Paper of Wreckage

August 15, 2024
Two former staffers of one of the world's most notorious tabloids present the story of how an Australian media magnate changed American media. FormerNew York Post writers and editors Mulcahy and DiGiacomo interviewed more then 240 past and presentPost staffers, competitors, media watchers, and even story subjects to compile an oral history of the tabloid. They focus primarily on the owner, pugnacious and business-savvy Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who took over the flailing newspaper in the mid-1970s. Interviewees describe how Murdoch, a veteran newspaperman, combined his knowledge of bylines, deadlines, and most of all bottom lines to alter how the American media present the news. Delivered by excellent reporters and prima donna columnists, shaped by Murdoch's political bent, the paper gained notoriety and circulation due to the gossip peddled on the infamous Page Six and the antics of an eccentric New York real estate operator named Donald Trump, astutely identified by Murdoch as someone who made good copy and would sell papers. While the book's "inside baseball" accounts of newsgathering, the goings-on in the often-debauchedPost newsroom, and the New York scene may bore some readers, the book is catnip for anyone interested in the evolution (or, depending on your point of view, devolution) of thePost in particular and U.S. media in general. For laypeople who may not know the newspaper terminology that peppers the language of many of those interviewed, the authors include a glossary that is both informative and entertaining. The commentary from the candid interviewees, like thePost itself, has it all, from delightfully sublime and critically incisive to completely nonsensical. Mulcahy and DiGiacomo have organized their research and interviews well to craft an interesting and rollicking narrative that will stand as a significant contribution to the history of mass media. Raucous and enlightening fun.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2024
"Newspaper of record" is a term used to describe a newspaper that's considered authoritative, independent, and objective. So the title of this new oral history of the New York Post, beginning in 1976 when Rupert Murdoch took over the 175-year-old paper, pretty much tells readers what to expect. Drawing on interviews with past Post staffers and other industry people, the book paints a rather depressing picture of a once-respected newspaper gutted and rebuilt as the cornerstone of a media empire that would focus on celebrity news, gossip, one-sided reporting, and style over substance. But there have been, the authors point out, some bright lights in the darkness: some Post reporters and editors who kept writing and publishing the kinds of stories that made the Post a great newspaper back in the day. Like Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson's Hollywood: The Oral History (2022) and James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales' Live from New York (2002), this book allows us to hear the voices of the people who saw history being made from the inside. A deeply fascinating--and considerably unsettling--look at the way American journalism has been transformed over the past five decades.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 14, 2024
Five decades worth of raucous behind-the-scenes anecdotes, from the creation of the notorious headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar” to the genesis of the popular gossip column Page Six, fill this scintillating oral history of the New York Post. Former Post contributors Mulcahy (My Lips Are Sealed) and DiGiacomo tap hundreds of former and current staffers, plus a zany selection of readers and subjects (filmmaker John Waters; a “onetime Gambino crime family hitman”), to tell the story of how the staid liberal paper changed after its 1976 purchase by Rupert Murdoch—a transition that was “like Sid Vicious taking over the Philharmonic.” Much of the book consists of tales of hardboiled, misfit journalists—“rogues, reprobates, freaks”—willing to do anything for a story, like pose as a grief counselor to nail an interview with the mother of a Son of Sam victim. The paper’s office hijinks are no less sordid; they include photographers snorting “coke off the light tables,” an editor who wore “red devil horns” while “spanking and terrorizing the copygirls,” and numerous fistfights. Though reveling in the sensationalism of such Mad Men–esque, pre-#MeToo behavior, the book is not uncritical; the authors are clear-eyed about the Post’s damaging “negative coverage of the Black community” and the credence it gave to unreliable sources, including Trump mentor Roy Cohn. It’s a juicy, gonzo slice of New York history.