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Excerpts from The New Media Monopoly
How This Book Came About in the First Place: Preface to
the 1st Edition
As a young reporter
in Providence, R.I., I used to drop by for tea in the back room of a secondhand
bookstore run by Mary and Douglas Dana. Douglas, a rosy-cheeked Scot,
would pull out his latest find in first editions and Mary would predict
that he would keep the book and never sell it. One Saturday afternoon,
Douglas showed me a first edition that made a difference in my reportorial
life. It was The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, edited by Marion Denman
Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson.
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Chapter 2 Opening
In 1983, the men
and women who headed the 50 mass media corporations that dominated American
audiences could have fit comfortably in a modest hotel ballroom. The
people heading the 20 dominant newspaper chains probably would form
one conversational cluster to complain about newsprint prices; 20 magazine
moguls in a different circle denounce postal rates; the broadcast network
people in another corner, not being in the newspaper or magazine business,
exchange indignation about government radio and television regulations;
the book people compete in outrage over greed of writers’ agents;
and movie people gossip about sexual achievements of their stars.
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