Backstory : inside the business of news / Ken Auletta

Includes index

Backstory , Ken Auletta explores why one of America's most important industries is also among its most troubled. He travels from the proud New York Times , the last outpost of old-school family ownership, whose own personnel problems make headline news, into the depths of New York City's brutal tabloid wars and out across the country to journalism's new wave, chains like the Chicago Tribune 's, where "synergy" is ever more a mantra. He probes the moral ambiguity of "media personalities"-journalists who become celebrities themselves, padding their incomes by schmoozing with Imus and rounding the lucrative corporate lecture circuit. He reckons with the legacy of journalism's past and the different prospects for its future, from fallen stars of new media such as Inside.com to the rising star of cable news, Roger Ailes's Fox News.