Personal Account of Journalist or Professor, Miscellaneous – Page 7

The Zeroes

The Book of the Week is “The Zeroes” by Randall Lane, published in 2010. This is the author’s personal account of his adventures in the magazine publishing business in the single-digit 2000’s.

Lane describes in detail, his mostly bad experiences with some of the world’s wealthiest people. They were the subjects of articles and ranked in lists in the magazines published by his company, Doubledown. They were mostly greedy Wall Street traders. He was obligated to throw lavish parties for them (paid for by his company) to sell advertising and subscriptions. He was pressured to write nice things about them, or have them pull their ads.

The author and his business partner also got caught up in the spirit of the times, which valued material possessions and growth financed through a staggering debt burden. He started a wine-tasting club, and a wristwatch club. He writes, “Character, focus, patience– all get sacrificed when you’re starved for 100% growth.” He organized events to raise money for non-profits. When an event’s promotional materials stated, “… a portion of the proceeds will go to charity” that usually meant 1 or 2%.

Read this suspenseful, eloquently written book to learn how the author and his company fared when the financial services sector got its comeuppance in 2008. Here’s a hint: “In all, 1,471 hedge funds closed their doors in 2008, with dozens more failing in 2009.”

A Matter of Opinion

The Book of the Week is “A Matter of Opinion” by Victor S. Navasky, published in 2005. This tome details the decades the author has spent working at the more than 150-year old, politically left-wing weekly opinion journal, The Nation.

Typical for a publication of its nature, The Nation, as of the book’s writing, had turned a profit for only three fiscal years of its existence. It is supposed to have for-profit status. During their histories, all such journals that derive most of their revenue from subscribers and a little from advertising, consider becoming a non-profit organization. The major traits of non-profits include: the ability to accept tax-deductible contributions, lower postage costs, and the fact that they are prohibited from endorsing political candidates and are restricted in their lobbying of lawmakers.

The Nation has been a party to various lawsuits in connection with defamation, intellectual property and free speech issues. One of its goals is to expose the truth about the activities of the American government. Navasky wrote, “… claims of national security are all too often a cloak for government lies, cover-ups, and bureaucratic disinformation.” Started in 1979, one suit brought by Harper & Row dragged on for years over The Nation’s releasing a story on President Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon prior to the release of Ford’s new book; Harper & Row spent an estimated $250,000, but it was seeking damages of $12,500.

In 1989, the tiny, financially struggling Nation wrote a satirical letter to Time, Inc., the target of hostile corporate takeover offers by Gulf + Western and Paramount with an offer of its own. It said, “… we can do better than Paramount’s $175 per share offer… our plan is to pledge the assets of Time, Inc. as collateral on the loan we take out to buy you so cash will be no problem for us.”

Read the book to learn of Navasky’s stories on all the issues involving the running of an opinion journal in the Twentieth Century, into the early years of the Twenty-First Century.

Blood Will Out – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the book “Blood Will Out” by Walter Kirn, published in 2014. It is a personal account of the author’s relationship with the scammer, Clark Rockefeller, aka Christian Gerhartsreiter. Kirn, a novelist and journalist, befriended him in the late 1990’s.

Growing up, Gerhartsreiter had had permissive parents, who “… excused and coddled their naughty son.” This might have led to his thinking he could get away with bad behavior, including murder, as an adult. He was, to the dismay of his ex-wife, initially caught for a different crime– trying to abscond with his young daughter. This was in 2008, a year fraught with stories of dishonest dealings on a large scale– Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, subprime lenders, etc.

Read the book to learn how and why Kirn was suckered into a lopsided friendship with a swindling phony.

Havana Real

The Book of the Week is “Havana Real” by Yoani Sanchez, published in 2009 (according to the copyright). This ebook is a compilation of the blog posts of a journalist in Havana from 2007 through 2010. The author wrote of the oppression of Cubans by their government, their poor quality of life under Communism, and the abuse she suffered for expressing her anti-government opinions.

Yoani Sanchez is a member of what is called “Generation Y” in America– people born in the mid-1970’s and later. At that time, the trend in Cuba was to give babies “Y” names. Sanchez grew up in a Communist dictatorship whose economy was subsidized by the former Soviet Union. In her early teens, she was compelled to join a military youth group whose members were trained to use an AK-47 and shout nationalistic slogans.

After the USSR broke up in the 1990’s, the formerly Communist leaders stopped providing economic aid to Cuba. The Cuban economy tanked. The author described how Cubans in her generation could not afford to take advantage of the practice of building their own homes and after twenty years of payments, owning the property. Instead, Generation Y ran out of money and ended up with stalled construction sites. The Havana apartment building she lived in deteriorated because the landlord was unwilling to pay a high enough wage to attract maintenance workers. For a few years, the elevator was broken. Until it was finally replaced by a rickety Soviet model that still broke down, she and her husband and teenage son had to walk up fourteen flights of stairs.

In summer 2007, Fidel Castro was reported to be ill. Cubans felt a sense of relief at not having to listen to his speeches that interrupted their TV watching, if they were wealthy enough to have a TV. Nevertheless, Sanchez wrote, “We can spend an hour on line to pay the electricity bill or consume half a day to get a pair of shoes repaired… Not know exactly when we can take the bus, receive a service, or buy a ticket.”

This is to say nothing of the horrendous Cuban education system. People who did poorly in school become employed by the schools to educate the children, as graduates who got better grades enter higher-paying professions. Often, these sorry-excuses-for-teachers fill their students’ heads with misinformation. There are also a lot of “tele-classes”– videos instead of live teachers because education is extremely pitifully funded. These videos can be seen by all Cubans who have a TV at home, if they can endure the boring dictation.

Read the book to learn of: the black markets– some of which evaporated due to political change– that deal in the basic necessities of life such as soap, juice and toilet paper; what happened to people who became too entrepreneurial in their capitalistic practices; the reorganized education system that bodes a bleak future for Sanchez’ son; and how Cubans’ already low standard of living fell even further in various ways during the time the author was blogging.

Writing Places – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the book, “Writing Places” by William K. Zinsser, published in 2009. It is a career memoir. Zinsser details the twists and turns of his writing and teaching, starting with his adventures in journalism in the New York City of the mid- to late 1940’s through the late 1950’s.

The author says that the New York Herald Tribune served as a role model for his writing, instilling lifelong values in him. Two older editors in the newsroom “…went out of their way to help me [gain experience.]” Unfortunately, by the late 1950’s, for various reasons, the newspaper was unable to uphold the values it originally held as part of its corporate culture.

Zinsser fell into freelance writing for magazines such as Life and the Saturday Evening Post. His generation saw lots of human-interest stories in a slew of weekly publications. “It was also,” he writes of the early 1960’s, “the last historic moment when it was possible for a magazine writer in America to be a generalist.”

For, television gobbled up a large chunk of consumer advertising at the expense of publications. It also competed for readers’ leisure time. Excuse the cliche, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Television showed consumer products in live-action scenarios against which magazines could not compete. Zinsser’s work slowed to a trickle because there arose topical specialization in periodicals; contributors were required to be experts on, say, hunting or cats or wine or brides, etc.

Another trend of the 1960’s was the lax teaching of writing by American high schools. Teachers allowed students freedom of expression with little regard for grammar or syntax. Excuse the cliche, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Read the book to learn how Zinsser adapted to the changing times. One hint is that it involved the “…American National United Allied General Corporation.” So as not to have biased the reader, this blogger is providing the following info at the end of this post:

Zinsser admittedly is a WASP-y Northeastern elitist, whose father was a Yale graduate. He himself is a Princeton graduate. He also confesses that memoir writers tend to be “…masters of retroactive blame. The hard job is to get beyond the ancient grievances and arrive at a larger point– some moment of acceptance and healing.”

Panther Baby

The Book of the Week is “Panther Baby” by Jamal Joseph, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a former member of the Black Panthers.

Raised by his grandmother in Harlem, Joseph was of Spanish-speaking and African-American origin. In the late 1960’s, as a church-going, teenage honor student, he joined an African-American community group that steered young men toward educational, career-oriented pursuits. “Pledgees were not allowed to go to parties, have girlfriends, smoke or drink.”

Nevertheless, shortly after joining the “Feathermen,” Joseph was drawn to the Black Panthers, a group with chapters in major cities around the United States, that fought for social justice for African Americans. Continuous battles with law enforcement meant that the group’s main activity was fundraising for the purpose of legal defense for oppressed Black Panthers.

The author contends that the U.S. government launched various campaigns implemented via the FBI and CIA to spy on, spread bad publicity about, and persecute the group’s members. The government used any excuse to arrest and torture them, and deny them due process with the goal of destroying the organization.

In Manhattan, in addition to teaching and making speeches, Joseph sold newspapers to raise money to fund a breakfast program for underprivileged children and clothing distribution in poor communities. He wrote that a major aspect of the Panther ideology involved arming members with guns to fight not white people, but the racist institutions of oppression.

One night, Joseph was arrested after attending a political rally. He and twenty other Panthers were charged with various serious crimes, and thrown in jail. Read the book to learn about the political and social changes that shaped the Black Panthers and the author in the next few decades.

Secret Life: An Autobiography

The Book of the Week is “Secret Life: An Autobiography” by Michael Ryan, published in 1996. This book tells the story of how Ryan became a sex addict as an adult. The root cause of his problem began when he was about five years old. He had an otherwise relatively normal boyhood in 1950’s and 1960’s America, but for his alcoholic father. Read the book to learn the details of the situation that could happen to any child whose parents are too trusting.

Audition

The Book of the Week is “Audition” by Barbara Walters, published in 2008. This is Walters’ autobiography, a detailed account of her personal and professional life. She had a long, illustrious career in TV News. She started out as a behind-the-scenes writer for the “Today Show” on NBC in the early 1960’s, when there was still a lot of discrimination against women. Nevertheless, her hard work at, talent and suitability for her job, over the course of decades, afforded her the opportunity to interview countless famous people; some, multiple times.

There were occasions when Walters received special treatment by her interviewees. In the spring of 1977, she was personally driven for six hours around the Bay of Pigs vicinity by none other than Fidel Castro. Later that year, she witnessed multiple Middle Eastern politicians gather all in one place when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat made (momentary) peace with Israel’s Menachim Begin. ABC interrupted a college football game with the “breaking news.” Viewers telephoned the network to express their displeasure, and after seven minutes of complaining, the viewers got their game back.

Walters was lucky to have helped pioneer the art of the TV interview and enjoyed its best years. She asked hard-hitting, sometimes personal questions that hosts do not ask anymore. She writes that nowadays, TV ratings rise with guests who are attention whores or criminals– whose stories are tabloid articles. Political leaders or celebrities with substance have become a rarity. “We really seem to care only if they are outrageous and call our president a devil or declare that the Holocaust never existed. Stand up and scream and we will interview you, or be reasonable and unheard.” Fortunately, the internet has become a source of intelligent discussion in some quarters– a source that is not under pressure to generate ratings.

New York in the Fifties

The Book of the Week is “New York in the Fifties” by Dan Wakefield, published in 1992. In this nostalgic volume, Wakefield describes the specific cultural quirks of place and time he experienced when he was in his twenties. He describes, among other interesting trivia, how he developed a strategy for securing a rented apartment in the city– a difficult undertaking, as decent apartments were snapped up as soon as they appeared in the newspaper classifieds.

Conveniently, he worked for the Village Voice, so he was privy to the classifieds as they were printed. Upon seeing an ad for an apartment that appealed to him, he would sprint to the payphone outside his employer’s office building to call the phone number in the ad.

How times have changed.