Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

on the bus, on the trail

I just finished reading The Boys on the Bus, Timothy Crouse’s book about the journalists that covered the 1972 presidential election.

I bought the book a few years ago, on the recommendation of a journalism professor in college. It was out of print at the time (it’s since been reissued), so I’d tracked down a paperback copy so yellowed and ancient I worried the book would crumble in my hands before I had a chance to finish it.

It was an excellent read, though, with some surprising parallels between the world of 1972 and the present day, from Crouse’s well-put explanation of “pack journalism” to his observation that campaign reporters want to be assigned to the winning campaign to his descriptions of stage-managed campaign events and powerless antiwar demonstrators to a characterization of writer Theodore H. White which in some ways echoes present-day criticism of the Post’s Bob Woodward.

Regarding the insularity of “pack journalism,” Crouse wrote:

They all fed off the same pool report, the same daily handout, the same speech by the candidate; the whole pack was isolated in the same mobile village. After a while, they began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories.

The Post’s Jonathan Yardley revisited The Boys on the Bus in 2004 for his “Second Reading” series of book reviews and offered some interesting observations about the book and its significance in the world of campaign reporting and reporting about reporting.

It also was fascinating to read about what some present-day big-name journalists — David Broder, for example — were doing thirty years ago. (It also underscores just how long they’ve been in the game.)

Some of Crouse’s reporting originally appeared in Rolling Stone before it was turned into a book. Hunter S. Thompson was covering the McGovern campaign for the magazine at the same time — that coverage became the basis of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: 1972 — so there are also some funny observations about Thompson, his behavior and the press corps’ reaction to him.

I also read about a lot of reporters I’d never heard of before, but “got to know” a bit through the book. Looking for the Yardley column, I ran across a Howard Kurtz story from last summer about the departure of Jules Whitcover from the Baltimore Sun. Whitcover was one of the reporters prominently featured in Boys on the Bus, and after having just read the book, the article was a fascinating sort of “where are they now?” piece for me, a way to learn what happened to some of those prominent “characters” in Crouse’s book after the 1972 campaign.