The Reporter’s Trade

by Joseph and Stewart Alsop

The Bodley Head, 1960, [First Edition], hardcover

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, front endpaper clipped, no inscriptions (see photographs)

“Written in 1958 by sibling newspaper columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, The Reporter’s Trade follows in the long tradition of journalism memoirs that mash-up biography and bibliography, with charming tales and a healthy dose of D.C. name-dropping.  The Alsop brothers were reporters and columnists from around the time of World War II until the 1970s, covering politics and Washington life as well as foreign affairs and national issues. Over their careers the brothers worked together and separately, writing for places such as The New York Herald Tribune and The Saturday Evening Post.  While The Reporter’s Trade devotes much of its time to recounting the duo’s reporting adventures and commentary on the post-war years, the Alsops also provide a dose of guidance on what it takes to be a journalist. “People speak of a newspaperman’s sources as though these sources were so many freely bubbling, always gushing springs. Yet the voluntary source is almost as rare as hen’s teeth,” they write.”