Q&A With Frank DiGiacomo & Susan Mulcahy

I am so delighted to be doing this Q&A with Frank DiGiacomo & Susan Mulcahy who co-wrote Paper Of Wreckage: The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media. Paper Of Wreckage was published on October 8^th. Frank is currently an executive editor at Billboard, where he edits and writes about the music business. He was previously a contributing editor at Vanity Fair & has done newspaper work. Before Vanity Fair, Frank worked on staff for 11 years at The New York Observer. Susan has worked as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and websites, and as a consultant to media companies and nonprofits. She is the author of three previous books, including, My Lips Are Sealed: Confessions Of A Gossip Columnist, a memoir about her time editing Page Six at the Post. Frank is also a former editor of the column. 

Q: Frank & Susan would you two like to give a brief description of the book Paper Of Wreckage: The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media? 

Frank: Paper of Wreckage is an oral history of the New York Post that begins in the second half of the 1970s, when it was a liberal, Jewish-centric tabloid owned by Dorothy Schiff, and chronicles its acquisition, loss and reacquisition by Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch over the next 47 years.  Although Murdoch did not immediately turn the Post into a right-wing newspaper — the tabloid was instrumental in getting Democrat Ed Koch elected mayor — he did import a swashbuckling group of British, Australian and New Zealand journalists who turned the paper and journalism on its head. One former reporter there during that time compared it to “Sid Vicious taking over the Philharmonic.”  Imagine a newspaper published by the Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Q: How long did it take the two of you to research & write Paper Of Wreckage?  What made now the right time to write and release this?

Frank: We pitched the book early in 2020 and signed the contract right before the pandemic hit. We turned in the manuscript in early summer 2023. It helped that Susan and I had both worked at the Post at different times during the paper’s history. Susan was there in the late 1970s through the mid ‘80s, and I was there in the early ‘90s. (We both also served as editors of Page Six.) So, we had an idea of the narrative. But because the Post is such a polarizing publication, we wanted the book to be balanced and nuanced. So, we interviewed more than 240 current and former staffers, story subjects and astute media observers, including former Vanity Fair and current Airmail editor Graydon Carter, former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson, Gay Talese and Tina Brown, former editor in chief of The New Yorker and The Daily Beast.

Q: Frank, would you say that your time as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and your work at The New York Observer helped with writing Paper Of Wreckage?  Susan, would you say that your writing & editing helped with you writing the book along with Frank?

Frank: Actually, working at the Post, where I was a co-editor of Page Six in the early ‘90s was the biggest factor in writing this book. Not only did I experience the paper’s balls-out culture firsthand, but I also heard so many amazing stories about some of the legendary reporters and editors there that I knew I wanted to pursue when we got the Paper of Wreckage deal with Atria. I had scratched the surface in my first piece for Vanity Fair, an oral history of Page Six, so when Susan invited me to co-author Wreckage, I jumped at the opportunity. It was a very heavy lift, but I’m so glad we did it and proud of the book.

Susan: All the skills I’ve developed through my various media jobs have come into play in this book — reporting, interviewing, writing, editing — and of course my experience at the Post. Knowing many of the characters was a big part of it. 

Q: How did the two of you meet and would you both write another book together? What is your advice for anyone wanting to write with a family member or a friend?

Frank: Susan came up with the idea for the book, so she should tell that story. I can’t remember where or when we met, but because we both worked on Page Six, it was inevitable. I got to know her a little better when I was researching and reporting the Page Six oral history for Vanity Fair. As I pored over decades of Page Six, I thought that the columns she edited were among the smartest and wittiest published. When I interviewed her for the story, I realized that her dry sense of humor and her take on the news complemented mine. That really helped when it came to mapping out the book, and I’d say that is a huge factor to consider when working with a friend or family member — or even a stranger —on a book. There are two other crucial components. You must remain open to your co-author’s perspective and opinions. Susan and I agreed on it a lot, but we didn’t agree on everything. When we didn’t, we talked it out, and if we couldn’t come to an agreement, we compromised. The final factor — and this is important — at least one of the authors needs to manage the project. Susan was fantastic at that. She set weekly meetings for us to discuss our progress and determine next steps; she set deadlines to have chapters finished; and because I was writing this book while working a full-time job at Billboard, she worked very hard to keep me on track. There were times when I chafed at this, but I am beyond grateful that she took this initiative. 

Susan: I can’t remember when I met Frank in person, but I know I talked to him in the late ‘90s or early aughts when he was at the Observer. Joe Conason, who was an editor there, is an old friend of mine and I would often call and give him story ideas and sometimes he told me to talk to Frank. These weren’t ideas for me to write, they were simply ideas. When you work on Page Six, you must come up with eight to twelve stories a day and always be thinking of tomorrow, too, so you become an idea machine. I wasn’t even living in New York then. I was working for an early web company in Seattle, but I still came up with New York-based ideas, and I’d pass them along to the Observer because I wanted to see them in print. Then Frank interviewed me for his oral history of Page Six, and I thought he did a great job. I started thinking a lot about the Post after writing a piece for Politico in 2016 about covering Donald Trump in the ‘80s – Frank suggested that Politico contact me. And then I did a Talk of the Town for The New Yorker about Myron Rushetzky, who maintains a massive email community called Post Nation for people who used to work at the paper. In 2019, I had lunch with Dan Klores, the documentary filmmaker, who is another old friend, and started telling him Post stories. He had just worked on an oral history about basketball. He suggested the Post would be a great subject for a similar project. A lightbulb went off, but it was a huge undertaking, and I knew I’d need a collaborator, I approached Frank because he’s a terrific writer and reporter who I knew would produce quality material. And he has! He also laughs at my jokes, which is crucial. We disagreed about the Oxford comma and a few other things, but we usually resolved our differences without violence, though if there had been a fistfight, it would have been in the Post tradition. I did torment Frank about staying on track and getting sections of the book completed on schedule, but in a project like this, someone has to be the control freak, and that was me. 

Q: Frank & Susan, are you currently writing another book similar to Paper Of Wreckage? Are you two working on solo projects as well? 

Frank: I am talking to my brilliant agent Sloan Harris about potential subjects for my next book, but I have nothing concrete to share. That said, it’s safe to say it won’t be an oral history. 

Susan: I am not sure I’ll ever do another oral history, but never say never. Right now, I’m working on a biography of Ruth Draper, the great monologue artist, whose recordings from the early 1950s have influenced a slew of Hollywood and Broadway people, including Lily Tomlin, F. Murray Abraham, and David Mamet. Bloomsbury-Methuen is the publisher. 

Q: What lessons do you both hope readers will learn after reading Paper Of Wreckage: The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media? 

Frank: I wouldn’t call them lessons. First, we want the book to be compelling and entertaining. When Peter Borland, our incredibly talented editor at Atria first sat down with us, he told us he wanted “a good story on every page.” Susan and I feel that we accomplished that. We also want to show that while the Post is reviled and dismissed by some — and not without reason — exceptional and ethical reporters, writers and editors worked there and did great journalism. One observation made more than once in the book is that you had to decide for yourself where your ethical line in the sand was. 

The other thing we show in Paper of Wreckage is the Post’s critical role in the building of Rupert Murdoch’s empire and the evolution of American media — which is underestimated. The tabloid style that Murdoch and his band of pirates established at the Post, moved to television with A Current Affair when Murdoch bought the Fox television stations and started a network. That show spawned several knockoffs, such as Hard Copy and Inside Edition. (The latter is in its 35^th. Season and employs several former Posties.) The success of those shows and unscripted crime series such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted — both products of Fox TV — influenced the competition, so you saw the other networks create the equivalent, such as NBC’s Dateline and To Catch A Predator. Fox News and the Post are essentially echo chambers for the Murdochian brand of conservative political coverage, and that spawned MSNBC’s progressive liberal brand of journalism. For better or worse, you can draw a dotted line from the New York Post to the state of media today. 

Susan: Love it or hate it – and I feel both ways – the Post has been enormously influential. We wanted to show how and why.