Book Review[s] – News at Work & News Talk

October 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance. Pablo J. Boczkowski. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. 272 pp.


News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Colleen Cotter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 294 pp.

Many studies of the cultural and sociopolitical effects of news stories tend to ignore the journalistic practices that have produced those texts, focusing on larger structures of power and domination. Both of these books rebalance the equation by highlighting instead how daily routines in newsrooms determine the selection, narrative, and presentation of news stories—routines that are increasingly shaped not only by professional practices but also by journalists’ expectations of what the public wants to read.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Alarming Reports: Communicating Conflict in the Daily News

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Alarming Reports: Communicating Conflict in the Daily News. Andrew Arno. New York, NY: Berghahnbooks, 2009. 216 pp.

Based on an unusual anthropological approach, Alarming Reports offers sharp insights into the dynamics of the news as it moves through complex social systems. The first published monograph in the University of Hawaii’s new Anthropology of Media series, Andrew Arno’s work contributes to a new media anthropology. The book thus is part of advancing the theory of media and communication studies in ways that dovetail with cultural activism (e.g., Ginsburg, 2008), transnational media (e.g., Mankekar, 2008), and so forth. However, Arno goes beyond these methods by deploying an anthropological approach to news as a special speech genre. Alarming Reports is thus refreshingly original, and deserves the special attention of media and communications scholars.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Digital Media Law

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Digital Media Law. Packard, Ashley (2010). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 352.

The Internet is a predominant “change agent” in the continually evolving communication law. Professor W. Wat Hopkins at Virginia Tech prefaced the 2011 edition of Communication and the Law: “The Internet is having an increased impact on regulation of expression, and that impact is addressed in this edition” (p. v). (Disclosure: The reviewer has contributed the “Defamation” chapter to Hopkins’s book since 1998.)  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Cultural Meaning of News

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Cultural Meaning of News. Berkowitz, Daniel A. (ed.) (2011). A Text-Reader. Los Angeles: SAGE. pp. 408.

When reviewing a text for a course, I often stop and make sure to read the preface, prologue, or other material before the first chapter for thoughts, ideas, and motivations of authors. This allows me some insight into what will make the text work or not work, how ideas will be presented in the text, and whether or not I might ultimately adopt the text for my courses. This is the same process I followed for Daniel Berkowitz’s Cultural Meaning of News. A Text Reader. The passion and dedication found within the text will make perfect sense after reading these first few pages.  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies. Matsaganis, Matthew D., Vikki S. Katz, and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, (2011). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. pp. 314.

Press theory can be complex: Who does or should the press serve? What informs it? What sustains it? What goals drive it? In a classic essay published 1918, Hilaire Beloc, the Catholic apologist, described the press as capitalist in origin, evolution, and effect. Beloc wrote of “the evil of the great modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and misinforming opinion and in putting power into ignoble hands.” In the same breath, he offered “its correction by the formation of small independent organs, and the probably increasing effect of these last” (p. 1).  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Global Journalism Ethics

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Global Journalism Ethics. Ward, Stephen J.A. (2010). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.  pp. 296.

Ward notes that traditional journalism values and practices are being questioned due to the global nature of modern journalism and the rapid changes brought about by digital and wireless technologies. Ward concludes that journalists are struggling to maintain a “credible ethical identity as they sail the roiling sea” of the modern media world (p. 3). Ward’s bold objective is to look at journalism’s future and offer conceptual inventions to help move journalism ethics forward, with an eventual goal of converging theoretical foundations and practical proposals. Although those looking for concrete practical proposals to follow in a global setting might be disappointed that Ward doesn’t get quite that far, his impressive theoretical framework provides an excellent starting point for scholars interested in journalism ethics in a wired, globalized world. As Ward writes, the goal of the book is to supply “the basic philosophical concepts to begin the invention of a detailed and theoretically solid global [journalism] ethics” (p. 235).  [Read more...]

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Book Review – Mediactive

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Mediactive. Gillmor, Dan (2010). Self-published under Creative Commons license. pp. 183.

Journalism is broken, and with Mediactive, Dan Gillmor aims to fix it. But he doesn’t start where you would expect—with a new financial model for the digital age.

He starts with educating the audience. After all, classic, “capital J” journalism is but a small part of the information we consume. Gillmor correctly aims more broadly, including blogs, targeted e-mails, user-generated content—the entire rabble of the web today. His goal is to help us become active users of mediated information. His principles? Be skeptical. Exercise judgment. Open your mind. Keep asking questions. Learn media techniques. In essence, the media consumer needs to think like a journalist, curate his or her own feed, and create meaning from examination of layers of linked sources. Gillmor then offers specific tools to navigate the Internet, from basic search and RSS to specific ways to evaluate the credibility of web-based information. It’s a useful primer in media literacy, especially useful to young audiences whose first instinct is to just “Google it.”  [Read more...]

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