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Journalism List: Personal Favorites.

I recently spoke at an ACLE session at my undergraduate alma mater, UP Mass Comm

a pinch-hitter for my boss. I thought the invite was for me to give an update on the

Maguindanao massacre case; instead I found myself talking to students half my age

about my former life as a journalist, and what I thought they should be reading toprepare themselves for such a demanding profession (predictably, none of them seemed

to have read or heard about any of the authors I mentioned at the talk). After the talk, Idecided to make a list of the books on journalism I thought any journalism student should

read. The list is only of foreign authors (most of them American). A good number are

memoirs written by journalism greats and they are valuable for the insights they give onthe nature of journalism as a profession. The others are anthologies of reportage. I

added two books written on what it means to have a free press the first was by a lawyer

who argued before the US Supreme Court a landmark case on free speech and the

second, by a long-time justice reporter for the New York Times, who covered the samecase and wrote an important book about it. There is one work of fiction by a British

novelist who at one time worked as a war correspondent in Ethiopia. His novel was athinly-disguised account of his experiences there. Another book is by an Italian radicalwhose work presents a nice counter-point to the liberal democratic perspective that

dominates thinking on journalism. I only included books I have in my personal library,

acquired for the most part in nearly two decades of raiding used book shops from allover the place. In the next few days, Ill probably add more to this list, as the ones

included here are what I can remember for now. I am sorry to say my collection of

Filipiniana on journalism is rather slim but I just might later on make a separate list forFilipino works.

Vincent Sheean, Personal HistoryTheodore White, In Search of History: A Personal AdventureHarrison Salisbury, A Time of Change

Philip Knightley, The First Casualty

Reporting, Lillian RossReporting Back, Lillian Ross

Dispatches, Michael Herr

The World of Jimmy Breslin

Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that tomorrow we will be killed with ourfamilies

Pete Hamill, News is A Verb: Journalism at the end of the 20th century

Pete Hamill, A Drinking LifeWilliam Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of A Foreign Correspondent

Ben Bagdikian, Double Vision

H.L. Mencken, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work: A MemoirMartha Gellhorn, Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir

Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

John Hersey, Hiroshima

Lincoln Steffens. "The Shame of the Cities." 1902-1904

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John Reed. Ten Days That Shook the World.

James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

John McPhee. The John McPhee Reader.Russel Baker, Growing Up

Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Norman Mailer. The Armies of the Night.Joan Didion. Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I.F. Stone, The Best of I.F. Stone

An American Album: One Hundred Fifty Years of Harpers MagazineFloyd Abrams, Speaking Freely: The Trials of the First Amendment

Anthony Lewis, Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment

Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Michael Ignatieff, The Warriors Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern ConscienceRobert Coles, Children of Crisis

Robert Coles, The Call of Stories and the Moral Imagination

Granta Magazine Issue No. 53 (News)

Granta Magazine Issue No. 58 (Ambition)Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

Tom Wolfe, The New JournalismRebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Gary Wills, Lead Time: A Journalists Education

St. Augustine, Confessions

Richard Selzer, Mortal LessonsFlannerry O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters

Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli

Czeslaw Milosz, To Begin Where I Am