Books

Paul LaRosa is a longtime producer at CBS News, having transitioned to electronic media following a long stint at the New York Daily News. Before that LaRosa, the lifelong New Yorker, attended Fordham University. But his career was shaped even earlier growing up in the Monroe Housing Projects in the Bronx. LaRosa went to Blessed Sacrament for grade school at the same time as future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. One year her senior, LaRosa didn’t know Sotomayor, who lived at a neighboring housing project.

LaRosa, 58, has recalled his many personal experiences in a fascinating memoir, Leaving Story Avenue by Park Slope Publishing, released April 18th.

“It was such an amazing time–the late 1970s in New York–it was just before computers came into being,” LaRosa tells FishbowlNY.

LaRosa writes intensively about his 16 years at the News.

“It was the end of the Front Page era because people would drink at their desks, everybody smoked,” LaRosa says. “It was no big deal to spend hours at Louie’s [bar behind the Daily News building]…It was still like an old Humphrey Bogart movie.”

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Here’s a look at what FishbowlNY stories made the most buzz this week.

1. Former Bloomberg Radio Anchor Becomes Published Author (left), March 17
2. Top Newsweek/Daily Beast Writer Gets New York Times Gig, March 16
3. Meredith Names VP of Corporate Sales, March 19
4. Peter Lauria Thinks its Time for Oprah to Shut Down OWN, March 21
5. The 2012 Digital Ellie Award Winners, March 20
6. YES Network Names New Sideline Reporter, March 20
7. Massive Layoffs Hit Oprah Winfrey‘s OWN, March 20

Keep up-to-date with the latest FishbowlNY news. Click here to sign-up for the FishbowlNY daily newsletter, bringing you our articles each afternoon directly to your inbox.

Broadcast veteran Gray Basnight is now making his mark in print. His first book, The Cop with the Pink Pistol by Ransom Note Press, hit the shelves (and the Internet) last week. The murder mystery centers around NYPD homicide detective Donna Prima.

For Basnight, this novel wasn’t based on reality. He points out that the Donna Prima character is based purely on imagination and fantasy.

“Most of it was just having a lot of fun with different things, and different lines I’ve had,” Basnight tells FishbowlNY.

Basnight, who was among more than 100 staffers laid off at Bloomberg Radio/WBBR in 2009, for a time put an exclusive focus on his writing. During that interval, he began to submerge himself with the idea for a historical novel. However, the words didn’t jump onto the page, as Basnight struggled to complete the manuscript.

“I knew that all writers just have to move on,” Basnight admits. “It occurred to me to try to write a detective novel.”

In an effort to make the book standout, Basnight went for proven detective formulas.

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New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor is making waves with her book The Obamas, which is being described as a tell-all of the administration and First Family that chronicles the tensions within both. Naturally, everyone is clamoring to read it.

Except The First Lady.

In an interview with CBS News, conducted by Gayle King, Mrs. Obama cleared up some of the allegations from Kantor’s book — including clarifying the status of her relationship with former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as close, although the book painted it as strained.

She readily admitted that she hasn’t read Kantor’s book, adding:  “…who can write about how I feel? Who? What third person can tell me how I feel, or anybody for that matter?”

Valid questions.

Kelly Florio Kasouf, the daughter of Steve Florio, the deceased former CEO of Condé Nast, has written a book about growing up in the world of the publishing power house. The book isn’t what you think it is though. It’s not filled with gossip about rude publishers and moody editors — it’s a children’s book.

According to WWD, Florio Kasouf’s book, The Super Adventures of Sophie and the City: All in a Day’s Work, is a fictional account of a little girl who sneaks into her father’s publishing company and ends up in different world’s that carry a magazine theme. While that sounds like a cool idea, we loved Florio Kasouf’s tale of the first time she met Anna Wintour.

“She asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” explained Florio Kasouf. “I said, ‘I’m going to take your job.’ Apparently she had said the same thing early on in her life, so she thought it was cute.”

That’s the kind of thing only the daughter of a high-powered exec can get away with.

In his new book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?, noted journalist and author Toure says he wanted to explore “what it means to be Black now.” And, no, “post-Blackness” is not the same as “post-racial.”

“Post-racial suggests a world where race does not exist and racism does not exist, and it’s a completely ridiculous term… With post-Blackness, what I’m talking about is a conception of Blackness where the identity options are infinite. So, we’re not saying THIS is what it is to be Black,” he explained in the second installment of our Media Beat interview.

“There seems to be this conception that Blackness must stay in the hood as if Blackness is milk, and the hood is the refrigerator. And the further away you get from the refrigerator, it will spoil. And you go to Yale for four years, somehow you have lost your Blackness, as opposed to if you go to jail for 10 years, your Blackness is hardened?”

In the book, he even asks noted Black academics, celebrities, and activists the best question ever (yes, I said it) about a huge stereotype: “Would you eat watermelon in a room full of white people?”

Watch the full video to find out how ?uestlove of The Roots and Rev. Jesse Jackson answered.

You can also view this video on YouTube.

Part 1: Toure Lights Up the Twittersphere with a Debate on… Tipping?

Part 3: Toure on Pitching, Getting Assignments, and That R. Kelly Interview

Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, has reportedly changed his mind about a biography that was being written by Rich Cohen. According to The New York Post, Cohen had Wenner’s approval and had even verbally agreed to a seven figure deal to write the book, when suddenly Wenner withdrew his interest:

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Cohen’s agent and co-head of the William Morris Agency’s Worldwide Literary Department, said, ‘Jann had come to Rich asking him to do it. After it got snapped up, Wenner had a change of heart.’ She said she was not sure why Wenner dropped the project but she said Cohen is not pursuing it independently.

This isn’t the first time Wenner has had a change of heart about a biography. In 2004 he gave his blessing to a writer named Lewis MacAdams, then allegedly pulled his support for the project when he found out that MacAdams was talking to people who Wenner had battled with.

Obviously Wenner has commitment issues. Can you imagine being behind him at a bodega? “I would like a Twix. Here is my money – no! I want a Snickers. Yes, they ‘satisfy.’ So, here is the money and thank – no!”

And on and on.

In his new autobiography, Uppity (which could just as easily have been called Integrity for his strong moral compass), Bill White talks candidly about his many decades in baseball, including the racial intolerance he suffered early in his career. FishbowlNY spoke recently with White, a man who is liked by so many in the sport.

But this article focuses on Chapter 10, White’s magical 18-year association with the New York Yankees—and the legendary Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto.

“That’s longer than I’ve been with anybody,” White laughed.

As former players, White (refers to himself as “average” on the field) and Rizzuto (Hall of Famer) formed that famous bond. But White says there was something deeper to their chemistry—dating back to Rizzuto’s broadcasting debut with the Yankees in 1957.

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Peter Bergen was a producer for CNN in 1997 when he produced Osama bin Laden’s first television interview, which has been widely replayed ever since.

As part of the scramble to cover Bin Laden’s death, the New York Times reports that, a mere 48 hours after the death was reported, it’s been announced that Bergen will write possibly the definitive book on the Bin Laden manhunt, tentatively titled… “Manhunt”. No chance that this will be the only book on the subject — prepare yourselves for an onslaught — but it may very well be the first.

Bergen has certainly earned the right; he’s the author of three books on terrorism and is now a national security analyst for CNN.

Crown Publishers, part of Random House, described the forthcoming book as  “an immersive, definitive account of the operation that killed the world’s most wanted man.”

Jennifer Rainville didn’t have a lengthy or legendary career in TV news, but it helped lead her  into her true calling as a full-time author.

Rainville worked behind the scenes at WNBC in 2001, and got in front of the camera at Time Warner Cable’s NY1 from 2002 to 2005.

Rainville has just published her first book—a novel—Trance of Insignificance—weighted heavily on her own personal experiences.

“Much of the settings and many of my experiences served as the inspiration,” Rainville says. “But the characters are invented. It’s fiction.”

Much of Rainville’s professional (and personal) life is portrayed using the protagonist Jules Duvil.

Along with her own personal experiences, Rainville incorporated several “muses” from working in news.

Early in the fictional Duvil’s career, she gets swept up in a torrid love affair with a seasoned New York TV anchor. The duo would hook up, sometimes planned, sometimes spur of the moment, for several years. It is easy for the reader to feel the electricity between the passionate news professionals.

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