A heartfelt take on two heartland dailies that (following a lengthy battle for local dominance) joined forces after a fashion; by a Detroit News journalist who covered the twisty story's denouement and understands its varied implications. Gruley first provides background on a once-vigorous rivalry between his publication (an afternoon paper) and the Free Press (Motown's morning sheet). While previously profitable, he notes, both began losing big money during the 1980's due to a combination of socioeconomic developments. A 1985 takeover of the News by Gannett (the largest newspaper chain in the US) led to the negotiation of a joint-operating agency (JOA) with the hated Free Press (owned by Knight-Ridder, another fourth-estate colossus). Under terms of such accords, same-city newspapers are allowed to amalgamate their advertising, circulation, production, and allied activities while maintaining separate editorial staffs. By federal law, however, JOAs (which investors favor for their capacity to improve income statements) must be endorsed by the Justice Department—and, after a good deal of acrimonious debate, Attorney General Edwin Meese III approved the News/Free Press agreement. But unions and public-interest groups opposed the limited get-together right up through the Supreme Court, where, in late 1989, they lost their case on a four-to-four vote. Gruley offers tellingly detailed accounts of the roles played by high-profile participants (Clark Clifford, Jack Kent Cooke, Norman Lear, Ralph Nader, Al Neuharth, et al.) and a host of lesser lights in what amounted to a high- stakes game of chicken. He also does a good job of reckoning the costs, concluding that Detroit would have been better served if the market had been left to decide which paper was fittest to survive. In the wake of the protracted, enervating struggle, Gruley observes, neither paper is equipped to compete with, let alone best, rival media. An informative rundown on an encounter that could prove a watershed in the evolution (or devolution) of America's metropolitan dailies.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-8021-1402-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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