What happens when SuperGoodMedia, a ridiculous out-of-town newspaper chain, buys the venerable Boston Daily Tribune, which has published every day since 1823? Heads roll and the few journalists left wonder when it will be their turn. That's protagonist Nick Nolan's worry, too ? until he gets exclusive coverage of a single mother who claims that the Virgin Mary is speaking to the world through her young comatose daughter.
Nolan not only keeps his job but becomes an international celebrity as The Tribune's circulation soars, advertisers bring record revenues, SuperGoodMedia negotiates lucrative movie and TV contracts, and circus-like crowds of thousands gather outside the single mother's home, awaiting miracles as the pope plans to visit... and a secret disaster looms.
Enter Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father and early pillar of the American press. Appearing to Nolan in dreams, Franklin offers a brutal critique of much of today's media, when real-life hedge funds and chains gut and close local newspapers, creating an unprecedented threat to American democracy. Franklin also prompts Nolan's eventual crisis of conscience, which leads to his redemption and an initiative that might help save local journalism while furthering social-justice causes.
By turns dramatic, fantastical, and darkly comedic, "Unfit to Print" is a scathing indictment of today's media by G. Wayne Miller, author and multiple award-winning journalist for four decades, most of them at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Providence Journal, oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the U.S. Unfit to Print is also a keen commentary on today's politics and culture, when so many get their "news" from social media, misinformation from domestic and foreign sources distorts truth, and reporters are disparaged as enemies of the people.
But why a novel and not a memoir or exposé?
Because as Ralph Waldo Emerson is purported to have said, "fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."
***
"A witty, zany and outrageously effective take on the state of print journalism today. A tale that's one part cautionary tale and two parts laugh out loud, sidesplitting fun." ? Jon Land, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
"An unflinching, deeply entertaining, and often satirical take on our modern media." ? Vanessa Lillie, bestselling author of Little Voices and Blood Sisters
"A story that will stay with you, much as Ben Franklin's ghost gleefully haunts its hero." ? Tom Nichols, author and Staff Writer at The Atlantic
"G. Wayne Miller's wickedly fun skewering of vulture capitalists and clickbait grifters paints a darkly satiric picture of the decline of journalism. But he also pens a love letter to American journalism and offers a road map for restoring local news ? and our democracy." ? Mike Stanton, New York Times bestselling author and University of Connecticut Journalism professor
"Unfit to Print is easily the best Miller book so far and I've read more than a few of this author's works." ? Padma Venkatraman, award-winning author of The Bridge Home and Born Behind Bars
"EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL OF IT! Read it and weep, despite the laughs." ? Mark Thompson, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and former Time magazine correspondent
"This eye- and mind-opening book is timely and not-to-be-missed." ? Elizabeth Massie, best-selling and Bram Stoker-winning author of Sineater, Hell Gate, and Desper Hollow
"Miller's ingenious 21st book deserves a 21-gun salute." ? William J. Kole, longtime AP foreign correspondent and author of The Big 100
