Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News.

• Author: Alter, Jonathan

Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News.

Yes, they're hyping the hell out of it with movie deals and splashy spreads. Yes, there are details about the haircuts of Jessica Savitch's boyfriends that we could do without. Yes, Gwenda Blair is picking on a decidedly minor cultural figure who can't respond. But this book is still worth reading, mostly for the devilish pleasure that is derived from the misery of others, particularly (and aptly in this case) when bad things happen to the bitch in the office. Am I arguing that anyone's happy the anchor woman died in that freakish car wreck? No. But the truth is that Blair could not have written this if Savitch were still alive. (Nor, for that matter, could Nicholas von Hoffman have written about Roy Cohn or Gerald Clarke about Truman Capote.) Combine freedom from libel suits and the public's lurid appetites and you have a hardy literary tradition: cannibalizing the dead.

Blair's larger point--that the TV industry (and NBC in particular) set Savitch up for a fall--doesn't quite work. It has the feel of a theme concocted to lend gravity to what is essentially...