NYU Picks Century's Best Journalism

Staff -- Library Journal, 3/8/1999

The nation's mania for list continues: New York University's journalism department has released a list of the 20th century's 100 best pieces of reporting. The term journalism is used very broadly, and about one-fourth of the 100 were published as books rather than newspaper stories. The rather eclectic list includes two collections of photos by the great Robert Capa (numbers 27 and 73), Walter Cronkite's TV coverage of Vietnam (number 63), and even Frank McCourt's best-selling memoir Angela's Ashes (number 95). John Hersey's Hiroshima took the top slot, followed by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Woodward and Bernstein's Washington Post investigation of Watergate, Edward R. Murrow's CBS Radio commentary on the Battle of Britain, and Ida Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil Company," which appeared in McClure's. Journalism that was the basis for literature also is well represented, including Steinbeck's reports on the Okie migrant camps and Hemingway's dispatches on the Spanish Civil War. Hunter S. Thompson's self-proclaimed "gonzo" approach to reporting won him the final slot, coming in at 100 with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, which perhaps officially makes him part of the establishment.