The first thing you need to understand about A.J.Liebling is this: If youre in the mood for a simple, straight-up story with a beginning, middle, and end you will not appreciate A.J.Liebling. If youre wanting, say, to know what time it is, Liebling will tell you how to make a watch in every detail. He's obsessive in an entertaining way if you have the time for it. And you will learn a lot. And, at times, you will swear the book will never end. But the man could write!
In this book Liebling talks about the newspaper industry, publishers, and the shenanigans publishers-newspapers pull to further their ends. Most of the stories were written in the 40s-50s and compiled in the 60s, but are as true today as they were then. Newspapers ignore the obvious and important, make-up much of what they do report, and lines of advertising sold & circulation is always the bottom-line. News is the last thing any publisher wants to pay for, so they economize by making it up or hire experts to make it up (that is, the expert is here NOT where the news is happening, and provides an opinion of events they know nothing about). Experts dont require expense accounts and costly travel. Liebling cites several events where the press was totally in the fog but had plenty to say; Stalin's death and his replacement are the best example of this phenomenon. And you get a sense of what sort of bums our government leaders are, or were. Liebling spills the beans on some of these people.
