Bulletins from Dallas (ePub)

most significant journalist of the era.” —Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, senior judicial analyst, Fox News Channel, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School

“To read Bulletins from Dallas is to touch the fabric of history, through Sanderson’s artful weave of many voices, from presidents across the decades to the last words uttered by J.F.K. Swept back through the corridors of time, we hear the urgent bells and clatter of the teletype machine: Merriman Smith’s first report to the world, ‘Three shots fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in Downtown Dallas.’ This compelling narrative takes us to that moment when our whole nation cried, and, even now, to tears of primal sympathy that never seem to end.” —Allen Childs, author of We Were There: Revelations from the Dallas Doctors Who Attended to JFK on November 22, 1963

“Bill Sanderson’s Bulletins from Dallas is the story of UPI newspaperman Merriman Smith who covered the Kennedy assassination with energy and panache, and for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It’s a clinic on how to be a newspaper journalist circa 1963, one with equal measures of precision and emotion. Smith was the Dean of White House reporters of his day, a man who ‘could dictate perfect copy off the top of his head,’ whose punctuation was unerring. Such focus and determination, and a competitive spirit that led him to beat out the AP especially on the JFK assassination story, makes this book exciting reading. You’ll want to be a reporter even as the species is endangered. Merriman Smith, unlike other sycophantic reporters, did not worship his subjects. Wisely, he offered his allegiance not to individuals, but to the White House itself. This is an important book and a must for anyone interessted in how a seasoned reporter covered the JFK assassination without mythologizing or distorting available history.” —Joan Mellen, author of A Farewell to Justice and The Great Game in Cuba

“Bill Sanderson provides readers a probing, in-depth look at one of the most fascinating journalists of the twentieth century. From Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, Merriman Smith was a front row observer to people and events that shaped the course of history—Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb, the turbulence of the Civil Rights Movement, LBJ’s ill-advised and misguided conduct of the Vietnam War. And, of course, President Kennedy’s assassination. In Bulletins from Dallas, the author uncovers new observations of and insights into “Smitty’s” reporting on that tragic day, as well as compelling stories and anecdotes about the journalist’s personal life and struggles. Anyone interested in presidential history, journalism, and that fateful day in Dallas, will love this read. I certainly did.” —Dean R. Owen, author of November 22, 1963: Reflections on the Life, Assassination, and Legacy of John F. Kennedy

“Bill Sanderson resurrects the murder of JFK in Dallas through the experience of fellow journalists who reported it, chiefly Merriman Smith, who was in the parade behind the president’s car and was the first to report the shooting to the world. He has also done his own research, corroborating for example the report that Jack Ruby was at Parkland Hospital when the president died. I found the book very readable, despite its irritatingly simplistic account of Oswald as the lone assassin, a threadbare theory which mainstream newsmen are apparently still expected to repeat.” —Peter Dale Scott, author of The American Deep State

“What happened in Dallas that November had a profound effect on the lives and careers of reporters covering the story. Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Jim Lehrer, and Hugh Aynesworth all made their bones in Dallas that day. Merriman Smith deserves to be numbered among them, and Sanderson’s book does a good job of reclaiming this forgotten figure a half a century later.” —The Dallas Morning News

“The book is full of reporting derring-do that will make journalists’ hearts swell…: Near-fisticuffs in the press car in the motorcade as Smitty hogged the phone; the wire bulletin that beat the pants off the competition; a clever rewrite guy commandeering the payphone at Parkland Hospital with 1960s technology knowhow; all leading to a day’s-end narrative that will make you catch your breath.” —Nieman Storyboard

“[Bulletins from Dallas] is a book that every reporter, would-be reporter or anyone interested in the news business back when newspapers were king should read.” —Peter Lucas, Lowell Sun