Title: Read all about it!
First published: 1993
Description: Read All About It! is a searing indictment of how the corporate owners of American newspapers have sacrificed the ideals of the free press at the altar of profit and how democracy has suffered as a result. Jim Squires comes to this subject with unimpeachable credentials: from 1981 to 1989 he was the editor of the Chicago Tribune, where he saw firsthand how the shortsightedness of corporate managers can divert a newspaper's journalistic mission and imperil its long-term.

Economic health. With passion, style, and vivid stories, Squires makes his case by deftly and humorously interweaving his own experiences with the larger economic trends in the industry. When he first became a reporter in 1962, the old newspaper families who ran the nation's press still saw their business as a public trust. Each newspaper had a distinctive voice, and press barons like Hearst and Pulitzer influenced the world around them, even as they promoted their own.

Politics, ideals, and personalities. In their diversity and passion lay the strength of the free press in America. But those days are gone, writes Squires, and the news business now combines the culture of television with the conscience of Wall Street. Newspaper journalism today is largely the province of large corporations which care more about private profit than public debate. Most of the old newspaper families have given up the fight - and even those that remain have.

Become corporatized themselves. The result is an American press that is more concerned with selling its readers something than challenging or informing them. Squires reserves his harshest criticism for the "bean counters" who now manage most of the nation's great newspapers and who view these once-powerful voices of democracy as cash cows to be milked in the corporate financial interest. He pulls no punches in his excoriating rebuke of the executive class, laying bare.

Their hypocrisies and their contempt for the traditional values of journalism. Unleashed and undominated, Squires sounds a call to arms against the subjugation of the free press in America - before it's too late.
Subjects: American newspapers, Chicago tribune, Consolidation and merger of corporations, History, Press
Places: United States