New Books In Journalism

Does voter ignorance undermine democracy? Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University and regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog at the Washington Post. Somin’s research focuses on issues concerning constitutional law, property law, and public political participation. He is the author of The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (revised edition, Stanford University Press, 2016). The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Journalists intentionally leave themselves out of the stories they cover. In Clyde H. Farnsworth‘s book Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century (University of Missouri Press, 2017) he gets the chance to tell not only his own stories, but also those of his journalist father. Farnsworth spent most of his career as a foreign correspondent and both he and his father worked at the same time at the New York Times. In the book he shares what it was like to cover historical events and grow up in the shadow of his father’s career. The book features stories about unique encounters with notable people, such as Amelia Earhart and Winston Churchill as well as personal vignettes of a real-life family in the twentieth century. Tangled Bylines provides unique perspectives on the transformations and consistencies in journalism from the 1920s through to the digital age. It provides a foundation for understanding a specific, sometimes singular facet of the history of American journalism.Learn m

In A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Text Publishing Company, 2017), Nir Baram, award winning author and journalist, gives a fascinating account of his travels around the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Baram talks to a wide range of Palestinians living under occupation and Jewish settlers. It’s a unique book which gives attention to voices that upset dominant understandings of the conflict. It’s highly readable yet informative and involving and deserves a wide readership. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can we as consumers distinguish between the many different political medias? Eric Alterman is CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. Eric is also a columnist for The Nation, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and the World Policy Institute in New York. He is the author of several books, including When Presidents Lie (Penguin 2004),  Kabuki Democracy (Nation Books 2011), and most recently, Inequality and One City (Nation Books 2015). The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

While the title of Matt Pearl‘s book, The Solo Video Journalist: Doing it All and Doing It Well in TV Multimedia Journalism (Focal Press, 2016), hints at a solitary existence, he shares experiences of many journalists who have inspired his work and emphasizes the community built around multimedia journalism. He has worked in television news for more than a decade and shares what he’s learned in a clear and logical way while still telling a story. The book gives a hands-on approach that walks the reader through planning a segment, dressing the part, conducting interviews and editing the content. For quite a long period of time, those in news media were part of a stable industry that hadn’t seen much change. The past few decades have been the opposite of stable. The expectations of those in journalistic roles are more fluid today. The definition of a multimedia journalist is a moving target of sorts, and Pearl has experienced adapting to those shifts and changes in the field. The book not only

Charles K. (CK) McClatchy was a towering figure in the making of Sacramento and the inland empire he liked to call Superior California. As editor of the Sacramento Bee from 1883 to 1936, McClatchy was both ardent booster and strident critic, a man whose voice helped shape Sacramento’s industrial landscape and to set its moral and political tone. In a new biography, Charles McClatchy and the Golden Era of American Journalism (University of Missouri Press, 2016), Steven M. Avella explores McClatchy’s public role as an iconoclastic editor who sketched local battles in dramatic terms of good and evil. Avella also examines the contradictions within the private man and the dark impulses that drove him to bouts of vindictiveness and rancor. McClatchy promoted his beloved Sacramento with a distinctive blend of Progressive politics, but in his later years he suffered from an anachronistic world view that relegated him to the sidelines of American life. This biography, based on extensive primary sources, is

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial an

From the early days of the BBC in 1922, women were everywhere in the broadcasting company’s offices. They were absent, however, argues Dr. Kate Murphy from most of the historiography devoted to this illustrious institution. In this vibrant monograph, Murphy sets out to find these hidden female figures. A former producer of the long-running program Woman’s Hour and currently a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University in the UK, Murphy is cognizant both of women’s contribution to the BBC and of the challenges they face working there. In Behind the Wireless: A History of Women at the BBC (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Murphy delivers on the titles promises. First, she offers a detailed portrait of the BBC in the interwar period as a unique workplace complete with medical services, a subsidized canteen, and a country-club for its workers. She demonstrates why the fact that the company was created around on a new technology made it especially suitable for women in general, and ambitious ones in par

In his acclaimed biography Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017), James McGrath Morris explores the fascinating life of pioneering black female journalist Ethel Payne. Backed by exhaustive archival research, Morris traces Payne’s role in documenting the civil rights struggle during the decades following World War II, before her later impact as the first female African American radio and television commentator on a national network. The New York Times has described Eyes on the Struggle as an “an important and often absorbing new book,” while the Chicago Tribune has contended that Morris’ beautifully written and carefully researched new book “gives Payne’s ground-breaking work the attention it deserves.” Morris’ other books include Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power, which Booklist placed on its 2010 list of the ten best biographies, and The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murde

Journalism, history, biography, memoirs, and historical fiction overlap to some degree. The first two focus on provable facts, but the facts must be arranged to form a coherent story, and that requires an element of interpretation, especially in history. Biography and memoirs demand even more of a story arc, although still devoted to a specific person who once lived or still lives. And historical fiction, although it departs from that fundamental reliance on what can be documented or evidenced by creating imaginary characters or putting words into the heads and mouths of real people, nonetheless relies on creating a you are there sense of authenticity that cannot exist without considerable research into how people in a given time and place dressed, talked, ate, traveled, and socialized. Finding Billy Battles and its sequels, The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles (Xlibris, 2016) and the forthcoming The Lost Years of Billy Battles (title not set), occupy this space between journalism and fiction. William Fit

If all you knew about methamphetamines came from popular culture (“Breaking Bad”) or government anti-drug campaigns (“Faces of Meth”), then you’d probably think that the typical meth user was a unemployed, rail thin degenerate with bad acne, no teeth and a penchant for child abuse. In these depictions, all meth users are “tweekers,” that is, very bad people who are addicted to speed (here, meth) and who can’t take care of themselves or others. But it just ain’t so, as Travis Linnemann points out in his thought-provoking book Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power (NYU Press, 2016). The image we get from the media and the law enforcement of meth use is as cooked as Walter White’s meth. In actual fact, very few peoples use meth (even in “Methland,” aka the Midwest) and most of those who do are not dysfunctional “tweekers.” This is not to say that meth isn’t a problem; it is, just like cocaine, heroin, abused prescription medicati

Sarah Jaffe has written Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (Nation Books, 2016). Jaffe is a Nation Institute fellow and an independent journalist. Over the last few years, several authors on the podcast have discussed the growth of the Tea Party, BlackLivesMatter, and Occupy Wall Street. Jaffe’s new book returns to the heart of these movements, explaining what has made ordinary Americans become activists. Jaffe argues that the financial crisis in 2008 sparked activism in many forms. In order to make this case, Jaffe travelled the country, interviewing people about what made them angry. She attended a people’s assembly in a church gymnasium in Ferguson, Missouri; walked a picket line at an Atlanta Burger King; rode a bus from New York to Ohio with student organizers; and went door-to-door in Queens days after Hurricane Sandy. Find her on twitter @sarahljaffe.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mills, a lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, re-reads the history of the BBC to offer a more problematic status for the corporation, as an adjunct of British state power. The book uses examples from the General Strike in Britain, through war and economics reporting, to the vetting of left wing political attitudes within the Corporation, to tell the story of an institution that has been misunderstood by both left and right wing critics. Moreover, the book provides a critique of the management and organisation reforms to the BBC, coupled with a class analysis, demonstrating the need for transformation to this important part of British society. At a time when the media is under intense scrutiny for its perceived failures in reporting and representing politics and economics, Mills’ analysis and prescriptions for reform make for essential reading.Learn more

With messages limited to 140 characters, Twitter once drew skepticism, even scorn, from journalists who saw little role for the social-media platform in their work. But as Alecia Swasy demonstrates in her new book, How Journalists Use Twitter: The Changing Landscape of U.S. Newsrooms (Lexington Books, 2016), many reporters now embrace Twitter as a means of cultivating sources, promoting stories and building their own “brands”as information providers. Swasy, a veteran business reporter who now teaches at Washington and Lee University, studied Twitter use at four metropolitan newspapers. She discovered that the humble “tweet”has become an integral component of a 24/7 news cycle in which reporters and readers engage in an ongoing conversation. James Kates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has worked as an editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other publicationsLearn more about your

The millennial generation (those born from 1980 through the beginning of the 21st century) now comprises the largest voting bloc in the American electorate. In Media, Millennials, and Politics: The Coming of Age of the Next Political Generation (Lexington Books, 2016), Alison N. Novak argues that these 50 million young citizens are misunderstood, marginalized and sometimes overtly insulted by the news media. Writers, newscasters and pundits label them “apathetic, uninvolved and entitled,” while ignoring clear evidence that many millennials are deeply concerned about the course of the nation. Novak examines coverage of millennials in cable television and online news, finding that journalists often substitute stereotypes and rhetorical shortcuts for rigorous examination of how members of this generation think and act. She concludes by calling the media to task and demanding that it present a fuller, more nuanced picture of a group that will soon inherit the reins of power in the United States. Jame

In his new book The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Ethan Michaeli charts the riveting history of the Chicago Defender, one of the nation’s longest running and most significant black periodicals. Founded in 1905 by publisher Robert S. Abbott, the Defender came to play a central role in regional and national black politics; drawing African Americans north to Chicago as part of the Great Migration out of the South, condemning Jim Crow and bolstering the electoral power of black America, and helping to secure the election of presidents such as Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. Relying on exhaustive research, including dozens of interviews and extensive archival material, Ethan has constructed the most in-depth and illuminating history of the Defender ever published – highlighting not only the impact of publisher Abbott and iconic columnists such as Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes, but also the hundreds of other journalists

Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story (Temple University Press, 2014) offers a timely reminder of how racial bias and prejudice continue to shape political perspectives and dominant media narratives. Drawing on her unique experience as a journalist covering the case, Natalie Byfield explores the media response to and framing of the Central Park Jogger case which gained national attention during the late 1980s. Byfield is a cultural sociologist, who has taught in the fields of sociology and media studies. She is an associate professor at St. John’s University in Queens, New York where her research centers on the sociology of knowledge. She examines language, media systems, and methodologies exploring their roles in the production and construction of race/class/gender inequalities. In 1989 she was a member of a reporting team nominated by the Daily News for a Pulitzer Prize relating to the papers coverage of the Central Park Jogger case. Dr. Byfield is also the recipient of a C

In a fragmented media world where anyone can speak, professional journalists are no longer the “gatekeepers” who decide what the public will see and hear. Instead, citizens are barraged with claims, assertions and innuendo that have not been subjected to the journalistic discipline of verification. Fact-checking, pioneered by bloggers and developed by professional news organizations, attempts to get at the elusive truth by subjecting political figures’ words to careful scrutiny. In Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism (Columbia University Press, 2016) Lucas Graves examines the fact-checkers’ work and plumbs its potential, its limits and its hazards. He concludes that fact-checking, while imperfect, is a genuine reform movement that is reshaping American journalism and the long-cherished ideal of objectivity. James Kates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has worked

Eric Gardner’s new study Black Print Unbound: the Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015) explores the development and voice of the Christian Recorder during the years leading up to and immediately after the American Civil War. As the house organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Recorder held a national reach among free African Americans and became an integral part of broader nineteenth-century black print networks. Through recovering the paper’s history, Black Print Unbound offers an important intervention into the study of African American literary history and American print culture. Eric’s teaching and research interests center on African American literature and culture and American literary history, and he is currently a professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. His first monograph, Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature was published in 2009 by the Universit

Carol McCabe Booker is a Washington, D.C. attorney and former journalist. In the 1960s and 70s, she covered civil rights for the Voice of America, freelanced articles for The Washington Post, Readers Digest, Ebony, Jet, and Black Stars, and reported from Africa, including the Nigerian warfront, for Westinghouse Broadcasting stations. After retiring in 2008, she helped her husband, journalist Simeon Booker, write Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter’s Account of the Civil Rights Movement, which received widespread critical acclaim following its publication by the University Press of Mississippi. After Simeon and trailblazing reporter Alice Dunnigan were inducted into the black journalists Hall of Fame in 2013, Carol tracked down Dunnigan’s out-of-print autobiography to recover her fascinating story for a modern audience. The daughter of a sharecropper born in rural Kentucky, Dunnigan went on to become the first African American female reporter accredited by the White House, the Supreme Court, and th