In 1972, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci published an interview with Henry Kissinger, the architect of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy, in which Kissinger described himself as “the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse.” Kissinger later described that interview, which reportedly displeased his boss, as“他的职业生涯的最灾难性的决定”。它聚氨酯t Fallaci on the map as one of the world’s most respected political journalists.

I desperately wanted to be the globe-trotting, intrepid and undeniably glamorousFallaci. Failing that, I wanted to work in a big-city newsroom, breaking big stories and writing incisive profiles. It didn’t quite work out that way, though I did, for a time, work at a small-town newspaper, covering school board and town council meetings, eventually becoming the editor and writing impassioned pieces about predatory real estate agents and local zoning ordinances.

A big part of why I wanted to be a journalist was what I perceived as the drama and romance of the profession; I devoured the old “Brenda Starr, Reporter” comic strip and all but memorized the classic films “His Girl Friday” and “Woman of the Year.” My mentor, of course, would be the gruff but kindly Lou Grant, editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune, played by Ed Asner on the eponymous television series.

If you’re a newspaper hound like me, you’ll love Carl Bernstein’s memoir “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.” Bernstein takes us back to his days as a 16-year-old, freckle-faced copyboy, decked out in an ivory suit bought from a discount local haberdasher, in the Washington Star newsroom. Failing out of high school as what in those days was called a juvenile delinquent, Bernstein found his calling at the Star, falling in love with the newspaper world.

What an intoxicating place it was: clattering typewriters, clanging phones, teletype machines ringing bells and flashing with big stories, the rumble of the presses, boys running copy downstream, ripped copy and paste pots. And, of course, fishbowl-size martinis, endless cigarettes and political gossip at Harrigan’s, the bar where reporters gathered.

Bernstein started at the Star in 1960, so the book covers the Kennedy years, the space race and the early years of the civil rights movement. Fertile ground indeed for an aspiring journalist.

One of the reasons I love this book is it’s the story of a newsroom that no longer exists. Walk into any big-city newspaper today and it’s strangely quiet. Everybody staring at their screens, writing and transmitting copy electronically. No clattering, no clanging, no rumbling. And certainly no cigarettes.

It makes me think about how much the digital revolution has not only transformed big-city newsrooms, but would have drastically altered the very plots ofso many well-known stories.What if Terry had been able to text Nickie about being struck by a car while on her way to meet him in “An Affair to Remember?” The plot of “Pride and Prejudice” would be destroyed without all the letters going back and forth and the time that elapses between them. Romeo and Juliet had epic communications issues that would have been easily solved by cell phones.

Back to newspapers: If you’re looking for an entertaining newspaper novel, try Michael Frayn’s hilarious 1967 “Toward the End of Morning,”set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national British newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street.

I also highly recommend Tom Rachman’s 2010 debut, “The Imperfectionists.” It’s the story of the staff members at an unnamed English-language newspaper in Rome, including a past-his-prime, four-times-married reporter; a bumbling obituary writer; a paranoid copy editor; and the corrections editor, a strict and constantly frustrated grammarian. The novel is equally funny and heartbreaking.

Today, Brenda Starr is but a distant memory, and here I am, writing for a big-city newspaper. I’m not interviewing world leaders like Fallaci, but I do get to write about books, my passion. I’ll take it.