When No News Is Bad News
A former managing editor of The Chicago Tribune probes the collapse of the newspaper industry and tries, mostly in vain, to find hope for the future of journalism.
by James Warren
The Atlantic
To give you an idea of the state of journalism today, I probably couldn’t do better than to tell you something about John Crewdson, a big, burly guy just past age 60, with whom I worked when I ran the Washington bureau of the Tribune. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on immigration at The New York Times in 1981, and is one of the premier investigative reporters of his generation.
Twenty years ago, Crewdson revealed (in a Tribune article so expansive it merited its own special Sunday section) that it was in fact a French research doctor named Luc Montagnier who had discovered the AIDS virus, rather than a self-promoting American, Dr. Robert Gallo, who had claimed full credit and been showered with media attention. To investigate the piece, Crewdson spent months wading into dense, difficult material, becoming almost as conversant in the science of AIDS as any researcher. (And just this year, Montagnier’s work—and Crewdson’s—was prominently rewarded, when Montaignier instead of Gallo received the Nobel prize for the discovery of the virus.)
Among other great Crewdson pieces was his 1996 series about people dying needlessly of heart attacks on commercial airliners, which resulted in all airlines now carrying defibrillators on board. (If you survive a heart attack at 30,000 feet, thank John.) And more recently, Crewdson dug deep into the Bush administration’s secret “rendition” program, matching tail numbers with FAA records, among other painstaking work, to unearth such disturbing details as the fact that a Boston Red Sox owner had been allowing his Gulfstream jet (sometimes used by the team) to be flown by the government on these covert flights.
(More here.)
by James Warren
The Atlantic
To give you an idea of the state of journalism today, I probably couldn’t do better than to tell you something about John Crewdson, a big, burly guy just past age 60, with whom I worked when I ran the Washington bureau of the Tribune. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on immigration at The New York Times in 1981, and is one of the premier investigative reporters of his generation.
Twenty years ago, Crewdson revealed (in a Tribune article so expansive it merited its own special Sunday section) that it was in fact a French research doctor named Luc Montagnier who had discovered the AIDS virus, rather than a self-promoting American, Dr. Robert Gallo, who had claimed full credit and been showered with media attention. To investigate the piece, Crewdson spent months wading into dense, difficult material, becoming almost as conversant in the science of AIDS as any researcher. (And just this year, Montagnier’s work—and Crewdson’s—was prominently rewarded, when Montaignier instead of Gallo received the Nobel prize for the discovery of the virus.)
Among other great Crewdson pieces was his 1996 series about people dying needlessly of heart attacks on commercial airliners, which resulted in all airlines now carrying defibrillators on board. (If you survive a heart attack at 30,000 feet, thank John.) And more recently, Crewdson dug deep into the Bush administration’s secret “rendition” program, matching tail numbers with FAA records, among other painstaking work, to unearth such disturbing details as the fact that a Boston Red Sox owner had been allowing his Gulfstream jet (sometimes used by the team) to be flown by the government on these covert flights.
(More here.)
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