Somebody's Gotta Tell It

"Jack Newfield believes that a journalist's beat is the hard news: say what needs to be said and make it stick. Inspired by newspaper legends Murray Kempton, I. F. Stone, and Jimmy Cannon, and by contemporaries Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, Newfield has spent over forty years putting his beliefs on the line and into print. He has opened cans of worms, sung the praises of the unsung, exposed bullies and cheats, and told us what it was like to watch history being made from the inside.". "Somebody's Gotta Tell It is the work of a journalist and a man whose passion for his profession and love for his country have never faltered, though they have led him to ask tough questions. Newfield captures the sweep of the nation's story over the last half-century, giving us indelible portraits of the personalities that have driven it - fighters, singers, politicians, dreamers, organizers, and gangsters - the high-profile as well as the rank and file. He acknowledges his debts, pays his respects, and settles his scores. Most of all he shows how the neighborhood code he learned growing up, though sometimes sorely tested, has never failed him."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.