Book Talk with Lawrence J. King

Who better than a guy who spent 25 years as a newspaper reporter and established himself as one of the mainstream media's harshest critics to write a book about the broken relationship between the media and the American public? Makes sense to me, but it took me a while to get to this point. You could say writing is in my blood -- my mother was a newspaper reporter and photographer and before her, my grandmother as well. But I started off on a divergent path, earning a degree in criminal justice. However, once I graduated, I decided law enforcement wasn't for me, so I got a job as a security officer by day and pursued a second degree in journalism by night. I then parlayed my two degrees into my first job as a full-time newspaper crime reporter in 1996. Two years later, I moved from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania, working for three different newspapers in the Keystone State, all as a crime and emergency news reporter. Sensing a seismic shift in the craft and industry of journalism, I left newspapers in 2021, and now work in public relations. My first book, Saving the Beast -- A Recovering Reporter Reflects on America's Broken Media and How to Fix it -- is the culmination of nearly two years of dissecting the conundrum of the media versus the public. It is my hope that readers find it educational, informative and entertaining