Making Words Dance Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism, and Writing

by Schmuhl, Robert; Smith, Terence

• ISBN13: 9780740790096
• ISBN10: 0740790099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-06
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Summary

Making Words Dance: Perspectives on Red Smith, Journalism, and Writing is a timely and timeless collection of lectures examining both the writer's art and the role of journalism in American culture. The collected lectures are complemented by 16 articles and columns by Smith, a stylist and reporter whose writing always danced and taught lessons about the craft. Both an entertaining tutorial on the writer's art and an incisive commentary on the state of contemporary media, Making Words Dance is a fitting celebration of the life and work of one of American journalism's most notable figures.

Author Biography

Robert Schmuhl holds the Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Chair in American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame. He is the director of the John W. Gallivan program in Journalism, Ethics Democracy, also at Notre Dame, and the author or editor of ten other books. Terence Smith, Red Smith's son and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, is an award winning journalist who has been a reporter, a foreign correspondent, and an editor for the New York Times, CBS News, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, National Public Radio, and a variety of Web sites, including his own.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Introduction: Rare Red Smith	p. xv
Prologue: Remembering Red	p. xxxi
Sports and Politics	p. 3
"When I Was an Athlete"	p. 12
Finding an Authentic Voice	p. 17
A Response and Some Reflections	p. 29
The Discussion Period	p. 32
"Harry Truman Returns"	p. 41
The Art of the Craft	p. 44
Questions and Answers	p. 52
"And a Grasp of Millionaires"	p. 59
The View from the Road	p. 62
Questions and Answers	p. 72
"Person to Person"	p. 82
90 Feet Is Perfection	p. 88
A Response	p. 98
Sportswriting: A Woman's View	p. 103
"The Babe Was Always a Boy-One of a Kind"	p. 109
Writing for the Reader	p. 118
Questions and Answers	p. 125
"Good, Clean Fun"	p. 134
Who Killed the Foreign Correspondent?	p. 138
Questions and Answers	p. 151
"Red Trotsky Talks to Red Smith"	p. 159
How Muhammad Ali Changed the Press	p. 164
Questions and Answers	p. 177
"I'm the Greatest"	p. 181
Journalism: It's as Easy as ABC	p. 185
Questions and Answers	p. 194
"After Fifty Years"	p. 206
Returning to Our Roots	p. 209
Questions and Answers	p. 215
"Young Man with Flyrod"	p. 224
"A Mighty Angler Before the Lord"	p. 226
From Copybook to Computer: What You Write on and How You Do It	p. 229
"Jim Thurber"	p. 239
Whom Do Journalists Work For?	p. 42
"A Very Pious Story"	p. 257
Are Journalists Obsolete?	p. 260
Questions and Answers	p. 269
"Miracle of Coogan's Bluff"	p. 278
When Politicians Meet the Press	p. 282
"Writing Less-and Better?"	p. 293
Acknowledgments	p. 295
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