We Want Media

Although the book title “Confessions of an American Media Man” isn’t quite as enticing the juicy tell-alls of a dangerous mind, that’s an American journalist for you (an Amherst and Princeton one at that). Tom Plate is a veteran journalist who has spent time at the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsday, New York Magazine, and CBS. Apparently, James Brady (from Brady reviewed Plate and hints that Plate uses the book for personal retribution and may have some flaws as a journalist.

Now, I haven’t read the book, but from the information available about it, it seems to be entirely an attack on people in the industry. Okay, that would be fine so long as it related to media issues, but he simply lashes out on them because they didn’t play nice. For example, he threw names around such as Gail Sheehy. According to Forbes, Gail Sheehy was his co-worker at New York Magazine and sweet-talked Plate into dishing anonymously about his sex life for her book Passages. He was devastated to find himself described as "short-legged and porky." Plate responds with an unconvincing, “No, this isn’t a get-even book.”

Plate's work ethic is questionable as well. Who in the world would disclose that he “showed up hung-over for lunch with a senior Time exec, who fortunately was even more hung-over, so Tom got the job.”

Yes, I suppose that anecdote is telling of the shape of the media hiring process, but it is even more embarrassing for Plate to flaunt his shoddy career climb. Even if we forgot the past, his career doesn’t seem much better now. Brady catches Plate telling a lie; Plate claimed his book was a best seller all over Asia, when in fact it was probably at least 141,000 books away from being anywhere near close the top 100 books. Brady also describes the book as “riddled with typos, misspellings and odd usages.” Apparently, Plate didn’t proofread the book at all, but instead sent it to Malaysia to have non-English speakers do it. When Brady suggested that Plate himself, a native English speaker, proofread his own book, Plate merely found the request “reasonable,” and promised a corrected second draft.

It sounds like a ridiculously, horrible book. Also, if its excruciatingly unstimulating title is matched with stories about his porkiness and sex-life, it doesn’t deserve a second draft.