![]() ![]() (How he affected the magazine’s reputation with his breathless coverage of Obama-which resulted in no less than six cover stories-is a different matter.) That’s because Renegade suffers from the fate of most hastily constructed campaign books in the digital age: it is simply a rehash of events that were obsessively covered when they first transpired. The allegation by Wolffe’s ex-colleagues that he hoarded all the best material for his book should be the least of their concerns. Obama, Smith writes, “essentially assigned the book” to Wolffe. For reasons that will soon be made obvious, Obama decided that among the many reporters assigned to cover him, Wolffe would be the one to whom he would grant exclusive access for the purposes of what would effectively be an authorized campaign book. But the most telling part of Smith’s story was the way he described how the book came to fruition. ![]() There seemed to be no shortage of staffers at the magazine willing to speak ill of their former colleague, whom they accused (without attribution, of course) of whisking around the country on Newsweek’s dime while saving his best material for his recently released (and bestselling) tome. ![]() Last month, Politico’s Ben Smith served up a juicy story about the controversy surrounding Renegade, former Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe’s book about the Obama campaign. Renegade: The Making of a President | By Richard Wolffe | Crown | $26, 368 pages ![]()
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