journalism

 

Last night, the Genre Reading Group met to discuss journalism and journalists. Journalism has been a very challenged and challenging profession as time goes by and there are now myriad definitions of what qualifies.  From the hallowed halls of the big papers to the crowdsourced digital pages of the internet to the airwaves with your favorite broadcaster/podcaster, it seems anyone may report on anything.

The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker

When Kim Barker first arrived in Kabul as a journalist in 2002, she barely owned a passport, spoke only English and had little idea how to do the “Taliban Shuffle” between Afghanistan and Pakistan. No matter—her stories about Islamic militants and shaky reconstruction were soon overshadowed by the bigger news in Iraq. But as she delved deeper into Pakistan and Afghanistan, her love for the hapless countries grew, along with her fear for their future stability. In this darkly comic and unsparing memoir, Barker uses her wry, incisive voice to expose the absurdities and tragedies of the “forgotten war,” finding humor and humanity amid the rubble and heartbreak. Now a major motion picture titled Whiskey Tango Foxtrot starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, and Billy Bob Thornton.

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Recounts the growth in power and influence of the great media institutions and the changes that they have brought about on the American scene, focusing on the people who make up Time Incorporated, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and CBS.

Other David Halberstam titles

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War -- reenactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners, history fans, students of current racial conflicts, and more -- this ten-state adventure is part travelogue, part social commentary and always good-humored. 

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz

With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times.

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America by Tony Horwitz

What happened in North America between Columbus's sail in 1492 and the Pilgrims' arrival in 1620?
On a visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he doesn't have a clue, nor do most Americans. So he sets off across the continent to rediscover the wild era when Europeans first roamed the New World in quest of gold, glory, converts, and eternal youth. Horwitz tells the story of these brave and often crazed explorers while retracing their steps on his own epic trek--an odyssey that takes him inside an Indian sweat lodge in subarctic Canada, down the Mississippi in a canoe, on a road trip fueled by buffalo meat, and into sixty pounds of armor as a conquistador reenactor in Florida.

Other Tony Horwitz titles

We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter by Celeste Headlee

Today most of us communicate from behind electronic screens, and studies show that Americans feel less connected and more divided than ever before. The blame for some of this disconnect can be attributed to our political landscape, but the erosion of our conversational skills as a society lies with us as individuals. And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. In We Need to Talk, she outlines the strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication.

Invisible People: Stories of Lives at the Margins by Alex Tizon

Every human being has an epic story. The late Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Alex Tizon told the epic stories of marginalized people—from lonely immigrants struggling to forge a new American identity to a high school custodian who penned a New Yorker short story. Edited by Tizon’s friend and former colleague Sam Howe Verhovek, Invisible People collects the best of Tizon’s rich, empathetic accounts—including “My Family’s Slave,” the Atlantic magazine cover story about the woman who raised him and his siblings under conditions that amounted to indentured servitude.

Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do by Gabriel Thompson

Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcement -- while telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants, and desperate US citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of 8 an hour.

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

One member opines that journalism as a profession is dead and recommends: https://journalismisdead.org/about/ 

If humor is your preference, seek out journalists Paul Harvey, Andy Rooney, Lewis Grizzard, and Erma Bombeck.

Articles by local Birmingham journalist Ian Hoppe

Celeste Headlee TEDTalk