Triumph and Tragedy: The Story of the Kennedys

by Associated Press

commemorative

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1968

About the author

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative.

As of 2005, the news collected by the AP is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters. The photograph library of the AP consists of over 10 million images. The Associated Press operates 243 news bureaus, and it serves at least 120 countries, with an international staff located all over the world.

Associated Press also operates The Associated Press Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. The AP Radio also offers news and public affairs features, feeds of news sound bites, and long form coverage of major events.

As part of their cooperative agreement with The Associated Press, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. For example, on page two of every edition of The Washington Post, the newspaper's masthead includes the statement, "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for re-publication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."

The AP employs the "inverted pyramid formula" for writing that enables the news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication area without losing the story's essential meaning and news information.

Cutbacks at longtime U.S. rival United Press International, most significantly in 1993, left the AP as the primary nationally oriented news service based in the United States, although United Press International still produces and distributes news stories daily. Other English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English-language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States. More recently launched internet news services, such as All Headline News (AHN) are becoming competitive to the traditional wire services like the AP.

Reviews

[William Razavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Journalism is the first rough draft of history" is what journalists love to say about their profession.
As my colleague who teach composition and rhetoric will gladly tell you, though, a great number of first rough drafts need all kinds of revision.
This book put out by the AP in the wake of Robert Kennedy's assassination is a great example of how much revision is required (and often never gets done) when those first rough drafts are published.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much detail was put in the biography of the patriarch Joseph Kennedy. His life (and at the time of publication of this book he was still alive) forms the structure of the narrative that is put together. He is presented in Greek tragic terms and is the real subject of the triumph and tragedy of the title. His children are all players in his story and even when he himself gets sidelined as the narrative centers on JFK and RFK, his shadow still shows up.
The presidency of JFK is presented in snapshots of moments in time (The Bay of Pigs, The Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) and Robert Kennedy's subsequent political career and death is the coda.
This book isn't a saccharine hagiography or a pure memorial. But it is also a book that with hindsight and historical revelation then seems even more flawed. In some ways the pure propaganda of a memorial book has a bit of nobility to it that this kind of first rough draft is missing precisely because it could already have done better if it was going to bring a sharp pencil to the scoring table. Instead the authors try to have it both ways. Presenting just enough of the edges to maintain a sense of credibility without trying to turn it into a scandal rag.
And so in the end, other than the primary document value of the photographs (some excellent ones here) the narrative here is best read once you've read more recent works that reveal far more information than what is hidden here.

[Mary Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good summary of the lives of the Kennedys starting from Joseph Kennedy and ending with Bobby's assassination. A little hard to understand in some places but that may be me. It does make me want to read more on the Kennedys.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rated: B+