The Stringer by Ted Rall, Pablo Callejo

​         Stringer is a kind of second best reporter on the scene, not the actual journalist, but someone who collects quoters, etc. to assist the journalist with the article. That’s how the main character in this book gets his start, but he is a second generation newspaperman, the news are in his blood. Alas, wrong sort of family business, with newspaper circulations steadily in decline since the 60s, by now social media has all by killed it.
      The only options seem to be adapt to the new paradigm and learn to survive in a world determined to stay under or wrongly informed by memes and tweets or quit. Or…reinvent the game altogether and yourself along with it.
     The protagonist chooses the latter option, abandoning all of his morals and journalistic integrity and becomes a newsmaker, a clever behind the scenes presence, manipulating forces of evil to…well, do evil, but of a predictable and reportable variety.
    Then comes power, fame, acclaim, money…question is, will it be enough at the end of the day to make a man happy?
    Very clever commentary on not only the status of reporting in this day and age, but on the very nature of news. No time like the present, when facts and truth are no longer empirical or real or even important and liars have been upgraded from soapboxes to worldwide platforms to shout their vitriol into the universe.
   Also, since this is a graphic novel, it stands to mention it is a very well drawn one, switching seamlessly from black and white to color and comfortably landing somewhere between a classic comic book art and elaborate cartoons. The art compliments the story, though the story definitely outshines the art and is the real star of the show here. Very good read. Recommended.