New Books in Journalism

Is truth in journalism the same as balance? Is fairness really fair to news consumers, or is fairness merely a code word used by journalists looking to get out of the line of fire? In his latest book, Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism (Vintage, 2013), Thomas E. Patterson gets at the heart of a journalism epidemic threatening the democratic process. Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press and a faculty member at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Patterson calls for journalists to become experts in a subject, whether it’s foreign policy, economics, or other matters. Knowledge-based journalism will give journalists tools they need to go beyond the he-said/she-said reporting model and will allow for a level of analysis that better serves the American people. Invoking the observations and wisdom of Walter Lippmann, Informing the News is an important work intended for journalism scholars, journalists, journalism educators, and anyone with a vested interest in a democratic society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

George Brock approached his book about newspapers and journalism in the digital age unwilling to write another gloom-and-doom narrative about the death or decline of the industry. When he studied the historical development of journalism and current trends, he found the industry is what is always has been: volatile, evolving, and vital to society’s well being. Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age (Kogan Page, 2013) is an important look at the industrial, economic, and pragmatic realities of a shifting industry. Using modern case studies, including the phone-hacking scandal that brought down Great Britain’s News of the World, as well as historical research and recent data, Brock examines where journalism was, is and will be. Brock, head of City University London’s prestigious graduate school of journalism, has produced a work that transcends academia without sacrificing methodology or theory. “Because journalism lives on the frontier between democratic purposes and the commercial market,” Brock writes, “it is constantly being reorganized and renegotiated.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

In our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the internet than from newspapers. But how irrelevant has paper really become? As Ian Samson argues in his new book, Paper: An Elegy (Harper Collins, 2012), not only is paper still vital in our society, it pretty much dominates all our lives. From advertising to currency, to board games and origami, paper still revolves around most business and leisure. Even “post-paper” products, such as e-readers, imitate the aesthetics and feel of paper, mirroring it in spirit if not in product. And how many of us have heard, “yes, I have an e-book reader, but I just really like the feel of a book in my hand”? In this interview, Ian Samson tells us about the history of paper, its uses throughout time, and our love affair with the “ultimate man-made material.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

In October 2007, journalist Eric Simons sat in the stands of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif., to watch his beloved University of California Bears take on Oregon State University in football. If Cal won, it almost certainly would be ranked No. 1 in the country. Instead, Simons agonized as Cal’s quarterback struggled through the final play. Cal lost. Simons suffered a miserable train ride home to San Francisco. But from crushing defeat sprang an idea for his latest book, The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession (The Overlook Press, 2013). A science and nature writer by trade, Simons sought scientific explanations for the physical and emotional reactions experienced by sports fans., “We are not subject to any kind of fan nature; we are more complex than that,” Simons writes. “We sports fan are glorious expressions of all the wondrous quirks and oddities in human nature.” Through the lens of sport and sports fans, Simons has built a unique window into what it means to be human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Brian Michael Goss, professor of communication at St. Louis University in Madrid, has taken one of media’s most studied theories and given it a facelift. In Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century (Peter Lang, 2013), Goss revisits the model created by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent. The filters remain, but Goss pushes the model into the modern context of new media models and expanded global exportation. “Far from condemning journalism,” Goss writes, “I hope to see it more closely approximate its mythologies about itself.” “Rebooting” is an important work, relevant not just to scholars, but all consumers of media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism: 1885-1917 (University of Chicago Press, 2013), the new book from the University of Oregon’s Gretchen Soderlund, is about far more than the title suggests. Using sex trafficking and scandal as a starting point, Soderlund delves into an era of journalism that features muckrakers and sensationalists, key political players and journalists with social and cultural agendas. It is a book about racial identity, journalists and their audiences, and Great Britain’s influence on journalistic practices and culture. “From an early twenty-first century vantage point,” Soderlund writes, “it is clear that issues of immigration, urbanization, heterosociability, and racial mixing were stitched into white slavery narratives.” Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism took Soderlund deep into the archives of journalism history. The result is a thorough, important discussion about one of the key periods in American journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Dan Kennedy envisioned a massive book project, a big-picture investigation into current issues facing journalism and media. Instead he found everything he needed in New Haven, Conn., inside the small but productive office of the New Haven Independent. In The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), Kennedy, assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, researches models of journalism that engage public conversation while producing indispensable local news coverage. Although Kennedy’s work includes insight into numerous organizations, the book focuses primarily on the Independent, a non-profit institution in the historical town of New Haven that includes the New Haven Register, a publication that dates back more than two centuries Through interviews and research, Kennedy shows that local journalism in the 21st Century can survive and thrive so long as those within an organization are willing to put in the work and develop an understanding of the new tenets of journalism: social engagement, deep community focus, and evolving revenue models “What you want is sustainability,” Kennedy says. “On the other hand, the New Haven Register traces its roots to Benjamin Franklin in the 1760s. I don’t think that anybody is going to achieve that kind of sustainability anymore, and I’m not even sure it’s desirable. I think we’re going to see things come and go.” The Wired City is food for the civic minded and news junkies alike. It’s an important work that begins a sketch of what local journalism can and should be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Robert W. McChesney, the celebrated political economist of communication, takes the Internet, industry and government head-on in his latest book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (The New Press, 2013). Digital Disconnect builds on McChesney’s previous works, spinning forward his scholarship to construct a remarkably current look at the Internet’s corporate and political landscape. “Almost all of the other books on the Internet, some of which are very good, sort of try to take a larger view of it,” McChesney says during the interview. “Because of where I’m coming from, because of my interests, I think that’s the one thing I could inject that draws from my past research, where I can speak with greater authority, that’s really not talked about by anyone else.” McChesney uses the book to argue that the Internet has become a hub of “numbing commercialism,” largely the result of failed government policies. Writes McChesney: “When the dust clears on this critical juncture, if our societies have not been fundamentally transformed for the better, if democracy has not triumphed over capital, the digital revolution may prove to have been a revolution in name only, an ironic, tragic reminder of the growing gap between the potential and the reality of human society.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead This is the unifying idea of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green’s new book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013) Those six words – If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead – appear on the back cover, on the inside jacket, and in the very first paragraph of the book’s introduction. The authors focus on the new currencies of media, including user engagement and the rapid flow of information, while debunking the terms we’ve all learned to know and dread, such as “viral” and “Web 2.0.” Jenkins, Ford, and Green set an ambitious agenda, targeting not one but three audiences: media scholars, communication professionals, and those who create and share media and are interested in learning how media are changing because of it. “Perhaps the most impactful aspect of a spreadable media environment,” the authors write, “is the way in which we all now play a vital role in the sharing of media texts.” A review of Spreadable Media can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Somewhere along the line, C.W. Anderson became fascinated with digital journalism and the culture that surrounds it: engaged publics, social networks, and the challenges to “legacy” media. Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Temple University Press, 2013) is the fascinating product of Anderson’s research into the Philadelphia journalism scene during the first decade-plus of the 21st Century. Once a thriving hub of traditional journalism, Philadelphia has become a living case study of the collision of digital media practices. Anderson’s ethnographic research and spot-on academic interpretation paints a vivid picture of a sometimes innovative, sometimes meandering journalism scene. Although we are at the beginning of the digital journalism era, in Rebuilding the News Anderson nonetheless walks us through the new ecosystem, what seems to be working, what doesn’t, and where we go from here. “Given all of the pain journalism has experienced in the past decade and a half,” Anderson writes, “it would be a shame to waste this moment.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism