[Marxism] John L. Hess

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Press, Jan. 26, 2005
JOHN L. HESS AND HIS TIMES
By Alexander Zaitchik

If one man ever gave blogging a good name, it was John L. Hess, who died 
last week of heart failure at 87. As late as New Year's Eve, Hess was 
speaking his sharp mind through his website, johnlhess.blogspot.com. There, 
as in his raspy-voiced daily commentaries for WBAI, the nation's oldest 
working media critic spat well-aimed poison darts at his favorite targets: 
bad food writing, lying politicians and the New York Times, Hess' 
journalistic home for a quarter century.

If anyone is quietly pleased with Hess' passing, they likely work in a big 
newspaper building at 229 W. 43rd St. Since leaving the paper in 1978, Hess 
has been a merciless shadow ombudsman for the Times, a role that culminated 
in the 2003 publication of My Times, his tell-all account of his long and 
varied career at the paper. During his years with the Times, Hess was food 
critic, city reporter, foreign correspondent, desk editor and obit writer. 
(One can only speculate how much this last post helped him prepare for last 
week.)

My Times is Hess' monument to the future. It is a devastating account of 
how the paper helped Robert Moses ravish the Bronx and Pat Moynihan libel 
the poor; how it blew My Lai, Watergate and the banking scandals that 
almost bankrupted the city; how it played along with the CIA abroad and Con 
Ed and Lilco at home; how it helped to wreck the campaign for national 
health insurance.

In unpacking all of this and more, Hess makes a convincing case that the 
Times has never been among the best newspapers in the world, just the most 
powerful. In many important ways, Hess believed the Times remarkably poor 
for a major daily?over- and poorly edited, over-staffed, puffed-up and 
power worshiping. The self-satisfaction the paper took in being a loyal 
mouthpiece for the Establishment is summed up by former Times foreign 
editor Emanuel Freedman, who once told Hess, "I don't know why everybody 
wants to be a reporter?always asking questions."

Not surprisingly, the Times failed to review or mention My Times upon its 
release, even as Judith Miller was busy confirming its thesis. Hess once 
told me that someone high on the masthead ordered a large batch of the 
memoir, but the first mention of the book to appear in the paper was 
Douglas Martin's smug Jan 22. obituary. My Times, writes Martin, "mixed 
some acerbic memories [of the paper] with the occasional grudging 
compliment." Mostly, the book was a showcase for Hess' "curmudgeonly manner."

Besides illustrating Hess' point about Times editing?can memories be 
"acerbic"??the obit is a pathetic attempt to gloat over the body of a man 
that brought so much acclaim to the paper during his career, and did so 
much to keep it honest in his retirement.




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