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ix Introduction —hank klibanoff As a literary genre, the memoir has come under attack in the last couple of years, often justifiably. There are too many people with too few years, too few experiences, and too little to say taking too much of our time glorifying their fifteen minutes of fame—and every quarter-hour increment that came before and after. But there are others whose memoirs capture the meaning and reveal the importance not merely of a life, but of a time. This is one of those memoirs, and it’s one that is particularly valuable to have now. Jack Nelson’s story is, of course, about him, his life and his extraordinary newspaper career before he retired. His years as a gullible cub reporter at the Daily Herald in Biloxi–Gulfport, Mississippi, as a pugnacious Pulitzer Prize winner at the Atlanta Constitution, and as the archetype beat reporter for the Los Angeles Times in its Atlanta and Washington, D.C., bureaus put Nelson in the forefront of some of this nation’s greatest domestic news stories since the Civil War. But more than one man’s journey, this is the revealing (and entertaining ) chronicle of newspaper journalism in the fifty years before the business went into intensive care just as Jack was retiring. This is not a sentimental scrapbook or a gauzy reminiscence about the days of gumshoes and glue pots. Jack has produced a rich memoir that is historically important in its portrayal of newspaper journalism in the evolving and emerging South of the twentieth century. That these stories were part of the life and journalistic development of someone who became as well known and respected as Jack makes this even more compelling. Jack straddled momentous periods in southern and U.S. history, and his memories about the difficult circumstances, the contentious people, and the calamitous events that he encountered provide a fully grounded perspective on that history. Inside these pages, you see how Jack, from x introduction his earliest days, was shaped by the events and circumstances he faced at close range—war, unemployment, white supremacy, black rebellion, bullying, hypocrisy, unchecked power and demagoguery. But that alone would not be a good reason to read this memoir; there are plenty of memoirs by people who grew up in times of war and violence, who had no plumbing or electricity, who had to confront drunk dads and comfort grieving mothers, who want to confess embarrassing moments. What makes this even more valuable is who Jack was, and the role he played as an actor in that history. Jack, to good purpose, felt “reporter” was not a title but an entitlement to ask anyone in power or authority any question at any time; he felt similarly entitled to obtain just about any document he believed might provide answers that would bring knowledge and clarity to his readers. In Jack’s early years, when he was reeling off mind-boggling stories about corruption and abuse in Mississippi and Georgia, that hard-nosed, unapologetic sense of privilege, in the best sense of the word, distinguished him from many reporters and probably cost him some friends. But Jack had an old-school belief that a newspaper reporter who was content to just be on the front row of history, and who didn’t get out of his seat and go behind the curtain in search of—well, who knows what one might find?—wasn’t really doing his job. So Jack was not a bit player in anything. He was, through his steely commitment to journalism, a creator of events, a generator of news, a history shaper. And he did it better than just about anybody. To see the way he cultivated sources—even the cop in the opening chapter who bullied Jack when he was fifteen turned out later to be a great source—is to see a master beat reporter at work. To see the way he parlayed a beating at the hands of a doctor into additional sources for his Pulitzer Prize– winning investigation into abuse, negligence, and corruption at the state hospital at Milledgeville, Georgia, is to see an indomitable spirit. Wherever Jack landed, he found the corruption others missed, or, more likely, disregarded. He found it in anything-goes, lawless Biloxi; he found it in buttoned-down corporate Atlanta; he found it in the college town of Athens, Georgia. Jack turned his investigations of illegal gambling , liquor sales, prostitution, shakedowns, and corrupt cops into...

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