Provoking the Press: (MORE) Magazine and the Crisis of Confidence in American Journalism

Description

At the beginning of the 1970s, broadcast news and a few newspapers such as The New York Times wielded national influence in shaping public discourse, to a degree never before enjoyed by the news media. At the same time, however, attacks from political conservatives such as Vice President Spiro Agnew began to erode public trust in news institutions, even as a new breed of college-educated reporters were hitting their stride. This new wave of journalists, doing their best to cover the roiling culture wars of the day, grew increasingly frustrated by the limitations of traditional notions of objectivity in news writing and began to push back against convention, turning their eyes on the press itself. Two of these new journalists, a Pulitzer Prize—winning, Harvard-educated New York Times reporter named J. Anthony Lukas, and a former Newsweek media writer named Richard Pollak, founded a journalism review called (MORE) in 1971, with its pilot issue appearing the same month that the Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers. (MORE) covered the press with a critical attitude that blended seriousness and satire—part New York Review of Books, part underground press. In the eight years that it published, (MORE) brought together nearly every important American journalist of the 1970s, either as a writer, a subject of its critical eye, or as a participant in its series of raucous "A.J. Liebling Counter-Conventions"—meetings named after the outspoken press critic—the first of which convened in 1974. In issue after issue the magazine considered and questioned the mainstream press's coverage of explosive stories of the decade, including the Watergate scandal; the "seven dirty words" obscenity trial; the debate over a reporter's constitutional privilege; the rise of public broadcasting; the struggle for women and minorities to find a voice in mainstream newsrooms; and the U.S. debut of press baron Rupert Murdoch. In telling the story of (MORE) and its legacy, Kevin Lerner explores the power of criticism to reform and guide the institutions of the press and, in turn, influence public discourse. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Culture of Criticism: The Limitations of the American Newsroom and the Societal Role of Press Criticism 2. Rosebud Associates: The Crisis of Objectivity in American Journalism and the Founding of (MORE) 3. The Marble Admonition: Chronicling the Journalism of the Early ’70s and Challenging the Institutional Press 4. The Gathering of the Gothamedia: The First A. J. Liebling Counter-Convention and the Coalescence of the Intellectual Elite of American Journalism 5. Get Me Rewrite: (MORE) Adjusts to the Post-Watergate Press 6. The Gadfly: How Press Critics and Their Targets Interact: Two Case Studies of (MORE) and the New York Times 7. How the Press Became the Media: More Becomes a “Media Magazine” 8. Further (MORE): The Demise of (MORE), and Its Legacy for Press Criticism Notes Bibliography Index