Final Edition: My Fifty Years in the World's Second Oldest Profession - Softcover

Rush, Joseph

 
9780974771007: Final Edition: My Fifty Years in the World's Second Oldest Profession

Synopsis

Plagiarism, deceptions, hoaxes and concocted quotes, including James Blair's New York Times's and Jack Kelley''s USA Today's deceits have plagued newspapers since long before the heightened nototiety achiever in the last year or so. A new book by veteran newsman Joe Rush relates journalistic misplays which got little attention except for corrections in the offending sheets and brief commentary from media critics.

The humorous aspects as well as the pifalls of the journalistic goofs are not lost on the auhor of "FINAL EDITION:My Fifty Years in the Second Oldest Profession".

The book offer a broad spectrum of in-the-trenches accounts of newsgathering, editing and production involved in the "daily miracle" that gets a newspape onto your driveway each morning.In-house publication traumas triggeed by erractic moon flights, fenzied Presidential elecions and a variety of disasers, including that of the presidentially and nationally tragic date of Jan.22, 1963, get their due in this volume that embraces the handling of major news of our times.It takes readers through a reporer's somewhat frenetic, sometimes devious and at all times probing career of excavating for news at every level of newspapes from bulky dailies and weeklies and competing freebies--all based on the vast experience of the author. I ads up to a journalistic volume with in-shop media tales not to be found elsewhere,including an abundance of anecdotes from the Evening News of Newak, N.J., of which he was news editor.

Final Edition painfully describes the demise of the "PMs"--the afernoon dailies--done in by television with its ability to delived instant images and timely reports and by newspaper personnel blind to he compoetitive threat.

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About the Author

The news was in the author's blood.Maternal grandfather covered Woodrow Wilson for New York papers before becoming a layer and long-term New Jersey state judge.Author's father Orange editorial managerof Newark News, died at 42 and author was given cub reporter job. Covered suburb for News and was part-timer for New York Times for 25 years. Attended Seton Hall College and Newark Rutgers Law School night while covering federal and state courts for News. Became news director of Newark News and after News shut down in 1972 became editor of Cranford Chronicle, a weekly, and city editor of Elizabeth Daily Journal before retiring. 0

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The sight of the chief, the township's answe to the usually remote remote threat of serfiou crime, was a surprise. I had envisioned him as an individual of perhaps 250 pounds or so, hardly one of 350 carried over six feet plus an inch or two . His breath came heavily in gaps, and I could foree difficult in taking notes. He wore suspenders over an undershirt, and promtly plumped down on he third step from the bottom of the stairway. He wass chewing somehing in a manner that made me curious as to its substance. "What do you know and what do you want to know?" was his stacatto demand. As he spoke his wife tok off for the kitchen. She returned immediately with a spitoon, which she placed on the bare floor near the left foot of the chief. He managed to slow his breathing long enough to expectorate in the general direction of the spitoon. I quickly recognizedd it was tobacco he ws chewing, and that his aim was poor.

I propoounded the questions I had been conjuring while enoue to Livingston in Rasputin, the beat-up convertiber that had cost my buddy and me $35 in a junkyad in Orane. "I have the address and names and ages of the killer husband and deceased wife and the name of the neighbor who found her," I told the chief, detailing what I had learned at police headquaers. "I don't know how many shots were fired, how many hit her and where, how long before she was found, how many in the family--none of that."

"See me tomorrow," said the chief, aiming at thne spitoon again, and misssing again. His wife. at the ready with the rag, promptly cleaned up the newest splash of ugly juice.

Because time was short for me, I was dismayed by being put off by the chief. "But chief, our 9 a.m.bulldog edition is the only one that comes to Livinston and I have to do the story tonight."

"I don't care when you have to do the story," the chief retorted, spitting more violently this time and missing by even more. That's your problem. See me tomorrow."

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