America's Last Great Newspaper War: The Death of Print in a Two-Tabloid Town
Hardcover
From the publisher's website:
When author Mike Jaccarino was offered a job at the Daily News in 2006,
he was asked a single question: “Kid, what are you going to do to help
us beat the Post?” That was the year things went sideways at the News, when the New York Post surpassed its nemesis in circulation for the first time in the history of both papers. Tasked with one job—crush the Post—Jaccarino
here provides the behind-the-scenes story of how the runners and
shooters on both sides would do anything and everything to get the scoop
before their opponents.
The New York Daily News and the New York Post have
long been the Hatfields and McCoys of American media: two warring
tabloids in a town big enough for only one of them. As digital news
rendered print journalism obsolete, the fight to survive in NYC became
an epic, Darwinian battle. In America’s Last Great Newspaper War,
Jaccarino exposes the untold story of this tabloid death match of such
ferocity and obsession its like has not occurred since Pulitzer– Hearst.
Told
through the eyes of hungry “runners” (field reporters) and “shooters”
(photographers) who would employ phony police lights to overcome
traffic, Mike Jaccarino’s memoir unmasks the do-whatever-it-takes era of
reporting—where the ends justified the means and nothing was
off-limits. His no-holds-barred account describes sneaking into
hospitals, months-long stakeouts, infiltrating John Gotti’s crypt,
bidding wars for scoops, high-speed car chases with Hillary Clinton,
O.J. Simpson, and the baby mama of a philandering congressman—all to get
that coveted front-page story.
Today, few runners and shooters remain on the street. Their age and exploits are as bygone as the News–Post war and American newspapers, generally. Where armies once battled, often no one is covering the story at all.
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