118. The Next Big Story: My Journey Through The Land of Possibilities - Soledad O'Brien

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I'm a huge CNN junkie - so naturally I had to read the autobiography of one of my favorite anchors (I woke up to her on American Morning every morning when I was in law school). I also had to get it autographed when she was doing a book signing at the CNN Center!

Soledad (I can call her that - she told me when I met her :) ) shares her life story - from growing up in an all-white town in Long Island as the daughter of a white man from Australia and a black woman from Cuba - to her discovery of her true calling to become a journalist - to her amazing stories from working at CNN, including her Black in America and Latino in America documentaries.

One of the stories that stood on the most to me was when she was discussing with Rev. Jesse Jackson how CNN needed more black anchors. He started ranting and saying that there were no black anchors on the network at all. Soledad interrupts him to remind him that she's the anchor of American Morning (which he knew - he had been a guest on the show!). "He looks me in the eye and reaches his fingers over to tap a spot of skin on my right hand. He shakes his head. 'You don't count,' he says." Apparently she spoke to him later and found out that he honestly didn't know that she was black. Her point was poignant: "That is how precise the game of race is played in our country, that we are so easily reduced to our skin tone. That even someone as prominent in African-American society as Reverend Jackson has one box to check for black and one for white. No one gets to be in between."

Soledad's stories from New Orleans after Katrina and from Haiti after the earthquake brought tears to my eyes. I love one point she made about Haiti: "It is almost as if the Americans are responding to a disaster in this nearby foreign country as a way of making up for Katrina. The land is peopled up by another group of black folks crying out for help. There is something about this that feels a bit redemptive, like folks who just took matters into their own hands and collectively screamed: We care."

My only complaint is the writing style - I loved the writing styles of journalists like Malcolm Gladwell and Anderson Cooper, but I found her style to be a bit choppy.  But overall - a great book.  

115. Call Me Ted - Ted Turner

It's impossible to live in Atlanta and not see the influence that Ted Turner has had over the city ... Turner Field; CNN Studios; Atlanta Braves; Atlanta Hawks. What I didn't understand is the influence that he has had over the media industry, the nation, and the world.

Turner is a man who is part narcissistic; part humanitarian; and completely fascinating. Even though he never finished college, his intelligence and experiences with his dad's billboard business led him to become one of the wealthiest men in the world. In his book, he shares stories of his tyrannical father who sent him off to boarding school at age four; his passion for sailing; his difficulty in maintaining his marriages, including his most recent marriage to Jane Fonda; and his insane idea to start a 24-hour news service (read my review of CNN: The Inside Story to learn more!).

This is a book worth reading on so many levels. The maneuvering of Turner Broadcasting taught me a lot about business. Apparently, after Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner, someone had the idea to merge with AOL during the dot com boom. By that point, Ted Turner was no longer on the Board of Directors - so he essentially wasn't running his own company anymore. AOL's stock was completely overvalued, so after the merger Turner ended up losing millions of dollars from the deal. The book also talks about the difficulties in starting CNN taught me about the media industry. I even learned more about the United Nations (who knew that he donated $1 billion to the United Nations Foundation?!).

The last paragraph in this book was so powerful:

I've often considered and joked about what I might want written on my tombstone. At one point, when I felt like I couldn't get out of the way of the press, "You can't interview me here" was a leading candidate. In the middle of my career, I considered, "Here lies Ted Turner. He never owned a broadcast network." These days, I'm leading toward "I have nothing more to say."

Ted Turner has his faults, but he is truly an amazing man. I can't recommend this book more highly.

114. CNN: The Inside Story - Hank Whittemore

The fact that I read this book - about the history of CNN - proves that I'm a CNN addict! (I found it at a used bookstore in Marietta for 50 cents. It was written in 1990 ... but hey, history doesn't change!).

Most people know that Ted Turner started CNN, but they don't know all that he was up against when he did it. He had already done really well for himself after he took over his father's billboard business by investing in radio and TV stations. He got the idea in the 1970's to start a 24-hour cable TV station (back when cable TV was still pretty new) ... and absolutely everyone told him he was crazy. The "three networks" (CBS, NBC, ABC) each had yearly budgets of about $100-150 million, and CNN had a projected budget for its first year of $30 million.

The stories about how CNN got up and running were great - and the anecdotes about Turner were even better. The man is crazy - CNN wasn't even profitable yet, and he started CNN2 (now HLN) to cover all bases to exclude his competition (CNN had a one-hour news cycle - he wanted one with a 30-minute news cycle). And he definitely wasn't afraid of suing people to get what he wanted! But honestly, he's an entrepreneurial genius ... and that's why he is where he is now (I work near the CNN headquarters, Turner Broadcasting, and Turner Field ... you get the point). That's why I've decided to read his autobiography next ... honestly, this book was a bit hard to get through. The author sometimes told the same stories from several different points of view, which got a bit long. So while the stories about Turner and many of the stories about how CNN finally got off the ground were great, I think Turner's autobiography might be better than this book.

41. Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News - Bernard Goldberg

Bernard Goldberg presents an ... interesting ... argument for the mainstream media's liberal bias. Goldberg had some pretty good support for this argument - i.e. 50% of journalists identify with being Democrats, while only 4% identify with being Republicans. But my question is ... why are there more Democratic journalists? Are Republicans ... discriminated against in the journalism industry?

Even if he does present a good amount of support for this argument - some "support" left me a bit confused. For example, he has a whole chapter on "the network color bar" - explaining why so many "victims" on network news are blond-haired and blue-eyed. Goldberg says, "We know who our viewers are. We know what they look like. And we know that they would be drawn more to stories about homeless people who looked just like their mothers and fathers and sons and daughters than homeless people who looked like, well, homeless people." He says that if journalists win sympathy for "them" ("people who look like our next door neighbors"), then they had a chance of winning sympathy for the less sympathetic homeless - which might translate into a new homeless shelter. But if this is true - why is something that is classified as a "liberal bias"?? Are liberals the only people who would want to do something to garner support for something like a new homeless shelter?

In my opinion, Goldberg tries to appeal to conservative emotion more than present hardcore facts. An interesting book - but I'm not convinced. Don't waste your time.