Newsroom Confidential, Margaret Sullivan
Newsroom Confidential, Margaret Sullivan
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Newsroom Confidential
Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life

Author: Margaret Sullivan

Narrator: Lisa Flanagan, Margaret Sullivan

Unabridged: 7 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2022


Synopsis

"Lisa Flanagan narrates journalist Margaret Sullivan's memoir/manifesto authoritatively....and gives this important audiobook the seriousness it merits." - AudioFile Magazine

Prologue read by the author

Over her four decades of working in newsrooms big and small, Margaret Sullivan has become a trusted champion and critic of the American news media. In this bracing memoir, Sullivan traces her life in journalism and how trust in the mainstream press has steadily eroded.

Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from summer intern to editor in chief. In Newsroom Confidential she chronicles her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. In 2012, Sullivan was appointed the public editor of The New York Times, the first woman to hold that important role. She was in the unique position of acting on behalf of readers to weigh the actions and reporting of the paper's staff, parsing potential lapses in judgment, unethical practices, and thorny journalistic issues. Sullivan recounts how she navigated the paper’s controversies, from Hillary Clinton's emails to Elon Musk's accusations of unfairness to the need for greater diversity in the newsroom. In 2016, having served the longest tenure of any public editor, Sullivan left for the Washington Post, where she had a front-row seat to the rise of Donald Trump in American media and politics.

With her celebrated mixture of charm, sharp-eyed observation, and nuanced criticism, Sullivan takes us behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets to explore how Americans lost trust in the news and what it will take to regain it.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

About Margaret Sullivan

MARGARET SULLIVAN is an award-winning media critic and a groundbreaking journalist. She was the first woman appointed as public editor of the New York Times and went on to the Washington Post as media columnist. She started her career as a summer intern at her hometown Buffalo News and rose to be that paper's first woman editor-in-chief. She writes a weekly column for the Guardian US, and teaches at Duke University. She tweets @sulliview.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on December 06, 2023

Too many journalists couldn’t seem to grasp their crucial role in American democracy. Almost pathologically, they normalized the abnormal and sensationalized mundane.-------------------------------------These days, we can clearly see the fallout from decades of declining public trust, the res......more

Goodreads review by Fran on January 15, 2023

I should be this book's ideal reader: I spent a long career as a news reporter and editor before switching to writing novels. Moreover, I'm a dedicated political junkie. And this book promises to reveal the inside story of Margaret Sullivan's decades as an editor, media critic, and ombudsperson at s......more

Goodreads review by Stewart on October 23, 2022

Full disclosure: I won a free ARC of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Let me state, first of all, that I really enjoyed this book. Not only is it a look back over Sullivan's career, but a nice capsule history of the decline of America's trust in the traditional news media. I mean, "nice," in the s......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on November 08, 2022

As a journalist I believe everyone in our profession should read this. It not only talks about how the media is rapidly changing and its failures, but Sullivan offers real ideas of how we can fix it. It made me rethink a lot of how I operate and the change I want to be a part of.......more

Goodreads review by Kat on December 21, 2022

Actually rating is 3.5 stars but I did enjoy this. I got a review copy of this book from Netgally but did end up listening to the audiobook once it was released. I recently moved to Buffalo, a city that plays a large role in this book, and that did make this kind of fun for me. I even listened to pa......more


Awards

  • Washington Post Best Books of the Year