overview
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Fleet Street
Irrespective of his success in building
a global media empire, Murdoch will remain of significance as the man
who restructured Fleet Street (with just a little help from his friends
Margaret Thatcher and the electricians union). Charles Wintour's The
Rise & Fall of Fleet Street (Hutchinson, London 1989) and The
Market For Glory (London, Faber 86) by Simon Jenkins offer
perspectives on 'old media' in the UK. Anthony Smith's incisive Goodbye
Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980's (Oxford, Oxford
Uni Press 80)
Andrew Harris' Selling Hitler
(London, Faber 87), about the 'Hitler Diaries' fiasco, is a romp. All
in all, Murdoch comes out of that hoax looking quite astute, which is
more than can be said for patricians and experts such as Hugh
Trevor-Roper and William Rees-Mogg.
Histories of UK newspapers include
David Ayerst's reverent The Manchester Guardian: Biography of A
Newspaper (Ithaca, Cornell Uni Press 71), redolent of Manchester fog
and soporific worthiness. The Pearl of Days: An Intimate Memoir
of The Sunday Times 1822-1972 (London, Hamish Hamilton 72) by Harold
Hobson, Phillip Knightley & Leonard Russell is far more sprightly.
For your next wait in FlightDeck we recommend Knightley's memoir A
Hack's Progress (London, Cape 97) - modest, humane, intelligent.
Richard Cockett's David Astor &
the Observer (London, Deutsch 91) is a pedestrian study of the UK
'quality' rag sliding to oblivion between the Times and the Guardian.
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