Background Readings For Journalism

Key Readings in Journalism brings together over thirty essential writings that every student of journalism should know. Designed as a primary text for undergraduate students, each reading was carefully chosen in response to extensive surveys from educators reflecting on the needs of today’s journalism classroom. Readings range from critical and historical studies of journalism, such as Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion and Michael Schudson’s Discovering the News, to examples of classic reporting, such as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s All the President’s Men. They are supplemented by additional readings to broaden the volume’s scope in every dimension, including gender, race, and nationality. The volume is arranged thematically to enable students to think deeply and broadly about journalism—its development, its practice, its key individuals and institutions, its social impact, and its future—and section introductions and headnotes precede each reading to provide context and key points for discussion.

The role of the news media in defining the important issues of the day, also known as the agenda-setting influence of mass communication, has received widespread attention over the past 20 years. Since the publication of McCombs and Shaw's seminal empirical study, more than one hundred journal articles and monographs have appeared. This collection exemplifies the major phases of research on agenda-setting: tests of the basic hypothesis, contingent conditions affecting the strength of this influence, the natural history of public issues, mass media influence on public policy, and the role of external sources from the president to public relations staffs on the news agenda.

We take our news for granted: that it will inform us about the significant people and cite the authoritative ones, reflect the world the way it is, and tell us why something happens as it does. Now, six working journalists, press critics, and scholars at the leading edge of media criticism have been specially commissioned to make the familiar act of reading the news into a fresh and revealing event. Taking the famous "five W's and an H" (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How), the authors turn these questions back on journalism for the first time to show us exactly what to make of the press. Leon V. Sigal Who? Sources Make the News Carlin Romano What? Grisly Truth about Bare Facts Michael Schudson When? Deadlines, Datelines, and History Where? Cartography, Community, and the Cold War James W. Carey Why And How? The Dark Continent of American Journalism Robert Karl Manoff Writing the News (By Telling the "Story") For everyone who reads the newspaper, for the journalist, and for the media critic alike, these essays offer fresh, provocative insights into a centerpiece of American culture, the news.