

How Cornelius Ryan’s 'The Longest Day' changed journalism - JacobAldridge
http://www.cjr.org/second_read/the_reporter_who_time_forgot.php?page=all

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mechanical_fish
I'm not sure why this is Hacker News, but I upvoted it anyway because, having
read it, I find that Cornelius Ryan is now another one of my heroes.

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JacobAldridge
I rate journalism among my passions, which is why I enjoyed this, but I added
it for its relevance to the ongoing discussion about news media. Solving 'the
news problem' with technology means blaming 'the news problem' on technology,
and I think it's a far more widespread cultural issue where tech plays but one
role.

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nfnaaron
"Meanwhile, The Longest Day was reissued in 1994 for the fiftieth anniversary
of D-Day. It still sells—a fact that belies the glaring omission of Ryan’s
work from so many anthologies of literary journalism, and also offers a
powerful lesson for a trade trying to figure out what people will pay to read.
There is nothing, it turns out, like a densely reported story propelled by the
palpable sense of a reporter chasing his story."

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ojbyrne
"Over the years the trade had produced occasional flashes of inspiration in
which a writer—Daniel Defoe, Rebecca West, Joseph Mitchell, W. C. Heinz, John
Hersey—took a turn at bringing to a true story the qualities of fiction."

I'm curious why the writer ignored George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway -
because they ruined his thesis?

