Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Feb 2019
544 pages
Genre: History, Science & Current Affairs
Publication Information
The definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade.
Merchants of Truth is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state of the news business told by one of our most eminent journalists.
Jill Abramson follows four companies: The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and VICE Media over a decade of disruption and radical adjustment. The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning and fickle audience of millennials. We get to know the defenders of the legacy presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty Baron (The Washington Post), Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet (The New York Times), Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), and Shane Smith (VICE) as well as their reporters and anxious readers.
Merchants of Truth raises crucial questions that concern the well-being of our society. We are facing a crisis in trust that threatens the free press. Abramson's book points us to the future.
"Starred Review. [O]ne of the best takes yet on journalism's changing fortunes." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A highly readable combination of significant topic, deep reporting, endlessly fascinating anecdotes, and vivid writing." - Kirkus
This information about Merchants of Truth shown above was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jill Abramson is a senior lecturer at Harvard University. She also writes a bi-weekly column for The Guardian about US politics. She spent seventeen years in the most senior editorial positions at The New York Times, where she was the first woman to serve as Washington bureau chief, managing editor, and executive editor. Before joining the Times, she spent nine years at The Wall Street Journal. The author of Merchants of Truth, she lives in New York City.
Become a Member and discover books that entertain, engage & enlighten.
The Northern Reach
by W.S. Winslow
What is the weight of the stories we choose to tell...and the burdens of those we hide?
Reader Reviews
Smalltime
by Russell Shorto
Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America.
Reader Reviews
Band of Sisters
by Lauren Willig
"A crackling portrayal of everyday American heroines…A triumph."
— Fiona Davis
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
