First Person

A memoir of life in a front-row seat of mass media’s most important highs and lows, by a legendary journalist finally ready to tell his own story. From his start as a 13-year-old “printer’s devil”—setting type while covered in ink and observing the reporters around him—to his leadership of media institutions at Northwestern, Fordham, and Columbia, Everette Dennis has been at the center of journalism’s shocking evolution over the past half century. Despite decades of meticulously documenting the lives of others, he has never told the full story of his illustrious and highly improbable career—until now. In First Person, Dennis details his path from the Pacific Northwest to the Persian Gulf, tracing the arc of the history of contemporary media: the introduction of offset printing in its infancy, the spread of television, the heyday of rich and powerful media conglomerates, the fracturing of markets, and the devouring of legacy journalism by the internet and social media. Candid and expansive, this book offers invaluable lessons for understanding the current landscape of communications, how we got here, and how we move forward.