The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss the history of journalism - the origins in the United States but we can also branch out to other parts of the world. Also famous journalists around the world.

Also posts on current events which either promote press freedom or endanger it. Let us hope that our reporters continue to be even better observers of human behavior and events, exceptional thinkers and have the ability to present the story so that it is read.

Also welcome on this thread are books that would assist future generations in their quest to be reporters themselves, accounts of good journalistic reporting - reporters who gave issues, people and events a voice that they would normally not have.

Remember there is no self promotion of any kind.

I am not sure if this thread fits here or under world history or somewhere else - I will give it some thought.

Here is one on the history of journalism from a British perspective regarding journalism in the UK:

My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism

by Andrew Marr

Synopsis:

How do you decide what is a "story" and what isn't? What does a newspaper editor actually do all day? The purpose of this insider's account is to provide an answer to all these questions and more. Andrew Marr's brilliantly funny book is a guide for those of us who read newspapers, or who listen to and watch news bulletins but want to know more.

A Political History of Journalism

by Geraldine Muhlmann (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this new important book, Graldine Muhlmann provides a comparative history of the rise of modern journalism, from the revolution of the late nineteenth century, with its new concern for facts, through to the present day. Her account is structured around the tension between what she calls the unifying and decentring tendencies in modern journalism that is, the concern to give readers a truth that is acceptable to all, on the one hand, and the concern to resist dominant representations and give voice to alternative views, on the other.

She illustrates her account with a wide range of case studies, from Sverine, who covered the trial of Dreyfus in late nineteenth-century France, to the great Vietnam War reporters, Seymour M. Hersh and Michael Herr. In between are fascinating new readings of famous figures like George Orwell and Norman Mailer as well as some less well-known writers, such as the great American muckraker, Lincoln Steffens, and the French crusading journalist, Albert Londres.

This historical and comparative account of the rise of modern journalism will be an ideal text for courses in journalism, political communication and media history. Written by an author who believes that journalism is crucial to our modern democracies and that it deserves to be studied with knowledge and care, the book raises serious questions about the role of the reporter and about the sorts of journalism that are possible in the twenty-first century.

History of Journalism in China

by Fang Hanqi (no photo)

Synopsis:

In 10 volumes, and more than 2,000 pages, the series covers all aspects of journalism in China s history, including newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, broadcast television, photography, documentary film, and journals.

The History of Journalism presents the development of journalism in China against the backdrop of the major events in China s history (the first Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution).

The 10 volumes of The History of Journalism offer unique insights into all aspects of journalism in the entire Chinese-speaking world, from the Mainland to Taiwan to Hong Kong to Macau and to the larger Chinese diaspora. The History of Journalism in China presents the evolution and development of journalism in China against the backdrop of the major events in China s history (the first and second Sino-Japanese Wars, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution).

The series looks at all aspects of journalism in China including not just newspapers but journals, television programs, newsreels, and other formats. The 10-volume History of Journalism in China offers unique insights into journalism in the entire Chinese-speaking world, from the Mainland to Taiwan to Hong Kong to Macau and to the larger Chinese diaspora.

The editor in chief of this series, Fang Hanqi, Professor Emeritus in Journalism, has been called the Father of China s Modern Journalism.

Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada

by Cecil Rosner (no photo)

Synopsis:

This title provides students with a comprehensive overview of investigative journalism in Canada.

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism

by Bob Edwards (no photo)

Synopsis:

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Turning Points in History)

Obscure Scribblers: A History of Parliamentary Journalism

by Andrew Sparrow

Synopsis:

Sparrow's account of over three centuries of Parliamentary reporting brings in literary giants such as Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens (who worked as a reported in Parliament in the 1830s) as well as covering major developments in how reporting was carried out - and press coverage.

Press, Politics and Society: A History of Journalism in Wales

by Aled Jones (no photo)

Synopsis:

The first major historical study of the origins, production and social impact of newspaper journalism in Wales. This is the first major study of the newspaper press in Wales. Spanning two centuries, and the press of two languages, the book explores changes in the organisation of journalism, the printing industry and distribution methods. It examines diverse forms of ownership and the patronage of the press by political and religious movements, placing the newspaper in its broader cultural contexts. Finally, it considers the legacies of the nineteenth century press for the twentieth, in particular its relationship with the newer media of radio and television.

Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation's Journalism

by Chris Daly

Synopsis:

Today many believe that American journalism is in crisis, with traditional sources of news under siege from a failing business model, a resurgence of partisanship, and a growing expectation that all information ought to be free. In Covering America, Christopher B. Daly places the current crisis within a much broader historical context, showing how it is only the latest in a series of transitions that have required journalists to devise new ways of plying their trade.

Drawing on original research and synthesizing the latest scholarship, Daly traces the evolution of journalism in America from the early 1700s to the digital revolution of today. Analyzing the news business as a business, he identifies five major periods of journalism history, each marked by a different response to the recurrent conflicts that arise when a vital cultural institution is housed in a major private industry.

Throughout his narrative history Daly captures the ethos of journalism with engaging anecdotes, biographical portraits of key figures, and illuminating accounts of the coverage of major news events as well as the mundane realities of day-to-day reporting.

Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting

by John Maxwell Hamilton (no photo)

Synopsis:

In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted -- facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs -- a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security.

In Journalism's Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton -- a historian and former foreign correspondent -- provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers' perceptions of the world across two centuries.

From the colonial era -- when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships -- to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism's constant -- and not always successful -- efforts at "dishing the foreign news," as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of "special correspondents" and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the "golden age" of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis' intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps.

Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to "find Livingstone"; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering.

Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism's Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.

Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and their Readers

by David Paul Nord (no photo)

Synopsis:

Illuminating how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, Communities of Journalism is a contribution to the cultural history of American journalism and to the history of reading

The Death and Life of American Journalism

by Robert W. McChesney

Synopsis:

Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone.Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown.

In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who together founded the nation’s leading media reform network, Free Press, investigate the crisis. They propose a bold strategy for saving journalism and saving democracy, one that looks back to how the Founding Fathers ensured free press protection with the First Amendment and provided subsidies to the burgeoning print press of the young nation.

Bottom of the 33rd

by Dan Barry

Synopsis:

“Bottom of the 33rd is chaw-chewing, sunflower-spitting, pine tar proof that too much baseball is never enough.” —Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax

“What a book—an exquisite exercise in story-telling, democracy and myth-making.” —Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award for Let The Great World Spin

From Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the longest game in baseball history—a tale celebrating not only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational ideal epitomized by the hard-fighting players of the minor leagues. In the tradition of Moneyball, The Last Hero, and Wicked Good Year, Barry’s Bottom of the 33rdis a reaffirming story of the American Dream finding its greatest expression in timeless contests of the Great American Pastime.

Note: From the Columbia Journalism Review - "Dan reinvented sports reporting and writing and told a story that, at the same time, has almost nothing to do with baseball".

American Dynasty

by Kevin Phillips (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Bushes are the family nobody really knows. This popular lack of acquaintance-nurtured by gauzy imagery of Maine summer cottages, gray-haired national grandmothers, July 4th sparklers & cowboy boots-has let national politics create a dynasticized presidency that would have horrified the Founders. After all, they'd led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges.

Onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since WWI, becoming entrenched within the establishment-Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency & presidency-thru a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, criminality & deception.

By uncovering relationships & connecting facts, Phillips comes to the conclusion that the Bush family has systematically used its financial & social empire to gain the White House, subverting the very core of democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with facile timing, twisting & turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans.

As Jeb Bush considers a run for the presidency, American Dynasty explains what it all means.

Note: This review was obviously written during the political season

Bloodlines: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

by Timothy Snyder

Synopsis:

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

From Booklist

If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture.

Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land.

The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today.

Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.

Note: Recommended by the Columbia Journalism Review for future Journalists - Wayne Barrett states: "The greatest history of the ugliest story of our times. Every body in the trenches of genocide is exhumed".

According to Robert Reich - This is how tyranny begins:

https://youtu.be/W_anu-feuKE

Source: Youtube and Robert Reich

and

NPR:

https://youtu.be/ZjS09xI_x1Y

More:
by Robert B. Reich

by

by Paul Starr (no photo)

Synopsis:

America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state. But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications.In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio, Paul Starr shows that the creation of modern communications was as much the result of political choices as of technological invention. With his original historical analysis, Starr examines how the decisions that led to a state-run post office and private monopolies on the telegraph and telephone systems affected a developing society. He illuminates contemporary controversies over freedom of information by exploring such crucial formative issues as freedom of the press, intellectual property, privacy, public access to information, and the shaping of specific technologies and institutions. America's critical choices in these areas, Starr argues, affect the long-run path of development in a society and have had wide social, economic, and even military ramifications. The Creation of the Media not only tells the history of the media in a new way; it puts America and its global influence into a new perspective.

Thank you Stuart

by Peter S. Prichard (no picture)

I remember reading this book during my masters work at University (this dates me). At the time, USA Today had just changed the face of journalism by introducing color to the front page and changing journalism to make it more "edible" in tidbits.

Synopsis:

In 1982 the Gannett Company, the nation's biggest newspaper chain, launched USA TODAY. USA TODAY celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2007. The brainchild of Al Neuharth, it was the most expensive, most closely watched newspaper debut in history. Journalists called it "McPaper," the "titan of tidbits," and "junk-food journalism." No newspaper executive had ever put so many millions and so many careers on the line. This updated edition of Peter S. Prichard's acclaimed 1987 release includes an afterward by longtime USA TODAY writer and editor David Colton. This updated section completes the story of the first century of "The Nation's Newspaper." Colton catches up with the founders and examines the journalistic achievements that have gained "McPaper" respect. Readers of USA TODAY - millions of them - will find this a fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of the battle to build a newspaper that has grown to redefine modern journalism. Readers of business histories will find it a classic case study of a bigrisk, big-reward business start-up.

Edible - can you imagine - what does that say as a nation.

Thank you so much for your add Terry and for really almost getting the citation pitch perfect - (no photo) is what we say at the end but pretty darn close. Good job and good add

Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Synopsis:

Geoffrey Stone's Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America during wartime. Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era.

Full of fresh legal and historical insight, Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents—Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon—to the Supreme Court justices—Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren—to the resisters—Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises.

Timeline of the Newspaper Industry:

http://inventors.about.com/od/pstarti...


Representative Journals of the United States

"Representative journals of the United States. Copyright 1885. Compiled by A. J. Kane. T. Sinclair & Son, Lith., 506 & 508 North St., Philadelphia."

First row: The Union and Advertiser (William Purcell) - The Omaha Daily Bee (Edward Rosewater) - The Boston Daily Globe (Charles H. Taylor) - Boston Morning Journal (William Warland Clapp) - The Kansas City Times (Morrison Mumford) - The Pittsburgh Dispatch (Eugene M. O'Neill).

Second row: Albany Evening Journal (John A. Sleicher) - The Milwaukee Sentinel (Horace Rublee) - The Philadelphia Record (William M. Singerly) - The New York Times (George Jones) - The Philadelphia Press (Charles Emory Smith) - The Daily Inter Ocean (William Penn Nixon) - The News and Courier (Francis Warrington Dawson).

Third row: Buffalo Express (James Newson Matthews) - The Daily Pioneer Press (Joseph A. Wheelock) - The Atlanta Constitution (Henry Woodfin Grady & Evan Park Howell) - San Francisco Chronicle (Michael H. de Young) - The Washington Post (Stilson Hutchins). Date 1885

Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age

by George Brock (no photo)

Synopsis:

News and journalism are in the midst of upheaval. How does news publishing change when a newspaper sells as few as 300,000 copies but its website attracts 31 million visitors? The internet is not simply allowing faster, wider distribution of material: digital technology is demanding transformative change. Journalism needs to be rethought on a global scale and remade to meet the demands of new conditions.

Out of Print examines the past, present and future for a fragile industry battling a “perfect storm” of falling circulations, reduced advertising revenue, rising print costs and the impact of “citizen journalists” and free news aggregators. Author George Brock proposes an optimistic outlook on journalism's future, taking the view that it was always unstable and likely, always will be. He argues that journalism can flourish in a new communications age, and explains how current theory and practice have to change to fully exploit developing opportunities.

Incisive and authoritative, Out of Print analyzes the role and influence of journalism in the digital age and asks how it needs to adapt to survive

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Trans (Complete in One Volume)

by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (no photo)

Synopsis:

The first fully-documented historical analysis of the impact of the invention of printing upon European culture, and its importance as an agent of religious, political, social, scientific, and intellectual change.

Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

Preface to Plato

by Eric Alfred Havelock

Synopsis:

Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.

The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the Iliad acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative.

The second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science

How does this book relate to the Future of Media?

According to Journalism Professor at Columbia University - Todd Gitlin - "The Greeks matter because some of them, at least, recognized that they were passing through a change in how people frame the world. In their case, it was the change from the oral to the written, and this is of course the subject of one of the Platonic dialogues, Phaedrus. In it, Socrates declares himself fully aware that human capacities can change, and that as memory is displaced or funnelled into print, a variety of changes may set in which affect not only how we know things, but also who we are as human beings.

Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato shows that the Greeks were aware that there was some connection, perhaps even an all-embracing connection, among forms of communication, memory and thought. It’s quite fascinating to me that people should have this awareness of a sea change in their way of knowing, this self-consciousness about it." -- Journalism Professor at Columbia University - Todd Gitlin in interview with Five Books

More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/todd...

The Creation Of The Media: Political Origins Of Modern Communications

by Paul Starr (no photo)

Synopsis:

America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state.

But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications.

In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio, Paul Starr shows that the creation of modern communications was as much the result of political choices as of technological invention.

With his original historical analysis, Starr examines how the decisions that led to a state-run post office and private monopolies on the telegraph and telephone systems affected a developing society.

He illuminates contemporary controversies over freedom of information by exploring such crucial formative issues as freedom of the press, intellectual property, privacy, public access to information, and the shaping of specific technologies and institutions.

America's critical choices in these areas, Starr argues, affect the long-run path of development in a society and have had wide social, economic, and even military ramifications.

The Creation of the Media not only tells the history of the media in a new way; it puts America and its global influence into a new perspective.

Raymond Williams on Culture and Society

by Raymond Williams

Synopsis:

-The most important Marxist cultural theorist after Gramsci, Williams' contributions go well beyond the critical tradition, supplying insights of great significance for cultural sociology today... I have never read Williams without finding something worthwhile, something subtle, some idea of great importance-
- Jeffrey C. Alexander, Professor of Sociology, Yale University

Celebrating the significant intellectual legacy and enduring influence of Raymond Williams, this exciting collection introduces a whole new generation to his work.

Jim McGuigan reasserts and rebalances Williams' reputation within the social sciences by collecting and introducing key pieces of his work.

Providing context and clarity he powerfully evokes the major contribution Williams has made to sociology, media and communication and cultural studies.

Powerfully asserting the on-going relevance of Williams within our contemporary neoliberal and digital age, the book:

Includes texts which have never been anthologized - Williams' work both biographically and historically

Provides a comprehensive introduction to Williams' social-scientific work

Demonstrates the enduring relevance of cultural materialism.

Original and persuasive this book will be of interest to anyone involved in theoretical and methodological modules within sociology, media and communication studies and cultural studies.

Review and Commentary:

According to Journalism Professor at Columbia University - Todd Gitlin - "This is an inaugural lecture Raymond Williams gave in 1974, when he assumed a professorship in drama at Cambridge University.

He’s one of the most fertile minds when it comes to media in the last century. Basically he’s saying that it’s extremely odd, and yet central, to the form of civilization that has evolved, that there’s so much drama.

And what he means by drama is not simply normal plays, but everything from advertising to television serials, to the contents of newspapers and magazines. He died in 1988 before a lot of the new technology we have now appeared; he had not encountered the iPhone.

But he anticipates a life in which people are immersed in narrative nonstop. I would add sound, or song, as another important component. This article is, at least to my way of thinking, the earliest statement of the point that quantity becomes quality.

The quantity of a certain kind of media experience creates a different way of life, which is in fact ours. Williams directed us into the whole problem of media saturation as a phenomenon worthy of treatment in its own right. -- Journalism Professor at Columbia University - Todd Gitlin in interview with Five Books

A great interview with Todd Gitlin:

"After many years of writing about how news is composed, how entertainment is composed, who decides on them and who pays attention to them, I’d been discomfited with the academic habit of thinking everything is a text and thinking of everyone as a graduate student who has nothing to do except interpret texts.

When in fact, mostly people are not so much studying texts as they are immersed in them, careening through the torrential speed and volume of the 24/7 media society.

The media torrent is a phenomenon in itself. Which is not to say that it’s content neutral, that content doesn’t matter, but that there is this huge social phenomenon: namely that what people spend most of their time doing in our civilization (when they’re neither sleeping nor working) is connecting to media.

And actually they’re even relating to media during much of the time they’re ostensibly working.

I tried in the book to look at precedents but primarily I looked at the sheer proliferation of means of delivery, including sounds as an important element. So I quickstep through history, the history of saturation, the speed of communication change, and I write about navigational strategy – which everybody develops, whether they know it or not, in striving to manage the media torrent.

And what’s your conclusion?

You mean is this good for civilization?

Well you can’t unplug the media torrent at will.

This is our civilization, and I suppose I’m more concerned that people take seriously the immensity of this phenomenon, in which we’re immersed.

We have more experience of people via electronics than we have of face-to-face contact. I don’t view this with automatic alarm, or as an occasion for fireworks.

There are elements that are beneficial, there are elements that are sort of horrific. I can’t pretend to have a particular line on it, except saying, “There it is, we’d better stare at it.”

So do you discuss newspapers in the book?

I do. The crisis in advertising – in other words, in the financing of newspapers – overlays a longer-running decline. If you look at the US, time spent with newspapers has actually been declining for years, long before the internet.

So in 1966, 75 per cent of Americans said they read the newspaper either every day or most days.

By 1986, that figure was down to 51 per cent.

Among the under-30s, 60 per cent had said yes in 1966, by 1986 that was down to 29 per cent. There have been large shifts in sensibility, that didn’t just begin with laptops.

So I think we’re in some big cultural upheaval, and one feature of it is the premium on seeing things through pictures, and hearing things through sound, knowing the world in those ways.

And there’s a decline in reading newspapers, a decline in reading books, and the situation has been exacerbated enormously by the siphoning of advertising away from newspapers, and also by the inability of anyone to figure out how to monetize the internet version of newspapers.

Newspapers remain central to people’s diet of online-ness, but if it were indeed possible for newspapers to sustain themselves economically by figuring out how to exploit the availability of the internet, it would seem to me that someone would have figured it out by now. People have been thrashing around about this for years, asking, “Where’s the new business model for the newspaper?” And they haven’t found an answer.

In the meantime there are a proliferation of ways in which people can entertain themselves. We underestimate how much of newspaper consumption has always been undertaken for purposes of entertainment. Much of what people look for in a newspaper experience is a feeling.

We may think we’re reading it for information, but what we’re actually reading it for, as I argue in my book, is to have a certain kind of sensation – a disposable emotion. And now there are so many other ways to achieve that. Newspapers are competing with every other so-called delivery system that’s out there. The old world is going fast. I don’t mean it’s going to disappear, but newspapers are obviously very unstable and weakened.

I saw an article in the New York Review of Books recently suggesting that endowments might be a solution. What’s your view on the non-profit model?

There is on-going discussion at Columbia Journalism School about such matters. I will tell you my prejudice. I don’t think that non-profits can by themselves constitute a solution to the problem.

They are imperfect, more than imperfect: they are sluggish institutions. They can also be high-handed, there’s not a lot of democratic accountability.

Obviously there’s a place for foundation support, but I don’t see non-profits as an adequate alternative to government subvention of some sort.

The trick, as in Canada and elsewhere, is to insulate finance from control.

I think the Brits have pretty convincingly demonstrated that it’s possible to do it via the BBC.

Another model is Scandinavian countries, which subsidize newspapers without regard to their political positions. I don’t think anyone ought to be naive about the dangers of government support, but I do think we need to have some creative thinking about how to subsidize what is, after all, a national need.

Without a substantial change in the system of newspaper finance, we’re heading into a distressing bifurcation – high-level journalism for a very restricted public while everyone else eats cupcakes, or crumbs.

So your solution for the serious news, which people aren’t interested in, is some sort of government support.

We need multiple models. Private ownership is fine as long as the proprietors are willing to live with single-digit profits. I don’t think the news media should be exclusively government-supported. But the news is a public good, like an airline system in which planes don’t fly into each other.

The availability of intelligently compiled, serious information is a prerequisite for democratic life. So the question is not whether there should be public funding, but how to manage it, so that it doesn’t become Orwellian.

The above was discussing his book:

Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives

by Todd Gitlin (no photo)

Synopsis:

Everyone knows that the media surround us, but no one quite understands what this means for our lives.

In Media Unlimited, a remarkable and original look at our media-glutted, speed-addicted world, Todd Gitlin makes us stare, as if for the first time, at the biggest picture of all.

From video games to elevator music, action movies to reality shows, Gitlin evokes a world of relentless sensation, instant transition, and nonstop stimulus.

He shows how all media, all the time fuels celebrity worship, paranoia, and irony; and how attempts to ward off the onrush become occasions for yet more media.

Far from signaling a "new information age," the media torrent, as Gitlin argues, encourages disposable emotions and casual commitments, and threatens to make democracy a sideshow.

Both a startling analysis and a charged polemic, Media Unlimited reveals the unending stream of manufactured images and sounds as a defining feature of our civilization and a perverse culmination of Western hopes for freedom.

A provocative new exploration of our media-saturated lives -a worthy successor to Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media.

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Source: Five Books

Understanding Media

by Marshall McLuhan

Synopsis:

This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media.

Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.