Gene Roberts

Hank Klibanoff

Critically analyzes how the new stories, editorials, and photographs in the American press--as well as the journalists responsible for them--helped transform the nation's attitude toward civil rights in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, looking at the Emmett Till case, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham bombings, and other key events and personalities. 30,000 first printing.

The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation

The Race Beat

Dee Harkey

New Mexico rancher and lawman Dee (Daniel R.) Harkey describes himself as having “been shot at more times than any man in the world not engaged in war.” Mean as Hell, originally published in 1948 when Harkey was 83, is his detailed, witty autobiography about his youth in San Saba County of west Texas, where in 1882 he learned from his brother Joe, the sheriff, to “be damned sure you don’t get killed, but don’t kill anybody unless you have to” and his adult life in Eddy County after moving to Karlsbad (then Eddy) in 1890. Harkey served as a New Mexico peace officer from 1893 until 1911. Among the many cattle rustlers, train robbers, and other outlaws he confronted were Jim Miller, whom Harkey fingers as Pat Garrett’s real killer, and the Dalton Gang. Harkey observes that, in 1948, “cattle stealing has gone out of fashion. We’ve gotten civilized. Instead..., we now have statesman who practice nepotism, pad the public payrolls and graft as much as they think they can get away with (in an honorable way, of course) just like the folks back east.” Readers interested in many aspects of the territorial and outlaw West will enjoy Dee Harkey’s lively stories.

The Life of a New Mexico Lawman

Mean As Hell

The American newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its entire three-hundred-year history. A generation of relentless "corporatization" has resulted in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling, and consolidation of newspapers, accompanied by dramatic -- and drastic -- change in reporting and coverage of all kinds. Concerned that this phenomenon was going largely unreported, Gene Roberts, legendary reporter and editor, decided to undertake a huge, extended reportorial study of his own industry, what would become the Project on the State of the American Newspaper. Gathering more than two dozen distinguished journalists and writers, Roberts produced a long series of reports in the American Journalism Review, published by the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, asking the crucial question: Are American communities -- in the very middle of the so-called information explosion -- in danger of becoming less informed than ever?

Gene Roberts

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