New Books in Journalism
392 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsInterview with Scholars of Journalism about their New Books
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Episodes
Thomas Aiello, "The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity" (Duke UP, 2021)
September 10, 2021 08:00 - 45 minutesIn The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity (Duke University Press, 2021), Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fascinating life of a pioneering Black journalist and media personality. A witness to some of the most iconic moments of the 1960s, Lomax remains an important yet overlooked civil rights figure, who emerged as one of the most influential voices of the movement despite his past as an ex-con, serial liar, and publicity-seeking provocateur. Thomas Aiello is...
Caitlin Petre, "All the News That’s Fit to Click: How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists" (Princeton UP, 2021)
September 10, 2021 08:00 - 52 minutesOver the past 15 years, journalism has experienced a rapid proliferation of data about online reader behavior in the form of web metrics. These newsroom metrics influence which stories are written, how news is promoted, and which journalists get hired and fired. Some argue that metrics help journalists better serve their audiences. Others worry that metrics are the contemporary equivalent of a stopwatch-wielding factory manager. In All the News That's Fit to Click: How Metrics Are Transformin...
Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)
September 03, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesUntil the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of American society in favor of the moneyed upscale consumer for more than four decades. Christopher R. Martin now reveals why and how the media lost sight of the American working class and the effects of it doing so. The damning indictment of the mainstream media that flows through No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Cl...
Local Long-Form Journalism: An Interview with David Schmalz
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutesDavid Schmalz is a staff writer at the Monterey County Weekly, where his longform pieces have won numerous awards from the California News Publishers Association, including a first place for enterprise reporting in 2014 for an expose he wrote about a local church's attempt to evict residents from 98 federally subsidized apartments from a property it managed. Those residents were able to keep their homes, and the property remains the largest affordable housing complex on the Monterey Peninsula...
Christopher M. Elias, "Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
August 24, 2021 08:00 - 58 minutesIf information is power, then so too is gossip. In Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (U Chicago Press, 2021), historian Christopher Elias shows how three men who sat at the center of the mid-century surveillance state—FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the bellicose anticommunist Senator Joe McCarthy, and the gold-collar lawyer from New York, Roy Cohn—understood that power and used it to their advantage, elevating themselves and intimidating other...
Covering New York Politics: A Conversation with David Freedlander
August 17, 2021 08:00 - 42 minutesDavid Freedlander is a veteran New York City-based journalist. He writes long-form features about politics and the arts, people and ideas, and has appeared in New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, ArtNews, The Daily Beast, Newsweek and a host of other publications. In this episode, we are talking about his coverage of New York Politics – the resignation of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and likely next mayor of the NYC, Eric Adams. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. I...
Samantha Barbas, "The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
August 13, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesOver the course of a long and successful legal career, Morris Ernst established himself as one of Americas foremost civil libertarians. Yet his advocacy of free speech – an advocacy that established the case law on which much of the subsequent jurisprudence is based – stands in stark contrast with his opposition to communism and his longstanding support for J. Edgar Hoover and his anticommunist campaigns. In The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade (U Chicago Press, 2021), Sama...
Megan Goodwin, "Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
August 09, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesSex abuse happens in all communities, but American minority religions often face disproportionate allegations of sexual abuse. Why, in a country that consistently fails to acknowledge—much less address—the sexual abuse of women and children, do American religious outsiders so often face allegations of sexual misconduct? Why does the American public presume to know “what’s really going on” in minority religious communities? Why are sex abuse allegations such an effective way to discredit peopl...
John Lovett, "The Politics of Herding Cats: When Congressional Leaders Fail" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
August 05, 2021 08:00 - 47 minutesIn considering how legislation moves forward in the American political system, we often think about elected representatives sitting in committee hearings or Senators speaking from the floor of the Senate to make a particular point. Woven into all of these ideas, which are not misguided, is the role (often behind the scenes) that congressional leaders play in trying to wrangle their caucuses to vote for or against legislation. In The Politics of Herding Cats: When Congressional Leaders Fail (...
Jessica Hopper, "The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic" (MCD x Fsg Originals, 2021)
July 30, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesThroughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examined women recording and producing music, in all genres, through an intersectional feminist lens. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (MCD x Fsg Originals, 2021) features oral histories of bands like Hole and Sleater Kinney, interviews with the women editors of 1970s-era Rolling Stone, and intimate conversations with iconic musicians such as Björk,...
Nick Couldry, “The Value of Voice” (Open Agenda, 2021)
July 29, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe Value of Voice is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. This wide-ranging conversation explores how the media can be used as a filter to examine power structures, political movements, economic interests, democracy and our evolving notion of culture, the importance of voice and the challenge posed by media instituti...
John Horgan, "Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science" (MIT Press, 2020)
July 23, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhat would it feel like to wake up inside the head of someone who writes about science for a living? John Horgan, acclaimed author of the bestseller The End of Science, answers that question in his genre-bending new book Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science (MIT Press, 2020), a stream-of-consciousness account of a day in the life of his alter ego, Eamon Toole--a blogger, college professor, and divorced father. This work of fact-based fiction, or "faction," follows Toole as he wakes up in hi...
Knitting and Politics in the Age of Trump: A Discussion with Carrie Battan
July 20, 2021 08:00 - 37 minutesToday we are talking to a New Yorker staff writer Carrie Battan about her piece from March of this year "How Politics Tested Ravelry and the Crafting Community" – about how a quote unquote “nice website about yarn” got involved in radical politics. Battan began contributing to The New Yorker in 2015 and became a staff writer in 2018. She has contributed to the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone, and the Web site Pitchfork, where she worked as a staff writer from 2011 to 2014...
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)
July 20, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutesThe legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Frank Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (University of California Press 2020) argues that this idealized portrayal of Magnum occludes the larger networks within which thes...
Christina R. Foust et al., "What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourRecent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics (U Alabama Press, 2017) is an attempt to foster a more coherent understanding of social change among scholars of rhetoric and communica...
Ken Ellingwood, "First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 47 minutesIn First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to the first true test of the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and a free press through the story of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. The story unfolds during the 1830s, a period known for legal efforts to silence the abolitionist movement by states across the South and violent mobs who picked up that charge when the government ...
Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández, "Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's War on Drugs" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
July 14, 2021 08:00 - 52 minutesRaúl Diego Rivera Hernández's book Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's War on Drugs (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) explores the current human rights crisis created by the War on Drugs in Mexico. It focuses on three vulnerable communities that have felt the impacts of this war firsthand: undocumented Central American migrants in transit to the United States, journalists who report on violence in highly dangerous regions, and the mourning relatives of victims of severe crimes, who take collecti...
Joshua P. Darr et al., "Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
July 07, 2021 08:00 - 50 minutesThe connection between local news and political polarization is a hot topic that scholars in political science, journalism, and other fields have explored from multiple angles. It's not often that a real-world experiment presents itself, but that's exactly what happened when a Google alert landed in the inboxes of Joshua P. Darr., Matthew P. Hitt, and Johanna Dunaway. During the month of July 2019, the Palm Springs Desert Sun dropped national politics from its opinion page and instead filled...
Megan Eaton Robb, "Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India" (Oxford UP, 2020)
July 06, 2021 08:00 - 48 minutesIn early twentieth century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins of society became a key player in Urdu journalism. Published in the isolated market town of Bijnor, Madinah grew to hold influence across North India and the Punjab while navigating complex issues of religious and political identity. In Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India (Oxfor...
Amanda Ripley, "High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
July 02, 2021 08:00 - 35 minutesWhat’s the greatest crisis facing America today? — Racism and hate crimes, exploding government debt, climate change, or the mess at the border? It may be none of these. America and many other countries are trapped in high conflict. Both sides are paralyzed by fear and anger as they demonize the other. The national narrative of "us versus them" is a threat to democracy and stops us from working together to build a better world. Best-selling author and investigative journalist, Amanda Ripley, ...
Nikki Usher, "News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism" (Columbia UP, 2021)
June 23, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesThe future of local news and the connection between local news and democracy are two of the hottest topics in philanthropy, education, and media these days. Nikki Usher addresses both head-on in her new book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism (Columbia University Press, 2021). In the book and in this conversation, Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. She questions longstanding beliefs about ...
Xenia Svetlova, "On Heels in the Middle East" (Pardes Publishing, 2020)
June 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOn Heels in the Middle East (Pardes Publishing, 2020) is the first book of Ksenia Svetlova, an Israeli journalist of Russian origin who covered the Middle East extensively during the last two decades. Svetlova takes us on a journey to Hizbullah dominated parts of Beirut, refugee camps in Gaza, Qaddafi's Libya and the revolutionary squares of the Arab Spring. She describes the fateful events that had changed the face of the Middle East such as the US invasion to Iraq or the second Palestinian ...
Jacob L. Nelson, "Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public" (Oxford UP, 2021)
June 15, 2021 04:00 - 52 minutesMany believe the solution to ongoing crises in the news industry — including profound financial instability and public distrust — is for journalists to improve connections to their audiences. Conversations about the proper relationship between the media and the public go back to Walter Lippmann and John Dewey and through the public journalism movement of the 1990s to today and what's come to be known as engaged journalism. In Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public...
Pandemic Perspectives from The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 10, 2021 08:00 - 58 minutesWelcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: Karin Fischer’s job as a contributing write...
Matthew Karp on Writing Engaged History
June 08, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesMatthew Karp is a historian of the U.S. Civil War era and its relationship to the nineteenth-century world. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and joined the Princeton faculty in 2013. The piece we are talking about is The Politics of a Second Gilded Age, published in February 2021 in The Jacobin. His first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Harvard UP, 2016) explores the ways that slavery shaped U.S....
Jonathan Rauch, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth" (Brookings, 2021)
June 07, 2021 08:00 - 39 minutesIn recent years Americans have experienced a range of assaults upon the truth. In The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Institution Press, 2021), Jonathan Rauch describes the various ways in which our understanding of truth has come under attack, and the mechanisms that exist to fight back. As Rauch explains, the challenge of determining truth is as old as civilization itself, with the system we use today a product of concepts formulated in the 17th and 18th centuries. ...
The Politics of Chinese Media: A Discussion with Bingchun Meng
June 07, 2021 08:00 - 23 minutesFeeling betrayed by liberal ideals in the US and UK, how are Chinese international students dealing with rising racism during the pandemic? Bingchun Meng from LSE talks to Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD student at NIAS, about her latest research project, “Mediated Experience of Covid-19”, based on her students' real stories and their sophisticated reflections. The author of the book The Politics of Chinese Media: Consensus and Contestation (Palgrave, 2018) shares her views on the commonalities a...
Andrea Wenzel, "Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
June 04, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutesAt a time when trust in the media is low and "news deserts" are increasing across the United States, engaged journalism offers a framework for connecting people, community organizations, and news organizations in ways that aim to rebuild trust and ensure that news coverage is inclusive and representative of the entire community. Andrea Wenzel's book Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust (University of Illinois Press, 2020) offers useful case s...
Cara A. Finnegan, "Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
June 02, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesDefining the Chief Executive via flash powder and selfie sticks. In this episode, Dr. Lee M. Pierce (they & she) interviews Dr. Cara A. Finnegan about Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital (University of Illinois Press, 2021). Lincoln's somber portraits. Lyndon Johnson's swearing in. George W. Bush's reaction to learning about the 9/11 attacks. Photography plays an indelible role in how we remember and define American presidents. Throughout history, presidents ...
Julie Golia, "Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age" (Oxford UP, 2021)
June 01, 2021 08:00 - 52 minutesJulie Golia's new book Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age (Oxford UP, 2021) chronicles the history of the newspaper advice column, a genre that has shaped Americans’ relationships with media, their experiences with popular therapy, and their virtual interactions across generations. Emerging in the 1890s, advice columns became unprecedented virtual forums where readers could debate the most resonant cultural crises of the day with strangers in an anonymous...
Ellen Peters, "Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers" (Oxford UP, 2020)
May 31, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourTo many mathematicians and math enthusiasts, the word "innumeracy" brings to mind popular writing like that of John Allen Paulos. But inequities in our quantitative reasoning skills have received considerable interest and attention from researchers lately, including in psychology, development, education, and public health. Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a unified treatment of these broad-ranging studies, from the ways more and ...
Dina Fainberg, "Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
May 25, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesIn an age of mutual acrimony and closed borders, journalists were among the few individuals who crossed the Iron Curtain. Their reporting strongly influenced the ways that policy makers, pundits, and ordinary people came to understand the American or the Soviet "other." In Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Dina Fainberg examines how Soviet and American journalists covered the rival superpower and how two distinctive ...
Free Tax Prep That's Never Free: A Discussion with ProPublica's Justin Elliott
May 25, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutesIn this episode, we are talking to ProPublica investigative journalist Justin Elliott. Justin has been with ProPublica since 2012 and writes about business and economics, as well as money and influence in politics. He has produced stories for the New York Times and NPR. His work on TurboTax maker Intuit – a story we are discussing today -- won a Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism. The story of how 70% of Americans are eligible to file their taxes for free, but no one can pull it off ha...
N+1: "Like Partisan Review, but Not Dead"
May 18, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, we are talking to Mark Krotov, the publisher and co-editor of n + 1, a magazine of politics, essays and fiction described once: “like The Partisan Review, but not dead” (Keith Gessen, co-founder). Mark was born in Moscow and left Russia for Atlanta at the age of six. He graduated from Columbia in 2008. Before joining n + 1, he was an assistant editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an editor at Overlook Press and a senior editor at Melville House. Agata Popeda is a Polish-Ameri...
Climate Denialism and Propaganda with Catriona McKinnon
May 18, 2021 08:00 - 33 minutesCatriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on climate ethics and environmental justice. Much of her recent work aims at addressing denialism about climate change. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Future of Truth project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.su...
Richard Toye, "Winston Churchill: A Life in the News" (Oxford UP, 2020)
May 14, 2021 08:00 - 30 minutesBefore Winston Churchill made history, he made news. To a great extent, the news made him too. If it was his own efforts that made him a hero, it was the media that made him a celebrity - and it has been considerably responsible for perpetuating his memory and shaping his reputation in the years since his death. Discussing this topic and much more besides in Professor of History at the University of Exeter, Richard Toye, in his wonderful new book Winston Churchill: A Life in the News (Oxford ...
Can we Disagree Online Respectfully?: A Discussion with Ian Leslie
May 11, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesIn this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes (Harper Business, 2021), is about how to disagree better. Ian regularly publishes in The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Economist. He co-hosted the podcast series Polarized and created a BBC radio comedy series. The piece we talked about today is "How to have Better Arguments Online"...
Pallavi Guha, "Hear #metoo in India: News, Social Media, and Anti-Rape and Sexual Harassment Activism" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
May 07, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesHello Everyone, and welcome to New Books in Gender and Sexuality, a channel on the New Books Network. I’m your host, Jana Byars, and I’m here today with Pallavi Guha, assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Towson, MD, to talk to her about her new book, Hear #MeToo in India: News, Social Media, and Anti-Rape and Sexual Harassment Activism, out this year, 2021 with Rutgers University Press. This book examines the role media platforms play in anti-rap...
The Work of Editing a Magazine: A Discussion with Chris Lehmann
May 04, 2021 08:00 - 50 minutesIn this episode, we are talking to writer and editor Chris Lehmann, an editor of The Baffler, a former managing editor of The New Republic and a former editor of In These Times. He was described by the TNR’s owner as someone, who “who was able to restore stability of The New Republic after a decade of incessant turmoil.” Chris is an author of political and cultural thought long-form journalism himself and the author of two books about money – Rich People Things: Real Life Secrets of the Preda...
The Politics of Online News in Cambodia
May 03, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutesIn this episode Astrid Norén-Nilsson of Lund University discusses her latest research about the Cambodian online news outlet Fresh News with Duncan McCargo, the Director of NIAS. Fresh News has become an indispensable source of information for Cambodia’s political and bureaucratic elite – but just how independent is the platform from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party? How can we classify the role that such new media platforms perform in a hybrid authoritarian political system? Astrid is an ...
Can Journalism Be Saved?: A Discussion with Nicholas Lemann
April 27, 2021 08:00 - 45 minutesThere is no better person to start this journey than with journalist Nicholas Lemann, who has been observing the industry, also long-form journalism, for almost 50 years. Lemann started at the age of 17 in an alternative weekly in New Orleans, and since then he has been a staff writer for a number of magazines, including The New Yorker – since 1999. Lemann is also a former dean and current professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In this episode, we are talk about the p...
Phillip Lopate, "The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970" (Anchor Books, 2021)
April 16, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutesThe three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America--racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them--proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Ess...
Michela Wrong, "Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad" (PublicAffairs, 2021)
April 16, 2021 08:00 - 46 minutesMichela Wrong’s Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad (PublicAffairs, 2021) is a glorious piece of journalism. It tells the story of Rwanda’s former head of external intelligence turned government critic, Patrick Karegeya, and his falling out with the Rwandan leadership, including current President Paul Kagame. For Wrong, the murder of Patrick Karegeya provides a passage-way into broader conversations about how Rwanda has been ruled since the 1994 geno...
Christopher Thaiss, "Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century" (Broadview Press, 2019)
April 14, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Christopher Thaiss, author of Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century (Broadview Press 2019). We talk about the research article, about writing styles, and about the uses of rhetoric to scientists. Interviewer: "Too many students learning to write in the sciences lack helpful feedback on their writing, and this causes them to experience, quite personally, that disconnect we were talking about, between doing science and writing science." Christopher Thaiss: "Fee...
Philip N. Howard, "Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives" (Yale UP, 2020)
April 12, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutesTechnology is breaking politics - what can be done about it? Artificially intelligent "bot" accounts attack politicians and public figures on social media. Conspiracy theorists publish junk news sites to promote their outlandish beliefs. Campaigners create fake dating profiles to attract young voters. We live in a world of technologies that misdirect our attention, poison our political conversations, and jeopardize our democracies. With massive amounts of social media and public polling data,...
Michael Rosino, "Debating the Drug War: Race, Politics, and Media in the War on Drugs Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
April 09, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourSince President Nixon coined the phrase, the "War on Drugs" has presented an important change in how people view and discuss criminal justice practices and drug laws. The term evokes images of militarization, punishment, and violence, as well as combat and the potential for victory. It is no surprise then that questions such as whether the "War on Drugs" has "failed" or "can be won" have animated mass media and public debate for the past 40 years. Through analysis of 30 years of newspaper con...
Rory Kress, "The Doggie in the Window: How One Dog Led Me from the Pet Store to the Factory Farm to Uncover the Truth of Where Puppies Really Come From" (Sourcebooks, 2018)
April 07, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhen journalist Rory Kress met Izzie, she didn’t think twice before bringing her home. She found the twelve-week-old wheaten terrier in a pet shop and was handed paperwork showing Izzie had been born in a USDA-licensed breeding facility—so she couldn’t be a puppy mill dog, right? But a few years later, as Rory embarked on her own difficult journey to become a mother, her curiosity began to tug at her. Sure, Izzie was her fur baby, but who was her dog’s real mother, and where was she now? And ...
Shannan Clark, "The Making of the American Creative Class: New York's Culture Workers and 20th-Century Consumer Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
April 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourDuring the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparalleled in the history of the United States. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, and secretaries made advertisements, produced media content, and designed the shape and feel of the consumer economy. While this centre of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices...
Chelsea Stieber, "Haiti's Paper War: Post-Independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804-1954" (NYU Press, 2020)
March 26, 2021 04:00 - 47 minutesPicking up where most historians conclude, Chelsea Stieber explores the critical internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between monarchy and republic. What transpired was a war of swords and of pens, waged in newspapers and periodicals, in literature, broadsheets, and fliers. In Haiti's Paper War: Post-Independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804-1954 (NYU Press, 2020) — her analysis of Haitian writing that followed independence — St...
Democracy and Truth with Sophia Rosenfeld
March 16, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutesSophia Rosenfeld is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Democracy and Truth: A Short History. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Future of Truth project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism