I mourn the decline of traditional newspapers, like The Telegram in The Solomon Scandals, despite their many flaws. How many paper dailies—not just individual copies of them—will end up as trash? And, yes, as many in the industry believe, Google is responsible to a great extent, but not in the way you might think. Google’s […]
Read More‘What Would Google Do’ with my old steeltown newspaper in Lorain, Ohio? Here’s what I’D do.
Related: Media critic James Fallows and Google News’ Josh Cohen will discuss digital-era journalism tomorrow, Wednesday, at 6:30 p.m., in D.C. What if reporters didn’t take over from newspaper publishers, the tease I posted earlier? Suppose someone else did, Google. One old newspaper alum, Jeff Jarvis, has even written a book called What Would Google […]
Read MoreRexwood Garst and the darker side of ‘meritocracy’ in journalism, politics and other fields
In The Solomon Scandals, I have a little fun with a hyperspecialized Yalie named Rexwood Garst, a reporter at a Washington Post-type newspaper. “Serbo-Croatian,” says this young resume jock who lives in a converted carriage house in Georgetown, “that’s the key. I know how to speak it.” It all jibes with my suggestion that the […]
Read MoreTruth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street
Firing back at the New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman, Dana Milbank at the Washington Post is spot on when he says the death watch on the Post newspaper is premature. I’ve given my own two cents on survival strategies. That said, Milbank needs to remember that the Washington Post Company’s priorities are less journalistic and more […]
Read More‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins’: My Q. & A. with playwright Margaret Engel
A black mongrel dog scampers across the stage, “dragging a leash and a canoe paddle.” Her owner yells for the dog by her proper name, “Shit”—an ever-handy expletive for a Texas oilman’s red-headed daughter, grouchy about the status quo. This is the populist journalist Molly Ivins at home, in a new play by Margaret (Peggy) […]
Read MoreBible of newspaper biz reincarnated under new owner, Duncan McIntosh
Good news: Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper business, is back from the dead and will be published by Duncan McIntosh. Mark Fitzgerald, an E&P veteran, is the new top editor. Online reporting has resumed, and a February issue will appear. Duncan McIntosh is a boating magazine publisher—it also organizes boat shows. Separately […]
Read MoreThe Jonathan Stone-David Rothman Q. & A.
Jonathan Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scandals, grilled me for this Q. & A.—uncut. Last updated April 10, 2024. STONE: Why’s Scandals copyrighted in your name? It’s my newspaper memoir. ROTHMAN: Er, faux memoir. Without me, you wouldn’t even have been born…or have worked for the Washington Telegram…or have struggled to avert an IRS-CIA […]
Read MoreScandals and the Internet—or lack of it
The Detroit Free Press and the rival News decided to print home-delivery editions just three days a week. Competition from the Web killed off the other four days. Similar scenarios are or will be unfolding elsewhere, as shown by the move of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the Web. So how does the Internet figure in […]
Read MoreWashington’s growing power over the rest of us: ‘Solomonic’ in the wrong way?
The Solomon Scandals vividly depicts a city of lobbyists, crooked lawyers and other manipulators. Herbert Stone, father of Jonathan Stone, the reporter protagonist, works for a provider of PR and “public affairs” services. It’s “a nice, safe pseudo-Civil Service, so to speak, for careerists keen on abetting the more obnoxious of the corporate profiteers.” But […]
Read More‘Solomon Scandals’ goes on sale now as e-book; January delivery in trade paperback
Psst! Advance promo copies of The Solomon Scandals are on sale now in e-book format (retail $5.95 USD). Twilight Times Books is also taking advance orders for First Editions in trade paperback (retail $16.95 USD). The paperbacks will ship in January 2009. These are “pre-release promotional copies.” Twilight’s phone number is 423-323-0183, and other ordering […]
Read MoreScandals’s origins
Blame The Solomon Scandals on my lack of ESP. Oh, to have read the minds of the people whose lives and deeds helped inspire the novel! Just why did the late Sen. Abraham Ribicoff end up in the 1960s with a $20,000 investment in a building that the CIA moved into? What were Ribicoff and […]
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