Media

March 31, 2009

The Insider

Seth Mnookin gains access to some of the most closely guarded American institutions.

Michael Gluckstadt

There is a phrase that always seems to crop up in descriptions of Seth Mnookin's reporting: "unprecedented access." Somehow, the 36-year-old Brooklyn-based writer gets inside tightly guarded institutions—the New York Times, the Boston Red Sox, Stephen Colbert—and shares his findings in books and magazines. His reporting on the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times in the book Hard News helped establish Mnookin as an investigative media reporter, a role he has continued to fill as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

Mnookin's insider accounts are detailed and unflinching. So why do people and organizations keep opening their doors to him? "That's a good question," Mnookin says in a tone that suggests he's often asked himself the very same thing. "Sometimes they feel their story is not being told in all the complexity and subtlety that it deserves."







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Article by Michael Gluckstadt

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