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Newsroom Confidential

Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"Lisa Flanagan narrates journalist Margaret Sullivan's memoir/manifesto authoritatively....and gives this important audiobook the seriousness it merits." - AudioFile Magazine

Prologue read by the author
Over her four decades of working in newsrooms big and small, Margaret Sullivan has become a trusted champion and critic of the American news media. In this bracing memoir, Sullivan traces her life in journalism and how trust in the mainstream press has steadily eroded.

Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from summer intern to editor in chief. In Newsroom Confidential she chronicles her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. In 2012, Sullivan was appointed the public editor of The New York Times, the first woman to hold that important role. She was in the unique position of acting on behalf of readers to weigh the actions and reporting of the paper's staff, parsing potential lapses in judgment, unethical practices, and thorny journalistic issues. Sullivan recounts how she navigated the paper's controversies, from Hillary Clinton's emails to Elon Musk's accusations of unfairness to the need for greater diversity in the newsroom. In 2016, having served the longest tenure of any public editor, Sullivan left for the Washington Post, where she had a front-row seat to the rise of Donald Trump in American media and politics.
With her celebrated mixture of charm, sharp-eyed observation, and nuanced criticism, Sullivan takes us behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets to explore how Americans lost trust in the news and what it will take to regain it.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 13, 2022
      Sullivan, a columnist for the Washington Post and a former New York Times public editor, recounts in this sincere if befuddled work her hard-won career in journalism. From her internship at the “tiny” Niagara Gazette in the 1970s to her desk at the Times, Sullivan surveys the travails and triumphs of being a woman in the industry, detailing the difficulties of being an editor for one of the nation’s most read papers—including “physical proximity to the journalists whose work I was criticizing”—and her challenging transition into the role of Style writer at the Washington Post, where she regularly faces misogynistic vitriol online. She also frankly contends with her own mistakes—including her team's coverage of a 2010 mass shooting in Buffalo where she included criminal profiles of the Black victims—and tracks her improvement when she wrote with “more empathy and insight” on the death of George Floyd in 2020. It’s this use of her writing about real-life devastation as a metric for personal improvement, however, that undermines Sullivan’s claim to a high ethical standard; and her criticisms—including her thoughts on Times journalist Dean Baquet’s “mishandling” of one journalist’s resignation after using the n-word—often fall flat. The insider’s view into American journalism is engrossing, but Sullivan’s blind spots, when it comes to her own blunders, are large. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the author's role in the coverage of a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., and the death of George Floyd.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Lisa Flanagan narrates journalist Margaret Sullivan's memoir/manifesto authoritatively. Flanagan speaks in a direct, straightforward style and alters her timbre only when imitating male voices. She captures Sullivan's spirited point of view--she's enthralled with her calling and appalled at the state of the media--and gives this important audiobook the seriousness it merits. Sullivan is a journalist's journalist. She was a longtime editor at the BUFFALO NEWS before becoming the first woman to serve as public editor at the NEW YORK TIMES. Following that she was the media critic at the WASHINGTON POST. Fearless at her craft, she has critiqued sacred cows like Bob Woodward and in her four years at the TIMES won a slew of fans for her candor. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

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