Author(s): Margaret Sullivan

Biography

In over forty years of working in newsrooms big and small, Margaret Sullivan has become a trusted champion and critic of America's newspapers. In her first book for a general audience, Sullivan traces her life in America's newsrooms and how trust in them has steadily eroded.

Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from local reporter to editor in chief. In Fear or Favor she chronicles her decades in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. In 2012 Sullivan was appointed the public editor of The New York Times, the first woman to hold that role. She was in the unique position of acting on behalf of readers to weigh the actions and reporting of the paper's staff, parsing potential lapses in judgment, unethical practices, and thorny journalistic issues. Sullivan recounts how she judiciously navigated the paper's controversies, big and small--from Hillary's emails to the coverage of Serena Williams to the need for diversity in the newsroom. In 2015, having served the longest tenure of any public editor, Sullivan left for the Washington Post, where she had front row seat to the rise of Donald Trump in American media and politics.

In her celebrated mixture of charm, sharp-eyed observation, and nuanced criticism, Sullivan takes us behind the scenes of the biggest newspapers in America to detail how they lost the trust of many of their readers, and what it will take for the public to trust the media again.