The art of reporting
If fate hadn't led me along an uneven path from the Merthyr Express to the BBC's Global News Division I would like to have been a reporter like David Remnick. Current Editor of The New Yorker, former Washington Post Moscow Correspondent, Pulitzer prize winner, insightful, clever, marginally better looking and a lot more talented than me - he writes like a dream. A new volume of his pieces from The New Yorker has just been published - "Reporting". Long and revealing profiles of Gore, Katharine Graham, Solzhenitsyn, Putin, Mike Tyson and more. And his piece contrasting the response to Hurricane Katrina with Lyndon Johnson's response to Hurricane Betsy in the 1960's is beautifully judged. The closest journalism gets to art.
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And yet another good thing to come out of Merthyr! Just another of life's coincidences - just put down this weeks Merthyr, read Euan's latest blog and came across this. Enjoy reading the Gateway blog too!
Posted by: Mark Moran | September 22, 2006 at 07:23 AM
Hi Mark! Thanks for dropping in....
Posted by: Richard Sambrook | September 22, 2006 at 07:35 AM
My brother gave me a subscription to the New Yorker for my 40th birthday so i've been catching up with how fantastic a magazine it is.
btw: that great remnick / katrina article is online here:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051003fa_fact
one of the (only) annoying things about the new yorker is its rather random approach to what i publishes online. (and the fiction ;)
Posted by: Jem | September 22, 2006 at 02:07 PM
When people ask me one of the things I miss about the US, I would have to say my New Yorker subscription. It's such a pleasure to read.
So pleased that you came out from behind the firewall. I owe you a pint. Drop me a note to collect.
Posted by: Kevin | September 22, 2006 at 03:26 PM
Remnick is indeed a marvel. Few sadly are the magazines (or supplements) that will print pieces as long as he is afforded - and even the New Yorker saves them, reasonably enough, for their special stars. I've been rereading Gay Talese's lauded piece about Sinatra, Esquire's 'best ever piece of the journalism' - 28 pages when printed close-set on A4. They don't commission them like that any more.
Posted by: andrew | September 25, 2006 at 06:14 PM