Newspaper editorials say a lot about the society in which we live. They are not just an indication and reflection of the issues of the day and of which way the political wind is blowing. They are also a part of the political climate that sets the agenda for politicians, and helps them discern which are the hot-button issues and which side people are on. Journalists and politicians enjoy a level of symbiosis in their relationships-they influence each other indirectly. It therefore follows that when fewer ideas, and a narrower range of opinions, are expressed in the nation's newspapers, there is a real danger that our thinking can become more simplistic as well. In 1930 there were 288 competitive major newspaper markets in the United States. Today, there are fewer than 30. In this dwindling marketplace of ideas, national themes tend to crowd out local issues. Moreover, newspapers must compete with 24-hour news channels like CNN and national newspapers like USA Today. This diminishing diversity of opinion and voices, as expressed in our newspapers' editorials, is taking place even as technological advances seemingly provide more sources of (the same) information. At the same time, as Hallock shows, the concentration of media ownership in fewer and fewer hands allows those individuals and entities an inordinate amount of influence. In this intriguing book, Hallock examines 18 newspaper markets to show us exactly how and where this troubling trend is occurring, what it means for the political landscape, and, ultimately, how it can affect us all.

This volume looks back at the last half of the 20th century through the work and reminiscences of ten of the era's preeminent journalists. Reporters Who Made History: Great American Journalists on the Issues and Crises of the Late 20th Century looks at a series of extraordinary chapters in the American story through the eyes of ten giants of journalism: Helen Thomas, Anthony Lewis, Morley Safer, Earl Caldwell, Ben Bradlee, Georgie Anne Geyer, Ellen Goodman, Juan Williams, David Broder, and Judy Woodruff. Taking each of these journalists in turn, Hallock focuses on his or her work in the course of a single decade, drawing on the author's interviews with the journalist, archival research, memoirs, and critical studies. These exemplars of the best postwar American news reporting never took the easy path of simply restating policies and uncritically regurgitating press releases. Instead, their skeptical, independent, and searching methods of investigative and analytical journalism actually influenced the course of the very events they covered and significantly shaped our understanding of our national past.