Presented by Penguin.

Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson, former editor of THE BRAND NEW York Times, may be the gripping and definitive in-the-room account of the revolution which has swept the news industry during the last 10 years and reshaped the world.

Drawing on revelatory access, Abramson takes us behind the scenes at four press titans through the most volatile years in information history. Two are maverick upstarts: BuzzFeed, the brain-child of virtuoso clickbait scientist Jonah Perretti, and VICE, about Merchants of Truth: In the Information Revolution led with the booze-fuelled anarcho-hipster Shane Smith. Their viral technology and disregard for the long-established criteria of news journalism allow them to create game-changing billion-dollar businesses out of the millennial flavor for puppies and nudity.

The two others are among the world’s most venerable news institutions: The New York Instances, owned and run for generations by the Sulzberger dynasty, as well as the Washington Post, also family-owned but quickly to become bought by the world’s richest merchant of most, Jeff Bezos. Here Abramson reveals first-hand the seismic clashes that happen in the boardrooms and newsrooms because they are compelled to select between their appreciated principles – objectivity and impartiality – and success in a global where online advertising via Facebook and Google appears the only life-raft.

We are using the deal-making tycoons, thrusting reporters and hard-bitten editors, the egomaniacs, bullshitters, provocateurs and bullies, as some surf yet others drown in the breaking wave of switch. And we watch as the survivors confront the horrifying price of their achievement: intimate scandal, fake news, the election of Leader Trump, the shaking of democracy.

Exposing the people and decisions that brought us to now, Merchants of Truth is a major book that breaks the best news story of our times.

(c) 2019, Jill Abramson (P) 2019 Simon & Schuster Audio