The News Media: What Everyone Needs to Know® - Tapa dura

"This lively and almost up-to-the-minute account of journalism past, present, and future shows the messy, complex interaction of society, law, politics, and technology in producing journalism and making it a barometer of and a participant in the general process of social change." -danah boyd, founder of Data & Society, and author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens "In this clear, concise, informative, and essential primer on journalism, the authors make good on the presumptuous promise of their subtitle: to answer most every question anyone could ask about the confounding, worrisome, and exciting state and fate of the news media." -Jeff Jarvis, Professor, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and author of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News "What a great idea for a book: Two eminent journalism scholars and a legendary journalist ask and then answer-insightfully, in meticulous detail-every conceivable question about the news media. It's a quick and enjoyable way to get up to speed on this complex topic, plus a handy reference for years to come." - Rodney Benson, author of Shaping Immigration News, and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

The business of journalism has an extensive, storied, and often romanticized history. Newspaper reporting has long shaped the way that we see the world, played key roles in exposing scandals, and has even been alleged to influence international policy. The past several years have seen the newspaper industry in a state of crisis, with Twitter and Facebook ushering in the rise of citizen journalism and a deprofessionalization of the industry, plummeting readership and revenue, and municipal and regional papers shuttering or being absorbed into corporate behemoths. Now billionaires, most with no journalism experience but lots of power and strong views, are stepping in to purchase newspapers, both large and small.

This addition to the What Everyone Needs to Know® series looks at the past, present and future of journalism, considering how the development of the industry has shaped the present and how we can expect the future to roll out. It addresses a wide range of questions, from whether objectivity was only a conceit of late twentieth century reporting, largely behind us now; how digital technology has disrupted journalism; whether newspapers are already dead to the role of non-profit journalism; the meaning of "transparency" in reporting; the way that private interests and governments have created their own advocacy journalism; whether social media is changing journalism; the new social rules of old media outlets; how franchised media is addressing the problem of disappearing local papers; and the rise of citizen journalism and hacker journalism. It will even look at the ways in which new technologies potentially threaten to replace journalists.