Will I love Scoop?

Scoop is, as the title promises, an incisive look at the absurdity of tabloid journalism and how it may do more damage than good. Written in 1938, it's never been more pertinent than today, with a mass media unable or unwilling to call out the fundamental challenges we face, instead fighting for ratings and holding up our collective intellectual adherence to the status quo. He does so with great wit and a penchant for absurdity. Can't think of a better book about the vacuity of mainstream reporting.

I first encountered Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Scoop in a backpacker guesthouse in Kowloon in 1987. Some traveler had left it behind, and I read it insatiably, cover to cover, and then started again from the beginning. It was even more hilarious and bitingly satirical on the second read and is the one book I’d take along were I banished to a desert island where luggage allowance was severely restricted.

First published in 1938, Scoop delivers a timeless and elegant roasting of the profession of journalism and self-important foreign correspondents. I have to admit–up to a point–that the bumbling exploits… show more.

A savage counterpoint to Pyle’s brave frontline reporting. The English novelist made two trips to the Ethiopia to cover the war launched by Mussolini in 1935. While in Africa, Waugh complained bitterly about a rival reporter who “never set foot in Abyssinia . . . he sits in his hotel describing an entirely imaginary campaign.” And in this satire, he gave savage voice to this incendiary allegation, describing a group of reporters who spent the bulk of their time far from the front, writing stories based on either misleading briefings by local propaganda chiefs or ingenious inventions that fit the… show more.