When I was in the thick of it, we were in one of the heydays of American journalism. Newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, along with a handful of magazines, like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, stimulated and curated a national debate that was spirited, sane, and fact-based. We were home to an astonishing gathering of talent. Our vision and sense of mission catalyzed readers into a community with knowledge and purpose.
Under the banner of the First Amendment, I sent out my warriors—Hunter S. Thompson, Richard N. Goodwin, P. J .O’Rourke, William Greider, and Matt Taibbi, among others—to cover national affairs and a dozen presidential elections. They took wild liberties in their prose, but we diligently observed the rules about truth and malice—the price of free speech.
