These revealing letters of Harold Ross tell the story of the birth of "The New Yorker". Although he claimed he was not a writer, Ross spent hours each day firing off letters to friends, such as E. B. White, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and others. Filled with anecdotes, this collection is a chronicle of the formation of the most prestigious magazine in America.

The American newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its entire three-hundred-year history. A generation of relentless "corporatization" has resulted in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling, and consolidation of newspapers -- affecting both the mightiest dailies and the humblest weeklies. Accompanying this corporate fury has come dramatic -- and drastic -- change in reporting and coverage of all kinds. Concerned that this phenomenon was going largely unreported -- and, therefore, unquestioned -- Gene Roberts, legendary reporter and editor, decided to undertake a huge, extended reportorial study of his own industry. Gathering more than two dozen distinguished journalists and writers, Roberts produced a long series of reports in the American Journalism Review, published by the University of Maryland School of Journalism. This is the first of two books to be published exploring the current state of the American newspaper, and it asks the crucial question: Are American communities -- in the very middle of the so-called information explosion -- in danger of becoming less informed than ever.

Gene Roberts teaches in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He has had a long, distinguished career as reporter and editor, including serving as the managin editor of the New York Times and the executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. During his eighteen years at the Inquirer, the paper won seventeen Pulitzer Prizes. What has happened to the news? Over the past decade, there has been a major shift in newspaper coverage. Many newspaper executives, paring costs and badly misreading public appetites, have cut back dramatically on all types of public-affairs reporting. Fewer reporters than ever are assigned to the statehouse or the White House, to city hall or foreign capitals. Too often celebrity gossip and movie tips take the place of serious journalism instead of existing alongside it. Newspapers once operated under a mandate to provide the kinds of news that citizens need to function in a democratic society, but many corporations have changed that mandate. For more than two years, legendary editor Gene Roberts led a group of journalists in an unprecedented study of the newspaper industry for the American Journalism Review. This is the second volume of their findings. The first, Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering, documented the storm of buying, selling, and consolidation that is transforming the American press. This second volume explores the consequences of these changes for ordinary communities and for the nation, arguing that they place democracy itself in peril. Contributors include Peter Arnett, Mary Walton, Charles Layton, John Herbers, James McCartney, Carl Sessions Stepp, Lewis M. Simons, Chip Brown and Winnie Hu.

The American newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its entire three-hundred-year history. A generation of relentless "corporatization" has resulted in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling, and consolidation of newspapers, accompanied by dramatic -- and drastic -- change in reporting and coverage of all kinds. Concerned that this phenomenon was going largely unreported, Gene Roberts, legendary reporter and editor, decided to undertake a huge, extended reportorial study of his own industry, what would become the Project on the State of the American Newspaper. Gathering more than two dozen distinguished journalists and writers, Roberts produced a long series of reports in the American Journalism Review, published by the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, asking the crucial question: Are American communities -- in the very middle of the so-called information explosion -- in danger of becoming less informed than ever?