"The lede" -- "Class acting" -- "This story just won't write" -- "Prediction memo" -- "Casuals" -- "Show and tell all" -- "Covering the cops" -- "On the assumption that Al Gore..." -- "The case of the purloined turkey" -- "Newshound" -- "Corrections" -- "Invitations" -- "Paper Baron" -- "Presidential ups and downs" -- "Among friends" -- "Don Rumsfeld meets the press" -- "The years with Navasky" -- "The 401st" -- Russell Baker -- Molly Ivins -- John Murphy -- Richard Harris -- Morley Safer -- Andrew Kopkind -- Murray Kempton -- John Gregory Dunne -- "Out of style" -- "Dirty words" -- "The life and times of Joe Bob Briggs, so far" -- "Negative and controversial" -- "A few observations on the zapping of the inner circle" -- "The truth will out" -- "Beautiful spot" -- "By meat alone" -- "No gossip in Russia" -- "Alternative" -- "Meeting my subjects" -- "Check it out" -- "Internetfactchecking.com" -- "New Grub Street" -- "Sabbath gasbags, speak up" -- "Back on the bus."

"Calvin Trillin can write just about anything-and has. He covered the Civil Rights movement in the South for Time, chronicled stories from small towns and cities for The New Yorker, and wrote comic poetry for The Nation. He has been called "perhaps the finest reporter in America" (The Miami Herald), "our funniest food writer" (The New Yorker), and "one of the most brilliant humorists of our time" (Charleston Post and Courier). But one of his favorite subjects across the years-a superbly good fit for Trillin's unique mélange of reportage and comedy-has been his own professional milieu: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers over a half century of his incisive, often hilarious writing on reporting, reporters, and the media world that is their orbit. A small roadside restaurant is thrown into upheaval after being named the best barbecue in Texas by Texas Monthly. Trillin and New Yorker editor Wallace Shawn have a showdown about "obscene language." A local weekly newspaper in Savannah gets unexpectedly embroiled in a missing person case. The line between journalism and protestor erodes at a reunion of Freedom Riders. Plus pieces on outrageous film reviews, the carefully manufactured elitism of Vanity Fair, the early days of food website Chowhound, controversial baron and publisher Conrad Black, and the Fortune 500 (what would it be like to be 501st?)"--