Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts
Written by Jill Abramson
Narrated by January LaVoy
4/5
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About this audiobook
“A marvelous book” (The New York Times Book Review), Merchants of Truth is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state of the news business.
The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning and fickle audience of millennials. “Abramson provides this deeply reported insider account of an industry fighting for survival. With a keen eye for detail and a willingness to interrogate her own profession, Abramson takes readers into the newsrooms and boardrooms of the legacy newspapers and the digital upstarts that seek to challenge their dominance” (Vanity Fair). We get to know the defenders of the legacy presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty Baron (The Washington Post), Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet (The New York Times), Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), and Shane Smith (VICE) as well as their reporters and anxious readers.
Merchants of Truth raises crucial questions that concern the well-being of our society. We are facing a crisis in trust that threatens the free press. “One of the best takes yet on journalism’s changing fortunes” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Abramson’s book points us to the future.
Jill Abramson
Jill Abramson is a senior lecturer at Harvard University. She also writes a biweekly column for The Guardian about US politics. She spent seventeen years in the most senior editorial positions at The New York Times, where she was the first woman to serve as Washington bureau chief, managing editor, and executive editor. Before joining the Times, she spent nine years at The Wall Street Journal. The author of Merchants of Truth, she lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Merchants of Truth
41 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Not sure why you’re allowing a known plagiarizer to post her book on here...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love this book. Having nothing to do with journalism, i discovered how the traditional papers tried to survive the digital revolution. I learned so much about journalism.
Big thanks to Jill Abramson. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jill Abramson offers a thorough overview of several major news organizations' transition to the digital age, with a focus on four in particular: NYT, WaPo, BuzzFeed, and Vice. This book is dense, with very few breaks in the very long chapters. Much was uninteresting to me, but I kept reading for the sake of the tidbits that offered me glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes to give me the news I consume every day.I was least interested in Vice - the interests of its barely-legal male target demographic in no way coincide with my own. NYT & WaPo, OTOH, I read weekly and daily respectively, so those were the inside scoops I was really showing up for.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Highly recommended....great book about the news business for anyone who thinks of themself as news-junkie. i learned a lot about getting the news from the internet instead of reading ‘the paper’#newyorktimes
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson, narrated by January LaVoy.In this non-fiction presentation, Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, who has been accused of plagiarism, attempts to explain what has happened to the print news industry and why. Using the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vice and Buzzfeed as primary examples, she shows how the digital news platform has been the catalyst for the demise of the print newspaper industry that was once in the vanguard of news presentation!Most of the facts presented are already known, but she organizes them to illustrate how the people responsible for the loss of interest in reading print news and for the surge in demand for information from a sound bite, have catered to the lowest echelon of society. The news that the early digital companies presented consisted largely of trash with which to attract and titillate, to shock and capture an audience largely interested in negative content of any kind, smut, gossip, etc. The more confounding the news was, the better it was received. The audience originally attracted consisted of the lowest mean common denominator of society, those who wallowed in hateful behavior, erotica, and their own need for fifteen minutes of fame. The digital news innovators had no moral or ethical standards to follow, and quite possibly, none of their own either. Their only guideline was to reach people and create a viral incident online which would create a sensation. For sure, their mantra was not “all the news that’s fit to print”, rather the more unfit it was, the better. Abramson attempts to explain how that original idea morphed from presenting semi-real and sometimes fake news to also publicizing real news. Overall, however, the effort was to create crowd appeal above all. The fact that Americans and others are much more interested in yellow journalism than honest journalism that used to act as the fourth estate, overseeing the wrongs of society, is really the most disheartening fact that I got out of the book. The fact that the public would rather read garbage, rumors, canards, and fake news headlines that stun them, than actually learn about what is really occurring, is extremely dismaying.Discreditable and dishonorable, shadowy sources of news are often the most successful purveyors of information, blocking out the more respectable and honorable news outlets. Clickbait is sought over authentic news. Society is being brainwashed by news services with no standards of honor. The digital platform is how most of the future generations will expand their knowledge of the world, and it is woefully unconcerned about respect for others, honorable behavior toward others or the truthful presentation of information to the world. Under this cloud of media frenzy that wishes only to gain headlines, is it any wonder that an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can gain notoriety even when she spouts nonsense? Is it any wonder that those who call others names are actually guilty of name calling but get away with it? The recent incident with the golfer Matt Kuchar whose tip for his caddy became hot news, is a prime example of what we have become, and the picture is not pretty. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to voice it on some platform.Utube, the Drudge Report and other non-mainstream sources, once marginalized, are now in the forefront and often break news stories without proper vetting. They are excused because they are not mainstream news outlets.I find it a sad commentary on the world today that we cater to ignorance and sensationalism, exaggeration and even outright lies to attract an audience. Is it any wonder that President Trump uses Twitter? How is it different than the methods used by any other news source? He wants to make headlines too! Since the so-called mainstream media won’t give him a moment of positive coverage on their platforms, he attempts to create his own.This is how a generation of young people wants to get its information. They are impatient and sometimes, not even very learned or literate. They do not do their own research to discover facts; they are lazy and ill informed by choice. They want the easy way out for everything because, after all, this is the generation that got a trophy merely for breathing in the presence of an event!This book has more value in the way in which it exposes the trash that news has become, the garbage that it has produced at the expense of truth, and the loss of a platform that once acted as a check and a balance on the government, as an ethical source of information and as a tool to educate the masses. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs we must face in the future.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5So, I’m from the old school of the printed newspaper page and having a difficult time accepting that the research/impartiality/independence that used to be reflected in the printed newspaper page is no longer there. It is the fault of those organizations that they were too soon to condemn the importance of online journalism and too late to catch up. I blame that completely on their elitism and arrogance, pretty much of which is the author’s message.This book was very informative from a historical perspective on what has happened to the news I grew up with and admired. Especially disconcerting is how material is now being presented online (and probably influencing printed stuff), often incorrect/biased and certainly not independent. Not being from the millennial generation or the one following, I did not grow up with a computer glued to my hand 24/7 and obviously cannot fully relate. I look at how those generations are receiving information and lament at what they are being largely spoon fed as accurate or important; however, most of what they are told to or do believe is important or accurate is neither – it is advertiser/sponsor tainted material, or material that has simply had the highest number of clicks. “Trending” topics don’t make them correct – only popular. Funny videos get a lot of views and can be “trending” but no one would consider them as news, nor fully trust that they might not be staged.Quite honestly, I do not know how they will ever find a way to be fully informed on important issues that will affect their lives. And if they don’t find a way to break through the BS out on line, their lives will be irreparably damaged. However, I won’t be around, so they will have to figure it out or suffer. I can influence my kids and point this out to them but too many who consume online/social media are not aware of how the “news” is being packaged for them, with attempts to influence their thinking. Certainly, this happens in the printed news, but typically the articles are much longer and you can form your own opinion…and you aren’t subject to having 50 different versions of a paper available for you to view before deciding to buy it. In the end, the book is a sad commentary. I did have some problem with the very liberal take the author took on many things…but this is to be expected given she was heavily associated with the New York Times.