What Journalism Could Be

What Journalism Could Be asks readers to reimagine the news by embracing a conceptual prism long championed by one of journalisms leading contemporary scholars. A former reporter, media critic and academic, Barbie Zelizer charts a singular journey through journalisms complicated contours, prompting readers to rethink both how the news works and why it matters. Zelizer tackles longstanding givens in journalisms practice and study, offering alternative cues for assessing its contemporary environment. Highlighting journalisms intersection with interpretation, culture, emotion, contingency, collective memory, crisis and visuality, Zelizer brings new meaning to its engagement with events like the global refugee crisis, rise of Islamic State, ascent of digital media and twenty-first-century combat. Imagining what journalism could be involves stretching beyond the already-known. Zelizer enumerates journalisms considerable current challenges while suggesting bold and creative ways of engaging with them. This book powerfully demonstrates how and why journalism remains of paramount importance.

Drawing on the collaborative expertise of three senior scholars, The Journalism Manifesto makes a powerful case for why journalism has become outdated and why it is in need of a long-overdue transformation. Focusing on the relevance of elites, norms and audiences, Zelizer, Boczkowski and Anderson reveal how these previously integral components of journalism have become outdated: Elites, the sources from which journalists draw much of their information and around whom they orient their coverage, have become dysfunctional; The relevance of norms, the cues by which journalists do newswork, has eroded so fundamentally that journalists are repeatedly entrenching themselves as negligible and out of sync; and because audiences have shattered beyond recognition, the correspondence between what journalists think of as news and what audiences care about can no longer be assumed. This authoritative manifesto argues that journalism has become decoupled from the dynamics of everyday life in contemporary society and outlines pathways for fixing this essential institution of democracy. It is a must-read for students, scholars and activists in the fields of journalism, media, policy, and political communication.

Essays by Thomas Frank, Clay Shirky, David Simon, and others: “Anyone concerned about the state of journalism should read this book.” —Library Journal The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere, and academic publications. Yet, until now, we have lacked a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new and shifting terrain. In Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights, celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled thirty-two illuminating pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Featuring some of today’s most incisive and influential commentators, this comprehensive collection contextualizes the predicament faced by the news media industry through a concise history of modern journalism, a hard-hitting analysis of the structural and financial causes of news media’s sudden collapse, and deeply informed proposals for how the vital role of journalism might be rescued from impending disaster. Sure to become the essential guide to the journalism crisis, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights is both a primer on the news media today and a chronicle of a key historical moment in the transformation of the press.

He traces the intellectual roots of the movement and shows how journalism can be made vital again by rethinking exactly what journalists are for."--Jacket.

SuperMedia is a lively, engaging, and refreshingly-opinionated text offering informed discussion on the importance and future of liberal journalism as a healthy part of a flourishing society. Examines the profound changes journalism is undergoing for social, economic and technological reasons Explores the potential for a entirely new type of journalism which these changes create, discussing the impact of social networking sites and blogs on traditional journalism, and making the case that journalism could be the catalyst for change needed to solve many of the world’s problems in a controversial manner Written by a first class broadcast journalist, it provides a practical roadmap for identifying the issues and solutions that will ensure an open and reliable news media for generations to come

A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.

A cutting-edge exploration of journalism in the era of digital media technology and big and open data.

We live in a profoundly challenging era for journalists. While the profession has historically taken on the mantle of providing clear, sound information to the public, journalists now face competition from dubious sources online and smear campaigns launched by public figures. In The Power of Journalists, four of the United Kingdom’s foremost journalists—Nick Robinson, Barbara Speed, Charlie Beckett, and Gary Gibbon—give on-the-ground accounts of how they’ve weathered some of the most significant political events of the past five years, including the referendum on Scottish independence and Brexit. These monumental political decisions exposed each journalist to the dangerous vicissitudes of public opinion, and made them all the more certain of their mission. In describing the role of the journalist as truth-teller and protector of impartiality as well as interpreter of controversial facts and trusted source of public opinion, they issue a clarion call for good journalism.