When journalism scholar Dr. Roy Peter Clark ’70 wrote a satirical essay that was published in the Los Angeles Times, he never imagined it would bring him an invitation to sit center stage in a literary controversy on national TV with Oprah Winfrey.

The essay concerned author James Frey and A Million Little Pieces, his memoir about overcoming drug addiction. The book sold millions of copies after it landed in Oprah’s Book Club but foundered when it was learned that some events in the book were exaggerated and others were fabricated.

After initially strongly defending Frey, Winfrey concluded that what he had done was indefensible and planned a very public condemnation of him, his book, and his publisher, Nan A. Talese, on her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Along with Frey and Talese, the rare live show on January 26 included New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, and Clark, who is vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for Journalistic Studies, a school for journalists.

“I would say the three of us [Rich, Cohen, and Clark] were totally unprepared for what was about to happen,” said Clark, who assumed Winfrey would continue to defend Frey. “We didn’t know that there was going to be a self-flagellation and a public flogging. It was amazing television.”

Winfrey apologized profusely for supporting the book initially, said Clark. As for Frey: “It was like she put him in the stocks; a pillorying of a wayward author,” he said.

Clark told Winfrey that when it is revealed that some part of a memoir has been embellished or fabricated, readers begin to doubt everything in that memoir. Further, he said, when one memoir turns out to be falsified, readers begin to have questions about all memoirs.

In an essay he is now writing, Clark argues that there should be at least two categories for the memoir. One would be “the non-fiction memoir” and the other would be labeled “based on a true story.”

Clark has edited seven volumes of Best Newspaper Writing, the annual collection of writing award winners published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. His publication, Writing Tools: Fifty Essential Strategies for Every Writer, will be his 14th book on journalism and is scheduled to be published this fall. 

Clark was the first PC student to be nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship. He returned to his alma mater to address students and alumni at the Liberal Arts Honors Program Convocation and Dinner in 2000. He has been at the Poynter Institute since 1979.