Southern Bookman

AJC political reporter Greg Bluestein gives inside story of Georgia's Democratic wave in 2020

With another Georgia election in full swing, Greg Bluestein's "Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power" ends like a TV series cliffhanger.

As state voters head to the polls for the primary Tuesday and another general election in November, Georgia Democrats hope to repeat on a state level their stunning 2020 wins for national offices.

Bluestein's "Flipped" tells the often amusing inside story of how Joe Biden won Georgia's presidential election over incumbent Donald Trump, followed soon after by U.S. Senate upset wins by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock over GOP incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Along with nuts-and-bolts reporting, Bluestein colorfully sets the scenes of campaign events, giving a vivid picture of Georgia places inside and outside metro Atlanta.

Upholding the AJC's legacy of Ralph McGill, Jack Nelson, Gene Patterson, Cynthia Tucker, Jim Wooten, Bill Shipp, Harold Martin, Steve Oney and others, Bluestein covers Georgia politics like the dew, to echo the old Atlanta Journal motto. In "Flipped," Bluestein draws upon deep background notebook material outside of his robust daily newspaper coverage of the 2020 campaigns.

With the current election bringing back Bluestein cast members Brian Kemp, David Perdue, Stacey Abrams, Brad Raffensperger and Raphael Warnock, Bluestein's detailed account seems like a prequel that might require an update only two years later.

Continuing his indefatigable reporting in the AJC about the current campaign, Bluestein will have ample information to write a sequel or several new chapters to his fast-paced book. Democrats hope that they remain the triumphant heroes rather than quickly fading.

Kemp plays a leading role in "Flipped," heroically bucking Trump by naming Loeffler to replace the late Johnny Isakson as U.S. senator rather than Trump's preferred candidate, Doug Collins, and resisting Trump's intense pressure to intervene in Biden's victory in Georgia.

Bluestein also gives a chilling account of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's telephone showdown with Trump in which Raffensperger stood firm against the president's threats in beseeching him to overturn Biden's win. Raffensperger's refusal of Trump is a true profile in courage.

While Kemp and Raffensperger suffered intense vilification from Trump and his supporters, as recounted by Bluestein, both men rebounded from near political death. Kemp appears headed to victory over Trump's chosen candidate Perdue without a runoff, while Raffensperger is favored to narrowly defeat Trump candidate Jody Hice.

Along with Perdue, whose dismal Senate campaign against Ossoff was repeated in his lackluster race against Kemp, Warnock is another Bluestein subject returning for the 2022 election.  Bluestein praises Warnock's 2020 ad campaign and political organization in beating the often clueless Loeffler.

In seeking to head off Trump-backed Republican front-runner Herschel Walker, Warnock is returning to his 2020 strategy of early TV ads emphasizing his warm, compassionate and family-oriented personality. With Walker showing substantial strength, Warnock must also revive the Democrats' organizational depth.

While Trump's false claims of a rigged presidential election in Georgia are blamed for dampening Republican turnout for the Senate runoff elections, Bluestein establishes that Ossoff and Warnock's networking efforts to bring Democratic voters to the polls were decisive.

In contrast to previous runoff elections in which Democratic turnout plummeted, especially among black voters, the 2020 Democratic runoff turnout exceeded that of presidential elections.

Bluestein gives a blueprint for political strategists to win Georgia elections. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and the Democratic ticket need that same organizational power to regain control of the statehouse.

The Democratic political turnover that Bluestein analyzes had thin roots, with Republicans regaining control of the state House and Senate, and passing restrictive voting legislation that brought widespread national opposition.

Kemp’s support of the harsh voting law and other extreme conservative legislation restored his popularity among Georgia voters. With Republicans united behind him, he appears formidable in his re-election bid against Abrams, whom he defeated in 2018 without a runoff.

To truly turn Georgia purple, the Democratic Party must regain control of state government.

 

 

 

Georgia the biggest test of Trump's GOP power

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's expected knockout victory over GOP challenger David Perdue will hand Donald Trump an embarrassing defeat.

Perdue's Trump-backed campaign was declared dead this week by AJC columnist Bill Torpy, who noted that the former U.S. senator has pretty much disappeared from the campaign trail. During Perdue's single Senate term, he was known more for his subservience to Trump and insider stock deals than any legislative accomplishments.

Kemp, who's built a huge lead by citing tax cuts, pay raises for state workers and popular pork-barell programs, likely will win without heading to a runoff. That will allow Kemp to focus his efforts immediately on Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams in the general election.

More than 700,000 Georgians had participated in the state's early voting by its final hours Friday afternoon, according to media reports.

Perdue could still force Kemp into a runoff with an unexpected surge on election day Tuesday, but the incumbent's lead appears insurmountable. Dismayed by Perdue's lackluster campaign, Trump reportedly has withdrawn his support from the former corporate raider,  according to MSNBC. 

Kemp's surge apparently received a boost from a large number of Democratic voters switching to the Republican primary ballot.

Many of the Democratic ballot switchers are supporting Kemp to send a message to Trump, although backing Perdue to force a runoff would be more beneficial to Abrams. In a runoff, Kemp would have to devote resources to defeating Perdue rather than immediately concentrating on Abrams.

Trump despises Kemp for rebuffing the former president's spurious campaign to overturn Joe Biden's Georgia victory in the 2020 presidential election.

While a Kemp blowout would mark a serious downfall for Trump, he still dominates Georgia's GOP in other races. GOP lieutenant governor candidate Burt Jones heads a Trump-backed GOP ticket.

Endorsed by Trump, former U.S. Rep. Jody Hice is embroiled in a tight contest with incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who also upset Trump by refusing his entreaties to overturn Biden's win. Raffensperger now supports unsubstantiated GOP claims about election fraud. Those Democratic crossovers might decide the winner.

In Trump's most heavy-handed power move in Georgia, he recruited former University of Georgia running back Herschel Walker to run for the U.S. Senate, despite Walker's lack of qualifications and his living outside of Georgia.

Although Walker has refused to participate in debates with Republican opponents, the former Heisman Trophy winner leads the GOP primary field, and shows strength in the polls against incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who's already running a heavy schedule of TV ads.

After Biden's 2o20 victory in Georgia, Perdue was upset by Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Senate runoff election. Warnock beat incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the runoff. Following Trump's bogus claims that Biden had stolen the Georgia presidential election, many GOP voters didn't turn out for the runoff because they falsely believed it would also be rigged.

The national media have been frequently disparaged for covering politics like horse racing. Keeping score of Trump's wins and losses in primaries across the nation is the latest gambit in this pack journalism ritual.

As in the 2020 election, Georgia again looks like the biggest horse race of them all.

 

 

 

The Atlantic to expand book coverage, striking a blow for reading

The Atlantic will expand its book coverage, citing its heritage as a major force in American intellectual culture.

"Expect more book reviews and essays — plus provocative arguments, reported stories, profiles, original fiction and poetry, and, of course, recommendations for your every reading need," said Jane Yong Kim, the venerable publication's literary editor, in announcing the expansion.

Founded in 1857 in Boston amid the country's turmoil that led to the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published many of the landmark pieces of American literature.

With founders like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow William Dean Howells and James Russell Lowell, it set the abolitionist agenda that led to the Union victory and the end of slavery.

In its early years, it published landmark work by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Howells, John Greenleaf Whittier and Julia Ward Howell. It later published work by a galaxy of American writers through the 20th century and first decades of the 21st.

The publication galvanized the civil rights movement by publishing Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Emerging from years struggling to survive, the Atlantic is one of America's traditional media companies enjoying a renaissance in the online publishing world.

After Apple founder Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs bought the company through her Emerson Collective, the company gained profitability from a boost in Web site subscriptions. Under editor Jeffrey Goldberg, the publication has hired a vibrant lineup of writers and regained prevalence in political and cultural debates.

As general book readership declines and publishing industry consolidation increases, the Atlantic is seeking to draw from a shrinking audience of book readers. Many Atlantic subscribers likely also read Harpers, the New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. 

While many of those readers are members of an aging elite, the Atlantic's younger writers appeal to a rising generation who seem returning to books in some degree. Younger novelists, mainly women, and non-fiction writers keep publishing a strong offering of books.

Along with books appealing to urban liberals, a Fox News-bred publishing industry churns out books condemned as factually spurious.

The decline of daily newspapers has brought a decline in book coverage. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post still cover books in depth, with strong reviews, and journals like the Los Angeles Review of Books have proliferated online.

After a move from literary Boston to Washington, D.C., in 2005, the Atlantic retrenched. Cutting back to 10 issues a year, it changed its name from the Atlantic Monthly to the Atlantic. 

Focusing more on politics and social issues, it also stopped publishing fiction and poetry, leaving the New Yorker and Harper's as the sole mass-audience journals offering short stories and poems. The rise of university literary magazines filled the void as creative writing programs proliferated.

The Atlantic's return to publishing fiction, essays and poetry is welcome news for a rising generation of young writers and the readers they hope to reach. As in the past, the Atlantic aims to set the standard for American literature.

 

Kathy Boudin's good works can't atone for her violent past

Kathy Boudin spent her final years as a Columbia University professor fighting for social justice.

Her friends and loved ones portray her as a saintly advocate for prisoners' rights and a pacifist lover of nature, music and poetry.

I have a hard time ignoring the fact that she was a murderer.

Boudin, who served 22 years in prison for her role in the killings of two police officers and a security guard in a 1981 Brinks armored car robbery, died Sunday of cancer at age 78. Although she had no direct role in the murders, she drove the getaway car and allegedly served as a decoy.

She was also a member of the radical Weather Underground, which planned to kill American citizens with bombs in an effort to "bring home" the Vietnam War.

The daughter of the well-known left-wing attorney Leonard Boudin and the niece of journalist I.F. Stone, Kathy was a privileged "red diaper" baby, growing up in Greenwich Village and attending the Little Red Schoolhouse along with another famed 1960s radical, Angela Davis.

After graduating as the class valedictorian at Bryn Mawr, one of the exclusive "Seven Sisters" women's colleges, she turned to radical politics, joining the Weather Underground, first known as the Weathermen after the Bob Dylan lyric "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

On March 12, 1970, two members of the group making a bomb in the basement of a lavish townhome at 18 West 11th St. in Greenwich Village blew themselves up and destroyed the building. Another comrade died in the blast. 

Tragically lacking bomb-making expertise, the group had ordered enough dynamite to level the entire block. But the blast didn’t set off the explosives that remained.

The townhome next door, where actor Dustin Hoffman lived, was also damaged in the accident,  as writer Robert Rosen discloses in a March 3 Village Voice article, an extensive account of the group and the disaster.

The actor who had recently achieved stardom for “The Graduate” might have been killed has he been home. The blast blew a hole in the wall of an office where Hoffman had earlier been working at a desk.

Taking a shower upstairs when the blast shook the building, a dazed Boudin fell through the floor and escaped naked into the street. A neighbor, identified by Rosen as Susan Wagner, one of Henry Fonda's former wives, who thought a gas explosion had occurred, rushed Boudin to her nearby house and gave her clothes.

After recuperating, Boudin escaped, heading with another survivor of the blast to a nearby subway station and riding away to 11 years underground. After a series of low-level jobs and dodging authorities, she and partner David Gilbert, the parents of an infant son, joined with the Black Liberation Army in the $1.9 million Brinks robbery.

Gilbert, also convicted of murder, was recently released from prison after his sentence was commuted by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo before he left office in disgrace.

During their years in prison, the couple's son, Chesa Boudin, was raised by Chicago residents Bernadette Dohrn and Bill Ayers, fellow Weather Underground leaders who had planned violent bombings. Ayers and Dohrn, who escaped prison terms on legal technicalities, also rehabilitated themselves, becoming noted education professors.

Ayers resurfaced with a self-serving New York Times op-ed piece the day before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He also regained notoriety during Barack Obama's first presidential campaign when right wingers claimed he was a close friend of the candidate, who lived in the same Chicago neighborhood.

Boudin after her release from prison received an advanced degree from Columbia, joined the Ivy League school's faculty and co-founded Columbia's Center for Justice, which advocates for prisoner's rights.

Her son Chesa Boudin, now the progressive district attorney of San Francisco, and Gilbert were with Boudin at her bedside when she died after a long cancer battle. Articles in the Nation and on the Center for Justice web site exalted Boudin, downplaying her Weather Underground days.

Like Ayers and Dohrn, euphemistically described as "activists," Boudin’s privileged background led to her rehabilitation and the diminishing of her violent past.

Boudin expressed remorse for the Brinks killings, and fought for social justice after her release from prison. History will remember her violent past.

 

 

 

 

Admired film critic Joe Morgenstern says farewell to Wall Street Journal column

I was out of town last Friday, and so didn't engage in my weekly treat of reading Joe Morgenstern's movie review in The Wall Street Journal.

Readers' letters praising Morgenstern on the WSJ editorial page Tuesday gave the sad news that I'd missed the 89-year-old Morgenstern's farewell column. Morgenstern said goodbye to his loyal readers just before his 27th anniversary at the WSJ.

Morgenstern is the last of a generation of film critics who ushered in the New Hollywood revolution, acclaiming movies like "The Graduate," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Easy Rider" and "Bonnie and Clyde." Later came "The Godfather," "Chinatown," "The Deer Hunter" and other classics.

Along with Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris and Manny Farber, Morgenstern launched a parallel revolution in film criticism. Their strong opinions and incisive writing drew acolytes - and detractors - rivaling the following of the auteurs they covered.

Writing for Newsweek, Morgenstern at first panned "Bonnie and Clyde," which appeared like a flaming comet in 1967.

In a quick reappraisal, Morgenstern hailed director Arthur Penn's revolutionary crime saga starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Advertising for "Bonnie and Clyde" cited Morgenstern's change of heart, contributing to the violent, challenging cinematic experience becoming a box office and Academy Award sensation.

In his farewell column - which I found behind the WSJ paywall - Morgenstern cited changes in the movie industry in which escapist fare for adolescent boys has come to dominate over serious artistic productions. 

While Morgenstern loves all films, even vehicles for comic book superheroes - his deepest passion is for increasingly rare, artistically ambitious work.

The genial, tolerant Morgenstern said he understands the younger generation's preference for streaming rather than going to the theater. As he pointed out, home screens are no longer so small, and watchers at home can control the viewing experience. He expressed his faith that serious artists will keep making aesthetically significant films.

Morgenstern was one of the Wall Street Journal writers who make the newspaper's weekend editions a joy to read.

The WSJ recently brought in former New York Times drama critic Charles Isherwood to replace the late Terry Teachout. While I feel the loss of Teachout's reviews, I welcome the return of Isherwood to the New York cultural landscape.

I'll miss Joe, whose column was like a weekly meeting with a friend at a coffee shop to discuss the latest interesting film.

If I may make a suggestion, former N+1 and current Baffler film critic A.S. Hamrah, author of the collection "The Earth Dies Streaming," is an exciting voice who shares Morgenstern's passion for movies. Hamrah's work deserves the broad readership that the WSJ would provide.

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Poetry flowers during National Poetry Month

Another National Poetry Month is almost gone.

In April, publishers release new poetry books and publications heighten their attention to the genre all but ignored the rest of the year.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review recently devoted an entire issue to "poesy." The New York Times Sunday magazine now publishes a poem each week.

Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda Thursday proclaimed his love of poetry in lavishly praising new critical studies of the art by Guggenheim Foundation President and noted poet/critic Edward Hirsch and Johns Hopkins professor and formalist poet Brad Leithauser.

Both have been longtime leaders of the nation's poetry establishment. Hirsch in several books and a term as the nation's poet laureate has striven to raise poetry's popularity. Leithauser has spearheaded efforts to restore the use of traditional meter and form after years of "free verse" dominance.

Hirsch's "The Heart of American Poetry" is the latest entry in an increasingly prevalent format he pioneered: offering a selection of poems accompanied by brief explanations of each of them.

Leithauser's "Rhyme's Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry" joins a teeming collection of books on poetic technique. The title and subject echo the late John Hollander's small classic "Rhyme's Reasons."

Dirda cites Hirsch's inclusion of outsider works like Robert Johnson's song "Crossroads Blues (Take 2)" along with a variety of poems from across the American canon.

He commends Leithauser for unlocking poetic techniques for the general reader.

While I'm skeptical of the triumphalism of National Poetry Month, I'm marking the occasion with the long-awaited arrival of British writer Lucasta Miller's "Keats a Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph." 

Has I yearned to read the book when it was first published in Great Britain, and waited long months for its American appearance. At last, April brought the book's arrival, and I'm happily reading it each night.

After years of receding from mainstream literary culture, poetry returned to prominence after Sept. 11, 2001. Grieving Americans after the attack on the World Trade Center found solace in poems like W.H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939."  Readers are also turning to poetry after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially to work by Ukrainian writers.

Poetry lives whenever deeper human emotions must receive expression.

 

 

U.S. Grant defended by Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo in Wall Street Journal article

As evidence mounts that the Republican Party stands for insurrection and opposes the truth, the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday remembered U.S. Grant, who defeated the Confederacy's rebellion against the United States.

On the 200th anniversary of Grant's birth, Civil War historian Allen G. Guelzo defended the Republican's Civil War record and often disparaged presidency.

That followed Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan's recent praise of Grant for his magnanimity to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Va., on April 9, 1865, Palm Sunday. Grant allowed Lee's defeated soldiers to keep their horses and weapons, and ordered that they be given food.

Guelzo, now at Princeton after a career at Penn, wrote a well-regarded history of Gettysburg and a recent biography of Robert E. Lee, refreshingly simply titled "Robert E. Lee: A Life." The frequent WSJ contributor also drew fire for agreeing to serve on Donald Trump's dubious panel that sought to whitewash American history.

Countering long-engrained criticism that Grant's presidency was one of the most corrupt in American history, Guelzo pointed out that a probe at the time led to only one indictment, and Grant was never implicated.

While elitists like Henry Adams mocked Grant for his perceived lack of refinement, Grant like Lincoln possessed a deep understanding of the nation's core values.

Grant's critics accused the Union Army leader of slaughtering too many soldiers to win battles. Abraham Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, joined those who claimed Grant's tactics caused too high a death toll. Detractors view Grant as a butcher who defeated Lee in a war of attrition because the Union had much greater manpower than the South.

Guelzo admits that Grant's direct assaults at Cold Harbor pointlessly wasted lives, but that the Union Army suffered fewer deaths than Lee's. Lincoln also supported Grant's strategy after the discouraging performances of McClellan, Hooker, Burnside and Meade.

Advances in weapons technology raised the appalling death counts of Civil War battles as generals often resorted to the outmoded strategy of direct attacks.

Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain, Burnside at Fredericksburg and Lee in launching Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg engendered horrifying slaughter by sending troops directly at entrenched enemy positions.

Dismissing the familiar accusations that the alcoholic Grant was drunk during battles, Guelzo points out that an investigator found no evidence that drinking ever impaired Grant's judgment.

Guelzo also defends Grant's actions in support of Reconstruction, pointing out that midterm elections at the end of his administration cost him his Republican majority in the House. Grant sent troops into South Carolina to suppress the Klan, and suspended habeas corpus, as Lincoln had done during the war. But Guelzo doesn't mention that Grant failed to send soldiers into other Southern states.

Outside of the purview of Guelzo, the Hayes-Tilden compromise and the ascension of Democrat Rutherford B. Hayes following Grant's presidency brought the removal of federal troops from the South, and the end of Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws restored white supremacy in the old Confederacy.

Dying of cancer, Grant courageously wrote his memoirs, considered a classic of American literature. Guelzo doesn't mention that Mark Twain encouraged Grant to write his battle recollections, which financially supported his family after his death.

Grant, who was serving as a clerk in his father's store when the Civil War began, is one of the central American stories, a flawed and unpretentious man who rose to carry out Lincoln's mission to preserve the Union and end slavery.

While like many Southern boys, I grew up revering Lee, I've over the years gained deep admiration for Grant and less respect for the Confederate idol.

At low moments, I draw encouragement from Grant's statement to Sherman after the Union's Army's disastrous first day at Shiloh.

"Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman said.

Grant responded, "Yes, lick ’em to-morrow, though.”

 

 

 

Pamela Paul in first New York Times column fires a shot in cultural wars

Pamela Paul in her inaugural New York Times column Monday took aim at ethnic barriers on artistic freedom.

The newspaper's former books editor decried critics who claim that only a member of a particular minority group can legitimately represent its experience.

Paul notes that such cultural identity warriors corrupt the language by brandishing the term "lived experience." Such a restrictive phrase impugns the creative imagination's power to express the variety of human life, she concludes.

Her defense of artistic truth against those who decry racial and gender "appropriation" in the arts might shock progressive Times readers, perhaps signaling a shift toward the center on the page formerly known as the "op-ed." The opening salvo indicates that Paul could join former husband Bret Stephens and David Brooks as in-house conservatives.

The Brown University alum and former Economist correspondent made an early splash with her first book, "The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony," which dissected the dissolution of her marriage to Stephens. Now, she's the wife of a hedge-fund exec and the mother of three children.

Reading Paul's column, I wondered why the Times hadn't placed her in the venerated space on the Monday business front page recently vacated by Ben Smith and distinguished by the late David Carr. Paul's most recent book, "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet," showcases social media savvy equal to Smith's. The business page space would give her a more prominent platform and still allow her to cover a range of subjects.

With Paul moving to opinionating, and Joseph Kahn being named Times executive editor to replace Dean Baquet, the New York chattering class has turned to wondering who will replace Paul as books editor.

Under Baquet, Paul took control of the Times' daily book coverage as well as the Sunday Book Review. While Paul added reader-friendly features to the Book Review, the major literary arbiter's increased attention to conservative books and popular fiction upset the progressive intellectual elite. In contrast to her provocative opening column, the Sunday book reviews under her watch turned bland and inoffensive.

A recent Nation article about the Times Book Review being at a crossroads received high readership. Choosing the new leader of the Times' book coverage will be one of Kahn's most important early decisions. As publishing industry consolidation advances, and cultural conflicts rise in intensity, the Times book coverage will take a leading role in setting  the nation's cultural agenda.

 

 

 

 

Joseph Kahn to pilot New York Times' speeding toward the future

Joseph Kahn will lead The New York Times far, far away into its digital future.

The Times made the biggest news among the New York/D.C. media elite Tuesday by naming the 57-year-old Kahn to replace Dean Baquet as the burgeoning media empire's executive editor. Baquet, who reached the exalted position's mandatory retirement age of 65 last autumn, will hand off the keys to the kingdom in June.

Kahn, a Times veteran who made his name covering China as the communist country began emerging as a global economic power, served as Baquet's managing editor during his eight-year reign, helping accelerate the Times from its print newspaper past into a new era of online video, breaking news alerts, newsletters, podcasts, puzzles and games and acquired diversions like the Athletic and Wordle.

Under Baquet, the Times' online news circulation soared, while the old print newspaper withered as aging readers headed into Baby Boomer heaven. Although traditional advertising plummeted, the online subscription boom allowed Baquet to multiply his staff, recruiting Internet-savvy technocrats as well as traditional international journalists in the Kahn mold.

The rush to online paradise was hampered by several staff insurrections and demands for greater racial and gender diversity.

Former exec-ed candidate James Bennett was jettisoned by taking too literally the Sulzberger dictim to add more conservative voices to the editorial page. Bennett was banished when employees revolted over his department running an incendiary op-ed by right-wing Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the military to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests following the George Floyd murder.

Articles in publications ranging from the Columbia Journalism Review to New York magazine and The Washington Post noted how the Harvard-educated Kahn represents a return to the white male establishment that led the Times for years. After the rocky tenures of Howell Raines and Jill Abramson, the newspaper turned to the genial Baquet, the first black to run the Sulzberger family's media empire.

The contrasts between Kahn and Baquet are striking. Baquet, a New Orleans native, grew up in an apartment above his family's restaurant, where he mopped floors and bused tables. Harvard-educated Kahn enjoyed a gilded childhood in Boston, the son of the founder of Staples.

As Politico writer Jack Shafer pointed out, the Times executive editor's job is often precarious. Baquet enjoyed a stable run, but Abramson was abruptly ousted after two and a half years. The cantankerous Raines was also forced out for upsetting the workers and displeasing the Sulzbergers.

A.G. Sulzberger, representing the family's new generation, presided over the end of Baquet's rule and named Kahn as his successor. Kahn like Baquet believes in traditional journalistic objectivity, often assailed by left-wing critics as giving too much credence to fact-challenged conservative views. Right-wing critics say the Times has allowed personal opinion to distort news stories.

In a relic from the past, articles about the Kahn appointment often referred to the Times as "The Gray Lady." That's a long-obsolete moniker from the days when the print newspaper ruled, embalming the news in black and white photos and swaths of gray type. The Gray Lady is long gone.

 

Farewell, Walter Mears, influential Associated Press political reporter

Many reporters of a certain age heard an inner voice when beginning to write a story: "What's the lead, Walter?"

If a writer discovers the most important information withbwhich to begin, the rest will follow.

Facing the terror of deadline pressure and an empty page or screen, I’ve often asked myself that question, taken from Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus."

The bible for the generation of newspaper people who came of age in the Watergate era, "The Boys on the Bus" made heroes of presidential political reporters Jules Witcover, Johnny Apple, Jack Germond, Hunter S. Thompson and others.

Crouse's brightest star was the Associated Press' lightning-fast writer Walter Mears, who strode through the book's chapters like a sheriff in a Western, upholding the tribe's values. He was the group's leader and conscience.

One of the era's great wire-service reporters, Mears turned out factual, clearly written stories as fast as a candidate gave a speech. Mears thought and wrote at the speed of his rapid-fire typing.

The other newsmen, when writing their own stories after the speech, shouted out to him,"What's the lead, Walter? What's the lead?"

Along with instantly discerning the most important part of a candidate's speech and writing accurately and succinctly, Mears could set a scene with a vivid turn of phrase.

Mears, who won the Pulitizer Prize in 1977 for his coverage of the Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford race, died March 3 of cancer at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 87, and had taught journalism at the University of North Carolina, according to obituaries in The Washington Post and New York Times.

During his career, Mears covered 11 political campaigns, from 1960 to 2000. He also served as executive editor of the Associated Press, before writing a political column.

Mears' reporting gave the views of presidential candidates to millions of readers at a time when local newspapers flourished. His stories were also quoted on local radio news stations, and influenced the campaign coverage of TV networks and major newspapers.

 The AP dynamo was a shining hero for newspaper people like me. Walter Mears was our conscience, as if we were forever on the bus with him.