Journalism,it's long been said,is not just a business but a vital public service.Lately,however,voices from all sides of the political spectrum insist that today's journalism often makes a mockery of its high-minded ideals.But that's where agreement ceases and the debate abou what ails journalism grows increasingly partisan and ugly.Is the culprit big media consolidation?Gotcha journalism?Noisy instant opinions on cable and the Internet?Apack of unpa-trions liberals,out of touch with America,whose collective bias forms an “Axis of Weasel”?Right-wing pundits who think that the words“fair and balanced”will,like a fairy's spell,turn their partisan diet into fair and balanced journalism?In Backstory,Ken Auletta's piercing gaze sweeps into every corner of a subject that has generated rtremen dous noise but preious little clear thinking. Auletta sits the reader by the campfire and tells stories.Stories about people that serve to illuminate the institutions they work for and the issues they wrestle with.He travels from the proud New York Times,a last outpost of old——school family ownership,recently burffeted by scandal,out across the country to jour-nalism's new wave,chains like the Chicago Tribune where synergy is in the saddle and the stock price often sets the pace.He journeys to the depths of New York City's brutal tabloid wars,where he discovers that ego and power are at least as compelling a motivator as profit；he ventures out onto the cushy celebrity-journalist circuit,where he shines a spotlight on jour-nalists who've ascended to the Olympian status of “media personality”and get to schmooze with Imus and collect fat corporate lecture fees.He reckons with the legacy of journalism's less compromised past,and prospects for its future,from fallen stars of “new media”like Inside.com to the ascendant star of cable,Roger Ailes's Fox News. The product of more than ten years cover-ing the news media for The New Yorker,Backstory will become the definitive take on this most important of subjects,a Journalism IOI for civilians as well as jour-nalists by the course's master teacher.