An exemplary work of journalism about journalism, of surpassing interest to any serious consumer of the news.
A deep-dive history of the New York Times in an age of transformation.
The Times, writes veteran political reporter Nagourney, has long borne the sobriquet “the Gray Lady,” but women have seldom figured in its management and upper ranks. The same was true of anyone but white males. As Nagourney, who covered the 2020 election for the paper, writes, this became a source of much concern to the publishers, members of the Sulzberger dynasty, and the paper's editorial and business leadership, who oversaw its transformation not just into a more diverse organization but also one at the forefront of the digital age. It came at a cost: “Newsrooms as a rule are unhappy places: roiled by self-doubt, anger, competitiveness, resentments, and vindictiveness,” and the Times was no exception. Accordingly, episodes of massive bloodletting were not uncommon. In an absorbing case study, Nagourney revisits the checkered career of serial fabulist Jayson Blair, who, in the end, took down his editor, Howell Raines, with him when his inventions were exposed. “I’ve got more arrows in me than Custer’s horse,” Raines once quipped, but this time the horse died. Another critical juncture in the book comes with the tortured saga of the Times’ first woman executive editor, Jill Abramson, whose dismissal stirred up unpleasant memories of a sexual discrimination class action lawsuit filed decades earlier. Nagourney’s account of the Times’ performance during the fraught days after 9/11, the good with the bad, is outstanding. Still, students of the journalism business will most value his study of the halting steps the paper took toward becoming a digital giant, with, today, far more online subscribers than print ones, lending weight to one editor’s observation: “Readers love news articles and narrative. But they clearly want more journalism that doesn’t consist mostly of blocks of text.”
An exemplary work of journalism about journalism, of surpassing interest to any serious consumer of the news.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780451499363
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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