The American Newspaper Columnist

Subjects:

• Communications » Journalism
• Communications » Mass Media

Reviews:

• Riley writes well and keeps the story moving, making clear both the similarities and differences among the many practitioners of the trade.
  —CBQ
• In all, 780 columnists are chronologically cited, most with brief and sometimes penetrating analysis. Of great value are the end chapter notes which generously list works about or by the subjects. An excellent bibliography cites about 240 sources. This book will prove invaluable as a comprehensive survey of the genre, and it will be essential as a resource tool in graduate programs....This book is as close as we'll probably come to a single, comprehensive look at American columnists. Riley admits he was forced to sacrifice detail for scope, and many good columnists have been oerlooked. But the results clearly capture the diversity and depth of an essential form of journalism. A measure of the book's worth is that those syndicated or local columnists who were not included will wish they had been.
  —Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
• This volume provides the most complete look available at the emergence of the columnist and at who the leading columnists have been from the Civil War era to the present.
  —New Books in the Communications Library

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Beginnings: Columnists of the 1800s
• Humor Columnists
• Column Poets
• The Pundits: America's Syndicated Political Columnists
• Other Syndicated Columnists
• Local Columnists
• Minority Columnists: Critical Mass at Last
• Selected Bibliography
• Index