Messages About The Medium

Roger Ailes, who certainly knows a thing or three about the news business, lists his five favorite books on the topic.

The books he chose date back to the mid-1960s. How has the industry changed then? Ailes writes:

Compared with the troubled New York Times of today, the newspaper Mr. Talese describes here–in his inside history of the Times from the postwar years through the 1960s–seems to exist in a golden age. Yes, we see the clash of giant egos and the infighting over everything from the coverage of the Kennedys to the appointment of a theater critic. But who, back then, could have imagined the Jayson Blair scandal or a deteriorating Times culture that allowed it to happen? When I was growing up, people thought: If it’s in the Times, then it must be true. Who thinks that now?

The people who pay to subscribe to TimesSelect, I suppose…