Related Publications

The Real Woodrow Wilson : an Interview with Arthur S. Link, Editor of the Wilson Papers, by James R. Carroll. Images from the Past.
     In 1993, as Link was concluding the publication of the last of 69 volumes of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, journalist James Robert Carroll sat down with him to talk about his life's work and the man at its center. This book, which is that engaging conversation, explores Wilson the man, the politician, the historical figure and the legacy. The story of the assembly of the Wilson papers is told here, too. It is an equally compelling tale of dogged perseverance, the job of discovery and marvelous luck. As Link makes clear, Wilson's defeat on the League was rooted not in intransigent idealism but in well-hidden medical calamities that came upon him when he most needed his strength and skills. On this unfortunate happenstance of nature was built the future catastrophes and global political upheavals of the rest of the Twentieth Century.

Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture, by Mark Feldstein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
     It is March 1972, and the Nixon White House wants Jack Anderson dead. The syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, the most famous and feared investigative reporter in the nation, has exposed yet another of the President's dirty secrets. Nixon's operatives are ordered to "stop Anderson at all costs", permanently. Across the street from the White House, they huddle in a hotel basement to conspire. Should they try "Aspirin Roulette" and break into Anderson's home to plant a poisoned pill in one of his medicine bottles? Could they smear LSD on the journalist's steering wheel, so that he would absorb it through his skin, lose control of his car, and crash? Or stage a routine-looking mugging, making Anderson appear to be one more fatal victim of Washington's notorious street crime? This book recounts not only the disturbing story of an unprecedented White House conspiracy to assassinate a journalist, but also the larger tale of the bitter quarter-century battle between the postwar era's most embattled politician and its most reviled newsman. The struggle between Nixon and Anderson included bribery, blackmail, forgery, spying, and burglary as well as the White House murder plot. Their vendetta symbolized and accelerated the growing conflict between the government and the press, a clash that would long outlive both men. The author traces the arc of this confrontation between a vindictive president and a flamboyant, crusading muckraker who rifled through garbage and swiped classified papers in pursuit of his prey, stoking the paranoia in Nixon that would ultimately lead to his ruin. The White House plot to poison Anderson, the author argues, is a metaphor for the poisoned political atmosphere that would follow, and the toxic sensationalism that contaminates contemporary media discourse. Melding history and biography, the book unearths significant new information from more than two hundred interviews and thousands of declassified documents and tapes. This is a chronicle of political intrigue and the true price of power for politicians and journalists alike. The result, Washington's modern scandal culture, was Richard Nixon's ultimate revenge.

The C-span Revolution, by Stephen E. Frantzich and John Sullivan. University of Oklahoma Press.
     Beginning in 1979, C-SPAN (the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) has offered gavel-to-gavel, unedited coverage of public events--especially sessions of Congress--in the United States. The C-SPAN Revolution is the first history of this unique network, offering a behind-the-scenes look at C-SPAN's evolution, operation, and impact on public affairs

Founding Father : How C-SPAN's Brian Lamb Changed Politics in America, by Stephen E. Frantzich. Rowman & Littlefield.
     Unlike most networks, C-SPAN's origin, development, operations, and legacy can be traced back to one person. Brian Lamb has never been elected to office nor appointed to a policy-making position, yet his impact on American politics supersedes that of many whose titles and positions imply greater influence. The "founding father" and "inspirational heart" of C-SPAN serves as the broker for democracy. Founding Father is the first biography of the enigmatic, self-effacing, and modest Brian Lamb. It explores Lamb's experiences as a student in the Midwest, public affairs officer to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, White House staffer during the Johnson and Nixon administrations (including his efforts to advise and prepare Vice President Gerald Ford to assume the presidency following the anticipated resignation of President Richard Nixon), Capitol Hill press secretary, media columnist, and many other previously unknown stories. Founding Father aha chronicles the creation and rise of C-SPAN from a dream, to an unknown niche network, to the network of record for public affairs with its legion of C-SPAN junkies.

O.O.P.S. : Observing Our Politicians Stumble : the Worst Candidate Gaffes and Recoveries in Presidential Campaigns, by Stephen E. Frantzich. ABC-CLIO.
     Almost every politician has occasionally misspoken, sometimes with disastrous effect, sometimes with little effect at all. O.O.P.S.: Observing Our Politicians Stumble: The Worst Candidate Gaffes and Recoveries in Presidential Campaigns observes and analyzes this phenomenon to document why some gaffes prove fatal while others are easily survived.

New media for the new millennium : federal and state executive press aides and ambition theory, by William C. Spragens. University Press of America.
     This book discusses the careers of the six White House press secretaries serving between 1981 and 1998, and the press secretaries for six governors during the same period. An introduction briefly outlines the history of public relations and the Press Secretary's changing role during the era of radio and television. Two concluding chapters consider correspondents' views of the Secretaries' work and situate the study in the context of ambition theory. 

From Spokesman to Press Secretary : White House Media Operations, by William C. Spragens. University Press of America.

The Presidency and the Mass Media in the Age of Television, by William C. Spragens. University Press of America.

Voice from America : Off the Air with Radio New Zealand's Washington Correspondent, by Connie Lawn. HarpersCollins.
     In this account of her twenty-six years as a reporter, Connie Lawn, the voice from America, familiar to thousands of Radio New Zealand listeners, gives her perspective on events as they unfold and become news.

Source Material: “Does This Constitute a Press Conference?” Defining and Tabulating Modern Presidential Press Conferences, by Martha Kumar. Presidential Studies Quarterlyv33 n1 (March 2003): 221-237.
     The presidential press conference has demonstrated the way in which both sides have adapted to their own environments. By studying the frequency, format, location, and participants, we can see the ways in which a president responds to reporters’needs for information and the president's own need to present himself and his programs but to do so in an environment where the risk level is manageable. In this article, the author is looking at the variations in the basic elements of the press conference as seen in the modern era conferences of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. This piece is restricted to looking at the at the classification of press conferences and exploring their variety as expressed in the number of the locations where they are held and the assortment of participants in addition to the president.

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News, by Steven Clayman, Marc Elliott, John Heritage, and Megan Beckett. Political Communication, v. 27, no. 3 (2010): 229-247.
     Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.

Whistleblowers and Investigative Reporters, by Mark Feldstein. Journalism & Communication Monographs v22 n3 (202009): 246-251
     When I was an investigative reporter in the 1980s and 1990s, the care and feeding of whistleblowers was my coin of the realm. A reporter is only as good as his or her sources, my editors liked to say; so finding, wooing, cajoling, vetting, and protecting confidential informants was as important as it was delicate. The stakes can be high: Successful exposure of wrongdoing can shut down crooked companies, send scoundrels to prison, and bring about policy reforms. At the same time, with so much on the line, career destruction awaits reporters who trust the wrong sources—or sources who trust the wrong reporter.