A best-selling classic—the raucous story of how American news reporting got to be what it is today.

Cheap booze. Flying fleshpots. Lack of sleep. Endless spin. Lying pols: just a few of the snares lying in wait for the reporters who covered the 1972 presidential election. Only three years out of college, Timothy Crouse managed to talk Rolling Stone magazine into letting him write about the reporters covering the Nixon and McGovern campaigns “on the bus.” Traveling with the press pack from the June primaries to the big night in November, Crouse hopscotched the country and witnessed the birth of modern campaign journalism.

Political spin-doctoring has become something of an art form in the last few decades. It was less artful in the early years of the information age, and Crouse’s entertaining look at the attempts of both ’72 campaign staffs to control the media seems almost comical, so poor were they at the manipulation of images and sound bites that now defines our politics. He is equally entertaining when he focuses on the other side of that equation—the media. More clearly than anyone before him, Crouse understood that journalists travel in packs—and that this fact shapes their thinking and reporting. As Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post thirty-one years after The Boys on the Bus came out, “People almost immediately understood that the landscape had changed: The press itself was now a story, and it has remained one—for better, but mostly for worse—ever since.”

As fresh and pertinent now as when it was first published in 1973, The Boys on the Bus is the raucous story of how American news got to be what it is today. With its verve, wit, and psychological acumen, it is a classic of American reporting.
 
Praise for The Boys on the Bus

“Crouse takes a big bite out of the hand that feeds news to America—a mean, funny,
absolutely honest book!”
—Hunter S. Thompson

“All the secrets . . . the definitive story.”
—The Washington Post

“Provokes, perplexes, illuminates and amuses.”
—Newsweek

Reviews: The Boys on the Bus “All the secrets . . . the definitive story.” —The Washington Post “Provokes, perplexes, illuminates and amuses.” —Newsweek “An extremely insightful and provocative book.” —New York “Crouse takes a big bite out of the hand that feeds news to America——a mean, funny, absolutely honest book!” —Hunter S. Thompson “Marvelously entertaining . . . There is no better way to find out just how the news . . . reaches us.” —The Boston Globe

Review: The Boys on the Bus (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post) The Boys on the Bus (1973), by Timothy Crouse, didn't enjoy quite as much eclat [as All the Presidents Men] (though it was a bestseller) but may have had a deeper and broader effect, for it turned the eyes of the press on the press itself, and opened the way to the age of media self-absorption. This surely was not Crouse's intention. A mere three years out of college, he managed to talk Rolling Stone magazine into letting him write about the men (and the very few women) who were covering both campaigns "on the bus," though the bus was usually an airplane, and in Richard Nixon's case it rarely left the White House grounds. The pieces got a lot of attention, and when Crouse expanded them into a book, people almost immediately understood that the landscape had changed: The press itself was now a story, and it has remained one -- for better, but mostly for worse -- ever since. ... (Read the full review.)

sfriedman	Posted on Mar 30, 2009 11:57 AM
Time Travel What a great way to go back in history. The book is very entertaining and I certainly felt I was living vicariously through the reporters. Too bad journalism is not the same today.
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Timothy Crouse was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone from 1971 to 1972. He is the author of The Boys on the Bus, a largely critical look at the journalists who covered the 1972 US presidential campaign. Later he became the Washington columnist for Esquire Magazine and also wrote articles for The New Yorker and The Village Voice. He has been working on fiction for the past several years.