "an idealistic editor's most extravagant imagination." He warned that it would never last forever.

A pivotal point in the Post's future came when publisher Donald Graham shot down the national global web strategy, preferring that his reporters think locally and the Post remain a local newspaper. That stopped the momentum of the Web movement, limited the Post's ambition and caused Coll to resign.

Even though Kindred writes "When attention spans can be measured in nano seconds, a thoughtful piece was all but a relic," he uses several articles and projects to illustrate the impact of the Post and its reporters. He focuses on the expose of soldiers' neglect at Walter Reed Hospital, the Va. Tech shootings, coverage of the Iraq war and the election of Barack Obama as President.

By late 2008, the Washington Post's circulation was its lowest since 1940 and print revenue continued to fall 10 times faster than online revenue rose.

Although the Washington Post and other newspapers will likely survive, it's clear that their glory days are sadly over. If you have any interest in newspapers and the changing communication era, this is an excellent book to read.

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting look "between the pages" at WaPo April 13, 2013

By Andrea

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I thoroughly enjoyed Kindred's anecdotes of the people who've worked at the Washington Post over the years. So many of the journalists Kindred interviewed said that they couldn't imagine doing anything else for a living. I especially enjoyed the inside story of how Gene Weingarten asked Joshua Bell to play his Stradivarius at a Metro station for a human-interest piece, and then observed the reactions of commuters rushing by. The resulting article, Pearls before Breakfast, was one of my all-time favorite WaPo stories.

I found Kindred's book both entertaining and sad. Entertaining, because it was a quick and engaging read; sad, because it described a world that's fading fast and will probably change beyond recognition in a few more years.