And the reviews of "Unfit" are here!
-- Kirkus Reviews
"In Miller’s satirical novel, a failing columnist at an imperiled newspaper gets unexpected help in resurrecting his career.
"In director Billy Wilder’s searing film Ace in the Hole (1951), a disgraced journalist lands a job on a small Albuquerque, New Mexico, newspaper and waits for a story he can hype that will return him to the big time. Here, Nick Nolan, a former Pulitzer Prize–nominated social justice columnist for the Boston Daily Tribune, has only one month—12 columns—to turn his click total around, or the bean counters at SuperGoodMedia who just bought the centuries-old paper will banish him to the suburban beat. His fortunes change when he writes a column about Amber Abbott, an 8-year-old in a persistent vegetative state, whose mother—Nolan’s former lover—claims that the Virgin Mary speaks to her daughter. The story goes viral, attracting thousands of new subscribers, and the paper’s new publisher demands that Nick stay on top of the story. As the new owners institute rules promoting “good news,” Nick finds himself in thrall to the clicks his story generates—until he meets Benjamin Franklin in a diner. Yes, it’s the historical Benjamin Franklin, who offers his help. “You’ve hit a low point,” he says, adding, “I am here to help you and hopefully others in a profession that was so dear to me.”
"While reader mileage will vary on the introduction of this fantastical element, the author’s anger at the state of journalism is palpable and will speak to readers who, like Nick, see Seymour Hersh and Maggie Haberman as heroes. Satire is heightened reality, but this book too often reads like grim nonfiction, with its click-bait headlines (“She Hid Under the Bed To Spy on Her Husband but Instantly Regretted It”) and odious hedge funds buying up community newspapers, only to decimate these former pillars of the community. Still, Miller is fighting the good fight, and unlike Ace in the Hole, his tale offers a sense of hope.
"A novel that illuminates what the author calls 'a sickening reality' but could use more dark humor."
--Sandeep Jauhar, New York Times bestselling author of My Father’s Brain:
"G. Wayne Miller’s 'Unfit to Print' is a scathing satire about how greed and profiteering have led to the demise of American newspapers. Read this irreverent novel to understand what’s wrong with journalism today."
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| Sandeep Jauhar |
-- Berkley Hudson, a journalist for 25 years including at the Providence Journal and the Los Angeles Times; author of O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South; and emeritus associate professor of the Missouri School of Journalism:
“Read All
About It! Ben Franklin Dreamscape Reveals Cures for What Ails American
Newspapers! G. Wayne Miller’s ‘Unfit To Print: A Modern Media Satire’ creates
wacky caricatures in a layered, funny and painful world of journalistic horrors
and fiddle faddle, tempered by examples of bold investigative reporting. Miller
entices us to grapple with crucial 21st Century issues of a free press,
democracy, and the public’s need and right to know the stories essential to our
common well-being and, perhaps, even our survival.”
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| Berkley Hudson |
-- Padma Venkatraman, award-winning author of The Bridge Home and Born Behind Bars:
“Unfit to Print is easily the best Miller book so far -- and I've read more than a few of this author's works. I truly enjoyed this engaging and entertaining satirical story, which like all important satires is also a terrifying and tragic commentary on our current media culture and politics.
"Underlying the sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic plot are two vital questions: what is considered ‘news’ today and how do we distinguish fact from propaganda? Written by a dedicated leader in the field of news media -- a journalist for four decades, most as a newspaper staff writer -- and a prolific storyteller who has experimented with many different genres, Unfit to Print is a work of fiction built on a substantial foundation of fact.
"This book will make you laugh, and think, and perhaps, spur you to act to save and enhance the quality of local journalism.’’
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| Padma Venkatraman |
--Vanessa Lillie, bestselling author of Little Voices and Blood Sisters:
"Do not miss Unfit to Print by G. Wayne Miller where he turns his expert journalistic pen toward the Fourth Estate and provides an unflinching, deeply entertaining, and often satirical take on our modern media."
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| Vanessa Lillie |
-- William J. Kole, longtime AP foreign correspondent
and author of THE BIG 100: The New World of Super-Aging:
"America's newspapers are in a mess of their own making
so preposterous it falls under the broad heading of 'Can't make this sh*t up.'
How fitting, then, that G. Wayne Miller's UNFIT TO PRINT is such a deliciously
farcical take. Miller's ingenious 21st book deserves a 21-gun salute."
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| William J. Kole |
-- Chip Scanlan, award-winning journalist, former director of The Poynter Institute’s writing programs and the National Writer’s Workshops, and author of of “33 Ways Not To Screw Up Your Journalism” and other books:
"In 'Unfit to Print,' G. Wayne Miller delivers a biting satire of our contemporary newspaper industry, unraveling the media frenzies that have come to define our age. Artfully holding up a mirror to its flaws, contradictions, and unexpected hilarities, Miller's critique is trenchant, wittily inventive, and irresistible. This is more than just a satire—it's a clarion call for introspection amidst the chaos of headlines.”
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| Chip Scanlan |
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| Elizabeth Massie |
-- Mark Thompson, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and former Time magazine correspondent:
“EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL OF IT! Veteran newspaper reporter and columnist Wayne Miller has hunt-and-pecked at the carcass of the American newspaper industry in his bittersweet romp. This novel will send shivers of schadenfreude and sorrow through any ink-stained wretch or newspaper reader, past or present. Not to mention those concerned with the need to keep tabs on the current crop of miscreants and scoundrels overlording America — as well as those ‘reporting’ on them. Read it and weep, despite the laughs.”
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| Mark Thompson |
-- Dante Bellini Jr., filmmaker whose credits include Ken Burns Here & There and Demons and Dragans: Mark Patinkin’s Cancer Journey:
“ ‘Unfit to Print’ is an outrageous spin on the newspaper
industry right now. Maybe the whole media ecosystem, actually.
“G. Wayne Miller gives us a front row seat in what appears,
at first glance, a farce. Then you realize, it’s actually not. And that’s both
the joy and horror of this brilliant novel.
“The characters are richly drawn from Miller’s long,
distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and that makes all the difference.
He intimately knows their dreams, joys and sorrows. And their strengths and
inadequacies.
“And he knows the pain and frustration when the bean
counters and MBAs start calling the plays.
“Unfit to Print is a cautionary tale that we may already be
too late to learn from. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun to read!”
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| Dante Bellini Jr. |
-- Mike Stanton, New York Times bestselling author and University of Connecticut Journalism professor:
"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."
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| Mike Stanton |
-- Mark Silverman, retired editor and publisher of The Detroit News, former editor of The Tennessean at Nashville, and a former corporate news executive:
"In 'Unfit to Print,' award-winning journalist G. Wayne Miller uses satire to show the real-life damage to local communities caused by profit-obsessed companies that decimate newsrooms and reduce newspapers to bare shells of themselves, filled with pap and lacking substance. His fiction resonates in today’s world where democracy is challenged by an absence of crusading and honest local journalism."
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| Mark Silverman |
" ‘Unfit to Print’ is a witty, zany and outrageously
effective take on the state of print journalism today. G. Wayne Miller's latest
plants him squarely in the turf of fellow newspaper men Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry
for whom no topic is too sacred to skewer. Miller writes what he knows in
penning a tale that's one part cautionary tale and two parts laugh out loud,
sidesplitting fun."
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| Jon Land |
-- Tom Nichols, author and Staff Writer at The Atlantic:
"Unfit to Print is a story that will stay with you, much as Ben Franklin's ghost gleefully haunts its hero. Only a real, old-time newspaper reporter could give us a satire - and a parable- about the demise of old-time newspapers and the damage their vanishing has done to American life. Wayne Miller is that reporter."
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| Tom Nichols |
-- Llewellyn King, Executive Producer and Host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS:
“I have long admired G. Wayne Miller's writing. Now he has
written a book, ‘Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire,’ that seems almost written
just for me. It deals with the decline and fall of regional and local
newspapers: how, as they were bleeding to death, hedge funds swept in and
stripped what was left, firing staff and producing pamphlets in the place of
newspapers. Miller knows this too well from his own experience.
“But Miller is a storyteller as well as a witness to
history. So here he delivers a fantastical satire, bringing in, via the dreams
of the protagonist, none other than Benjamin Franklin to excoriate the money
people and to lament the damage their greed has done to democracy.
“This is a must-read for newspaper people and an engrossing
yarn for everyone else -- those luckless ones who have never stepped into a
busy newsroom and savored its intoxication.
“As to the message, it might have been called ‘Unsafe to
Ignore.’ ”
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| Llewellyn King |
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