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 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 MoreCrooked politicians mean tumbling buildings—in countries from Egypt to China, not just U.S.
In The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel, hundreds of IRS and CIA bureaucrats die in the collapse of a rickety high-rise. Bribery involved? Of course. So how much Real Life is there in this scenario? Just type building collapse corruption into Google and see such headlines as: Corrupt work cited in Egypt building collapse […]
Read MoreTwo Chicagoans: President Bullard vis-a-vis Obama
Both are self-made men from Chicago—intellectual politicians with law degrees. And like me, both are on the liberal side. No doubt, a few superficial parallels exist between my fictitious Eddy Bullard and President-elect Barack Obama. And it isn’t even deliberate. Thirty years ago when I conceived The Solomon Scandals, President Bullard held a law degree […]
Read MoreScandals as a Northern Virginia Jewish novel
Jonathan Stone as an Afro-American? Because Jewish protagonists are such old hat? So suggested a buddy of mine—not an anti-semite or self-hating Jewish, but an intelligent man of the observant, practicing variety. May I respectfully disagree? In fact, The Solomon Scandals in some respects is as much a Northern Virginia Jewish novel as a newspaper […]
Read MoreSolomon for real?
Update, April 10: A long essay in the back of the second edition of The Solomon Scandals discusses the Smith family’s government leases and other ethics-related issues in D.C., including the Clarence Thomas controversies. Sy Solomon, the real estate millionaire in The Solomon Scandals, never existed. Like many of the characters in my novel, he […]
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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