SURRENDER THE THRONE - DTP - PRODUCT INFORMATION

Could the media get away with murder?

In the early 21st century, media consolidation ensures the dominance of two moguls on two continents: Louis Redmond in London, England and the Ridenhour family in Manhattan, New York.

After Redmond Enterprises initiates a hostile takeover of Echelon Media Corporation, its CEO, Steven Ridenhour Sr., is murdered in Aspen and the billionaire’s estranged son inherits the worldwide empire.

When the NYPD uncovers new evidence against the young heir, an ambitious Manhattan D.A.’s office indicts Junior for a murder-for-hire conspiracy.
During New York's trial of the new century and a contentious election year, Steven Ridenhour Jr. must wage a multi-front war against his father's enemies and his own to discover the truth and protect his family legacy.

As real-life media moguls influence public opinion, SURRENDER THE THRONE captures the zeitgeist of our Information Age and the allure and tragedy within the American Dream...

PAUL JARNAGIN: The inspiration began as a classic what-if? What if the world’s richest man was on trial for murder? Then the corollary was: What if this mogul owned most of the media and tried to influence the outcome? It was a First Amendment thriller with a great hook. Thematically, it morphed into a serious examination of the media’s role in our society. But the heart of this story is a murder-mystery, which the protagonist, a second-generation mogul, must solve while he’s on trial for his life. In basic storytelling terms, it’s a larger-than-life plot with larger-than-life characters: a metropolis Clash of the Titans.

JARNAGIN: It has Shakespearean and royal overtones, but it's really about modern thrones of power and the worthiness of those who occupy them. In this story, the power centers are located in the media capital of the world: publishing, politics and the legal system. Whoever abuses their power and deserves to be "deposed" is revealed by the book's ending, surprise or not.

JARNAGIN: It means that the story's themes and plot points are integrated by Freedom of Speech. SURRENDER THE THRONE does have courtroom drama, but the real drama happens outside of it. It’s a timely issue. The First Amendment has taken a hit lately. What can you say and not say without paying a price? We do live in a time in which reporters can go to jail for speaking truth to power, even to themselves. Sometimes the echo chamber can be deafening and you wonder where it’s coming from and why. Perception versus reality is another theme in the novel.

JARNAGIN: Neither. If people want to read true accounts, they can go to the non-fiction section. My novel deals with the mass media and its subsidiaries within a fictional scenario. A lot more interesting that way. It’s a balanced view of all aspects of the press, positive and negative, and how they view each other - from the inside-out. A recent trend in journalism is tabloid fodder turned into mainstream headlines. Is it a symbiotic relationship, or a battle for advertising revenue? You have two types of media with different ethical standards, yet they're often owned by the same conglomerate. You often hear media pros say that it’s all consumer-driven, we want it like drug addicts. If that’s true, where do we go for rehab?

JARNAGIN: Not ironically, I’m a news junkie myself - selectively, of course. I usually read about a dozen papers a day, print and/or online, cable and regular TV. Without that daily knowledge of the world around me, I’d go nuts. Ultimately, knowledge is power, but it can also be a dangerous thing. The original noble purpose was people’s right to know.

JARNAGIN: Making the media world authentic was my first priority, so I researched that unique world, then I populated it with characters I created from scratch. It’s no mystery that most moguls have several traits in common: an idiosyncratic vision, perseverance and a compulsion/passion to overcome odds and the competition, if necessary. The successful ones see a gap in the marketplace, go into debt chasing after a concept that nobody grasped at the time, then corner that market while everyone else struggles to catch up. That’s the American Dream personified. How they go about it, ethical or not, is in the eye of the beholder.

JARNAGIN: My novel takes place in the early 21st century. I suppose the top two moguls of today would be Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone with cable titans and telcos nipping at their heels. In the early 1900's, Hearst and Pulitzer were their only competition -- they started as tabloids and went mainstream later -- so you could say my story is back to the future, only modernized. Well-read people can draw their own parallels. I’m not pulling an Orson Welles and deconstructing someone famous with contempt. As I said before, go to the non-fiction section for that. In SURRENDER THE THRONE, the moguls’ personal lives clash and contrast with their public personas. Conflict is drama, not biographical fodder.

JARNAGIN: The 24/7 media has changed in technological ways, yet remains the same as it was 100 years ago. Back in the days of “print only,” and, to a greater extent, radio and newsreels, news came from limited and filtered sources. TV changed the landscape. Why read the news, when you can just watch it? Now there’s the internet to challenge the traditional newspapers. But, perhaps coming full circle, the media is now dominated by five or six big media corporations with “vertical” distribution streams. That’s a lot of concentrated power within a handful of people. I took it further in SURRENDER THE THRONE, where media moguls rule the world after the FCC rubber-stamps media consolidation via backroom political pressure. All of the media families devour each other until two moguls, Redmond Enterprises in London and Echelon Media Corporation in New York, are left standing, or financially solvent. A murder trial is the backdrop.

JARNAGIN: The Great American Novel is an intangible litmus test that the book pundits never agree upon, so I opted to write a story that matched the current zeitgeist, politically and culturally, yet had its own unique take. It will be interesting to see how life and art co-exist ten, twenty years from now. I’m a history buff, so it’s interesting to look back and see what the media “spin” was at the time of certain events and watershed moments. Were the press and its conscience behind the curve or ahead of it? And how did that affect society as a whole?

Q: How will the mainstream media react to a mainstream novel about the media?

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