Two great reads

In the past couple of months I've read two similar books, both about newspaper publishing, and both with similar themes and outcomes. You won't need to have hatched out of a newsroom to enjoy both, either.

One, Tabloid City, is by veteran newspaper man Pete Hamill. Hamill doesn't disappoint readers - his usual heart-warming story-telling is on game, and his well-developed characters are ones you invest yourself in throughout the story. Tabloid City: A Novel

The other, The Imperfectionists is by newcomer Tom Rauchman. Rauchman has worked for the Associated Press as a correspondent stationed in Rome. Compared to Hamill, however, he's a newcomer both as a journalist and a novelist. But you'd never know it. His story is every bit as enthralling as Hamill's. I wonder how such a young man could produce such a sophisticated story. It better not be his last. The Imperfectionists: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

In each story, characters came to life for me; I was able to identify with each like never before: these were people I definitely knew: the solitary copy writer with enviable talent of creating headlines where I would just stare at a white screen, all while making page design look effortless; the affectations of a  adrenaline junkie foreign correspondent/stringer who is hell bent on showing how worldly he is while draining the life and resources from everyone around him; the corrections editor/copy editor who is always right. Don't even bother arguing. And you're thankful for him, believe me. The cub reporter who is really so talented you wonder why he chose journalism; the obit writer who just wants to do his job and get out of there unscathed; and the editor-in-chief who is has lead an interesting life, travelled extensively, is tough but fair, remote but kind and witty. He really is the lifeblood of the newsroom.

These characters inhabit each book with such dead-on accuracy and life that I'm already planning to happily reread both to visit them again. They're people I know.

Threaded through each novel is the newspaper itself. Hamill and Rauchman both write about their newspapers as endearing, living, breathing things. Their humble beginnings, their humming energy and their hardships make them characters in their own right.

Both authors portray the changing world of news well. Hamill in particular inserts what have to be his own views of the industry's evolution throughout his many years as a journalist. Rauchman captures a journalist's constant struggle with the job of gathering and writing the news against the business of running a newspaper.

Readers are invested enough in each story to feel for the papers as they meet their predictable but emotional fates.

Have any of you read either novel? What did you think?