What were the best
journalistic stories of the American 20th century? This list was selected by Madeleine Blais, Alan Brinkley,
David Brinkley, Lydia Chavez, Karen Durbin, Clay Felker, Jeff Greenfield,
Pete Hamill, Mary McGrory, Nancy Maynard, Eric Newton, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Gene Roberts,
Morley Safer, David Shaw,
George Will, Ben Yagoda and the
New York University Journalism faculty. The list was released in March, 1999.
There were 270 nominations for this list. The judges based their decisions on the work's impact, the magnitude of the event being reported on, and the quality of the writing.
Top 100 Works of Journalism In the United States In the 20th Century
- John Hersey -- Hiroshima, 1946
- Rachel Carson -- Silent Spring, 1962
- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- Watergate investigations for the Washington Post, 1972-73
- Edward R. Murrow -- This is London...radio reports for CBS on the German bombing of London, 1940
- Ida Tarbell -- The History of the Standard Oil Company, 1902-1904
- Lincoln Steffens -- The Shame of the Cities, 1902-1904
- John Reed -- Ten Days That Shook the World, 1919
- H.L. Mencken Coverage of the Scopes monkey trial, 1925
- Ernie Pyle Reports from Europe and the Pacific during World War II, 1940-45
- Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly -- See It Now documentary on Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1954
- Edward R. Murrow, David Lowe and Fred Friendly -- Harvest of Shame, 1960
- Seymour Hersh -- Investigation My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, 1969
- New York Times -- Publication of the Pentagon Papers, 1971
- James Agee and Walker Evans -- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941
- W.E.B. DuBois -- The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
- I.F. Stone -- Stone’s Weekly, 1953-67
- Henry Hampton -- Eyes on the Prize, 1987
- Tom Wolfe -- Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968
- Norman Mailer -- The Armies of the Night, 1968
- Hannah Arendt -- Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963
- William Shirer -- Berlin Diary, 1939-1941
- Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood, 1965
- Joan Didion -- Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968
- Tom Wolfe -- The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965
- Michael Herr -- Dispatches, 1977
- Theodore White -- The Making of the President: 1960, 1961
- Robert Capa -- Ten photographs from D-Day, 1944
- J. Anthony Lukas -- Common Ground, 1985
- Richard Harding Davis -- Coverage of German march into Belgium, 1914
- Dorothy Thompson -- Reports on the rise of Hitler in Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post, 1931-34
- John Steinbeck -- Reports on Okie migrant camp life for the San Francisco News, 1936
- A.J. Liebling -- The Road Back to Paris, 1944
- Ernest Hemingway -- Journalistic reports on the Spanish Civil War, 1937-38
- Martha Gellhorn -- The Face of War, 1959
- James Baldwin -- The Fire Next Time, 1963
- Joseph Mitchell -- Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories, 1992
- Betty Friedan -- The Feminine Mystique, 1963
- Ralph Nader -- Unsafe at Any Speed, 1965
- Herblock -- Political cartoons, 1950
- James Baldwin -- Letter from the South: Nobody Knows My Name, 1959
- Huyn Cong Ut -- Photograph of a burning girl running from a napalm attack, 1972
- Pauline Kael -- Trash, Art, and the Movies, 1969
- Gay Talese -- Fame and Obscurity, 1970
- Randy Shilts -- Reporting on AIDS, 1981-85
- Janet Flanner -- Paris Journals in The New Yorker, 1944-45
- Neil Sheehan -- A Bright Shining Lie, 1988
- A.J. Liebling -- The Wayward Pressman, 1947
- Tom Wolfe -- The Right Stuff, 1979
- Murray Kempton -- America Comes of Middle Age, 1950-1962
- Murray Kempton -- Part of Our Time, 1955
- Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele -- America: What Went Wrong, 1991
- Taylor Branch -- Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63
- Harrison Salisbury -- Reporting from the Soviet Union for The New York Times, 1949-54
- John McPhee -- The John McPhee Reader, 1976
- ABC -- Live broadcast of Army-McCarthy hearings, 1954
- Frederick Wiseman -- Titicut Follies, 1967
- David Remnick -- Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, 1993
- Richard Ben Cramer -- What It Takes: The Way to the White House, 1992
- Jonathan Schell -- The Fate of the Earth, 1982
- Russell Baker -- Franks and Beans, in The New York Times, 1975
- Homer Bigart -- account on the end of World War II in the New York Herald-Tribune, 1945
- Ben Hecht -- 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922
- Walter Cronkite -- Documentary on Vietnam, 1968
- Walter Lippmann -- Early essays for The New Republic, 1914
- Margaret Bourke-White -- Photographs for Lifemagazine following the defeat of Germany, 1945
- Lillian Ross -- Reporting, 1964
- Nicholas Lemann -- The Promised Land, 1991
- Joe Rosenthal -- Photograph of Marines raising a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, 1945
- Hodding Carter, Jr -- Go for Broke, 1945
- The New Yorker -- The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 1947
- Meyer Berger -- Report on killings of Howard Unruh in The New York Times, 1949
- Norman Mailer -- The Executioner’s Song, 1979
- Robert Capa -- Spanish Civil War photos for Life, 1936
- Susan Sontag -- Notes on Camp, 1964
- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- All the President’s Men, 1974
- John Hersey -- Here To Stay, 1963
- A.J. Liebling -- The Earl of Louisiana, 1961
- Mike Davis -- City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, 1990
- Melissa Fay Greene -- Praying for Sheetrock, 1991
- J. Anthony Lukas -- The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick, 1967
- Herbert Bayard Swope -- Klan Exposed, 1921
- William Allen White -- To an Anxious Friend, 1922
- Edward R. Murrow -- Report of the liberation of Buchenwald, 1945
- Joseph Mitchell -- McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, 1943
- Lillian Ross -- Picture, 1952
- Earl Brown -- Series of articles on race for Harper’s and Life magazines , 1942-44
- Greil Marcus -- Mystery Train, 1975
- Morley Safer -- Report for CBS on the hamlet of Cam Ne in Vietnam, 1965
- Ted Poston -- Coverage of the Little Scottsboro trial, 1949
- Leon Dash -- Rosa Lee’s Story in The Washington Post, 1994
- Jane Kramer -- The Europeans, 1988
- Eddie Adams and Vo Suu -- Photograph of a Saigon execution, 1968
- Grantland Rice -- Notre Dame’s ‘Four Horsemen’, 1924
- Jane Kramer -- The Politics of Memory, 1996
- Frank McCourt -- Angela’s Ashes, 1996
- Vincent Sheean -- Personal History, 1935
- W.E.B. DuBois -- Columns on race during his tenure as editor of The Crisis, 1910-34
- Damon Runyon -- Crime reporting, 1926
- Joe McGinniss -- The Selling of the President 1968, 1969
- Hunter S. Thompson -- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1973
Sources:
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Top%20100%20nominations%20page.htm
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Top%20100%20page.htm
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Top%20100%20-%20German%20page.htm