Pick one or two paragraphs in each essay that, in your view, expresses well Liebling's main thesis in his analysis of the problems of the press in (respectively) 1963; 1947; 1960.
Discuss -- do not summarize, but analyse -- each paragraph.
Finally: summarize Liebling's general analysis of the press, and tell us what you think about it.
Length for the above -- 300 words or a bit more; 100 words or a bit more on each essay.
THEN Read the two chapters on Hearst from Liebling's collection of essays The Press.
Liebling wrote "The Man Who Changed The Rules" in The New Yorker on the occasion of Hearst Sr.'s death in 1951. In it he considers Hearst's career.
Ten years later he wrote "A Look At The Record" (in The New Yorker again, I think) as a review of W.A. Swanberg's biography of Hearst, and as a retrospective. Here he muses on Hearst's career again, but also on the way it is being remembered, or recreated, by a biographer who admires "the great man" and by the official media, always ready to celebrate -- itself!
Read these two essays by Liebling on Hearst. Consider the following questions:
Liebling's view of Hearst, reality vs myth.
The way Liebling uses Hearst as a way of continuing his critical analysis of American journalism as a whole, in the 1940s to the early 1960s, the period bracketed by these essays.
Write 100 - 150 words analyzing Liebling's discussion of Hearst and what he meant. Don't quote -- analyze.
Total length for all assignments: 400 words - a little longer than usual.