Donald Ritchie examines the lives of early, self-styled congressional journalists such as Horace Greeley, Emily Briggs, Benjamin Perley Poore, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Horace White, James G. Blaine, and others who were positioned in the hub of government when the Civil War, the purchase of Alaska, the Crédit Mobilier scandal, and the Johnson impeachment hearings were making front-page news. Rich in anecdote, this lively book illuminates an important era of journalism and American history. The nascent issues of censorship, right to privacy, and conflict of interest that it describes are still very much with us.
In a lively study of the people who covered Congress in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Donald Ritchie profiles many writers who, like Greeley, found the Washington scene alluring and disorienting. Despite adversarial rhetoric and mutual suspicion, close personal relationships have long flourished between members of Congress and the press.
