This image is the cover for the book Life of Kings

Life of Kings

In an age when local daily papers with formerly robust reporting are cutting sections and even closing their doors, the contributors to The Life of Kings celebrate the heyday of one such paper, the Baltimore Sun, when it set the agenda for Baltimore, was a force in Washington, and extended its reach around the globe. Contributors like David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire, and renowned political cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher (better known as KAL), tell what it was like to work in what may have been the last golden age of American newspapers -- when journalism still seemed like “the life of kings” that H.L. Mencken so cheerfully remembered. The writers in this volume recall the standards that made the Sun and other fine independent newspapers a bulwark of civic life for so long. Their contributions affirm that the core principles they followed are no less imperative for the new forms of journalism: a strong sense of the public interest in whose name they were acting, a reverence for accuracy, and an obligation

Frederic B Hill, Stephens Broening

Stephens Broening was Associated Press correspondent in Paris, Moscow, and Lisbon from 1965 to 1976 before joining the Sun as assistant city editor in 1976. In 1978 he was named the paper's first Op-Ed page editor, a post he held until 1985 when he was assigned to the Sun's Washington bureau as diplomatic correspondent. In 1990, Broening joined the International Herald-Tribune in Paris as a news editor, responsible for the IHT’s coverage of the Americas and Asia. He returned to Baltimore in 1996 and for ten years was a visiting scholar in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Frederic B. Hill was a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Sun, including tours as bureau chief in London and Paris, covering Europe and southern Africa, before becoming an editorial writer for the Evening Sun. He was foreign affairs director for Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R., MD) in 1985 and 1986. He then established the State Department’s Office of Special Programs. The office conducted policy planning exercises (war

Rowman and Littlefield