/lit/ - Literature

Krugman.

David Simon

/thread

Hunter S. Thompson.

Deceased: Edward R. Murrow
Alive: Bill Moyers
Active: Richard Engel
Rookie: Michael Hastings
Hotness: Emily Heil

Julian Assange, but he probably isn't considered a journalist in the strict sense of the word, so probably Glenn Greenwald or Chris Hedges

>>2517655
>Chris Hedges
He is to the left what Glenn Beck is to the right, and he makes me puke.

Amy Goodman: God Tier

>>2517674
Amy Goodman is pretty amazing

>>2517674
What the fuck? You gotta be trollin'

Could you guys start linking to some articles?

Sure.
Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04232010/profile2.html

>>2517690

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8095-chris-hedges-|-totalitarian-systems-always-begin-by-rewriting
-the-law

>>2517686
About Hedges or Goodman? Because I'm being quite sincere about both.

Nobody handles an interview like Amy Goodman. Gives the most level-headed interviews you'll see on any daily news program. Then they let that beaner Juan Gonzales open his yap and he so obviously leads guests into saying what he wants, talks about irrelevant shit, and doesn't even ask questions, just gives statements and expects them to roll with it. If he's even managed to spit up a sentence without fucking it up and repeating/rephrasing the whole thing.

Also I like "Tyler Durden" from ZeroHedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/

democracynow.org

Just Amy Goodman being awesome. Every day but Saturday/Sunday.

>>2517674
I love Hedges, enough to forgive him is obvious faults. I wonder though why you call him the "Glenn Beck of the Left." Can you elaborate please?


This is my favorite Chris Hedges moment: his commencement address to Rockford College. It is so very very lulzy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAWMgYyAtHU

They don't make them like that anymore.

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and Soraya Sarhadi-Nelson have cast-iron balls, but Mike Pesca just seems like a super-cool dude all around.

>>2517726
What a terrible layout.

>>2517733
His pieces are just too radical socialist for my taste. Every time I read something on TruthDig by Hedges, the majority of it is palatable but he feels the need to pump it up with so much anti-corporatist hardline social doomsday rhetoric that his journalism, which should be shining, ends up getting muddled in a message that roughly translates to: "We're all fucked unless you stop shopping at Wal-Mart, buy an eco-car, and vote straightline democrat for the remainder of your natural existence".

I'm left-leaning independent, myself, and some of what he writes resonates with me, but with him practically salivating at the chance to give a blowjob to anyone who claims to be the 99%, it gets hard to take him as seriously as his journalistic skills deserve.

>>2517733
not that guy, but Chris Hedges strikes me as a more outspoken version of Noam Chomsky: imperialism always bad, America is mostly evil, the world is a shithole because of us, etc

>>2517747
>funded by donations
I hear Fox News and CNN have pretty slick websites.

Oh oh oh. Never mind. I get Chris Hedges mixed up with Chris Hayes all the time. I've never heard much about Hedges.

http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/

>>2517713
Dude, Juan is awesome. His obvious grasp of economic issues is evident whenever they interview anyone on the European debt crisis. And he's a cool guy. I saw him speak on his book tour in San Diego. He had spoken at, like two universities and the Tavis Smiley show, and he still gave a really good presentation about his book, "News for All the People." He even took a long time out to talk to me about the ethnic newspapers my dad got when I was growing up, even though he must have been exhausted.

>>2517754
Yeah, Hedges is like Action Chomsky, with his war stories and PTSD.

>>2517749
Hmmm I see. How about some Thom Harmann?

And as long as we've strayed into punditry

Rachel has a book out now. Should be a great read.

>>2517765
>Action Chomsky
oh god how I lol'd
>>2517761
Alright, I was harsh on the Juan-ton, but they need to make the print bigger on the teleprompter or something because as soon as they cut from Amy sailing smoothly through every story Juan's gotta squint his eyes and sound out every other word, and it distracts/enrages me.

>>2517788
Heard her on NPR today. They played a clip where she (lesbian) interviewed a guy who wrote a book on "curing" gays and how his work is being used to justify the passage of a bill in Uganda that would pretty much legalize the round-up and execution of homosexuals. You could practically hear her pulling his balls out through his nostrils.

>>2517749
Fair enough, though it should be noted that Hedges is more a columnist than a journalist. I don't think he's claimed to be a journalist since he left the NYT. And also, Hedges really doesn't play the game of Right vs. Left partisan skirmishes. He's basically saying, "A pox on both your houses" to both the Dems and the Repubs, and his calls for nonviolent civil disobedience go far beyond the ethos of "drive-a-Prius-to-save-the-world' liberals.

>>2517808
And Hop on Pop is a remarkable story about the tribulations of fatherhood and the extraordinary lengths a parent goes to in order to nurture and love a child.

It's all in what you make of it, I suppose. Good thing these are all just opinions.

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.

>>2517536
Haha, /lit/ wouldn't know a good journalist even if they read the newspapers. This thread proves it. Hunter S. Thompson? Pfffh...

Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Ryszard Kapuściński, Svetlana Alexievich, Edgar Snow,
Philip Gourevitch, Anna Politkovskaya, Martha Gellhorn (wife of hemingway 3rd), John Hersey.
All of these have a body of work that trumphs most of the literature you've read in your life. With the added bonus of it being some what on the truthy side.

And the obvious: Hemingway and Orwell.

Christopher Hitchens
Hunter S Thompson
Matt Taibi
Robert Fisk

>>2517828
HST is just entertainment.

>>2517674
Chris Hedges like Glenn Beck? If you had said Alex Jones, I would have agreed...but instead you decided to say something fucking retarded.

>>2517840
Okay, assume I said he's like Alex Jones. Whatever it takes for me to earn your approval.

>>2517828
10/10 post would read again.

Feels reassuring that some people on /lit/ knows what they are doing. If you have any ambitions to become a journalist, then these are some of the writers you should have read.

Stop da pressez fer Paul Jay.

Jihan Hafiz.

>ctrl f clive james
>nothing

wat

Brooke Alvarez, Tucker Hope, Andrea Bennett, Jean Teasdale, Herbert Kornfeld, Joad Cressbeckler, Clifford Baines, Jim Anchower

Spike is best reporter.

>>2517875
>>2517882
>>2517902
>>2517906
Who?

>>2517828
>Hah!
>I've never heard about any of these.
>Surely he is trolling.
>Google
>wtf
>editor of Paris review
>shot by russian agents
>pulitzer
>pulitzer
>invented new journalism
>considered best feature journalist in the world
>writes journalistic magical realism
>etc...

Got to read these writers, t-thanks i guess.

Do they still have those?
I thought they were all replaced by people reading off political talking points and propaganda.

Kevin Sites

>>2517926
Paul Jay is a Canadian journalist. He is the senior editor and CEO of www.TheRealNews.com The reports are basically a series of glorified Skype chats, but still it is quite good. It also has bureaus around the world, and Jihan Hafiz is their Egyptian reporter.

Brooke Alvarez et al are from The Onion.

RT's programs "Capital Account" and "Keiser Report" are pretty good. They have their obvious shortcomings and biases, and should always be taken with a grain of salt but on the whole, they give a good idea about how the financial system has basically turned into the Wild Wild West.

Pic related. It's Artemis Clyde Frog from "the wild wild west"

>>2517738
This motherfucker knew what was up. He is partially the reason I'm majoring in journalism right now.

Louis Theroux

My nigga AC

>>2517536
I don't read blogs.

>>2518238
fuck that guy, fucking prissy spotlight hogging little bitch

>>2518250
You wish you looked this good

>>2518293
Silver hair is fucking played out. Every guy has hair the color of shit on snow these days and the stylists always throw fake looking highlights in. It isn't cool to be silver anymore.

>ctrl+f
>no gay talese
>no george plimpton
>what are you people doing

I'm surprised no one's brought up Klosterman.

>>2518234
He is a master of disguise. No one suspects such a quiet. unassuming nerdy guy could make such a fool of them. He errs on the side of exploitation. but his docs are good for a laugh.

>>2518301
I'm pretty sure his hair's been white since he was fairly young, it was like that when he was on Channel One news.

>>2518301
No one pulls it off like the silver fox.

didion's old stuff is interesting, slouching towards bethlehem for example is the tits.

someone who doesn't get nearly enough love: John Dolan. Wrote a crazy article about teaching at american university in Iraq that was spreading propaganda. also his review of james frey's milion pieces is the greatest book review ever written and it accuses frey of lying years before anyone knew that was true. it's called, "a million little pieces of shit." highly recommended

exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6948&IBLOCK_ID=35

>>2518304
>He errs on the side of exploitation.
Maybe in "When Louis met...", but not usually.

holy shit /lit/ sucks right now

>>2518528
Yeah, it's pretty try-hard.

Charlie Brooker, ever since this:
http://www.tvgohome.com/

>>2518304
>>2518304
Of course, Guy Talese, he is great also.
I was the one who posted all the names earlier.

>>2517536
We should make like an essential must-read image for journalistic work.

>>2518758
seconded...

Has anybody mentioned Vollman yet?

jason burke

I'm a big fan of a lot of the people mentioned in this thread, but since no one's mentioned him, Upton Sinclair

>>2518758
Indeed.

>>2518496
>the greatest book review ever written
>first line
>"This is the worst thing I've ever read."

Wut.

>Having a favorite journalist

>>2518758
I tried. Before the shitstorm begins, I wanted to make it just early works, but ended up throwing more modern stuff in. To be amended as others see fit.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Krakauer yet.

>ctrl f Ryszard Kapuściński
>1 result

wtf are you doin guys

>>2517590
>Rookie: Michael Hastings

For some reason I was under the impression that Hastings was an older guy, wow.

I have a soft spot for Peter Jennings and Jayson Blair.

mencken

jump for more bournalists

Jeremy Scahill
Greg Palast
I.F. Stone

John Hersey: Hiroshima
Ryszard Kapuściński: Another day of Life
Edgar Snow: Red Star over China
Hunter S Thompson: Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
Stig Dagerman: German Autumn
Guy Talese: The Kingdom and the power
George Orwell: Down and out in London and Paris
Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
Truman Capote: In cold blood
Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (dont know)
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward: All the President's Men
David Foster Wallace: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (A /lit/ special)
Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
These are some I could come up with.

Nir Rosen has done great work in Iraq.

Charlie Brooker.

>>2522211
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4

video related

>>2522211

>Imagine forcing the cast of Emmerdale to hurriedly construct Las Vegas at gunpoint in the rain. That's Glastonbury.

>>2520783
Please do! I've read 3/4 of your list, never heard of the other quarter and it all sounds amazing. I'd appreciate more recommendations if you get time.

Cheers!

>>2522225
I hope you watched Black Mirror.

This is going to make me sound terrible but hear me out -

Alright. I'll be straight - I want to be a Journalist, I really do. Why?... Well, the reason is Hunter. Yeah, I love the guy. That doesn't mean I want to be a carbon copy of him, hell, there are 30 thousand of those - He was just the first person who got me thinking about Journalism.

Well now it's dawning on me that Journalism and Film are the two biggest things in my life and I'd like to venture into both. Film I've got a diploma in and I know it's luck and money, both of which it seems I'm fresh out of, so right now I'm focusing my energy on Journalism.

>IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME AND MY STORY START READING HERE
I don't know enough Journalists, or read them, to be able to craft my art to a fine point. I know you need your own brand and uniqueness is the key to all art, but I also have a strong belief in working from history. This is where all you lovely people come in.

Recommend any Journalists or Works from Journalists for me. I'll be lurking through this thread and looking up a whole bunch of people from it, and reading through their works.

If it helps to be more specific, I love political and war Journalism. I also love Music, but I doubt there will be a lot of nameable music journalists outside of Bangs and Cristau just kidding, he's a cunt.

>>2522866
Christgau is actually awesome; you probably like prog or something

>>2519232
Should've picked Homage to Catalonia instead of Down and Out.

>>2519258
Jayson Blair was quite a talented writer. Unfortunately, he was also an immoral fabricating piece of shit.

Just out of curiosity, has anybody here read a book called "Provenance"? A professor of mine wrote it. Apparently it deals with art forgery..

>>2522926
You overstate yourself

HEY!

what's the diff between book-length journalism and creative non-fiction?

>>2522866

emulating your idols is cute and all but we're talking about the topic at hand. try to be more patient, seek some stuff out on your own.

if you need help with your personal epiphanies there are an array of things you can do that don't involve polluting a discussion board. on the internet you've got tumblr now, or you can just talk to a prof or join a writing group. here you aren't going to get any guidance since most people here just like to read okay?

>>2517738
Nigga is you serious?

Mencken was an anti-semite and white supremacist. The only difference is that was able to obscure it with his erudition, and scolded enough of white america to hide it.

>>2523049
>anti-semite
>white supremacist.

good buzzword usage

>>2523051
buzzwords? those are nouns that refer to his opinions. you are aware of what i'm talking about, right?

>>2523051
You know that "buzzword" is a buzzword, right?

>>2523051

>The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered, they lack many of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.
-H.L. Mencken, 1930

He opposed their wholesale extermination at the hands of the Nazis. By the standards of the time that was principled, I guess?

>In an open letter to Upton Sinclair published in The American Mercury in June 1936: "You protest, and with justice, each time Hitler jails an opponent; but you forget that Stalin and company have jailed and murdered a thousand times as many. It seems to me, and indeed the evidence is plain, that compared to the Moscow brigands and assassins, Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist."

Ah, 1936. Never change

>>2523077
It's true.
And stalin was an ally, hitler was the enemy.

shows who the good guys were.

>>2523094
The Allies.

>>2523099
wrong

>>2523113
The winners.

The winners were the allies btw.

Louis Theroux:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taUqt_E0aOs

>>2523116
winning makes you the good guy?

>>2523118
Only if you are the ultimate winner. Though for as long as you are a winner you can describe youirself as good. The problem is then someone bigger coming along and punching you in the stomache and calling you bad.

>>2523118

No, not killing six million jews and not provoking a global war makes you the good guy if you're on the other side.

>>2523120
the only ones who won were the jews, the leftists dig their own graves, and our countries suicide under multi-culti and mass immigration.

>>2523123
The six million Jews bit was only known after the fact, it provoked nothing but horror afterwards. Not a war.

>>2523124
I'm doing pretty well under "multi-culti", partly because I am "multi-culti". Sound to me like you're inadequate and looking for any excuse for it.

>>2523128

Well I guess it allows us to safely rule out the nazis as good guys. The other part remains true.

>>2523123
>he believes in the 6 million!
>he thinks hitler started ww2!

>>2523128
>shitskin defending mass immigration

>>2523131
Yeah. they certainly did provoke. Every country was tip-toeing round not wanting to repeat WWI. Then they invaded Poland totally.

>>2523139
>Whitey whining about immigration
If you can't take the competition, get out of the country.

>>2523140
So germany is supposed to sit there while the polish oppress germans and economically starve east germany?

>>2523131
the whole holocaust narrative is fiction specifically designed to justify this whole nazi's = bad propaganda.

And strange how everyone skips over the fact that they destroyed germany then permitted the soviets to occupy over half of europe!

>>2523141
How about you get the fuck out, shitskin.

>>2523143
>so Germany is supposed to sit there while Poland blah blah blah
clearly, then, the right move is to invade them

your move, troll

>>2523148
Well how else is hitler supposed to act? They provoked the war, they were the ones who wanted it, they thought they could gain at germanys expense.

And guess what, they were right.

>>2523155
>provoking war
>ethically right because it's economically viable
>ergo they were the good guys

try again

>>2523157
wasn't hitler who provoked war.
Missed the whole gleiwitz incident?

>>2523147
Make me, nerd.

Pic related, you and your friends trying to make me "get out".

>>2523155
Are you the dude who was in /vg/ a while back?

>>2523181
I'm always in the SC2 threads

>>2523182
No, there was a guy arguing this exact same point in a Grand Strategy General a couple hours ago, it should be still be up there.

>>2523185
oh ya that was me, problem?

>>2523188
Nah, just need to reiterate that anyone wishing to live under a racially motivated facist dictatorship is batshit insane.

>>2523189
so all the rest of the world except for the self-destructing west is insane?

gotcha

I didn't know suicide was a prerequisite of sanity.

Archive this thread for future reference

http://chanarchive.org/request_votes

Ron Maiberg

>>2523292
Totally. As soon as these assholes stop arguing about ancillary bullshit.

>>2523292
>>2523292

bump

>>2517536
I have book on reportage writing that lists 100 must reads. I'll look it through when I come home from work.

Until then

willian bonner

Ian mother fucking Hislop. Any other answer is invalid.

Naomi Wolf has done some amazing work, with her supple prose and well-toned sense of organization.

>>2525515
And those curvacious articles

>>2523077
>>2523094

> that compared to the Moscow brigands and assassins, Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist."


Implying that's not true you do know millions more were murdered in the soviet union than by those two.

I'm glad only one troglodyte has mentioned him, 'cos I fuckin' hate Matt Taibi.

>>2523049
Mencken was an elitist in the most egalitarian sense (if that makes any sense); he believed that of every racial and ethnic group, each had its own crop of exceptional beings whom Mencken liked. The rest could go suck a dick in his opinion, regardless of their skin color, religion, etc.
>pic elated

>>2523077
You have to remember, for numerous reasons Joseph Stalin was more repugnant to a lot of intellectuals at that time than Hitler, who was kind of a yokel in their eyes. There were some Modernists that really admired fascism though.

>>2523094
Actually, the genocides that Hitler committed during WW2 hadn't occurred yet. Mencken's comments seem quaint now in light of that. No one's disputing the fact that Stalin was a mass murderer and his state-sanction violence went on longer.

>Mencken was an elitist in the most egalitarian sense (if that makes any sense); he believed that of every racial and ethnic group, each had its own crop of exceptional beings whom Mencken liked. The rest could go suck a dick in his opinion, regardless of their skin color, religion, etc.

If he were an egalitarian misanthrope, he wouldn't need to single out specific any racial category and ascribe a specific set of social pathologies to it.

Oh wait, anti-semitism was highly fashionable at the time. Maybe, just maybe, he was one too, and not just an edgy contrarian.

Mencken had valuable things to say, but he also had his fair share of reprehensible and archaic opinions as well.

>>2523194
Counterpoint: India, USA, Brazil -- all have their fair share of problems, before you even go there.

The only people who see ethnic strife as the inevitable result of pluralism are ethnocentric chauvinists with absolutely no imagination. They can't imagine a tolerant society because they consider racial categories as reductive explanations for complex sociological phenomena.

Chances are they have never left American suburbia or their coddled, whiteopia enclaves in Euroland. I'm sure jackbooted terrorists like ABB are appealing to you.

>>2523555
TRIPS SPEAK TRUTH.

joe sacco

matt taibbi is like, i'm glad someone with a big audience puts out the kind of stuff he writes about, that but his style is juvenile (i totally understand enjoying it and thinking it's worthwhile, though) and he's shockingly misogynistic in that "19-year-old moron who thinks it's progressive to talk about wanting to hate-assfuck michelle bachmann" kind of way (but fuck that shit)

You fucking fools who don't acknowledge Hunter S. Thompson as an amazing journalist, theirs not nearly enough discussion of him on this board, and hes by far the most interesting writer to come about since Hemingway or Twain.

>>2526552
It's taken as given I'd hope. He's on a few of the lists in this thread. I don't think he goes unappreciated, perhaps under-appreciated though.

>>2526552

Indeed. Most of the haters are probably people that only know him as the writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 was awesome, as were the Gonzo Papers compilations (though I've not read them all). Thompson had such a unique voice and rhythm to his prose.

>>2526806
Steinbeck really had one of the best mustaches of the 20th century.

>>2527207
What's the matter with you??

This thread needs more Tom Wolfe.

>>2527218
He said mustache not crustache

>>2527300
>>2527218
>>2527207
You people are certifiably insane.

>>2527317
Curlicues?

>>2527320
Bonus if your name makes a baseball-to-porn transition all-too-easy.

Sibel Edmonds' "Boiling Frogs Post" is an excellent news source. Edmonds, if I'm not mistaken, was an FBI whistle blower.

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com

>>2523072
>He opposed their wholesale extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

Not only that, he also called for the US to receive Jewish refugees to save them. Which the US did not do.

>>2528633
Her mustache isn't that great though.

Lets back on topic now.

Sy Hersh

>>2528680

>>2528694
Very strange of you.

>>2528680
hehe, sorry. But it should be noted that she is Turkish, so had she let her mustache grow out, she would have put everyone else here to shame!

>2012
>journalism