^#smrgSAHAF Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper -

Each day across the country, clusters of editors meet to decide what the public should learn about "the news" -- everything from sports to crime. Sensitive questions arise. For example, how hard should reporters try to ferret out the sex lives of a politician, judge or minister? People with a solid stake in their communities once ran these news conferences for the most part. But giant chains are taking over the American information industry. Their executives must respond to pressures from distant corporate headquarters and, ultimately, from Wall Street's investors.

The first book of its kind, SPIKED is the inside account of one acquisition, that of the Hartford Courant in Connecticut. SPIKED shows how hidden imperatives and taboos corrupted America's oldest newspaper after it was bought by one of the most respected media firms in the country, the Times Mirror Co. of Los Angeles. Learn how the chain's executives:

Repeatedly misled readers, government officials and Pulitzer Prize judges; Shamelessly inflamed minorities against police while its own reporter was finding irrefutable evidence that police did nothing wrong;
Intimidated public officials so that they did not dare reveal the newspaper's deceptions; Refused to report health hazards and abusive insurance company practices uncovered by experts and its own staff of reporters;
Paid a reporter $50,000 in hush money.