About the Author

Seth Mnookin is a former media columnist for Newsweek, where he also covered politics, crime, and popular culture. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Spin, and elsewhere. A 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, he lives in New York City.

Reviews

“Seth Mnookin is one of the best and brightest journalists of this ominous post-American century. And here he’s written the book that’s the answer to the question I’ve been wondering about for a long time: How could something like this happen at The New York Times, a paper the country desperately needs to survive.”
–HUNTER S. THOMPSON

“I read Hard News in a single sitting, long into the night. Seth Mnookin has written a gripping narrative, a thoughtful media study, and a fascinating portrait of some very strange characters. This book is undoubtedly the last word on a low moment in the history of a great institution.”
--JEFFREY TOOBIN

“This is two terrific books in one: a riveting thriller, starring a heroic Dirty Dozen team of reporters risking their careers to unearth dangerous truths, and a Shakespearean tragedy about hubris and race and good intentions and self-destruction featuring a pathetic, half-mad villain and a noble, deluded king. Seth Mnookin has written the definitive chronicle of this extraordinary upheaval at the most important newspaper on earth. But Hard News is also a heartening reminder that some powerful institutions take virtue seriously, and can right themselves quickly when things go awry.”
–KURT ANDERSEN

“In Hard News, a con man is the center of attention, but the ideal of ‘getting it right’ is the book’s true heart. This is a juicy morality tale for the information age.”
–SARAH VOWELL