Accidental Journalist

by Cheryl Heckler

Overview

Idealistic American Edmund Stevens arrived in Moscow in 1934 to do his part for the advancement of international Communism. His job writing propaganda led to an accidental career in journalism and an eventual Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for his uncensored descriptions of Stalin's purges. The longest-serving American-born correspondent working from within the Soviet Union, Stevens began his journalism career reporting on the Russo-Finnish War in 1939 and was the Christian Science Monitor's first man in the field to cover fighting in World War II. He reported on the Italian invasion of Greece, participated in Churchill's Moscow meeting with Stalin as a staff translator, and distinguished himself as a correspondent with the British army in North Africa. Drawing on Stevens's memoirs as well as his articles and correspondence, Heckler sheds new light on both the public and the private Stevens, portraying a reporter adapting to new roles and circumstances with a skill that journalists today could well emulate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826266132
Publisher:	University of Missouri Press
Publication date:	12/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 - 10 Years

About the Author

Cheryl Heckler is Assistant Professor of English/Journalism at Miami University of Ohio and lives in Oxford. A former columnist for the New York Times syndicate, she is author of Heart and Soul of the Nation: How the Spirituality of Our First Ladies Changed America and coauthor of The Carpenter's Apprentice: The Spiritual Biography of Jimmy Carter.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: An Accidental Journalist     1
An American in Russia
The Early Years in Moscow     29
Kirov's Death and the Purge     45
Covering World War II
Russia and Germany against the Baltics, Norway, and Finland     67
Italo-Greek War     97
Ethiopia with Selassie and Wingate     137
Desert War of 1942     163
With Churchill in Moscow     193
Wendell L. Willkie, Iraq, Iran, Victory in North Africa     211
A Moscow Correspondent Once Again     231
An Inevitable Journalist: Samples of Stevens's Reporting     257
Bibliography     281
Index     285

Editorial Reviews

Absorbing but erratic portrait of a charismatic, little-known American who was the longest-serving journalist in the Soviet Union. Edmund Stevens went to Russia in 1934 to work as a translator and writer for the Communist International's publishing house; the idealistic American communist wanted to contribute to the Bolshevik cause. Fired during a 1937 Stalinist purge that saw most of the publishing house's senior officials "repressed," Stevens turned to journalism and became a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in 1939. He solidified the Monitor's reputation as a leader in war reporting, and he won a Pulitzer in 1950 for his articles on Stalin's purges. He died in 1992, but Heckler (English and Journalism/Miami Univ. of Ohio; Heart and Soul of the Nation: How the Spirituality of Our First Ladies Changed America, 1997) focuses on the World War II years. Stevens had no formal training as a journalist, she writes, but his uncanny ability to anticipate where the next big story would be took him to the frontlines in small, overlooked nations such as Finland, Norway, Lithuania and Ethiopia. He also boasted a memorable skill in summing up a place or situation with colorful, often humorous details. Documenting the day-to-day impact of the war on both soldiers and ordinary civilians, Heckler notes, Stevens could never maintain a stable home life, frequently abandoning his long-suffering wife to return to the front lines. Regrettably, Heckler's clunky, distracting choice of format significantly detracts from the journalist's riveting story. Excerpts from his unpublished memoir are interspersed at random intervals with observations from Heckler and other journalists, with littleindication as to whether the material is contemporary or historical. Stevens's fascinating recollections would have been better served by a series of detailed chapter introductions than by Heckler's frequent, awkward interruptions. A valuable resource for war-journalism buffs, who can only hope that Stevens's memoirs will someday be published in full, unmarred by Heckler's intrusive editing.

Kirkus Reviews