Scotty
James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism
By John F. Stacks 

A Look at Reporting, Politics and Ethics

America's Powerhouses,
America's Journalism

     Scotty is a book that tells the story of a figurehead of American reporting, James B. Reston. It is written by an eminent editor of today, John F. Stacks, whose own experience in journalism brings much to this book that would otherwise be lacking. It is, indeed, a happy pairing.

     Scotty Reston not only reported the most amazing events our nation has faced since W.W.II, his opinions and later his participation helped shape those events. We see the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Crisis, and the Vietnam War. We glimpse the Watergate debacle and presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan. We come to understand these events as never before. They are even clearer than when we read the headlines of the day or Reston's clarifying columns. The reason, of course, is that now we have the power of hindsight and the additional advantage of Stacks's experience and fastidious research.

     This is a book for anyone interested in American history. It is also a book for anyone with an interest in journalism. Stacks doesn't often quote Reston, but when he does, Reston's eloquence and understanding of events is apparent.

     Not too long ago, the New Yorker featured a well-written piece about the family whose story is integral to that of the powerful New York Times. The Sulzberger family story is fascinating; Reston's story is connected so closely with theirs that Scotty becomes a redux of that paper's history as well. The personalities, the politics, the struggles are all there. They affected American opinion and policy deeply. It is interesting to see how our nation was shaped by so many who were not elected-the powerhouses of Journalism in the last century.

     After all is said and done, the very thing that stalled Reston's autobiography, Deadline, hinders Stacks's Scotty. Stacks recounts the story of Reston's son, himself a writer, telling his father that Reston had "got it all wrong," that he was writing from the "outside in." In other words, he wasn't revealing enough of himself. Stacks's version could do no better on this count, after all. He is writing about a man who couldn't divulge his inner workings, not even in his own biography. Stacks is taking material from interviews with those whom Reston knew professionally, or from intimates with whom he was often distant.

     The subtitle of Scotty gives nearly equal billing to the man himself. The Rise and Fall of American Journalism is apt, for that is what this book truly is: a history of the way journalism worked, then and now. Stacks builds this story around Reston's skeleton but the real story, the more poignant story, is how TV and the times changed our national pulse over the last few decades and journalism's part in that transformation. I would have liked to have known Scotty better when I turned the last page of this book. Still, what this book teaches about our nation's soul cannot be rated second best.