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David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (Knopf, 1979) Reissued in paperback by University of Illinois Press in 2000 Twenty-one years after the release of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's best-selling backstage glimpse into a formidable American media industry, The Powers That Be was reissued in paperback, and the world it celebrates is gone. The book dances with the characters at CBS, Time, the LA Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post - a hegemony of powerful players, still juiced-up on Watergate and driven by unsullied tenets of print journalism. Their dialogue - rife with the challenges of Vietnam War coverage, the Nixon scandal, and encroaching corporate pressures - paints a picture of a profession at its high-water mark, obsessed with balancing what its audience wants with what it needs. No one is sadder than Halberstam to watch those waters recede. His introduction to the new 2000 edition is a bleak summary of what he considers to be the media's rapid descent into service and celebrity-centered journalism, ledes that bleed, and a new generation of editors and producers who bite their nails over ratings instead of accuracy. If we are to believe him, and there is certainly enough new media criticism that corroborates his perspective (see Robert W. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy), Halberstam's chronicle of the rise of the American media has become the wistful memoirs of a faded endeavor. But the sheer devotion and fervor of the characters who guided journalism to its climax remains inspiring. With rich, concise strokes, Halberstam flits between what he has deemed to be television and print's most prestigious institutions, letting news figures and breaking stories point the way through the behind-the-scenes decisions that turned the media into such a viable force after Watergate. He fills the stage with an entire cast of news world players who lend this work a dimensionality and voice that has allowed it to endure, not as a history book, but as an immersive whirlwind tour. MORE: CNN interviews Halberstam on a variety of subjects Powells.com overview of Halberstam's work and interview |
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