The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere, and academic publications. Yet, until now, we have lacked a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new and shifting terrain. In Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights, celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled thirty-two illuminating pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Featuring some of today’s most incisive and influential commentators, this comprehensive collection contextualizes the predicament faced by the news media industry through a concise history of modern journalism, a hard-hitting analysis of the structural and financial causes of news media’s sudden collapse, and deeply informed proposals for how the vital role of journalism might be rescued from impending disaster. Sure to become the essential guide to the journalism crisis, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights is both a primer on the news media today and a chronicle of a key historical moment in the transformation of the press.

Looks at the relationship between economic power and the digital world, encouraging readers to fight back against the monopolies that are making the Internet less democratic. 20,000 first printing.

This book examines pressing debates concerning how and why journalism education should respond to digital changes in and around the industry, and questions market oriented ideology and civic responsibility in the field. Surveying a broad field of discourse and research into journalism education, Creech shows how public ideals, market logics and industry concerns have come to animate discussions about digital journalism education and journalism’s future, and how academic structures and cultures are positioned as a key obstacle to attaining that future. The book examines labor conditions, critiques of journalism education as an institution, and curricular change, with reference to how conversations around race, fake news, and digital infrastructures impact the field. Creech argues for a critical pedagogy of journalism education, one that pushes beyond jobs training and instead is centred around a commitment to public and civic value via a liberal arts tradition made practicable for the digital age. This insightful book is vital reading for journalism educators and scholars, as well as journalists and news executives, education scholars, and program officers and decision-makers at journalism-adjacent foundations and think tanks.

Ever since newspaper companies first turned to their governments for support in the 1950s, print media has been supported by state aid in many parts of the world. Today, the principles and practicalities of these subsidies have been called into question, endangering the secure funding of expensive high-quality press output. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of today’s global challenges in the print news media’s struggle for survival. It presents current practices concerning government subsidies to newspapers for political, economic, and socio-cultural purposes against the background of declining readership and revenues, increased inter-media competition, austerity budgets imposed on national economies and shifting audience tastes. Using the insights of theoretical debates in the fields of media economics, media governance, and modern management theory, the book analyses these issues by investigating the power of government subsidies to shape and control newspaper markets. It brings together experts in these fields to combine theory with industry practices, aiming to help all parties involved to understand the complexity of issues and requirements necessary to preserve the social benefits of print media.

The Future of Journalism: Developments and Debates analyses the radical shifts in journalism which are changing every aspect of the gathering, reporting and reception of news. The drivers of these changes include the rapid innovations in communication technologies, the competitive and fragmenting markets for audiences and advertising revenues, and the collapse of traditional business models for financing media organisations, as well as changing audience requirements for news, the ways in which it is presented and the expansive number of (increasingly mobile) devices on which it is produced and consumed. Each of these trends has significant implications for journalists - for their jobs, workplaces, products and perceptions of their professional roles, ethical judgements and day-to-day practice. They also pose significant challenges for the future funding of a sustainable, critical and high ‘quality’ democratic journalism. The Future of Journalism: Developments and Debates comprises the research-based responses of distinguished academic specialists and professional journalists to the challenging issues involved in assessing the future of journalism. It is essential reading for everyone interested in the changing role of journalism in the economic, democratic and cultural life of communities locally, nationally and globally. This book was originally published as two special issues of Journalism Studies and Journalism Practice.

Does America have a free press? Many who answer yes appeal to First Amendment protections that shield the press from government censorship. But in this comprehensive history of American press freedom as it has existed in theory, law, and practice, Sam Lebovic shows that, on its own, the right of free speech has been insufficient to guarantee a free press. Lebovic recovers a vision of press freedom, prevalent in the mid-twentieth century, based on the idea of unfettered public access to accurate information. This “right to the news” responded to persistent worries about the quality and diversity of the information circulating in the nation’s news. Yet as the meaning of press freedom was contested in various arenas—Supreme Court cases on government censorship, efforts to regulate the corporate newspaper industry, the drafting of state secrecy and freedom of information laws, the unionization of journalists, and the rise of the New Journalism—Americans chose to define freedom of the press as nothing more than the right to publish without government censorship. The idea of a public right to all the news and information was abandoned, and is today largely forgotten. Free Speech and Unfree News compels us to reexamine assumptions about what freedom of the press means in a democratic society—and helps us make better sense of the crises that beset the press in an age of aggressive corporate consolidation in media industries, an increasingly secretive national security state, and the daily newspaper’s continued decline.

Neoliberal policy approaches have swept over the American political economy in recent decades. In Framing Inequality, Matt Guardino focuses on the power of corporate news media in shaping how the public understands the pivotal policy debates of this period. Drawing on a wide range of empirical evidence from the dawn of the Reagan era into the Trump administration, he explains how profit pressures and commercial imperatives in the media have narrowed and trivialized news coverage and influenced public attitudes in the process. Guardino highlights how the political-economic structure of mainstream media operates to magnify some political messages and to mute or shut out others. He contends that news framing of policies that contribute to economic inequality has been unequal, and that this has undermined Americans' opportunities to express their views on an equal basis. Framing Inequality is a unique study that offers critical understanding of not only how neoliberalism succeeded as a political project, but also how Americans might begin to build a more democratic and egalitarian media system.

This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.

The new era of Google, Twitter and Facebook has fundamentally shifted the journalist′s relationship with the audience. To navigate these new realities, it is imperative for journalism students to master skills in cross-platform writing, and understand the implications on their communication decisions. This second edition of Understanding Journalism tackles these changes head-on. It integrates media and cultural theory with the step-by-step development of writing skills to give students the techniques and the savvy they need to succeed. Bigger and better, this new edition includes: A new chapter on who journalists are in the social media age Reorganization of journalism skills chapters to bring writing and editing to the fore Full coverage and examples on Twitter, social media, SMS formats In-depth exploration of the ethical issues raised by new media platforms All new exercises, case scenarios and further readings It is the essential guide for all students of journalism.

Digital Media and Innovation takes an in-depth look at how smart, creative companies have transformed the business of media and telecommunications by introducing unique and original products and services. Today′s media managers are faced with the same basic question: what are the best methods for staying competitive over time? In one word: innovation. From electronic commerce (Amazon, Google) to music and video streaming (Apple, Pandora, and Netflix), digital media has transformed the business of retail selling and personal lifestyle. This text will introduce current and future media industry professionals to the people, companies, and strategies that have proven to be real game changers by offering the marketplace a unique value proposition for the consumer.