CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Charleston County Public Library welcomed ABC News 4's Dean Stephens and The Post and Courier's Angie Jackson to the Main Branch Auditorium to discuss their lives working in the news.
During the event, Jackson and Stevens fielded questions about the way social media has changed the industry, and the effects of the 24-hour news cycle and the role cable news networks have shaped people's perceptions of the industry.
"When I think about local journalists, I think the thing to remember if someone does believe truly that journalists are the enemy, at the local level your reporters are the same people you see in church. We shop at the same grocery stores as you. We're your neighbors; we live in these communities too, so we are not trying to be malicious," Jackson said. "If we get something wrong, it's human error. It's not because we have some agenda that we're trying to push out."
They addressed how younger generations are watching less news and reading fewer stories in their local papers. The duo even turned the tables on the audience, including a pair of Porter Gaud students, asking each member about their habits as news consumers.
In conjunction with the Human Library Series event, we've compiled a list of books that take an even closer look at the life of a journalist and their work, including works from other Post and Courier staffers and local journalists.
Local Journalist-Authors
In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the Secret Plan that Sparked a Civil Rights Movement by Brian Hicks
Four years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in Charleston, South Carolina, hatched his secret plan to end segregation in America. Julius Waties Waring was perhaps the most unlikely civil rights hero in history. An eighth-generation Charlestonian, the son of a Confederate veteran and scion of a family of slave owners, Waring was appointed to the federal bench in the early days of World War II. He had coveted a judgeship his entire life, but circumstance and fate denied him until he was 61. When Waring finally donned the robe, it changed everything he'd ever known. Faced with a growing demand for equal rights from black South Carolinians, and a determined and savvy NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall, Waring did what he thought was right: He followed the law, and the United States Constitution. Shaken by the bigotry and backlash that followed each of his rulings, Waring soon had a moral awakening--and decided to set the world right.... This is the story of Judge J. Waties Waring, his incredible life and the country he changed.
Sea of Darkness: Unraveling the Mysteries of the H.L. Hunley by Brian Hicks
On a dark night in February of 1864, the H.L. Hunley , the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat, torpedoed the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic , a feat that would not be repeated for another 50 years. But fate was not kind to the Hunley that night as it sank with all of its crew on board before it could return to shore. Considered by many to be the Civil War's greatest mystery, the Hunley 's demise and its resting place have been a topic of discussion for historians and Civil War buffs alike for more than a hundred years.
Adding still more to the intrigue, the vessel was discovered in 1995 by a dive team led by famed novelist and shipwreck hunter Clive Cussler, sparking an underwater investigation that resulted in the raising of the Hunley on August 8, 2000. Since that time, the extensive research and restorative efforts underway have unraveled the incredible secrets that were locked within the submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears by Brian Hicks
Son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, Ross was educated in white schools and was only one-eighth Indian by blood. But as Cherokee chief in the mid-nineteenth century, he would guide the tribe through its most turbulent period. The Cherokees' plight lay at the epicenter of nearly all the key issues facing a young America: western expansion, states' rights, judicial power, and racial discrimination. Clashes between Ross and President Andrew Jackson raged from battlefields to the White House and Supreme Court. As whites settled illegally on the Nation's land, the chief steadfastly refused to sign a removal treaty. Only when a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed their chief and negotiated an agreement with Jackson's men was he forced to begin his journey west. In one of America's great tragedies, thousands died during the Cherokees' migration on the Trail of Tears.
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew by Brian Hicks
On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo--and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost shipMary Celestehas baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth.
The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when theMary Celestesailed into history.
In Brian Hicks's skilled hands, the story of the Mary Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew's disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath--the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of theMary Celeste. But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck.
Baptized in Sweet Tea by Ken Burger
“Baptized in Sweet Tea” is a collection of columns from Ken Burger, award-winning author and long-time journalist for The Post and Courier. The book commemorates all that he loves about South Carolina. Accentuated by color photographs that capture Southern culture, this book celebrates the Lowcountry at its finest.
Sister Santee: A South Carolina Story by Ken Burger
What happens when you put together drugs, racial tensions, an enormous cast of characters and a category four hurricane known as Hugo? Sister Santee follows the story of Maceo Mazyck, Junior Jones, Berkeley Aiken and Stoney Sanders as they face the realities of life in the Southern post-Civil Rights era.
Four disparate story lines & numerous other characters interact in a seemingly circuitous story. Once the groundwork is laid, however, each piece is fitted into the puzzle until the reader steps back at the last chapter to see the finished picture. And my, what a glorious picture it is.
Salkehatchie Soup: A South Carolina Story by Ken Burger
Salkehatchie Soup offers a fictional setting to the very real issue of nuclear waste stored underground in rural South Carolina. Ken Burger's origins in hard-hitting journalism left him with a desire to expose controversial issues affecting his home state. By presenting these issues in fiction, Burger grasped the opportunity to tie both historical and current events into a tightly woven tale of government espionage and the effects it can have on people from all walks of life.
Team Player by Bill Farley
This contemporary mystery/thriller is the first in a planned series featuring Bobby McRae, a former decorated soldier in an undercover diplomatic unit. After his separation from service under strange circumstances his unorthodox career arc takes him to Hollywood as a top executive at a film and television studio. When the allure of Tinseltown fades for McRae, he moves to Charleston to live the life of a "Southern country gentleman." Then a former Los Angeles business associate arrives on the doorstep of his rustic cabin outside town - unexpected and very dead- and McRae has to call on all of his skills and resources to find out who murdered him and why.
Other Reads from the CCPL Collection
Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment by Floyd Abrams
An eminent First Amendment advocate discusses his best-known cases in light of the current threat to America's freedom of speech. From the Patriot Act to Janet Jackson's Super Bowl show, recent events have embroiled America and its media in ongoing battles to maintain this country's freedom of expression. In this book, an attorney on the front lines of America's fight for uncensored expression for more than thirty years re-creates eight of his most important cases. With adversaries as diverse as Richard Nixon, Wayne Newton, and Rudy Giuliani, and allies as unlikely as Kenneth Starr and Senator Mitch McConnell, Abrams takes readers behind the scenes to examine his strategies, the ramifications of each of the decisions, and the long-term significance of each case, while presenting a look at the law in action.
No Time To Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle by Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman
An eviscerating look at the state of journalism in the age of the 24 hour news cycle by a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic and a veteran news correspondent.
No Time To Think focuses on the insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed at which it is produced, is only half thought out, half true, and lazily repeated from anonymous sources interested in selling opinion and wild speculation as news. These news item can easily gain exposure today, assuming a life of their own while making a mockery of journalism and creating casualties of cool deliberation and thoughtful discourse. Much of it is picked up gratuitously and given resonance online or through CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other networks, which must, in this age of the 24-hour news cycle, "feed the beast."
In dissecting this frantic news blur, No Time to Think breaks down a number of speed-driven blunders from the insider perspective of Charles Feldman, who spent 20 years as a CNN correspondent, as well as the outsider perspective of Howard Rosenberg, who covered the coverage for 25 years as TV critic for The Los Angeles Times.
The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in its Tracks by Bruce Bartlett
As recent national events have proven, the floodgates have opened and the political terrain is shifting rapidly with the dangerous concept of "alternative facts" supplanting actual facts at the highest levels of our government and in new media sources that are intentionally designed to spread obfuscation and lies. This brief, accessible citizen's guide helps you fight this deeply troubling trend and ensure that truth is not a permanent casualty. Written by Capitol Hill veteran and longtime journalist Bruce Bartlett, The Truth Matters teaches you how to drive through a media environment littered with potholes and other dangers, providing actionable tips, tricks, recommendations, and shortcuts for both casual news consumers and journalists.
Girl with a Camera: Margaret Bourke-White, photographer by Carolyn Meyer
Growing up, Peggy White intended to become a herpetologist, but while she was still in college her interest she became fascinated with photography. Her focus widened from landscape architecture to shots of factories, trains, and bridges. Her artist's eye sharpened to see patterns and harsh beauty where others saw only chaos and ugliness. Margaret Bourke-White was the first female war photojournalist in World War II and the first female photographer for Life magazine. And her photographs were just like her: bold and original.
War and Photography: A Cultural History by Caroline Brothers
Drawing on the work of Barthes, Eco, Foucault, Baudrillard, Burgin and Tagg, and on the historians of mentalities, War and Photographypresents a theoretical approach to the understanding of press photography in its historical and contemporary context.
Brothers applies her argument with special reference to French and British newspaper images of the Spanish Civil War, a selection of which is presented in the book. Rejecting analyses based upon the content of the images alone, she argues that photographic meaning is largely predetermined by its institutional and cultural context. Acting as witnesses despite themselves, photographs convey a wealth of information not about any objective reality, but about the collective attitudes and beliefs particular to the culture in which they operate.
The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism edited by Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda
The Art of Fact is a historical treasury tracing literary journalism back to such pioneers as Defoe, Dickens, and Orwell, and to crime writers, investigative social reporters, and war correspondents who stretched the limits of style and even propriety to communicate powerful truth. Here an extraordinary range of styles—the elegance of Gay Talese, the militance of Marvel Cooke, the station-house cynicism of David Simon, the manic intelligence of Richard Ben Cramer—illuminates an extraordinary range of subjects. From large public events (Jimmy Breslin on the funeral of JFK) to small private moments (Gary Smith on the struggles of a Native American basketball player), these readings—sad, funny, and most of all provocative—offer the double pleasure of true stories artfully told.
What Good Is Journalism? How Reporters and Editors are Saving America's Way of Life edited by George Kennedy and Daryl Moen
To go by today's critics of the news media--who have created a virtual cottage industry--American journalism has reached a nadir. Yet with all its well-documented faults, journalism is vital to the health of our democracy, the glue of information that holds this complex nation together. This book shows the most important roles that journalism plays in the world's oldest democracy. Two seasoned educators and practitioners of journalism have assembled a team of writers who look beyond the critics to show that there is much to be praised about the state of American journalism today.
Journalism tells us most of what we know about the world beyond our own experience by going where its audience cannot or will not. It keeps watch on the government and other powerful institutions, exposes wrongdoing and injustice, and shares the endless fascinations of everyday life. Through stories of real people, this book forcefully argues that American journalism is better than its critics admit and a force for good in the lives of both individuals and the nation. Like the exemplary journalism it describes, it offers dozens of instances that show how good journalistic practices enrich the daily lives of citizens and enable them to play their own roles in the democracy.
The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News by Sheila Weller
For decades, women battered the walls of the male fortress of television journalism, until finally three -- Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour - broke through, definitively remaking America's nightly news. Drawing on exclusive interviews with their colleagues and intimates from childhood on, bestselling author Sheila Weller crafts a lively and eye-opening narrative, revealing the combination of ambition, skill, and character that enabled these three singular women to infiltrate the once impenetrable "boys club" and become cultural icons.
Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa by Alex Kershaw
Robert Capa was arguably the finest photojournalist of the twentieth century and without doubt its greatest combat photographer-he covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the beginnings of Vietnam. An inveterate gambler who coined the dictum "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa risked his life again and again, most dramatically as the only photographer landing with the first wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he created some of the most enduring images ever made with a camera.
But the drama in Capa's life wasn't limited to one side of the lens. Born in Budapest as Andre Freidman, Capa fled political repression and anti-Semitism as a teenager by escaping to Berlin, where he first picked up a Leica and then witnessed the rise of Hitler. By the time his images of D-Day appeared in "Life Magazine," he had become a legend, the first photographer to make his calling appear glamorous and sexy, and the model for many of the most intrepid photographers to this day. In 1947, after a decade covering war, he founded a cooperative agency-Magnum-and in the process revolutionized the industry. For the first time, photographers would retain their own copyrights and negatives, and nearly half a century later, Magnum remains the most prestigious agency of its kind.
By the time he died, at just forty-one in 1954, Capa was not only the greatest adventurer in photographic history. He had become a colleague and confidant to writers Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway and director John Huston, and a seducer of several of his era's most alluring icons, including Ingrid Bergman.
Freeing the Presses: The First Amendment in Action edited by Timothy E. Cook
Most Americans consider a free press essential to democratic society -- either as an independent watchdog against governmental abuse of power or as a wide-open marketplace of ideas. But few understand that far-reaching public policies have shaped the news citizens receive. In an age when mass communication ranges from independent cable channels to the Internet, it is essential to assess these policies and their effects if we want the media to continue fulfilling their role. Freeing the Presses offers a pathbreaking inquiry into the theory and practice of freedom of the press at a critical time in the growing overlap between modern media and political discussion. Six political communication scholars draw upon history, sociology, political science, legal philosophy, and journalism to investigate whether the freedoms and privileges given to the news media and to reporters actually produce the results we expect. Their discussion covers past, present, and future media performance and engages a wide range of provocative questions.
Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis
More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The media can air the secrets of the White House, the boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just fourteen words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In Lewis's telling, the story of how the right of free expression evolved along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of our constitution. Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is surprisingly recent. Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O’Faolain
In 1996, a small Irish press approached Nuala O'Faolain, then a writer for The Irish Times, to publish a collection of her opinion columns. She offered to compose an introduction for the volume, and that undertaking blossomed into an "accidental memoir of a Dublin woman" and a book called Are You Somebody'that was published around the world and embraced so wholeheartedly in the U.S. that it reached the number-one position on the New York Times bestseller list and launched Nuala O'Faolain on a new career.
Hailed universally for her unflinching eye ("A beautiful exploration of human loneliness and happiness, of contentment and longing."-Alice McDermott, The Washington Post Book World); her wisdom ("A remarkable memoir, poignant, truthful, and imparting that quiet wisdom which suffering brings."-Edna O'Brien); and her boldness ("An immensely courageous undertaking."-The Irish Times), Are You Somebody'took readers from O'Faolain's harrowing childhood, through decades defined by passion and a ferocious hunger for experience, to a middle age notable for its unbroken solitude and longing. The success of the book's publication robbed O'Faolain of her obscurity, but the traits that defined her life remained obstinately intact.
In Almost There, O'Faolain begins her story from the moment her life began to change in all manner of ways-subtle, radical, predictable, and unforeseen. It is a provocative meditation on the "crucible of middle age"-a time of life that forges the shape of the years to come, that clarifies and solidifies one's relationships to friends and lovers (past and present), family and self. It is also a story of good fortune chasing out bad-of an accidental harvest of happiness. Almost There, like its predecessor, is a crystalline reflection of a singular character, utterly engaged in life. Intelligent, thoughtful, hilarious, fierce, moving, generous, and most of all, full of surprises.
Crashing the Party: An American Reporter in China by Scott Savitt
It's 1983. Scott Savitt, one of the first American exchange students in Beijing, picks up his guitar and begins strumming Blackbird. He's soon surrounded by Chinese students who know every word to every Beatles song he plays. Scott stays on in Beijing, working as a reporter for Asiaweek Magazine. The city's first nightclubs open; rock 'n' roll promises democracy. Promoted to foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times then United Press International, Scott finds himself drawn into China's political heart. His girlfriend is the assistant to Bette Bao Lord, the wife of the US ambassador. He interviews people who will become leaders of the democracy movement. Later, at 25 years old, Scott is the youngest accredited foreign correspondent in China, with an intimate knowledge of Beijing's backstreets. But as the seven-week occupation of Tiananmen Square ends in bloodshed on June 4, 1989, his greatest asset is his flame-red 500 cc. Honda motorcycle--giving Scott the freedom to witness first-hand what the Chinese government still denies ever took place. After Tiananmen, Scott founds the first independent English language newspaper in China, Beijing Scene. He knows that it's only a matter of time before the authorities move in, and sure enough, in 2000 he's arrested, flung into solitary confinement and, after a month in jail, deported. Scott Savitt's ... memoir of his two decades in China manages to take an extremely complex political-historical subject and turn it into an adventure story.
Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal’s Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks
From adolescent pen pal in the suburbs of Australia to prize-winning foreign correspondent, Geraldine Brooks presents an intimate and captivating memoir. Born on Bland Street in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longs to discover the vivid place where history happens and culture comes from. As a means of escaping the world around her, she enlists pen pals from around the globe who offer her a window on the hazards of adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. With the aid of her letters, Brooks turns her bedroom into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the barricades of Parisian student protests, the swampy fields of an embattled kibbutz.
She hires on as an intern at The Sydney Morning Herald and then wins a scholarship to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City, where she begins her career as a foreign correspondent. As a writer for The Wall Street Journal, Brooks reports on wars and famines in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Africa, but she never forgets her earlier foreign correspondence. Back in Australia to attend her dying father, she stumbles on her old letters in her parents' basement, and embarks on a journey that tales her around the world on the most meaningful assignment of her career.
Where War Lives: A Journey into the Heart of War by Paul Watson
Paul Watson was born with his right hand missing. To defy people's expectations, he becomes an avid war journalist, traveling to the most dangerous places on earth and staying long after it was wise or safe to do so. Then, with the click of a camera shutter, Watson's life changes forever.
As one of the last remaining journalists in Somalia, hehears that a Blackhawk has been shot down over Mogadishu,and that a mob is dragging the body of a U.S. soldier through the streets. Watson risks his life to infiltrate the mob and snap the photo that garners him the Pulitzer Prize. But as the accolades pour in and Watson travels to other troubled areas of the world, he can think only of the damage he has done--to Sergeant Cleveland's family, whose last image of their son would always be the battered, dusty corpse Watson had photographed; and, he fears, to the spread of terrorism, with the worldwide spectacle his photo created from that barbarity.
From the jungles of Rwanda to the ruined streets of Somalia to the craggy mountains of Afghanistan, this intimate portrayal of war from the front lines is raw and deeply human, a tale for our time.
Raw: My 100% Grade-A, Unfiltered, Inside Look at Sports by Colin Cowherd
In his no-holds-barred, unapologetically controversial voice, New York Times bestselling author and ESPN radio show host Colin Cowherd gives an insider's look into all things sports, including behind-the-scenes scandals, inter-team rivalries, and players' lives on and off the field.
There's a lot you don't see or hear sitting high up in the stands. But Colin Cowherd knows what really goes on--and he's not afraid to share the vivid details of everything we don't see on ESPN. From hotel parties for athletes and other industry professionals, to gossip from the road between games, to what happens at ESPN behind closed doors, Cowherd draws on personal experiences to offer you an exclusive look into the rarefied, outrageous, ego-stuffed sphere of the professional sports world.
Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two World War II Correspondents and Their Epic Escape Across the Pacific by Bill Lascher
The unforgettable true story of two married journalists on an island-hopping run for their lives across the Pacific after the Fall of Manila during World War II--a saga of love, adventure, and danger.
On New Year's Eve, 1941, just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were bombing the Philippine capital of Manila, where journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby had married just a month earlier. The couple had worked in China as members of a tight community of foreign correspondents with close ties to Chinese leaders; if captured by invading Japanese troops, they were certain to be executed. Racing to the docks just before midnight, they barely escaped on a freighter--the beginning of a tumultuous journey that would take them from one island outpost to another. While keeping ahead of the approaching Japanese, Mel and Annalee covered the harrowing war in the Pacific Theater--two of only a handful of valiant and dedicated journalists reporting from the region.