A SPECTRUM READER: Five Years of Reporting,...

A SPECTRUM READER: Five Years of Reporting, Essays & Criticism, edited by Bill Jones, Philip Martin and Stephen Buel (August House: $9.95, illustrated). The stories in this collection originally appeared in Spectrum, the Little Rock alternative newspaper, founded in 1985 by two dissatisfied reporters from the Arkansas Democrat. Many of the articles are quite entertaining, although the authors sometimes work a bit too hard at being iconoclasts and muckrakers. The editorials and reviews, including a hilarious account of enduring the entire 22-hour Jerry Lewis Telethon, are more likely to interest the general reader than the detailed discussions of Arkansas politics. An agreeably irreverent example of regional journalism.