The Idea of Public Journalism

The Idea of Public Journalism
Author: Theodore Lewis Glasser
Publisher: Guilford Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1999-05-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781572304604

This volume offers a critical and constructive examination of the claims of public journalism, the controversial movement aimed at getting the press to promote and indeed improve (not merely report on) the quality of public life. From leading contributors, original essays refine the terms of the debate by situating it within a broad cultural, historical and philosophical framework. Exploring the movement's promise as well as its problems, The Idea of Public Journalism sheds lights on issues of political power, freedom of expression, democratic participation and press responsibility.

Public Journalism and Public Life

Public Journalism and Public Life
Author: Davis "Buzz" Merritt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136684824

The original edition of Public Journalism and Public Life, published in 1995, was the first comprehensive argument in favor of public journalism. Designed to focus the discussion about public journalism both within and outside the profession, the book has accomplished its purpose. In the ensuing years, the debate has continued; dozens of newspapers and thousands of journalists have been experimenting with the philosophy, while others still dispute its legitimacy. This larger second edition further develops the philosophy, responds to the arguments against it, outlines how specific principles can be applied, and explains the importance of public deliberation and the role of values in public journalism. Divided into three sections, it can be used as a supplement to the first edition or as a starting point for those being newly introduced to the ideas that have been the subject of debate within the profession and among those interested and involved in civic life at all levels. Section 1 summarizes two major arguments -- why journalism and public life are inseparably bound in success or failure and why the way journalism operates in the current environment fosters failure more often than success. Section 2 looks at the evolution of the profession's culture, its impact on the author's extensive career, and how he grew to believe that substantive change is needed in journalism. Section 3 deals with the implications of public journalism philosophy -- how it requires the application of additional values to daily work, its evolution in the early years and where its current focus should be, plus various questions about the future of cyberspace.

What are Journalists For?

What are Journalists For?
Author: Jay Rosen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780300089073

He traces the intellectual roots of the movement and shows how journalism can be made vital again by rethinking exactly what journalists are for."--Jacket.

The Pursuit of Public Journalism

The Pursuit of Public Journalism
Author: Tanni Haas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135866546

The Pursuit of Public Journalism is an engaging introduction to the theoretical foundations and practices of the journalistic reform movement known as 'public journalism.' Public journalism - stated briefly - seeks to reinvest journalism with its fundamental responsibilities to democracy and public life. This book argues against many deeply ingrained practices ranging from journalistic detachment to framing stories via polar conflict in favor of greater civic involvement on the part of journalists. Tanni Haas traces the historical context in which public journalism emerged, develops a philosophy for public journalism, reviews empirical research on public journalism’s performance to date and responds to the major criticisms directed at public journalism. He also examines the particular challenges that public journalism poses to curriculum and instruction: how can journalism educators teach students to write stories useful and of concern to citizens, and how can they encourage citizens to publicly criticize news coverage of given topics? Following review of the major challenges and criticisms of public journalism, the author offers practical solutions for improving public journalism and speculates on public journalism’s likely future.

Democracy on Trial

Democracy on Trial
Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: House of Anansi
Total Pages: 162
Release: 1993-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0887848540

Is democracy as we know it in danger? More and more we confront one another as aggrieved groups rather than as free citizens. Deepening cynicism, the growth of corrosive individualism, statism, and the loss of civil society are warning signs that democracy may be incapable of satisfying the yearnings it itself unleashes - yearnings for freedom, fairness, and equality. In her 1993 CBC Massey Lectures, political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain delves into these complex issues to evaluate democracy's chances for survival.

The View from Somewhere

The View from Somewhere
Author: Lewis Raven Wallace
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-10-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022666743X

A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.

Networked Press Freedom

Networked Press Freedom
Author: Mike Ananny
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262345838

Reimagining press freedom in a networked era: not just a journalist's right to speak but also a public's right to hear. In Networked Press Freedom, Mike Ananny offers a new way to think about freedom of the press in a time when media systems are in fundamental flux. Ananny challenges the idea that press freedom comes only from heroic, lone journalists who speak truth to power. Instead, drawing on journalism studies, institutional sociology, political theory, science and technology studies, and an analysis of ten years of journalism discourse about news and technology, he argues that press freedom emerges from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power and fight for visions of democratic life. He shows how dominant, historical ideals of professionalized press freedom often mistook journalistic freedom from constraints for the public's freedom to encounter the rich mix of people and ideas that self-governance requires. Ananny's notion of press freedom ensures not only an individual right to speak, but also a public right to hear. Seeing press freedom as essential for democratic self-governance, Ananny explores what publics need, what kind of free press they should demand, and how today's press freedom emerges from intertwined collections of humans and machines. If someone says, “The public needs a free press,” Ananny urges us to ask in response, “What kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press?” Answering these questions shows what robust, self-governing publics need to demand of technologists and journalists alike.

Listening Publics

Listening Publics
Author: Kate Lacey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-05-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745665209

In focusing on the practices, politics and ethics of listening, this wide-ranging book offers an important new perspective on questions of media audiences, publics and citizenship. Listening is central to modern communication, politics and experience, but is commonly overlooked and underestimated in a culture fascinated by the spectacle and the politics of voice. Listening Publics restores listening to media history and to theories of the public sphere. In so doing it opens up profound questions for our understanding of mediated experience, public participation and civic engagement. Taking a cross-national and interdisciplinary approach, the book explores how listening publics have been constituted in relation to successive media technologies from the invention of writing to the digital age. It asks how new practices of listening associated with sound and audiovisual media transform a public world forged in the age of print. Through detailed histories and sophisticated theoretical analysis, Listening Publics demonstrates the embodied and critical activity of listening to be a rich concept with which to rethink the practices, politics and ethics of media communication.

Imagined Audiences

Imagined Audiences
Author: Jacob L. Nelson
Publisher: Journalism and Pol Commun Unbo
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2021
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019754259X

The Journalist-Audience Relationship -- The Promise of Audience Engagement -- Journalism's Imagined Audiences -- When Data and Intuition Converge -- First Imagined, Then Pursued -- The Obstacles to Audience Engagement -- Understanding News Audience Behavior -- Conclusion.