Deadlines and Disruption

November 12, 2012
News veteran Shepard effectively charts his professional ups and downs alongside an insider's look at the rapidly changing business of print media. In unassuming prose, he chronicles his career, beginning in the 1960s as a staff reporter at Business Week, followed by stints at Newsweek and the Saturday Review, returning to Business Week in 1984, spending two decades as editor in chief. He revamped the venerable magazine's content and design for a rapidly changing business age. But more illuminating than the account of his professional achievements is the book's third section dealing with the changing nature of journalism and its evolving shift from print to digital. When Shepard, now dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, describes crafting a new media-rich curriculum, the narrative picks up considerably. His own feelings about the Internet have changed dramatically, from viewing it as a "Category Five Storm for journalism" to "believ that digital technology enriches journalism," with new modes of producing and delivering news and the ability to reach new readers. Newshounds, readers, writers, and editors may not agree with the unalloyed optimism, but they should find Shepard's transformational journey fascinating. Photos. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

Starred review from August 15, 2012
The digital media revolution powers a lifelong journalist's sharp, business-minded autobiography. Former Newsweek senior editor and BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Shepard, now in his 70s, acknowledges the inevitable replacement of traditional media with digital, portable formats. He writes that he foresaw the progression but never imagined its enormity. These musings fittingly accentuate his memoir, a chronicle that recalls a 50-year history as a distinguished journalist, beginning in the Bronx as a Jewish child born to a depressive mother and a hardworking father. A pretty grade school penmanship teacher helped foster an early love of writing, though Shepard misguidedly majored in engineering in college. In 1966, he became a 26-year-old rookie at BusinessWeek, married the first in a line of fellow journalists and penned stories as a foreign economic correspondent. Throughout a breezy wealth of anecdotes, truisms and historical asides, Shepard writes of spending a defining five years at Newsweek, a stint at the doomed Saturday Review, overseeing seminal investigative pieces and advocating an online version at BusinessWeek. While he firmly considers the Internet a destructive "Category Five storm for journalism," Shepard concedes he's come full circle in the understanding and even the advocacy of the great migration to digital formats. The author reports rather than complains or bemoans this media acculturation and feels the industry would be best suited by "a convergence of traditional and revolutionary." Celebrating a two-decade tenure at BusinessWeek and a founding deanship at CUNY's top-tier graduate journalism program, Shepard's authoritative and cautionary blessing on the journalism world is both fitting and resolute. Insightful and convivial account of a bright, bountiful life dedicated to words, information and wonder.

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October 15, 2012

Over almost 50 years in journalism, Shepard (former editor in chief, BusinessWeek) has witnessed global crises, political upheavals, Wall Street crashes, and boom times--but he views the digital revolution as the biggest seismic shift in the history of his profession. How does journalism stay relevant in the era of Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, instantaneous access, and unrivaled audience participation? He maintains that there are no easy answers, yet the problem can be boiled down to a simple statement: adapt or perish. Shepard, founding dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, weaves this issue through a memoir that traces his years from journalism school in the 1950s to becoming dean of a newly created graduate program. The digital shift does not just impact how news is reported, he declares; it impacts how news is disseminated, shared, and interpreted. As Shepard states, this shift can be compared to the move from silent films to talkies--and it will be just as widespread and permanent. VERDICT Shepard's book will resonate with many and should be read by anyone interested in the flow of information today and its impact on society as a whole.--Teri Shiel, Westfield State Univ. Lib., MA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
In 2004, at what might have been the age of retirement, longtime Business Week editor-in-chief Shepard decided to take his life in a new direction: he would become the first dean of a new journalism school, based at City University of New York (CUNY). Starting a new journalism school at a time when many experts were predicting the demise of journalism altogether? That took guts. This is two compelling books in one: Shepard's story of his life in print journalism, and a clearheaded look at the way journalism is evolving due to electronic media, social networking, and the ability of anyone with a computer and an opinion to make him- or herself heard. Is journalism dying? Not according to Shepard. It's changing, yes, but in some respects it's also improving: the division between news source and audience is blurring, with the audience now being able to report its own news and to require established journalistic entities to tailor their output to suit the audience's needs (witness the rise of hyperlocal journalism). The author is eminently qualified to write about this subject, and he's an excellent writer to boot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)