The characters are larger-than-life and, at times, histrionic, and there is an oversaturation of themes – from politics, police work and journalism to circus life, snake charming and fetishism – in what is, at its core, a detective novel.
She began her journalism career covering rock music for Circus, Creem and others before joining Omni magazine as a founding editor and writer.
It's the age of the media thon, a relentless hybrid of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism.
SPORTSSUNDAY The Real Reality TV An American art form -- a combination of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism -- as experienced by Monica Lewinsky, O. J. Simpson and Woody Allen.
"Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism, and the big ratings a media circus always delivers," Burns said.
It is simplistic to cast it as the noble crusade of journalism versus the crass demands of commerce, bread versus circuses.
In 1882, a writer for The Nation magazine remarked that the talent found in circus clowns was now to be found in journalism.
Prime time news shows, whether of liberal or conservative channels, look more like a circus and a football game than hard-hitting journalism.
That exception may well protect journalism, scholarship and animal rights advocacy about subjects like factory farming, pharmaceutical testing, circuses and the slaughter of baby seals.
The debate about what these bloated media circuses mean to the future of democracy -- and to its supposed handmaiden, journalism -- has itself spawned a new, highly populated industry, though not a particularly scintillating one.
