Former executive editor of The New York Times and one of our most
eminent journalists Jill Abramson provides a "valuable and
insightful" (The Boston Globe) report on the disruption of the
news media over the last decade, as shown via two legacy (The New
York Times and The Washington Post) and two upstart (BuzzFeed and
VICE) companies as they plow through a revolution that pits old vs.
new media.
"A marvelous book" (The New York Times Book Review), Merchants of
Truth is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state
of the news business.
The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an
aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning
and fickle audience of millennials. "Abramson provides this deeply
reported insider account of an industry fighting for survival. With a
keen eye for detail and a willingness to interrogate her own profession,
Abramson takes readers into the newsrooms and boardrooms of the legacy
newspapers and the digital upstarts that seek to challenge their
dominance" (Vanity Fair). We get to know the defenders of the legacy
presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new
speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty
Baron (The Washington Post), Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet
(The New York Times), Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), and Shane Smith
(VICE) as well as their reporters and anxious readers*.*
Merchants of Truth raises crucial questions that concern the
well-being of our society. We are facing a crisis in trust that
threatens the free press. "One of the best takes yet on journalism's
changing fortunes" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Abramson's
book points us to the future.
