Highly Readable!
Oh Lord!
We’ve had our fun with ol’ Walter around here. To wit:
* The Weirdness of Walter Jacobson
* Walter’s Weird Whitney Wailing
But if his book really does reveal “meddling by corporate and network executives” as promised in the press release below, it will be worth a read.
Unfortunately, the publishers warn that “it is ultimately Jacobson’s story, a memoir of a long and distinguished (and sometimes highly controversial) career.”
Ugh.
From Southern Illinois University Press:
Walter Jacobson’s highly readable book Walter’s Perspective: A Memoir of Fifty Years in Chicago TV News provides a unique glimpse into the rough-and-tumble Chicago news business as seen through the eyes of one of its legendary players.
From his first news job working as a legman for Daily News columnist Jack Mabley in the 1950s to his later role as a news anchor and political commentator at CBS-owned WBBM, Jacobson battled along the front lines of an industry undergoing dramatic changes.
While it is ultimately Jacobson’s story, a memoir of a long and distinguished (and sometimes highly controversial) career, it is also an insider’s account of the inner workings of Chicago television news, including the ratings games, the process of defining news and choosing stories, the media’s power and its failures, and the meddling by corporate and network executives.
Blurb from Robert Feder:
Walter Jacobson is as much a Chicago landmark as Wrigley Field or City Hall. With the same candor and courage he brought to his must-see nightly commentaries, he traces his own unlikely rise from enfante terrible to wise elder statesman of the business. Even for those of us who thought we knew him, Walter’s Perspective is a revealing, provocative memoir of a local news icon feared by politicians, respected by colleagues and beloved by viewers.
The foreward, not included in press materials, is by Bill Kurtis.
See:
* City Honors Bill Kurtis For His Service To Official Sources
* “Walter and Bill have no business being in a newsroom anymore”
We can’t wait!
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Comments welcome.
Posted on September 20, 2012