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78 books match the query 'Editors, Journalists, Publishers' and 4 start with w

cover of Walter's Perspective: A Memoir of Fifty Years in Chicago TV News

Walter's Perspective

A Memoir of Fifty Years in Chicago TV News

Walter Jacobson, Foreword by Bill Kurtis

Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

This highly readable book provides a unique glimpse into the rough-and-tumble Chicago news business as seen through the eyes of one of its legendary players. From his first news job working as a legman for Daily News columnist Jack Mabley in the 1950s to his later role as a news anchor and political commentator at CBS-owned WBBM, Walter Jacobson battled along the front lines of an industry undergoing dramatic changes. While it is ultimately Jacobson’s story, a memoir of a long and distinguished (and sometimes highly controversial) career, it is also an insider’s account of the inner workings of Chicago television news, including the ratings games, the process of defining news and choosing stories, the media’s power and its failures, and the meddling by corporate and network executives.

As a reporter, Jacobson was regularly contentious and confrontational. He was fired on a number of occasions and was convicted of libeling tobacco company Brown and Williamson, resulting in a multimillion-dollar federal court judgment against him and CBS. Yet it was this gutsy attitude that put him at the top of the news game. With an engaging writing style, Jacobson recollects his interactions with Chicago mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley, Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, and Rahm Emanuel; recounts his coverage of such fascinating news stories as the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention and the execution of convicted mass murderer John Wayne Gacy; and recalls his reporting on and interviews with Louis Farrakhan, governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, and Barack Obama. More than a memoir, Walter’s Perspective is the extraordinary journey of one reporter whose distinctive career followed the changing face of Chicago’s local news.

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cover of Whitman's Southern Sojourn: Rediscovering the Poet in New Orleans, 1848

Whitman's Southern Sojourn

Rediscovering the Poet in New Orleans, 1848

Stefan Schöberlein

University of Iowa Press, 2025

Walt Whitman’s 1848 stint in New Orleans was a crucial moment of development for the poet. Working for The Daily Crescent, a new local newspaper, Whitman spent his days strolling through the multiracial city and turning his impressions into prose sketches, news items, and fiery editorials. While in the southern metropolis, the young journalist brushed shoulders with American soldiers returning from Mexico, cheered on European revolutions in the French Quarter, and explored raunchy performances at the St. Charles Theatre. Yet 1848 was also the year Whitman began lobbying for “Free Soil,” after encountering in New Orleans, Creole citizens, enslaved Black people, and the slaveholder who would become America’s next president.

Far from some brief escape, New Orleans was a significant milestone in Whitman’s development as a political firebrand, as well as a major step for a professional journalist on the rise. Through a wealth of new texts, contexts, and personalities, Stefan Schöberlein and Zachary Turpin paint a vivid picture of a writer on the verge of Leaves of Grass, embracing the contradictions and the multitudes of New Orleans.
 
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cover of With the Bark Off: A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media

With the Bark Off

A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media

Neal Spelce with Thomas Zigal

University of Texas Press, 2021

What if you got a call from Lyndon Johnson to be in Washington DC tomorrow to take a trip around the world? If you are twenty-four-year-old broadcast journalist Neal Spelce, you buckle up. A two-week diplomatic dream trip turned into a lifelong rollercoaster ride. Spelce began his career as a part-time journalist in the LBJ family-owned Austin TV station in 1956, which vaulted him into a lifetime of memorable experiences with Johnson and many icons of the twentieth century. From his live reporting during the UT Tower shooting tragedy to his lifelong association with LBJ, Spelce found himself behind the scenes in many of the twentieth century’s crucial moments. The Austin-based journalist shares candid moments with LBJ and five other US presidents, including a rare interview with father and son presidents George Bush while the three were cramped together in a small bass boat on a Texas lake. During his lengthy media career, Spelce saw Austin grow from a college town to a thriving city. Along the way he interacted with Texas legends such as Darrell Royal, Willie Nelson, Dan Rather, and more, all part of entertaining stories that he tells, as LBJ liked to say, “with the bark off.”
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cover of Writing in America

Writing in America

Fischer, John

Rutgers University Press, 2018

In the fall of 1959, Harper’s Magazine published a special supplement on the state of writing and the American literary scene. The supplement was greeted with a broadside of commendation and a fusillade of cavil, and has since become recognized as the most useful brief survey of the contemporary state of the American writing arts and of their fellow travelers, the spoken word, the typescript word, the filmed and televised word, and the publishing memorandum. 

In this newly reissued volume in the Rutgers University Press Classics Imprint, Writing in America proves to be as stimulating as it was in 1960. Here, writers including Robert Brustein, Stanley Kunitz, and C.P. Snow examine the state of writing in American novels, films, and television candidly and critically. The result is a collection of essays that showcase a first-rate and highly entertaining piece of reporting on the American literary scene that resonate in 2017.   
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