What’s Keeping Me Busy These Days

For any readers who’ve been wondering about the relative (in)frequency of my recent posts here and on Honourary Canadian, I want to explain that since Labor Day my business, Philip Turner Book Productions, has gone full bore and I am busy with such paying assignments as reading and reporting on a suspense novel for an author who hired me to assess his manuscript; editing the professional memoir of a retired corporate executive; editing website copy for a financial and retirement planner; meeting with the operations director of a website to discuss me providing book-related content for them; as an agent, I’m working on the contract for a Spanish novelist whose book I recently licensed to a US publisher; and pitching a terrific pirate-themed trilogy that’s already a self-publishing success, to major US publishers. I love writing and curating the two blogs, but they sometimes take a back seat to other work, especially work that is directly remunerative.

And in honor of Autumn, and the Winter that is surely coming, I’ve grown back my goatee, a facial accoutrement I’ve maintained periodically over the years.

PT photo w/goatee

Thanks, as always, for checking back here to see what is new, or for that matter, what’s old—in the three years I’ve been writing these blogs, I’ve published almost 900 posts, so there’s bound to be material you haven’t noticed before, on books, publishing, media, music, culture, and current affairs. Also, remember to look for me on Twitter where my handle is @philipsturner, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and the other social networks shown at the top right corner of this site.

Hoping You Have an ‘Easy’ Fast

Working with Authors, in to Their 100s

Marking Photojournalist Ruth Gruber’s 103rd Birthday

As a book editor, I’ve had the privilege of working with dozens of talented authors. Amid all the superb writers one sub-group stands out: authors in their 80s, 90s, or even older, in their 100s. This group has included Edward Robb Ellis (1911-1998), author of A Diary of Century: Tales by American’s Greatest Diarist. Here is a collection of posts Ive written about him. Another of these remarkable authors is Ruth Gruber, also born in 1911, with whom I’ve published six books, including her memoir Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent, also the title of a documentary about her. Ruth turned 103 this week, and is still going strong. This is a collection of posts I’ve written about her. Please join me in celebrating her amazing life and career.

In Which My Critique of PBS NewsHour for Letting Architect of Iraq War Spew Invective at President Obama Gets Wide Coverage

For a media hound like me, Jim Romenesko’s media news website is a regular must-read. Imagine the satisfaction I felt today when I saw he’d done a post yesterday that used a tweet of mine from Monday night—about a shockingly one-sided PBS Newshour segment about ISIS and President Obama—as the jumping-off point for his piece. In the segment, Judy Woodruff interviewed Frederick Kagan, an early proponent of invading Iraq, who slammed President Obama repeatedly for his supposed failures with regard to Iraq, including the bogus canard that he failed to leave US troops in the country, when it was the Bush administration that negotiated the terms under which US forces left. This and many other false and tendentious claims were made by Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, all of which went unchallenged by interviewer Judy Woodruff. Worse, at the end of the segment she said, “We hear you,” as if lending her stamp of approval to Kagan’s screed. I was appalled at this egregious example of biased coverage and tweeted to that effect. Today, Romenesko ran a post picking up my tweet, and for which he interviewed PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, who’s also covered this episode. Getler agreed that the segment was an example of terrible and one-sided coverage. Getler learned that the program had planned for another guest to be on opposite Kagan, but that they couldn’t come on, after all. The NewsHour never told viewers this on-air. Below is a screenshot to Romenesko’s post, and here’s a link to it.

Romenesko, Sept 30, 2014