Journalists

From Murder Scene to Murde3r Scene: Crime Writer Edna Buchanan

Bill Thompson

Edna Buchanan joined the Miami Herald in 1973, working the police beat. And she was good at it. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for her reporting.

By the late 1980s, she had turned to fiction writing, The real life stories she had covered became the raw material for her fiction.

And it turned out she was really good at that, too. Many of her books became best sellers, and a couple were turned into movies.

Get your copy of Edna Buchanan’s book

But she also wrote several nonfiction books, including one in 1992 called Never Let Them See You Cry. That’s when she and I had one of our several conversations over the years.

So here now, from 1992, Edna Buchanan

Edna Buchanan is 85 now, and still lives in Florida.

JFK Jr As Remembered By Magazine Colleague Richard Bradley

Bill Thompson

It was 25 years ago tomorrow, July 16, 1999 that a small plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard took the lives of 38-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.. his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.

At the time of his death Kennedy was struggling to keep his magazine, George, afloat.

Richard Bradley was one of the original editors at George in 1995, and by 1999 was the magazine’s executive editor.

Get your copy of Richard Bradley’s book

In 2002, Bradley – writing under his birth name Richard Blow – published a bestselling book about JFK Jr. and George, called American Son. The book was not without its critics and controversy, with some saying Bradley should not have written it at all.

I met Bradley when he was on a book tour to promote it in the spring of 2002. So here now, from 2002, Richard Bradley

Richard Bradley is0 now. George magazine folded in 2001 .

The Night the Beatles Rocked America: A Conversation with Journalist Larry Kane

Bill Thompson
Photo by Endlessdan

Sixty years ago this week the Beatles performed in concert – notable because it was their very first concert in the United States.

On February 11, 1964 the Beatles entertained a crowd of about 8,000 at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, DC.

After that concert, as they embarked on their 1964 U.S. tour, along with them was young journalist Larry Kane. He was, in fact, the only broadcast journalist who was with the band at every stop on both the’64 and ‘65 American tours

Kane has written three books about the Beatles, including his 2014 book When They Were Boys. So let’s take a few minutes to revisit this milepost in American culture. Here now. from 2014, Larry Kane,

Larry Kane is 81. He is a special contributor to Philadelphia’s KYW radio.

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Dan Rather: A Journey Through 70 Years in American Journalism

Bill Thompson
Photo by Moody College of Communication

Dan Rather has been a fixture in American journalism since the early 1950s.

As a young boy, growing up in Texas Rather became enamored of heroes like Edward r. Murrow, and vowed to become a journalist himself someday.

After establishing himself as a local reporter in the ’50s, Rather joined CBS News in the early 1960s. He was promoted to White House correspondent, and famously had run-ins with President Richard m. Nixon.

In 1981 Dan Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS evening News, a position he held for the next 24 years. His tenure in the anchor chair was not without its controversy and rather occasionally found himself at the center of the news.

In 1976 he wrote a best-selling book about the network news business, called The Camera, Never Blinks. And in 1994 he wrote its sequel, The Camera Never Blinks Twice. And that’s when I had one of my several interviews with him.

So here now, from 1994, Dan Rather.

Dan Rather is 92 now and still covering the news. Since 2021, he has been writing the newsletter “Steady” on the Substack platform.

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The Real Story of Area 51: A Conversation With Investigative Journalist Annie Jacobsen

Bill Thompson
Photo by Slowking

Area 51 (which is not its official name) is such a highly classified US Air Force installatio nthat for many decades, the United States government wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence.

And forget about finding out anything that really goes on an Area 51.

That is, until 2011, when investigative journalist. Annie Jacobsen wrote her groundbreaking book called simply Area 51.

She talked to men who had once worked there and kept Area 51’s secrets for years. And what she found out, and wrote about, is nothing short of astonishing..

So here now, from 2011, Annie Jacobsen.

Annie Jacobsen lives in Southern California and continues her investigative work.

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The Book That Proved Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone

Bill Thompson
Photo by Posnerwiki

It has now been 60 years since the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dallas.

And yet his death remains the subject of widespread conspiracy theories.

But 30 years ago, there was a definitive book written that reached the same conclusion that the Warren Commission did in the 1960s. That conclusion: Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, and acted alone.

The author of that book, called Case Closed, was investigative journalist Gerald Posner. Using technology completely unheard of in the 1960s, Posner reached the same conclusion.

So here now from 1993 Gerald Posner.

Gerald Posner is 69. HHs most recent book was a 2020 volume about big pharma.

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Dean Murphy

Bill Thompson
Robert J. Fisch

The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were to this generation what Pearl Harbor was to our parents and grandparents.

And as the histories of those events are written, it is essential to have contemporary eyewitness accounts.

But in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attack a New York Times reporter wanted to go beyond just simple eyewitness accounts and assemble an entire oral history of that day.

So in the months that followed, Dean Murphy painstakingly assembled an oral history which was published one year after the attack. His book was called September 11: An Oral History.

Now, while the descriptions in this interview are not in and of themselves graphic, the overall subject matter may be disturbing to some.

So here now, from September 2002, Dean Murphy.

Dean Murphy is now Associate Managing Editor at The New York Times.

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Jorge Ramos

Bill Thompson

For many years, Walter Cronkite was America’s favorite, and most trusted, television news anchor. Today, there’s a man known as the Walter Cronkite of Latino Americans

His name is Jorge Ramos, and he has been anchoring the news on Univision since 1987.

After his 50th birthday, when he realized that he had spent exactly half of his life in his native Mexico and half in the United States, Ramos became a US citizen..

But as he explained in his 2002 autobiography, No Borders, Ramos never felt completely at home in either country.

And that conversation that we had about his book more than 20 years ago seems as relevant today as it did then .

So here now, from 2002, Jorge Ramos.

Jorge Ramos is 65. He’s been Univision anchor since 1987. He lives in Miami.

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P.J. O’Rourke

Bill Thompson
Photo by Cato Institute.

Can you think of a subject that is drier and more boring than economics? After all, there is a reason that even it’s practitioners call it “the dismal science “.

But in the hands of satirist and journalist, P.J. O’Rourke, economics takes on a whole new brilliance.

And the title of his 1998 treatise on world economics, Eat The Rich, seems to have special resonance today.

Indeed, the ongoing debates over capitalism versus socialism is as powerful now as it was when I interviewed P.J. 25 years ago.

So here now, from 1998, P.J. O’Rourke.

P.J. O’Rourke died of cancer in 2022. He was 74.

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David Frost

Bill Thompson

David Frost had a successful, decades long career as a television talk show host and interviewer, in both the UK and the US.

He interviewed thousands of VIPs, celebrities, and movers and shakers of all kinds.

But he may be best remembered for his 1977 series of interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon, who just three years earlier had resigned the presidency in disgrace after the Watergate scandal.

Frost paid Nixon some $600,000 for those interviews. But they paid off, big time, as they became a part of American television history, and helped restore some of Nixon’s credibility.

I met David Frost 30 years later, when he wrote a book called Frost/Nixon, a behind the scenes account of how the interviews came about, and what happened when the cameras stopped ruling.

So here now, from 2007, David Frost.

David Frost died in 2013. He was 74.

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