Ah, well, THE LAST NEWSPAPERMAN still has plenty of truth in it.

The premise is that in 1999, the author was working on an end-of-the-century piece for a local newspaper, and he went to a retirement home to interview people who lived through most of the century. He hit the jackpot with Fred Haines, a retired journalist who covered some of the biggest stories of the 20th century, including the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Hindenburg disaster. He shares his clippings and his unpublished memoirs, then reveals the parts of the story he never wrote down like how he helped get the photos of the Lindbergh baby's mutilated corpse and regretted it for the rest of his life.

Since the real author, the fictitious interviewer, and Fred Haines are all newspaper writers, they have strong, descriptive voices. From the noisy, smoky New York bars where journalists traded stories to the chaos of the Lindbergh home during the first frantic hours after the crime, Di Ionno's words paint vivid pictures of life, death, and ethics in the 1930s.

Mark Di Ionno is an award-winning reporter and professor of journalism, and while Fred'sn stories have a strong basis in fact, the truth of the novel goes much deeper than that. It's an examination of journalistic integrity. In the 1930s, the country was recovering from the Great Depression, and newspapers were fighting to survive against an onslaught of new media. Getting the scoop and making it sensational meant sales and survival. Sound familiar? Back then, the new media were radio and newsreels, but the battles to beat the competition and the debates over entertainment versus information are still being fought in newsrooms across the country. I know; when I'm not reading, I'm producing broadcast news on a local TV station.

THE LAST NEWSPAPERMAN is a fascinating, fast-paced, insightful look at the wonderful and terrible world of breaking news, where the truth depends on who's telling the story and the push for scoops and exclusives sometimes trumps morality.

Book Summary