The Columnist

"In the Washington Merry-Go-Round, a nationally syndicated newspaper column that appeared in hundreds of papers from 1932 to 1969, as well as on weekly radio and television programs, the investigative journalist Drew Pearson revealed news that public officials tried to suppress. He disclosed policy disputes and political spats, exposed corruption, attacked bigotry, and promoted social justice. He pumped up some political careers and destroyed others. Presidents, prime ministers, and members of Congress repeatedly called him a liar, and he was sued for libel more often than any other journalist, but he won most of his cases by proving the accuracy of his charges. Pearson dismissed most official news as propaganda and devoted his column to reporting what officials were doing behind closed doors. He broke secrets-even in wartime-and revealed classified information. Fellow journalists credited him with knowing more dirt about more people in Washington than even the FBI and compared his efforts to Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers or Edward Snowden with WikiLeaks, except that he did it daily. The Columnist examines how Pearson managed to uncover secrets so successfully and why government efforts to find his sources proved so unsuccessful. Drawing on a half century of archival evidence it assesses his contributions as a muckraker by verifying or refuting both his accusations and his accusers"--

Leslie Ward, a star columnist’s at New York News Events, whose column created a bigbuzz in different social networks including her own blog became a target of a blogger with a twisted mind whose arguments with the rest of her bloggers resulted into a deadlyspin leaving his murdered victims in the city.

Years of backstabbing and betrayal start to catch up with one of Washington’s elite opinion writers, “a character that deserves to jump outside the Beltway and enter the language like ‘Uncle Tom,’ ‘Peter Pan,’ or ‘Scrooge.’” (Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor). During a cocktail party, George H. W. Bush encourages Brandon Sladder, the prominent Washington columnist, to write his memoirs. Sladder has, after all, known just about everyone of importance. From talking on intimate terms with world leaders, being a witness to enormous change, and expressing his weighty opinions on matters of state, he believes that his own story could add so much more than a footnote to our age. But what is meant to be a look back at his life and our times turns out to be far more revealing. The Columnist is Sladder’s attempt to burnish his image for posterity. What emerges is something else: the misadventures of an irresistibly loathsome man—self-important, social climbing, dangerously oblivious, “an unforgettable character who is lovably hateable” (Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book) and one of the most memorable rogues in contemporary fiction. The Columnist is a dead-on, elegantly written portrait of the media and politics of the second half of the twentieth century—“It’s Balzac as word-processed by Philip Roth, only, for my two cents…funnier…[A] great American novel” (Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking).

A new play from the Pulitzer- and Tony Award–winning author of Proof, coming to Broadway this April In midcentury America, newspaper columnists are kings—and Joseph Alsop wears the biggest crown. Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost. Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn's The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.

Years of backstabbing and betrayal start to catch up with one of Washington’s elite opinion writers, “a character that deserves to jump outside the Beltway and enter the language like ‘Uncle Tom,’ ‘Peter Pan,’ or ‘Scrooge.’” (Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor). During a cocktail party, George H. W. Bush encourages Brandon Sladder, the prominent Washington columnist, to write his memoirs. Sladder has, after all, known just about everyone of importance. From talking on intimate terms with world leaders, being a witness to enormous change, and expressing his weighty opinions on matters of state, he believes that his own story could add so much more than a footnote to our age. But what is meant to be a look back at his life and our times turns out to be far more revealing. The Columnist is Sladder’s attempt to burnish his image for posterity. What emerges is something else: the misadventures of an irresistibly loathsome man—self-important, social climbing, dangerously oblivious, “an unforgettable character who is lovably hateable” (Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book) and one of the most memorable rogues in contemporary fiction. The Columnist is a dead-on, elegantly written portrait of the media and politics of the second half of the twentieth century—“It’s Balzac as word-processed by Philip Roth, only, for my two cents…funnier…[A] great American novel” (Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking).

Collection of articles from the columns of Kamala Das.

THE STORY: From the Pulitzer and Tony award-winning author of Proof , a drama about the press and power, sex and betrayal. At the height of the Cold War, Joe Alsop is the nation's most influential journalist, beloved, feared and courted by th