Carl Bernstein’s Eulogy for the Newspaper Business

Jil Abramson, NY Times - Nearly 25 percent of the 9,000 U.S. newspapers that were published 15 years ago are gone, leaving behind a vast news desert and signs of a weakened democracy. So it’s bittersweet to read Carl Bernstein’s “Chasing History,” a rollicking memoir about the golden age of newspapers. Bernstein ignores the bad karma engulfing the newspaper industry to recreate his rookie days at The Washington Evening Star, a robust afternoon paper that ceased publication in 1981. Bernstein’s nostalgia for those times is so deep that after the first 30 pages I could hear ghostly voices shouting, “Honey, get me rewrite.”