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Amy Chozick is a political reporter and author. She currently works for The New York Times. She began her journalism career writing for the San Antonio Express-News after attending The University of Texas at Austin where she graduated with a degree in English. She began writing about Hillary mostra altro Clinton in 2007, while working fo rthe Wall Street Journal. In 2008 she became a member of the traveling press of both Clinton and Barack Obama. After writing for the Wall Street Journal for eight years, she joined The New York Times in 2011. In 2013 she was assigned to the New York Times political team with a focus on Hillary Clinton and her family. Her first book - "Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Political Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling", made the bestseller list in 2018. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: Journalist Amy Chozick at the 2018 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, United States. By Larry D. Moore - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74065996

Opere di Amy Chozick

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Sad and disturbing account of an obviously dysfunctional campaign. Well written and interesting account of the girls on the bus!
 
Segnalato
fmclellan | Jan 23, 2024 |
There moments (at the end) when I just wanted it to finish, but for the most part it was an interesting read.
 
Segnalato
ennuiprayer | 1 altra recensione | Jan 14, 2022 |
46. Chasing Hillary : Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling (audio) by Amy Chozick
published: 2018
format: 12:42 Libby audiobook (~352 pages, 382 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: Jun 27-Jul 3, Aug 31 - Sep 11
rating: 4+

Hesitant to pick up Hillary Clinton's book, [What Happened], I got this from the library instead. I was worried that there were aspects of Clinton that she herself wasn't aware of that played a key role in the election and I wanted something more at a remove and critical, but reasonable. This fit that to a degree. And, I love these kinds of books, by journalists about what they are seeing as they cover the stories. But this had two hard lessons.

Chozick was the New York Times reporter assigned to follow the Clinton campaign. This means that she was on the press plane and attended about every event she could, at the cost of, in a way, of being too close and not getting a chance to really analyze the campaign, and do research and talk to other people and whatever it entails to get a broader picture. Her book is wordy and mixes in a lot extra information about her personal life, but Chozick is entertaining and writes intelligently and perceptively and is a terrific narrator. Unfortunately, she writes about a very naive, under-experienced journalist making a lot of mistakes, losing sight of the big picture, and accomplishing roughly the opposite of what she intended. Kudos for honesty, but... Chozick saw Clinton up close and all the problems and awkwardness Clinton managed to convey to the press, and that's basically what she reported. From her came a series of negative articles - to the point that Clinton campaign hated her. Of course, she was actually a big fan of Clinton. What she did was exactly in line with what the New York Times accomplished in a nutshell. Find the flaws in every candidate, and equate them on the headlines. Clinton e-mails become just as bad on Trump's lacks of ethics. It's a really disturbing kind of insight and one that left me disheartened and discouraged with our big presses. (I know, I'm not alone there).

But this book is a two punch, and that's just one of them. The other is against Clinton.

Anecdotal side note: So, I know I made too much of this, but I have this memory of Clinton as Secretary of State, after having recently lost to Obama. She was in Malaysia and doing an event with a bunch of kids and I was interested because, despite all her time as a public figure, I never felt I got a sense of who she was. It was such an awkward event. Clinton clearly wasn't comfortable with these kids, but she forced her way through it, smile pasted on. The kids were fine and, later the same day news stories praised her. I've been worried about her since. (this isn't in the book, of course)

Clinton, it turns out, is really awkward with the press and with groups of people she doesn't know in general. In her fund raising sessions, she can cut the chase and say the critical stuff and comes across really smart. She is really smart. She is also knowledgeable, experienced and hard hitting. But, in the midst of supporters and watched by the press, she struggles and hates every minute of it, pastes on the fake smile that no one thinks is real. She looks like she is putting on an act.

Chozick thinks it was Clinton's handling of the emails that gave Trump the confidence he could beat her. I think this noteworthy. Most people at a sane-allowing political remove know that e-mail thing was a lot of about nothing. It's unfortunate she wasn't careful, she should have known better, but mainly it was just bad consequence of a kind of innocent mistake. But, it became a story because Clinton couldn't handle the press and kill it. It was left to linger.

She was apparently way worse in 2016 than in 2008. Chozick implies she seemed worn out and she kept the press, the group Chozick was a part of, at an unbridgeable distance, never letting any of them get to know her or interview her. No private conversations, no insightful comments and news releases. She even had two campaign planes - one for herself, and a second plane for the press dedicated to following her campaign.

In a nutshell, she was terrible with the press and did everything in her power to make it worse. I close this book convinced that had Clinton become president she would have pushed a lot of good policies, done a generally good job with all the executive agencies, appointed generally good people to critical posts, and the country would have hated her. Every mistake would be blown out of proportion, like Benghazi, and she wouldn't handle it well. In the midst of whatever success, the spotlight would be focused on the problems. And the New York Times would be part of that.

I really appreciate this book. I have to say that. Whatever Chozick did or didn't do wrong in her job, she provides a great deal of insight here into a lot things. I wonder how much of this kind of analysis is in [What Happened]. How does one say, "I was awkward at my own rallies and hated them"? How does one say, "I failed to build any relationship with the press because I didn't want to"? You can't get that kind of ground truth from the person who is actually in the spot light and must be guarded about everything they say.

As we now live under a world where the US is run by a sociopathic nutjob undermining critical aspects of all government agencies and the courts, strengthening the ugliest world leaders, while running out a series a news-absorbing lies and nursing his relationship to white supremacists, it's kind of hard to understand how this happened. Russian bots, Breitbart, Fox and The Drudge Report all played their parts in their misinformation campaigns, but also, the mainstream press allowed themselves to be played, and the Clinton campaign was unable to manage it.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6579706
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Segnalato
dchaikin | 1 altra recensione | Sep 15, 2018 |

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3
Utenti
105
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#183,191
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½ 3.7
Recensioni
3
ISBN
13

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