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Description
Ritchie, D. A. (2005). Reporting from Washington: The history of the Washington Press Corps. New York: Oxford University Press. 432 pages.
Donald A. Ritchie's analytical rigor and attention to historical detail have produced a book unrivaled in its circumference of archival research uncovering the workings of the Washington Press Corps from the New Deal era to the present. Ritchie explains to the casual reader how:
Since 1880, the U.S. government has ceded the authority to determine who qualifies for a press pass to cover the Capitol, the White House, and the federal agencies to members of the press corps themselves. Reporters elect committees of correspondents, who grant formal accreditation, thereby defining, and restricting, their own trade. (p. XIII)
Thereafter, the book interrogates the professional norms of inclusion and exclusion for Washington Press Corps membership over time, describes how technological changes influenced its journalistic culture, and illustrates the unique ways in which Washington correspondents unraveled and fumbled historic political stories, ranging from Nixon's Watergate to Clinton's "Monicagate," and has performed with valor and significance during recent times. In so doing, it reflexively demonstrates how "hard-fought battles" within the journalism profession "eventually opened the press galleries to greater diversity, by race, gender, and technology, and repeatedly redefined Washington reporting" (p. XIII). Although the text proceeds thematically, it also unravels a temporal struggle over meanings that define the relationship between the U.S. presidency and the Washington Press Corps.
The book's first chapters... |
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