Abstract
Ross Eaman's Historical Dictionary of Journalism is an extensive effort to provide a concise history of journalism. The author is a media historian at Carleton University, Canada. The aim of the second edition of his dictionary is to cover the history of journalism ‘as an institutionalised form of discourse, from the acta diurnal in ancient Rome to the news aggregators of the 21st century’ (blurb) by exploring its evolution through the different platforms although the word platform itself is not one of the keywords used. It starts with a chronology of the key events and developments in the history of journalism from 59 B.C.E. to September 2020. Thus, the first event covered is Julius Caesar ordering the publication of the acta diurna, while the last one is Facebook threatening ‘to ban news articles from its platform in Australia if its parliament proceeded with plans to require social media companies to pay news publishers for their content’ (p. xlvi). The long introduction that follows then provides a narrative history of journalism. The main part is the dictionary entries themselves, which include the biographies of media owners, editors, journalists, social critics of news, educators and technological innovators; main forms of journalism; types of news media; specific countries, etc. This dictionary is part of a wider series aimed at presenting essential information on a broad range of subjects. The final part is a bibliography, organised by dictionary entry, rather than in alphabetical order. While writing such an extensive dictionary of journalism is a mammoth task for which the author should be complimented, there are some glaring omissions in it, which question its credibility. Central and Eastern European countries, while included in the Introduction, are not covered in the dictionary itself and important trends and developments in other countries such as the process of Berlusconization of Italy, which has had a knock-on effect on other countries are not even mentioned, let alone discussed, even though there is an entry on Italy.