Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America by Stephanie Gorton
Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America by Stephanie Gorton
The president of the United States made headlines around the world when he publicly attacked the press, denouncing reporters who threatened his reputation as "muckrakers" and "forces for evil." The year was 1906, the president was Theodore Roosevelt -- and his fury was aimed at McClure's magazine.
One of the most influential magazines in American history, McClure's drew more than four hundred thousand readers and published the groundbreaking stories that defined the Gilded Age, including the investigation of Standard Oil that toppled the Rockefeller monopoly. Driving this revolutionary publication were two improbable newcomers united by single-minded ambition. S.S. McClure was an Irish immigrant, who, despite bouts of mania, overthrew his impoverished upbringing and bent the New York media world to his will. His steadying hand and star reporter was Ida Tarbell, a woman who defied gender expectations and became a notoriously fearless journalist.
Through McClure's, they cemented investigative journalism's crucial role in democracy and introduced Americans to the voices of Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and many others.
Tracing McClure's from its meteoric rise to its spectacularly swift and dramatic combustion, Citizen Reporters is a thrillingly told, deeply researched biography of a powerhouse magazine that forever changed American life. It's also a timely case study that demonstrates the crucial importance of journalists who are unafraid to speak truth to power.
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK. THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES.....
Ecco, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2020