COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW

BOOK REPORTS
IDEAS & REVIEWS

BY JAMES BOYLAN copy I remember editing in the

1950s. He had a di,stinguislied career
COVERING GLOBALIZATION: as a foreign and war correspondent,
A HANDBOOK FOR REPORTERS and ultimately accepted the a.ssign-
Edited by Anya Schiffrin and ment of memorializing Yank, which
Anitr Bisat he has dtine well in this readable
Columbia University Press. 340 pp. memoir-history. Not bad for a for-
$69.50 cloth and electronic; mer Gl of ninety.
$34.50 paper
DRAWN TO EXTREMES: THE

C ohering Globalization is a text-

book in a special sense. It is
(ícganiiíed in palatable sections like
USE AND ABUSE OF EDITORLVL
CARTOONS
By Chris Uimb
any good text, but ils content is (Columbia University Press
Liimed high, at joiimalisLs aspiring to 281 pp. $29.50
cover the economics of emerging
c<j Lin tries. One editor, Anya
ScliilTrin. is at Columbia University's
School of International and Public
each; second, it was written, edited.
and distributed by enli.sted men.
E ditorial cartoons have steadily
lost status since the days when
many major newspapers had a full-
Affairs: the otlier, Anier Bisat. is an
with super\'isory officers and even scale cartocm either on page one or
economist now working in hedge generals keeping their distance. It on the editorial page. Most now .set-
iund.s. They have (he assi.stance of was first proposed by a former tle for syndicated or reprinted fare,
more than thirty contrifiiitors from enlisted man, Egbert White, and it or for gag drawings, more humor-
t>ther countries and international became, despite its government ous than pointed. Yet Chris Lamlj, a
organizations. Tliis is an impressive sponsorship, a peculiarly democratic professor of communication at the
work that starts on a particularly periodical for a far-flung citizen College of Charleston, remains a
good note with an essay on critical army. Run from offices in New York believer in their Wi)rth and vitality.
thinking for journalists by Schiffrin and edited by a Boston newspaper- Cartoonists, he suggests, are a
and by the Nobel Prize winner man named Joe McCarthy {no rela- downtrodden class: their "editors do
Joseph E. Stiglitz. Tips for reporterstion), Yank's staff was under orders not understand the function of edi-
are scattcrcLi throughout. to rotate regularly out to the front torial cartoons" and •'cartoonists are
lines. It was notable for its combat often given less freedom than edito-
YANK — THE ARMY WEEKLY: coverage, written and pictorial; for rial writers or columnists have."
REPORTING THE GREATEST ils ''Mail Cal!" column, which aired The cartoonist's darkest days occur
GENERATION issues and complaints from around when (1) the newspaper refuses to
By Barrett McCriim the globe; and not least for its publish a cartoon or (2) when it
Fulcrum Publishing weekly cartoon, "Sad Sack," the pri- issues an apology for a cartoon it
2S~ pp. S 18.95 paper vate too unlucky to attain pfc. published. Yet the examples that
Yanks staffers were notorious for Lamb prints of rejectetl cartoons —

W ho remembers Yank niaga- their indifference to military dress

/.ine any more!' Unlike it.s and protocol, and for their adven-
newspaper counterpart. Stars and turousness: one carload drove into
many of them merely risqué rather
than daring — sliake one's confi-
dence in the infallibility of cartoon-
Stripes, which has lasted from 191H Tokyo in August 1945 well in ists. The book is generously illustrat-
to the present ( w ith time out advance of the rest of the military. A ed with the work of cartoonists past
between wars), Yank WAS published few staffers died: a good many were and present. It contains a special
; ibr only three anti a half years, but wounded, including the aLithor. tribute to Garry Trudeau, who has
J in that time it had two claims to Yank closed at the end of 1945, and now done Dooneshury for more
i fame: first, for a time it was the its journalists scattered back intt) the than thirty years; Lamb hails him as
;; most widely read periodical in the newspaper and magazine ¡îusiness. a satirist outstripping Mark Twain,
'^ world, distributing more than two Among them was Barrett McGurn, Ambrose Bierce, and H.L. Mencken.
<j' million copies a week at a nickel whose New York Herald Tribune Possibly. •

March/April 2005 63
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