At a time when hard-hitting journalism is under siege within the halls of power and, more insidiously, under threat of extinction because of the economics of the internet, Seymour M. Hersh's memoir, Reporter, is a welcome tonic. A legend among investigative journalists, Hersh broke some of the most important stories of the last 50 years, and this engaging account of his career during the golden age of journalism is, not surprisingly, filled with colorfully told anecdotes of the art of getting the story.

Hersh's own origin story is right out of a Horatio Alger novel. The son of Jewish immigrants, Hersh grew up on Chicago's South Side, working in his father's store in a largely black neighborhood, playing or watching baseball when he could. After his father's death, Hersh ran the family business while also attending the University of Chicago. After dropping out of law school, he kicked around at some inconsequential jobs before landing at the rough-and-tumble City News Bureau of Chicago as a copy boy and then a field reporter, and his rapport with the black community in the heavily segregated, openly racist city gave him his first taste of the importance of finding and respecting sources. He worked for The Associated Press in far-flung Pierre, South Dakota, before making it back to Chicago and then Washington, D.C. For all his talent and ambition, though, Hersh struggled to make his mark or land a job with a major paper. He even worked briefly as press secretary in Senator Eugene McCarthy's anti-war presidential campaign.

Then history intervened. While freelancing out of the National Press Building, Hersh got a vague tip about the court-martialing of a GI for killing civilians in South Vietnam. The story of what came to be known as the My Lai Massacre was being kept from the public by the military, and Hersh went to work with his usual dogged determination, tracking down the accused, Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was under house arrest at Fort Benning, Georgia. The chapters about uncovering the My Lai story, which took Hersh deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole that was the Pentagon's waging of an unwinnable war, unreel like a tightly plotted suspense film. Unable to interest a major publication in the story, Hersh—with his trademark moxie—self-syndicated it. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, a rarity for a freelance journalist.

This is a captivating memoir that could inspire a new generation of journalists.

Still, his dream job at the New York Times eluded him, and he went to work for The New Yorker. When he finally landed at the Times, he continued to report on Vietnam and foreign affairs until a new story took over the headlines: Watergate. Later, back at The New Yorker, Hersh covered the war on terror, consistently calling out the lies of the Bush-Cheney White House and bringing shocking revelations about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to light. Hersh, who quotes the Times as calling him "scruffy, scrappy, stubborn, loud," argues that his achievements have come not from his personality but from doing the work that is the essence of good journalism: a lot of reading, conducting interviews and finding the sources. The stories in his book bear out these claims.

Reporter is a captivating memoir that could inspire a new generation of journalists—assuming they still have the financial support to find their stories and a place to tell them.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for revealing the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, Hersh has circled the globe to tackle the tough stories, winning five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more. Now here are the stories behind the stories, to show how reporting works.

Recounting the story behind the story, running on conviction and sheer stubbornness, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hersh's investigation of the 1968 My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in South Vietnam and the case against army officer William Calley Jr. often reads like a case study in how to write a political thriller. Between racing through military training camps, hand-copying files, and fighting skeptics, Hersh's account reveals the level of persistence that drives award-winning journalism. Going beyond the business of news, Hersh offers an insider look at Washington politics, recounting the people (Kissinger, Nixon) and events (Vietnam, Watergate) that put his stories on the front page, ending with a review of the War on Terror and reporting post-9/11. As Hersh notes, he is a "survivor from the golden age of journalism." VERDICT A fascinating look at an era when quality reporting was the result of will and determination (and knowing the right contacts). An excellent choice for readers interested in late 20th-century politics.—Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami

The legendary investigative journalist forthe New York Times and the New Yorker recalls his struggles to uncover government secrets—and get them printed—in this powerful memoir. Hersh recounts his career unearthing epochal stories, from the 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American troops at My Lai and Watergate revelations to abuses at the Abu Ghraib military prison during the Iraq War. There's gripping journalistic intrigue aplenty as he susses out sources and documents, fences with officials, and fields death threats. His pursuit of My Lai perpetrator William Calley, which saw him barking bogus orders at soldiers and crawling through a Fort Benning barracks, feels like a Hollywood thriller. Almost as arduous are his efforts to get nervous editors to run incendiary articles while he navigated byzantine newsroom politics, especially his testy relationship with Times chief Abe Rosenthal, who emerges as a hybrid of courage and timidity. Along the way, Hersh paints pungent sketches of everyone from Henry Kissinger ("the man lied the way most people breathed") to the "ass-kissing coterie of moronic editors" at the Times who watered down a piece on corporate skulduggery. Hersh himself is brash and direct, but never cynical, and his memoir is as riveting as the great journalistic exposés he produced. Photos. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.(June)