Kelly, Tom. The Imperial Post: The Meyers, the Grahams, and the Paper That Rules Washington. New York: William Morrow, 1983. 320 pages.

It's an article of faith among East Coast elites that there are only two newspapers worth reading -- the New York Times and the Washington Post. NYT is too well-established to be interesting, but the Post is run by a rich woman (Katharine Graham) and a cussing editor who went to the right schools (Ben Bradlee). The Post came in second with the Pentagon Papers, so conventional wisdom says they tried harder. Soon even Hollywood took notice. However, insiders who write books on the Post know that they are still in second place, still too arrogant over their power, and still trying too hard.

It's been over ten years since this book was written, during which time the Washington Post seems to have devolved considerably. One problem with major newspapers like the Post is that their circulation monopoly lets them sell too much advertising. Another is that they have their own bureaus around the world, so they rarely deign to use stories from AP and Reuters. More often than not, this means that their national and international coverage simply isn't very good. And the op-ed pages are narrow and dull, rarely worth reading. So when the final product thumps on the doorstep, the ratio of useful print to the number of trees consumed to print it is shamefully low. If television news wasn't worse still, newspapers would be out of business by now. There must be a better way.
ISBN 0-688-01919-6

Extract the names from this source

Back to search page