Making the News, Taking the News

For fifteen years, Ron Nessen enjoyed an extraordinary career covering the major national events of the 1960s and ’70s for NBC News, and later serving as White House press secretary to President Gerald R. Ford. Making the News, Taking the News remembers the events and personalities that dominated national politics during Nessen’s career, bringing a hard-won perspective to those tumultuous times. Through an interweaving of countless incidents and personal anecdotes, Nessen builds a story that captures the true grit of closed-door politics. Off-the-record briefings and strategy sessions, as well as descriptions of experiences with Vietnam troops in the field, provide a vivid illustration of the life of an on-the-road reporter. At the heart of the book is Nessen’s White House years, as the veteran reporter gives a valuable eyewitness account of events both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras that shaped and altered America during two critical decades.