Quarterly Winter 2010 — AEJMC Hot Topics

Book Review – The Death and Life of American Journalism

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols. Philadelphia, PA: Nation Books, 2010. 334 pp.

This book offers a well-documented argument for why federal subsidies of mass media are needed. Robert McChesney, the Gutgsell endowed professor of communication at the University of Illinois, has written extensively about the state of the media. He is joined in this book by John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of the Capitol Times in Madison, WI. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quarterly Winter 2010, Reviews Tagged With: american journalism, federal funding, John Nichols, NPR, PBS, Robert W. McChesney

Book Review – Combat Correspondents: The Baltimore Sun in World War II

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Combat Correspondents: The Baltimore Sun in World War II. Joseph R.L. Sterne. Baltimore, MD: The Maryland Historical Society, 2009. 281 pp.

When historians and World War II history buffs think about World War II correspondents, names such as Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, Hal Boyle, Richard Tregaskis, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, and others come up—journalists and writers who reported for national news organizations and publications. They don’t think of names such as Mark Watson, Lee McCardell, Price Day, and Holbrook Bradley.

These four and many others reported for this country’s metropolitan and regional newspapers, paying special attention to soldiers, sailors, and civilians from their newspaper’s readership areas while also often providing standard coverage of the fighting. They did not necessarily spend the duration of the war at the front, dependent as they were on the financial situation of their papers, as well as the plans and ideas of their editors and publishers.

Book Review – The Chaos Scenario

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

The Chaos Scenario: Amid the Ruins of Mass Media, the Choice for Business Is Stark: Listen or Perish. Bob Garfield. Nashville, TN: Stielstra Publishing, 2009. 306 pp.

One of the popular debates about the Internet and related digital technologies is whether they represent an evolutionary change or a revolutionary one. It is fairly easy to argue for the former position, since fundamentally all that the Internet does is to lower the cost of transmitting information. However, it is much more fun to argue for the latter view, and Bob Garfield is clearly in this second camp.

In The Chaos Scenario, Garfield uses a mix of colorful language and well-chosen examples to argue that the so-called digital revolution “isn’t just some news-magazine cover headline. It’s an actual revolution, yielding revolutionary changes, thousands or millions of victims and an entirely new way of life.” The principle implication of this shift is a fundamental undermining of most existing business models for media firms — Garfield envisions the end of traditional advertising agencies, newspapers and other traditional news organizations, and most network television programming.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Quarterly Winter 2010, Reviews Tagged With: Advertising, aejmc quarterly, Bob Garfield, Internet, Mass Media

Book Review – The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records. David Cuillier and Charles N. Davis. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011. 236 pp.

According to one recent study, the average American consumes about thirty-four gigabytes of information each day. Much of that information—in the form of government reports and research data — is retrieved over the Internet. On the surface it would appear that the age of easy access to government records has finally arrived via the World Wide Web. However, in The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records, David Cuillier and Charles N. Davis paint a starkly different picture. Their book is a blueprint that journalists and average Americans can follow to obtain public documents.

Book Review – Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World. Debora Halpern Wenger and Deborah Potter. Washington DC: CQ Press, 2008. 352 pp.

The authors of this book describing technological transformation in broadcast journalism suggest that in today’s multimedia world, journalists “must develop a multimedia mind-set.” They are correct; unfortunately, more could have been done with this book to assist aspiring broadcast journalists in understanding how to do that.

Wenger and Potter offer a definition of multimedia reporting — “communicating complementary information on more than one media platform”—but what this reviewer believes is lacking are extensive descriptions and examples of how old-fashioned broadcast journalism reports can be translated for and delivered in a multimedia world. There are a few chapters devoted to this, most especially chapters 7 and 8, but not enough is done throughout the book to establish multimedia.

Book Review[s] – International Media Communication in a Global Age & Negotiating in the Press

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

International Media Communication in a Global Age. Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta, eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. 480 pp.

Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy, 1918-1919. Joseph R. Hayden. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. 320 pp.

These texts present two opposite but equally important foci of research in the growing field of international communication—the edited collection takes a macro view, tackling news flow theories, international journalism, and strategic communication in a globalized world, while the monograph delves in depth on a very narrow episode, the peace negotiations after World War I. Both introduce fruitful research avenues about concerns as different as the role of the news media in diplomacy and strategies for global branding. While two of the three parts of Golan, Johnson, and Wanta’s volume are valuable enough that the book could be used as textbook in an introductory class on international communication, Hayden’s work is most helpful as a spur to further research on the important issues it raises.