Word: darnton
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...Earlier this month, there appeared in my mailbox in New York City what seemed like an interesting white paper, “The Research Library in the Digital Age.” It was written by Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer university professor and director of the Harvard University Library, and was forwarded to me by Frances D. Ferguson, chair of the Overseas Committee to Visit the University Library...
...newspaper spike, the symbol of days gone by, when an editor rejecting copy would spike it on a metal spire atop one's desk. The smart-alecky reporter assigned to cover the crime teams up with a dark and attractive (if implausibly aristocratic) female police detective. In their relationship, Darnton skillfully plays with the touchy alliance/competition/mistrust between reporters and cops, mirroring the larger association between the media and government. Surveying the thicket of potential murderers, Darnton can offer a kaleidoscopic view of the characters who populate the newspaper. ("Any suspects?" the editor is asked. He answers...
...publisher (modeled on the current Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger) frets about the stock price and drags senior staff to time-wasting group retreats. "Thinking was not his forte, but he had a certain cunning," writes Darnton. The executive editor (modeled on the current executive editor, Bill Keller) is too shy to talk to his staff and constantly reminisces about his days as a foreign correspondent in Russia and Africa. The reporter without a moral compass (Judith Miller, of WMD fame) gets caught plagiarizing Tolstoy. There is even a hard-driving and swashbuckling rival publisher named Lester Moloch (modeled on Rupert...
...Darnton relies on gentle satire to evoke the many ironies in newspapering and even his seemingly throwaway descriptions of news situations ring utterly true. The ancient pressroom at City Hall looks like "a crowded Mayan ruin littered with the detritus of tourists." The relentless questions rained on a journalist writing a page-one story on deadline is an experience "like getting nibbled to death by ducks...
...Darnton, a talented correspondent and editor, excelled at the Times but never won promotion to the highest ranks, allowing him a bitingly accurate perspective on how things really work at the paper. Only now, after his recent retirement, could he write what amounts to a tell-all about the newspaper he clearly loved and gave much of his life to. His novel may lose him a few friends, but it will win him many new admirers...