New Books in Journalism
392 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsInterview with Scholars of Journalism about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi, “Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions” (I. B. Tauris, 2014)
December 05, 2014 12:45 - 47 minutesHow those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself far less contested, but the nature of the journalism surrounding the EU was also far more accommodating. One of the main lessons of John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi‘s fascinating book Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions (I. B. Tauris, 2014) is how much it has mirrored the evolution of the European project itself. In the fir...
Victor Pickard, “America’s Battle for Media Democracy” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
November 25, 2014 18:22 - 30 minutesThe media system in the United States could have developed into something very different than what it is today. In fact, there was an era in which significant media reform was considered. This was a time when media consumers were tired of constant advertising, bias, and control by corporate entities, and instead wanted more “public-oriented” content. Sound at all familiar? In his new book, America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media R...
Randal Marlin, “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion” (Broadview Press, 2013)
November 17, 2014 12:34 - 41 minutesIt’s been 100 years since the start of the First World War, a conflict that cost millions of lives. In his recently revised book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion (2013), Randal Marlin writes that Britain pioneered propaganda techniques to sell that war that have been imitated ever since. He tells how the British spread a false story about Germans boiling the bodies of their dead soldiers in corpse factories. It was designed to paint Germany as a uncivilized, ghoulish nation that had t...
Heather Menzies, “Reclaiming the Commons for the Common Good: A Memoir and Manifesto” (New Society Publishers, 2014)
October 06, 2014 13:48 - 45 minutesThe Canadian author and scholar, Heather Menzies, has written a book about the journey she took to the highlands of Scotland in search of her ancestral roots. In Reclaiming the Commons for the Common Good: A Memoir and Manifesto (New Society Publishers, 2014), Menzies outlines her discovery of a vanished way of life and argues that restoring it would help North Americans recover a deeper sense of self as well as more satisfying social relations with the people around them. It could also hel...
Jonathan Swarts, “Constructing Neoliberalism: Economic Transformation in Anglo-American Democracies” (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
September 22, 2014 11:00 - 1 hourThe new book, Constructing Neoliberalism: Economic Transformation in Anglo-American Democracies (University of Toronto Press, 2013) shows how political elites in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada successfully introduced radically new economic policies in the 1980s. While opinion polls have consistently showed that neoliberal policies are not popular, governments in all four countries have continued implementing an agenda that includes government spending cuts, the privatization of...
Brooke Erin Duffy, “Remake, Remodel: Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age”
September 18, 2014 14:26 - 35 minutesBrooke Erin Duffy’s Remake, Remodel: Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2013) traces the upheaval in the women’s magazine industry in an era of media convergence and audience media-making. Duffy, assistant professor at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication, is especially interested in the experience of writers, editors, and others who produce women’s magazines: How are they coping with new competition, more intense work routines, and the impera...
Brooke Erin Duffy, "Remake, Remodel: Women's Magazines in the Digital Age" (U Illinois Press, 2013)
September 18, 2014 08:00 - 35 minutesBrooke Erin Duffy's Remake, Remodel: Women's Magazines in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2013) traces the upheaval in the women's magazine industry in an era of media convergence and audience media-making. Duffy, assistant professor at Temple University's School of Media and Communication, is especially interested in the experience of writers, editors, and others who produce women's magazines: How are they coping with new competition, more intense work routines, and the impera...
Richard Starr, “Equal As Citizens: The Tumultuous and Troubled History of a Great Canadian Idea” (Formac, 2014)
September 11, 2014 12:59 - 57 minutes“We are not half a dozen provinces. We are one great Dominion,” Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald proudly declared. More than a century later, Canada has 10 provinces and three northern territories making it one of the biggest and richest countries on Earth. In the spirit of optimism that prevailed in the year after the country celebrated its 100th anniversary, then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau called for the founding of a just society in which every Canadian would enjoy funda...
Silver Donald Cameron, “The Living Beach: Life, Death and Politics where the Land Meets the Sea” (Red Deer Press, 2014)
August 05, 2014 11:57 - 51 minutesThe acclaimed Canadian author Silver Donald Cameron writes that the idea for his newly reissued book, The Living Beach: Life, Death and Politics where the Land Meets the Sea (Red Deer Press, 2014), occurred to him when he was interviewing a “lean, laconic, geologist,” named Bob Taylor who works at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “A beach stores sand in dunes behind it,” Taylor said. “When it’s attacked, it draws material from the dunes for itself and for buildi...
Robert E. Gutsche Jr., “A Transplanted Chicago: Race, Place and the Press in Iowa City” (McFarland, 2014)
July 01, 2014 12:42 - 54 minutesThe city of Iowa City’s website promotes its “small-town hospitality” and its focus on “culture.” But a closer look at Iowa City, home to 70,000 and the University of Iowa, reveals a community trying to redefine itself as urban African-Americans relocate to the area. This is the focus of Robert E. “Ted” Gutsche‘s book, A Transplanted Chicago: Race, Place and the Press in Iowa City (McFarland, 2014). In it, he takes on the “Southeast Side” and all its meanings. “Southeast Side” has become a ...
Travis Vogan, “Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media” (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
May 16, 2014 18:30 - 51 minutesLast weekend was the NFL Draft, the annual event when teams select college players who have shown the talent to advance to the professional ranks. Staged at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, broadcast live on two cable networks, and surrounded by ceaseless media attention and analysis, the Draft is the spring anchor-point of the NFL as a year-round attraction. Decades ago, the Draft was nothing more than a business meeting. Yet even then the NFL was taking steps to establish itself as a year...
Erika G. King, “Obama, the Media, and Framing the U.S. Exit from Iraq and Afghanistan” (Ashgate, 2014)
March 06, 2014 18:41 - 34 minutesErika G. King learned a lot during research for her book, Obama, the Media, and Framing the U.S. Exit from Iraq and Afghanistan (Ashgate, 2014), but one item surprised her a bit more than most. “One might have thought, but one would be wrong. . . that media organizations might just come together and say, ‘Yes, Iraq was a difficult war, but we accomplished something, and now it’s over and things can be seen in a slightly positive light,’ ” King said. “But I found it very interesting that jour...
Matthew Cecil, “Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image” (University Press of Kansas, 2013).
February 17, 2014 13:00 - 52 minutesMatthew Cecil brought many questions into his latest historical work, Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image (University Press of Kansas, 2014). Questions included, “Why were some members of the press so willing to serve as J. Edgar Hoover’s pawns, even when it was clear they were being used?” And, “How did Hoover’s interactions with the press resemble his leadership at the FBI?” Cecil, director of Wichita State’s Elliott School of Commu...
Joseph Uscinski, “The People’s News: Media, Politics, and the Demands of Capitalism” (NYU Press, 2014)
February 08, 2014 17:09 - 42 minutes“When we criticize the news, who are we really criticizing?” This is the final question asked by Professor Joseph Uscinski in his book, The People’s News: Media, Politics, and the Demands of Capitalism(NYU Press, 2014). The answer, Uscinski says in his interview, is us–the consumer. News producers, he writes, are merely responding to the demands of consumers, adjusting news content based on ratings, polls and audience demographics. The People’s News views news through the lens of news as a c...
Lauren Coodley, “Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)
February 01, 2014 14:04 - 57 minutesEverybody knows the author of The Jungle was Upton Sinclair (or, if they’re a little confused, they might say Sinclair Lewis). As Lauren Coodley shows in her new biography Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), there was a lot more to Upton Sinclair. For one thing, he was the author of nearly eighty books that were not entitled The Jungle. One of those, Dragon’s Teeth (part of the World’s End series), won him the Pulitzer Prize for ...
Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, “How to Watch Television” (NYU Press, 2013)
November 16, 2013 12:23 - 47 minutesWhat if there was an instruction manual for television? Not just for the casual consumer, but for college students interested in learning about the culture of television, written by some of the field’s top scholars? In How to Watch Television (New York University Press, 2013), editors Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell have put together a collection of 40 original essays from some of today’s top scholars on television culture. Each essay focuses on a single television show, and each is an exam...
Jonathan D. Wells, “Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
October 23, 2013 15:26 - 1 hourIt’s getting harder and harder to trailblaze in the field of American Studies. More and more, writers have to follow paths created by others, imposing new interpretations on old ones in never-ending cycles of revision. But Jonathan Daniel Wells did find something new: Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South (Cambridge UP, 2011; paperback, 2013) is the first to focus in on women journalists, both black and white, in the nineteenth-century American South. The South had a v...
Thomas E. Patterson, “Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism” (Vintage, 2013)
October 13, 2013 14:11 - 51 minutesIs truth in journalism the same as balance? Is fairness really fair to news consumers, or is fairness merely a code word used by journalists looking to get out of the line of fire? In his latest book, Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism (Vintage, 2013), Thomas E. Patterson gets at the heart of a journalism epidemic threatening the democratic process. Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press and a faculty member at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the P...
George Brock, “Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age” (Kogan Page, 2013)
September 27, 2013 19:28 - 40 minutesGeorge Brock approached his book about newspapers and journalism in the digital age unwilling to write another gloom-and-doom narrative about the death or decline of the industry. When he studied the historical development of journalism and current trends, he found the industry is what is always has been: volatile, evolving, and vital to society’s well being. Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age (Kogan Page, 2013) is an important look at the indust...
Ian Samson, “Paper: An Elegy” (Harper Collins, 2012)
September 24, 2013 13:56 - 34 minutesIn our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the internet than from newspapers. But how irrelevant has paper really become? As Ian Samson argues in his new book, Paper: An Elegy (Harper Collins, 2012), not only is paper still vital in our society, it pretty much dominates all our lives. From advertising to currency, to board games and origami, paper still revolves around most business and l...
Eric Simons, “The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession” (The Overlook Press, 2013)
July 31, 2013 15:52 - 53 minutesIn October 2007, journalist Eric Simons sat in the stands of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif., to watch his beloved University of California Bears take on Oregon State University in football. If Cal won, it almost certainly would be ranked No. 1 in the country. Instead, Simons agonized as Cal’s quarterback struggled through the final play. Cal lost. Simons suffered a miserable train ride home to San Francisco. But from crushing defeat sprang an idea for his latest book, The Secret Lives...
Brian Michael Goss, “Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century” (Peter Lang, 2013)
July 22, 2013 17:43 - 44 minutesBrian Michael Goss, professor of communication at St. Louis University in Madrid, has taken one of media’s most studied theories and given it a facelift. In Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century (Peter Lang, 2013), Goss revisits the model created by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent. The filters remain, but Goss pushes the model into the modern context of new media models and expanded global exportation. “Far fro...
Gretchen Soderlund, “Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism: 1885-1917” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
June 27, 2013 12:44 - 48 minutesSex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism: 1885-1917 (University of Chicago Press, 2013), the new book from the University of Oregon’s Gretchen Soderlund, is about far more than the title suggests. Using sex trafficking and scandal as a starting point, Soderlund delves into an era of journalism that features muckrakers and sensationalists, key political players and journalists with social and cultural agendas. It is a book about racial identity, journalists and their audi...
Dan Kennedy, “The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age” (UMass Press, 2013)
May 29, 2013 14:05 - 44 minutesDan Kennedy envisioned a massive book project, a big-picture investigation into current issues facing journalism and media. Instead he found everything he needed in New Haven, Conn., inside the small but productive office of the New Haven Independent. In The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), Kennedy, assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, researches models of journalism that engage pub...
Robert W. McChesney, “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy” (The New Press, 2013)
April 04, 2013 15:10 - 47 minutesRobert W. McChesney, the celebrated political economist of communication, takes the Internet, industry and government head-on in his latest book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (The New Press, 2013). Digital Disconnect builds on McChesney’s previous works, spinning forward his scholarship to construct a remarkably current look at the Internet’s corporate and political landscape. “Almost all of the other books on the Internet, some of which are ver...
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, Joshua Green, “Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture” (New York University Press, 2013)
March 09, 2013 15:51 - 52 minutesIf it doesn’t spread, it’s dead This is the unifying idea of Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green’s new book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013) Those six words – If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead – appear on the back cover, on the inside jacket, and in the very first paragraph of the book’s introduction. The authors focus on the new currencies of media, including user engagement and the rapid flow of information, while d...
C.W. Anderson, “Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age” (Temple UP, 2013)
March 03, 2013 17:55 - 52 minutesSomewhere along the line, C.W. Anderson became fascinated with digital journalism and the culture that surrounds it: engaged publics, social networks, and the challenges to “legacy” media. Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Temple University Press, 2013) is the fascinating product of Anderson’s research into the Philadelphia journalism scene during the first decade-plus of the 21st Century. Once a thriving hub of traditional journalism, Philadelphia has become a...
Eric Deggans, “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
February 13, 2013 23:15 - 1 hourEric Deggans doesn’t just want to see the media transformed. He has his eye on something even more profound. “The goal is to transform the audience,” he said, “because the audience has the power.” Deggans, media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, is the author of Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The title comes from a 2008 episode of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” in which the host, Bill O’Reilly, called Deggan a race-baiter. At ...
Mark Deuze, “Media Life” (Polity Press, 2012)
January 29, 2013 15:26 - 54 minutes“You live in media. Who you are, what you do, and what all of this means to you does not exist outside of media.” So begins Mark Deuze‘s critical look at media, society, and culture, Media Life (Polity Press, 2012). Media are everywhere, and like fish in water, most are blissfully unaware of the very surroundings in which they live. Deuze uses hope to separate his book from many scholarly works on modern media culture. He writes not from fear of the future, but optimism. Media, he writes, i...
Chip Bishop, “The Lion and the Journalist: The Unlikely Friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop” (Lyons Press, 2011)
January 15, 2013 13:29 - 46 minutesIt’s a great advantage of a dual biography that one can draw attention to a significant life that might otherwise be unexamined by linking it to the life of someone famous. Such is the case with Chip Bishop‘s biography, The Lion and the Journalist: The Unlikely Friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop (Lyons Press, 2011), which charts the simultaneous rise of the former President and the author’s own great-granduncle. The author does an excellent job illustrating the dynami...
James Rodgers, “Reporting Conflict” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
August 11, 2012 21:13 - 53 minutesOne of the hardest jobs in journalism is making sense of conflict. Seeing through the fog of war and through what each side wants you to report is fantastically difficult, before you come across issues such as access, logistics, safety and context. James Rodgers has a deep understanding of why this is so hard because for many years (Reuters TV and BBC) he was one of the journalists who spent time in conflict zones from Chechnya and Iraq to Georgia and Gaza. As a result his book Reporting Con...
Jonah Goldberg, “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas” (Sentinel, 2012)
May 17, 2012 14:37 - 54 minutesIn his new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (Sentinel HC, 2012), Jonah Goldberg, founding editor of National Review Online and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, analyzes various media strategies used by liberals to “cheat in the war of ideas.” He believes radical ideas are frequently presented swathed in cliches and aphorisms, and attempts to disentangle some of the most recent examples. In our interview, we talked about how he speaks in a pop culture i...
John Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)
February 27, 2012 16:09 - 1 hourHoward Cosell was fond of saying that American television in the 1970s was dominated by three C’s, representing each of the broadcast networks: revered CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, NBC’s late-night talk show host Johnny Carson, and Cosell himself, the marquee sports announcer for the ABC network. Cosell was known for an inflated sense of self-importance, but in this claim he was accurate. From his interviews of Muhammad Ali on Wide World of Sports in the Sixties, through his 13-year ten...
Amanda Smith, “Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson” (Knopf, 2011)
February 01, 2012 22:10 - 1 hour“When your grandmother gets raped, put it on the front page.” That was the Medill family editorial policy and Eleanor Medill “Cissy” Patterson embraced it enthusiastically. The granddaughter of the Chicago Tribune‘s founder, the cousin of the Tribune‘s editor and the sister of the founder of the New York Daily News, Patterson’s family were said to have ink in their veins and she was no exception. By the early 1930s, this titian-haired heiress was the only female editor of a U.S. major metropo...
Tim Groseclose, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011)
December 22, 2011 13:32 - 49 minutesIn his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), Tim Groseclose, Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, discusses his quantitative measurements of political bias in the American news media. Based on years of in-depth studies, he concludes that nearly every mainstream media outlet is skewed to the left of the American electorate, and that this bias has helped push the American electorate to the left of where it would ...
Richard Hamilton, “The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco” (I. B. Taurus, 2011)
September 09, 2011 19:04 - 44 minutesFew places can match the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech for spectacle. As the shadows lengthen and dusk approaches, the square seethes with snake charmers, charlatans, showmen and chancers, all shrouded in charcoal smoke from dozens of makeshift food stalls. It feels like a glimpse into a different world in a different age. One part of that different age, however, is dying out. A handful of storytellers still make their living by captivating audiences with tales and stories of love and death, tr...
Howard Spodek, “Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth Century India” (Indiana University Press, 2011)
July 25, 2011 14:16 - 1 hourAs Ahmedabad, the chief city of Gujarat state in Western India, puts itself up as a contender for World Heritage status, Howard Spodek’s lovely book, Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth Century India (Indiana University Press, 2011), can only give a boost to its campaign. This book is a discrete, yet integrated, collection of narratives from Ahmedabad throughout the twentieth century. The stories trace how this city quietly and unobtrusively sent out people and ideas into the rest of India, an...
James Brabazon, “My Friend the Mercenary: A Memoir” (Canongate, 2010)
May 23, 2011 15:38 - 1 hourIn February 2002, British journalist James Brabazon set out to travel with guerrilla forces into Liberia to show the world what was happening in that war-torn country. To protect him, he hired Nick du Toit, a former South African Defence Force soldier who had fought in conflicts across Africa for over three decades. What follows is an incredible behind-the-scenes account of the Liberian rebels known as the LURD as they attempt to seize control of the country from government troops led by Pr...
Stevan Allen, “Roaming Ghostland: The Final Days of East Germany” (Xlibris, 2010)
October 30, 2009 19:09 - 1 hourWe like to think of countries as permanent fixtures. They aren’t. They come and go. In 1989, a place called the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany, was going. It was never really an “ordinary” place. In the West but also the East; sovereign but not sovereign; German but not German; poor but rich. I could go on. It was the unnatural product of the Cold War, so when the Cold War ended it ended as well. But it didn’t just blink out of existence. Not at all. For a brief period–rough...
Matthew Goodman, “The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York” (Basic Books, 2008)
January 23, 2009 03:22 - 50 minutesThe modern newspaper is not as old as you think. Until the early nineteenth century, they were thin and expensive. It was only with the advent of the penny press circa 1830 that the truly mass broadsheet was born. Yet selling a paper for a cent was not a straight-forward business proposition. In order to turn a profit, you needed to sell a lot of copy. You won’t be surprised to learn that the best way to move papers was to give the people what they wanted–scandal, outrage, marvels, miracles a...
James Zug, “The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper” (Michigan State UP, 2007)
June 27, 2008 01:57 - 58 minutesEvery so often I read a book that reminds me that things weren’t at all what they appear to have been in hindsight. James Zug‘s wonderfully written The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper (Michigan State UP, 2007) is one such book. For years I studied and wrote about Russia and the Soviet Union. In that time, I came to think of communists as at best horribly misguided and at worst positively malevolent. Zug reminded me that in fact communists were on...
Eric Gardner, “Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West” (University Press of Mississippi, 2008)
April 09, 2008 20:44 - 1 hourToday we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. The interview focuses on Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), a new book which Dr. Gardner both authored an introduction to and edited. This is the first collection from an African American journalist writing for the San Francisco based newspaper, the Elevator. Gardner’s introduction does an excellent job of placing Carter into bo...