Barry H. Gottehrer and a “City in Crisis”

Abstract

This study focuses on Barry H. Gottehrer, who authored “City in Crisis,” an acclaimed New York Herald Tribune series about the problems facing New York City in the 1960s. Gottehrer subsequently joined Mayor John Lindsay's administration to help quell civil unrest in the face of events such as the Vietnam War and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. This study considers Gottehrer's place among journalists who abandoned journalistic neutrality to become active government players. Gottehrer's methods reflected a novel communications strategy in which he tried to avoid press coverage of himself and his associates while working to give media access to disenfranchised people with the understanding that gaining such attention was often the underlying goal of protests and riots. He employed his strategy at a time of a shifting media landscape with the close of numerous newspapers in New York City and the rise of local TV news.