How Journalism Was Corrupted by the Power of Privilege | Gay Talese | Big Think

How Journalism Was Corrupted by the Power of Privilege

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Journalists were once outsiders looking in, says Gay Talese, but today their proximity to Washington makes them myopic; they'd be wiser to disperse and keep their eyes on the horizon.Journalists today don’t report like they used to, and they sure as hell don’t dress like they used to either. Gay Talese, a defining figure in literary journalism, here reconstructs the mentality of journalists in the 1950s, when his career began. Compared to now? It’s no wonder the media was shocked by the election results, Talese says. Today’s journalists are glued to Washington D.C, under the influence of the same potion that has seen the rise of celebrity: power, luxury, elitism. Talese suggests the Washington press corps disperse out to the 50 states and report on the end result of policies – how it affects people on the coast and the heartland – as much as they report on the formation of those policies the nation’s capital. Perhaps with an ear to the ground, the next election won’t take everyone for such a ride. Gay Talese's most recent book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.

Bill Nye's most recent book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.

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GAY TALESE :

Gay Talese is an American journalist and a nonfiction writer. He wrote for The New York Times in the 1960s after working for its copy and obituary sections. In the 1950s, he was one of the first writers to add minute details, use literary flairs, and begin articles in medias res.

His groundbreaking article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" was named the "best story Esquire ever published," and he was credited by Tom Wolfe with the creation of an inventive form of nonfiction writing called "The New Journalism."

He has written many non-fiction books, beginning with 1964’s The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. His 2006 autobiography A Writer’s Life focuses on his trials and failures as a writer, such as having a profile piece rejected by The New Yorker, which ironically reviewed the book positively and said it had a “distinctly moving” quality.

Gay Talese was named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement. The awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. His latest book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.

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TRANSCRIPT :

Gay Talese: It was alleged that the newspapers were not aware the large percentage of the population of American citizens were unhappy with the ruling establishment, did not feel their voices were being heard and they voted against what everybody thought was the leading candidate and instead voted for this rank outsider, a very unpredictable and generally unpopular person, this businessman, this egotist, this rakish character named Donald Trump.

I thought what was missing from the newspapers, and I think more than that from Americans in general who watch television, who read books, who teach in universities, who are among the educated classes, which almost includes everybody these days. The reason I say that, in my lifetime born in 1932 and becoming a journalist in the 1950s and at the time I became a journalist in the 1950s we journalists, whether we worked for the New York Times or the Philadelphian Inquirer or the Chicago Tribune were generally the first of our family to have gone to college. And when I say college I do not mean Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, I mean Brooklyn College or in my case the University of Alabama. We were not going to the elite colleges, if we went to college at all we were considered scholars in our family. But what we were, not true today, but what we in the mid 20th century America we were outsiders. We journalists were of the outsider class whether we were Italian heritage as me or Jewish or African-American or Spanish, whatever.

And we did have courage because most of us had come from parents or grandparents who had first-hand knowledge of persecution in foreign countries and who came to this country on the run and brought with them the spirit of unfairness. And we as the inheritors of their spirit in journalism we were the children of those people, we brought not cynicism but skepticism of power. And it was never our ambition to be part of power because we were chroniclers of power, we were critics of power, we were viewers of power, we were outsiders. Well those days are long, long, long gone.

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