All The News That's Too Hot To Print
My very good friend, journalist David Wallis, put together a collection of the best journalism that was killed before it could hit the printed page:
Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot To Print (Nation Books) resurrects remarkable articles that publications like Harper's, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker assigned to renowned writers, then discarded--not for reasons of quality but because of their potential for unwanted controversy. Skittish editors feared that publishing these provocative pieces about politics, sex, corruption and culture might upset their pals, enrage readers or offend advertisers.This ground-breaking book, which Joe Conason of The New York Observer called "a public service and a work of art," pries open the inner-sanctum of the editor's office to give readers a rare glimpse at the sometimes sordid business that goes on within. Here, for the first time, read Betty Friedan's powerful essay imploring young women to take college seriously; in 1958 this article so unnerved the man who ran McCall's that he refused to run the revolutionary work, inspiring Friedan to write The Feminine Mystique. Among the other important stories in these pages: Larry Doyle's scathing satire of control-freak Hollywood publicists that struck too close to home for editors at US; Mike Sager's gripping account of life in a Palestinian refugee camp that The Washington Post inexplicably spiked; Jon Entine's devastating investigation of The Body Shop's questionable marketing practices that Vanity Fair kept you from reading-until now.
Killed also anthologizes under-published stories that were initially rejected by editors, including a censored book review by George Orwell (with a new introduction by Christopher Hitchens) that London's Observer deemed unpatriotic during wartime.
More here on David's site.
UPDATE: Here's an IWantMedia interview of David about the book.
Interesting that the excised Ted Rall article is called "Coming to Terms with Father's Day." I'm not sure why that particular piece was cut, considering that this is the underlying theme of every single word Rall has ever written.
Jim Treacher at June 10, 2004 12:28 PM
This book looks excellent. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Amy.
M at June 12, 2004 4:32 PM