The Paper Chase; A Second Read
Posted: May 6th, 2011 | Author: mshapiro | Filed under: Updates | No Comments »New in this issue of Columbia Journalisn Review
http://bit.ly/iKXGvh
New in this issue of Columbia Journalisn Review
http://bit.ly/iKXGvh
In the dark winter and spring of 2009, as dispatches from the news business grew ever more grim, as Jim Romenesko’s posts took on the feel of casualty reports, newsrooms across the land began to feel like the Emerald City when the Wicked Witch soars overhead, trailing smoke and sending everyone scurrying not for cover, but for an answer, to the Wizard. So it was that in the midst of this gloomy time help appeared, and not merely
the illusion of a wizardly hand. It came from Walter Isaacson and from Steven Brill, who were quickly joined by a determined chorus that, no longer willing to stand idly by as its trade died, took up a call that was clear, direct, and seemingly unassailable in its logic: make the readers pay.
This month marks the 45th anniversary of baseball’s first pay-to-view major league baseball game, and with whom better to celebrate than the team that hosted that first telecast from the House that Walter O’Malley built?
Monday is the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Continental League, and it is understandable if the moment does not trigger a flood of happy associations or, for that matter, any memories at all.
“A fascinating look at an almost forgotten era. . . . One of the best baseball books of recent seasons. Grade: A.”
“This season brings a bumper crop of books about baseball in New York, the best of which concerns a team and a league that don’t even exist. Michael Shapiro’s ‘Bottom of the Ninth’ . . . is one of the best tales of what might have been, how baseball might have harnessed the power of television and how the sport might have staved off the rise of football.”
–David M. Shribman, Bloomberg News