Let it Bleed

John Darnton Paints the Times Red

by Nina Shengold and photographs by Jennifer May, August 25, 2008

Talk about front-page news. In the opening pages of John Darnton’s Black & White and Dead All Over, merciless editor Theodore S. Ratnoff turns up dead in the newsroom, a note in his trademark purple ink pinned to his chest with the spike he once used to impale cancelled stories. The journalistic saw “If it bleeds, it leads” has rarely been taken so literally.

Ratnoff was the scourge of a fictional newspaper that bears more than a passing resemblance to Darnton’s day job. In a waggish press release, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor writes, “Some have suggested that Black & White and Dead All Over, which is set in a major New York City metropolitan daily of international repute, may be a roman a clef. Such a rumor may have come from the fact that I have worked over four decades at the New York Times and that I have never worked at any other newspaper.” Could this be why the Times Book Review headlined its rave, “Anybody We Know?”

From the aerie-like deck of his New Paltz retreat, the author insists, “The characters are not always one-for-one. I put pieces together.” After a pause, he adds wryly, “Some pieces are bigger than others.” Most of the novel’s wittily encoded cables were lifted verbatim from legendary reporter Homer Bigart; a fatefully bad lede is based on an actual one by a now-deceased colleague.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” the semiretired Darnton shrugs, though Black & White provides ample proof that he not only can make it up, but can also make it hilarious. Kirkus Reviews called the satirical mystery a “multifaceted, gloriously entertaining thriller.” The LA Times weighed in with “deliciously sharp, wise, and hilarious. A love letter to an endangered species.”

That species, of course, is print journalism. Darnton’s insider view of a news industry threatened by rising costs, diminishing profits, corporate greed, and a vanishing readership gives his novel additional bite. So does his undiluted affection for the hard-drinking, work-driven newsmen of past generations.