In the first half of the 20th century, the golden age of newspapers, the colorful, charismatic Roy W. Howard was chairman of Scripps-Howard, one of the two most important newspaper empires in the United States. The only American newspaperman who was simultaneously a publisher, editor and journalist, Howard was one of the most famous men of his era: selfmade, ambitious, powerful, controversial, and the advisor to every president from Woodrow Wilson to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Newsmaker is based on Beard’s exclusive access to fifty years of Howard’s privately-held diaries, and thousands of pages of his “Strictly Confidential” memoranda, a behind-the-scenes background to the history of the first half of the 20th Century, which divulges the secrets of some of the most important figures in a turbulent era.