Mitchell Stephens
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231159388
- eISBN:
- 9780231536295
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231159388.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book provides an original, sometimes critical, examination of contemporary journalism, both on- and offline, and proposes a new standard for journalism (wisdom journalism) that brings together ...
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This book provides an original, sometimes critical, examination of contemporary journalism, both on- and offline, and proposes a new standard for journalism (wisdom journalism) that brings together the more rarified forms of reporting to provide an informed, insightful, interpretive, explanatory, and even opinionated take on current events. The book argues that, for a century and a half, journalists have made a good business out of selling the latest news or selling ads next to that news. Now that news pours out of the Internet and our mobile devices—fast, abundant, and mostly free—that era is ending. Our best journalists, the book suggests, must instead offer original, challenging perspectives—not just slightly more thorough accounts of widely reported events. Most attempts to deal with journalism's current crisis emphasize technology; this book emphasizes mindsets and the need to rethink what journalism has been and might become. The book finds inspiration for a more ambitious and effective understanding of journalism in examples from twenty-first-century articles and blogs, from a selection of outstanding examples of twentieth-century journalism and from Benjamin Franklin's eighteenth-century writings.Less
This book provides an original, sometimes critical, examination of contemporary journalism, both on- and offline, and proposes a new standard for journalism (wisdom journalism) that brings together the more rarified forms of reporting to provide an informed, insightful, interpretive, explanatory, and even opinionated take on current events. The book argues that, for a century and a half, journalists have made a good business out of selling the latest news or selling ads next to that news. Now that news pours out of the Internet and our mobile devices—fast, abundant, and mostly free—that era is ending. Our best journalists, the book suggests, must instead offer original, challenging perspectives—not just slightly more thorough accounts of widely reported events. Most attempts to deal with journalism's current crisis emphasize technology; this book emphasizes mindsets and the need to rethink what journalism has been and might become. The book finds inspiration for a more ambitious and effective understanding of journalism in examples from twenty-first-century articles and blogs, from a selection of outstanding examples of twentieth-century journalism and from Benjamin Franklin's eighteenth-century writings.
Matt Carlson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252035999
- eISBN:
- 9780252093180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252035999.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter draws together major themes that persist across the previous chapters. Journalists responded to the struggle over unnamed sources as victims of structural hindrances they encountered in ...
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This chapter draws together major themes that persist across the previous chapters. Journalists responded to the struggle over unnamed sources as victims of structural hindrances they encountered in their work. While contemporary journalism does face complex problems, the chapter argues that we cannot account for controversies over unnamed sources solely through this frame. Such a perspective ignores the relationship between unnamed sources and the status needs of elite journalists and their news outlets. This combination of media structure and individual action complicates efforts to repair journalism. The culture of unnamed sources as it exists benefits sources and journalists—while often ignoring the public interest.Less
This chapter draws together major themes that persist across the previous chapters. Journalists responded to the struggle over unnamed sources as victims of structural hindrances they encountered in their work. While contemporary journalism does face complex problems, the chapter argues that we cannot account for controversies over unnamed sources solely through this frame. Such a perspective ignores the relationship between unnamed sources and the status needs of elite journalists and their news outlets. This combination of media structure and individual action complicates efforts to repair journalism. The culture of unnamed sources as it exists benefits sources and journalists—while often ignoring the public interest.
Dominic Boyer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451881
- eISBN:
- 9780801467356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451881.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This epilogue returns to the question of how studying the impact of digital information and communication on contemporary news journalism brings into focus a parallel legacy of digital mediation and ...
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This epilogue returns to the question of how studying the impact of digital information and communication on contemporary news journalism brings into focus a parallel legacy of digital mediation and digital thinking in anthropology. It first explores the concept of “digital reason” through Sigmund Freud, examining how digital thinking has seeped into the foundations of epistemic activity in anthropology and the human sciences; indeed in discovering the ways that it has informed entire theoretical paradigms and analytical styles without disclosing its true intuitive basis. It then turns to the mechanization of computation in the early twentieth-century which led to the information theory. The theory paved the way for a new phase in the industrialization of computation and communication. The chapter concludes with a discussion of when the first signs of digital reason become visible in anthropological knowledge and how this eventually led to the study of the informatics preconscious.Less
This epilogue returns to the question of how studying the impact of digital information and communication on contemporary news journalism brings into focus a parallel legacy of digital mediation and digital thinking in anthropology. It first explores the concept of “digital reason” through Sigmund Freud, examining how digital thinking has seeped into the foundations of epistemic activity in anthropology and the human sciences; indeed in discovering the ways that it has informed entire theoretical paradigms and analytical styles without disclosing its true intuitive basis. It then turns to the mechanization of computation in the early twentieth-century which led to the information theory. The theory paved the way for a new phase in the industrialization of computation and communication. The chapter concludes with a discussion of when the first signs of digital reason become visible in anthropological knowledge and how this eventually led to the study of the informatics preconscious.
