Abstract
You would have had to end all periodical and newspaper subscriptions and shut off all computer connections to avoid the ubiquitous ongoing discussions and debates about the changing field of communications roiling the print media and blogosphere these days. Indeed, many of the books reviewed in this edition manifest what the contemporary British social theorist John Thompson has described as the “corrosive impact of public scrutiny and debate” through the “discursive elaboration” of mediated messages.
And, of course, an adjunct to that discursive elaboration for those of us in communication is calls for changing the way we teach and what we teach. One such clarion call for a major renovation in both the news ethic of journalism and the education of journalists that has recently received much notice is Thomas E. Patterson’s Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism, which is reviewed in this edition by Guido H. Stempel III. Stempel offers this observation with a caveat: “In summary I agree with most of what Patterson advocates for journalism education, but he starts with an inaccurate and incomplete notion of what journalism education is.” He notes that Patterson offers little that would surprise most journalism educators. “What he really does is to describe what the best journalism programs have been doing for years.” That should engender some more discussion and debate.
Another acknowledgment that the world is changing is the much ballyhooed The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century. Reviewer Ivor Shapiro observes that “‘The Book’ on 21st century journalism ethics has not yet been written, and quite likely never will be. But an excellent start has been made.” And another book that looks at change and our struggle to keep up is Regulating Social Media: Legal and Ethical Considerations, a compilation of essays on the legal issues surrounding social media and discussions of possible regulations reviewed by Kris Boyle, who describes this as “a snapshot of emerging issues.”
Similarly, in his review of Media Smackdown: Deconstructing the News and the Future of Journalism—a book that paints “quite a bleak picture”—Stephen D. Cooper goes on to discuss what could well be some additions to the journalism curriculum such as the “nonpartisan scrutiny of evidence, warrant, and claim.” Cooper also asserts that correspondingly, “it would be good for journalists to have a good grounding in all three major strands of American political thought: classical liberalism (the founding principles), progressivism (the contemporary left), and modern conservatism (the contemporary right).
In the same vein, another book reviewed here is Lifestyle Journalism that is a revision of conceptions about the weight and importance of a traditional, but often marginalized, form of journalism. The reviewer, Donna Harrington-Lueker, notes the scholarly neglect of lifestyle journalism that is “often derided and dismissed as insubstantial and commercially driven.” She argues that the book’s nine articles “contextualize, theorize, and otherwise explore what is often dismissed as something other than ‘real journalism.’”
And finally, one book reviewed here deals obliquely with communication change in that it holds up for inspection the nature of this new digital regime. Jason Tham’s review of Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age notes that this is a book that argues that not only has Web 2.0 failed to give us a “cultural revolution,” but it also “reinforces power and inequality.” This assertion is slightly reminiscent of Emily Bell’s Guardian essay on the relaunch of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight in which she asserted, Remaking journalism in its own image, only with better hair and tighter clothes, is not a revolution, or even an evolution. It is a repackaging of the status quo with a very nice clubhouse attached. A revolution calls for a regime change of more significant depth.
Now, there’s some corrosive “public scrutiny and debate.”
Still, aside from the future of journalism and journalism education, this edition includes book reviews on a wide-ranging number of subjects. They include reviews of books on social media’s impact on society, on media and social movements, on broadcasting, on international communications, on media and the environment, on media history, on photography, on media and religion, and on the press and privacy.
Dip in and enjoy.