Which is more surprising? That the White House might have pressured the New York Times to hold its story about the Bush administration's approval of civilian eavesdropping, or that the Times's eventual running of the story was prompted by the decisions of a publishing house scheduled to release the Times reporter's book on that very subject?
This is the question that has been occupying the minds of those of us who braved our offices on the quietest publishing week of the year—that, and the schadenfreudeish thrill that the venerable Times might be in trouble again. From Jayson Blair to Judith Miller, the paper of record seems to be getting less and less respect. Suddenly emerging as all powerful is S&S's Free Press, which sent out a press release on December 16 heralding the fact that it had the complete wiretapping story by veteran Times reporter James Risen. It is called State of War and was scheduled to be published on January 16.
Then, suddenly, the house announced it had pushed up publication to January 3. The book, of course, is embargoed, and was not given out to reporters or reviewers in advance.
What an empowering moment for a publishing house: the whole world wants the whole story, and the Free Press is the one who's got it!
Never mind that I, like most journalists, hate embargoes and resent being beholden to publicists. We want to report news, after all, not follow it. But the State of War example represents something far more important than bickering over petty who's-in-charge concerns. Yes, James Risen is a New York Times reporter, but it is not his paper that's breaking the story: it's his book. And for a publishing industry that's constantly derided as backward and lumbering and slow, the joy is palpable. If S&S had been open last week, you would have heard executive heels clicking all the way up the West Side of Manhattan to Random House.
When you look back at the nonfiction publishing of the last few years—Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies, Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyaltyand even Jose Canseco's Juiced—you can't help but realize that it's books that have led the news. For all the carping about how the culture doesn't value what we do, it's what we produce that influences much of the serious cultural and political discussion.
Sure, there's always an example like the Vanity Fair revelation of Deep Throat's identity to remind us that sometimes, sadly, the book is just an afterthought. And, of course, there are enough Paris Hiltonish memoirs to plunge us back into our familiar self-loathing over the vacuousness of what we also do.
But I say, good for Free Press (which, incidentally, was also the publisher of Against All Enemies) for being the newsmaker here; I can't help feeling that if, say, the house had decided to push publication back to the spring, the Times—which reportedly held the Risen stories for over a year—would not have rushed to publish its pieces now.
To have shamed the newspaper of record into publishing a story it probably should have run long ago—now, that's very, very rich indeed.
Maybe this will be a happy new year, after all.
