Abstract
It is hauntingly prophetic that Richard M. Perloff begins The Dynamics of News: Journalism in the 21st-Century Media Milieu with anecdotes on race-based police brutality, as it was written before the Black Lives Matter resurgence. Indeed, so much that has happened in 2020 could not have been predicted, but Perloff’s highly contextual view of media in the current moment provides clues we were always headed in this volatile direction, with both social issues and journalism in the United States.
Perloff’s clear-eyed, critical analysis of the news media today, as both persecuted and flawed, is easy to read and right on target. He concisely captures the complex scope of the landscape. The author ultimately argues that because the modern definition of news is “up for grabs,” we should be looking at journalism with a “fresher, sharper set of eyes” to unravel what has happened and what could be next (p. 11). What follows is an unending set of existential observations and questions for newsrooms, paired with encouraging assurances that “journalism adapts, fitfully, yet persistently, to the vicissitudes of an unpredictable present” (p. ix).
I just taught a new course at Grady College—Media Savvy: Becoming Digitally Literate. My students, both journalism and non-journalism majors, learned misinformation terminology, fact-checked digital content, and interviewed professional journalists. It became clear during this course that these young adults struggle to distinguish truth from fiction in digital spaces. Yet, they were hungry to be “literate.” I kept these students in mind, as well as my capstone undergraduate reporters, when choosing the highlights that follow from Perloff’s book. These sections, among others, set a strong foundation for seeing journalism’s transformation tensions as recursive rather than definitive, providing hope for the disillusioned about the state of the media industry.
In Part I of the text, which focuses on media processes and purposes, the author’s continual critique of a lack of hierarchy is important: There can be a seemingly endless number of stories to click on, parading down a phone, with no particular rhyme or reason or appealing aesthetic architecture. Stories or pictures can appear one after the other, with news gathered by very different platforms that vary in their approaches to news and journalistic integrity. (p. 21)
This is a key reason why people are so easily misled, and Perloff asserts four characteristics of contemporary news that create a framework to help define this problem and how journalists might combat it.
Throughout the book, Perloff uses specific examples and contrasting definitions to drive his writing. The examples are solid touchpoints for concepts (goodness, that did happen during the first Iraq war), and in a heavy 24-hr news cycle, exemplars prompt us to remember media-driven events like the Kavanaugh hearings in the wake of the all-consuming COVID-19 pandemic. The author’s intense wrestling with definitions of both “journalism” and “news” is also productive in a number of ways. In a time when much of what our students consume is not news by generally accepted definitions (or Perloff’s), these disparate views can prompt important discussions.
Part II examines the motivations and moralities of news. In doing so, Perloff addresses complex issues such as race, gender, and sexuality in coverage and newsrooms staffs, perceived liberal media bias, and economic/organizational pressures with aplomb. The “is news a reflection of reality” argument elucidates the flaws in a still sensational, highly constructivist, and myopically national media system.
It is interesting that in Chapter 8 the author presents not professional acculturation but a set of “routines” as fundamental to the practice (and flaws) of journalism. Of course, this mostly plays out as a complicating discussion of news values, which is the bread and butter of being a journalist in any time and on any platform. Pulling on Nikki Usher’s immediacy, interactivity, and participation, Perloff extends the typical “man bites dog” discussion in a tangible way, just as crowdsourcing has procedurally replaced more traditional sourcing techniques.
A thorough discussion of objectivity is ripe for our time and is threaded throughout the text: Thus objective journalism can be helpfully viewed as a goal—an open-minded, evidence-based commitment to truth, a beacon to encourage fairness and appreciation of the multiplicity of perspectives that underlie a problem. Objectivity remains an idealized value, a standard toward which professional journalists, broadly defined, can strive. (p. 170)
Perloff writes about the pendulum settling between mythic independence and a socially constructed concept of how a journalist circumvents bias.
What’s lacking in this text that covers just about everything about journalism today? Digital examples and components would better illustrate many aspects, and like many works published today, I fear this book’s examples will read as dated much too soon. The summaries at the end of each chapter can be repetitive of the already well-written and concise sections. And, the cover image does nothing to foreshadow the insight of this book—at least for those who still judge books by their covers. The phrase “in a digital age” in Courier on a newspaper page doesn’t reflect the intelligence of this text, unless it’s meant to be ironic.
In shorter programs or curricula that struggle to expose students to everything they need, this text validates how interdisciplinary and pervasive journalism has always been and continues to be. It would be a good fit for an introductory graduate class—particularly with Chapter 10’s complex and overlapping theories about how news is constructed and why. However, there are a number of sections of this book that would work in an undergraduate class as well, setting the tone and foundation for an understanding of the media that we interact with daily.
In the end, Perloff is saying it is “both and” for the news right now. Even though journalism is being stretched to the point of peril, there is cause for optimism that a stronger and healthier model of this pillar of democracy will emerge because of these extraordinary (yet historically repetitive) obstacles. The author asserts it is ridiculous for journalism not to be in a constant state of flux and unnerving self-reflection, for that status is at the core of our purpose and is both useful and good (albeit exhausting and anxiety-ridden).
This text, in the same way, is able to accomplish two disparate feats at the same time. It teaches those with little journalism familiarity about the history and current context of news, with all of its profound purposes and disastrous drawbacks (or formidable failings). But, as a former professional journalist turned journalism educator (who still manages a digital news organization), I was reminded of what we do and why we do it. The systematic articulation of these ideas caused reflection that was necessary to continue to prepare for and innovate into what journalism will be next.