Nothing wrong with war stories, actual and less so, but the most interesting journalism memoirs dig into the why and wherefore of the work and the life in ways useful and provocative for the rest of us.
“Chasing Hope” is among several on my shelf and Kindle (read the author’s review of “Chasing Hope” here). I’ve enjoyed two recent ones by former Detroit Free Press colleagues: “Striving: Adventures of a Female Journalist in a Man’s World,” by Jo Thomas; and “Lost and Found: Coming of Age in the Washington Press Corps,” by Ellen Hume. Both are remarkable for the candor and courage displayed by the authors in recounting sometimes painful times in their professional and personal lives.
I also recommend Margaret Sullivan’s “Newsroom Confidential,” published in 2022, an excellent primer for her American Crisis, the podcast and column focused on journalists’ roles addressing growing threats to democracy and coverage of Trump.
Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron eschews the word ‘memoir,” perhaps because his “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post” is more focused on Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post than it is on Baron. I reviewed it along with Adam Nagourney’s “The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn and the Transformation of Journalism.”
Reading now on my Kindle: “A Native’s Return: 1945-1988,” by William L. Shirer, also the author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” “A Native’s Return” is the third installment of a three-volume memoir and was published in 1990. But its discussion of the McCarthy era of the 1950s makes for relevant reading today.
Just picked up from my local library: “The Father and The Son,” by former Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray. Murray’s book was published almost 25 years ago. I include it here both because Murray took over this month as interim editor of The Washington Post and because the story looks so good. Murray was 16 when, eight years after the death of his mom, his dad sat him down at the dining room table and told him that their lives were about to change in a big way. Here’s a free link to the book excerpt the Post published in 1999.
On my list to read next: “In My Time of Dying: How I came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife,” by Sebastian Junger; and “Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery,” by Lawrence Ingrassia.
