New Books in Journalism

Inspired by the reading and writing habits of citizens leading up to the French Revolution, The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France (Cornell UP, 2021) is a compelling addition to the long-running debate about the link between the Enlightenment and the political struggle that followed. Dr. Elizabeth Andrews Bond diligently scoured France's local newspapers spanning the two decades prior to the Revolution as well as its first three years shining a light on the letters to the editor. The Writing Public is a history of the thousands of readers and writers who participated in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution by writing to their local newspapers. A form of early social media, these letters constituted a lively and ongoing conversation among readers.Bond takes us beyond the glamorous salons of the intelligentsia into the everyday worlds of the craftsmen, clergy, farmers, and women who composed these letters. As a result, we get a fascinating glimpse into who participated in public discourse, what they most wanted to discuss, and how they shaped a climate of opinion.The Writing Public offers a novel examination of how French citizens used the information press to form norms of civic discourse and shape the experience of revolution. The result is a nuanced analysis of knowledge production during the Enlightenment.The Writing Public won the David H. Pinkney Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies.Dr. Elizabeth Andrews Bond is an associate professor of History at The Ohio State University. She is a specialist in the history of print and public opinion, the social history of ideas, the cultural history of the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.Brigid Wallace is a Graduate Student in the History Department at Lehigh University. (Twitter: @faithismine51) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett’s work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers.This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett’s life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett’s previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (U Massachusetts Press, 2022) celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle. Hettie V. Williams Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University where she teaches courses in African American history and U.S. history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Why does the democratic establishment always avoid turning left, even when it might mean a political win? Gordon asks David Sirota. Sirota is behind the smash-hit Netflix movie Don’t Look Up! Even if you weren’t a fan of that movie this is worth a listen, because David is more than just a screenwriter. He’s a journalist who doesn’t limit his journalism to one kind of storytelling.David has written for The Guardian and for Jacobin, but he is also host and co-writer of investigative podcast series Meltdown, which documented how Obama’s lacklustre response to the financial crisis set the stage for Trump. He’s also worked as a speechwriter for Bernie Sanders.We cover a range of topics: from the limits of technocracy, the political co-option of science and expertise, the critical reaction to Don’t Look Up, and whether or not Ideocracy (2006) has bad politics.—————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.——————-ABOUT THE SHOW——————For a full list of credits, contact information, and more, visit our about page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

What is the role of the press in a democracy? For nearly a century, scholars, media critics, and politicians have debated this question—in a large part thanks to Walter Lippmann. Lippmann’s 1922 book, Public Opinion, changed the conversation about how to educate voters and who should be able to vote at all. In this episode, University of British Columbia professor Heidi Tworek discusses the timeless questions and the man who asked them. Heidi Tworek is assistant professor of international history at the University of British Columbia. She is an editor of The Journal of Global History and the author of News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

A special opportunity to hear from Sara Custer, editor of The Campus (Times Higher Education), about the role of journalism and reporting in higher education. Avi and Sara cover topics ranging from the role of media in increasing cross-institution collaboration and sharing during the pandemic to how universities can do a better job supporting their junior scholars. Also, don't miss out on the opportunity to learn how you can publish in Times Higher Education yourself!Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons: Visual Discourses During the 2018-2021 Electoral Crisis (Lexington Books, 2022) by Matt Reingold, published by Lexington Books as part of its Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature series, offers an incisive—and prescient, given the recent dissolution of the incumbent government—consideration of how political cartoonists in Israel broaden the conversation about the various challenges faced by the country.Organized thematically around issues that emerged at various points across the three-year period under consideration (including political mudslinging, the ultra-Orthodox community, the Coronavirus pandemic, and coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu in the right-leaning press), analysis of the cartoons complemented by interviews with many of the cartoonists whose works feature in the book, Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons moves the conversation about the Jewish State away from its typically partisan (and thus limiting) vistas. Reingold shows how with humor, satirical nous, and a sophisticated awareness of their audiences, the cartoonists’ work often cut across the traditional faultlines of Israeli society (Religious/Secular; Ashkenazi/Mizrachi; Cosmopolitan/Narrow; and of course, “Left”/”Right”), engaging with a more representative (if, of necessity, less tidy) discussion about Israel today.As Israel prepares for its fifth election in three years, following the collapse of the most broad-based coalition government in the country’s history (led, not-entirely-incidentally, by the country’s first religiously observant prime minister), Reingold’s book gives nuance and context to the conversation about Israel in Israel.Matt Reinhold has a PhD in Jewish Education. He teaches Jewish history and Jewish thought at Tanenbaum CHAT, a community Jewish high school in Toronto, Canada.Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Rough Draft of History: A Century of US Social Movements in the News (Princeton UP, 2022) offers a new view of U.S. social movement history across the twentieth century by examining how movement organizations were covered in major national newspapers. The book analyzes U.S. social movements--ranging from temperance to women's suffrage to the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street--in a broad comparative fashion. Drawing on the full set of digitized newspapers from the twentieth-century (a task that as little as twenty years ago was considered impossible for researchers), the book offers both an institutional history of news--why the media covered what they covered, and to what effect--and also shows the influence of news coverage on a range of social movements, from the well-known to the obscure. Media coverage is a crucial component of movement visibility; news can draw the general public into battles over new issues but also shapes how movements are perceived. The authors show how a movement's structure--its organization, as well as the protest and non-protests activities it undertakes--influence its coverage, and consider too how macro-political conditions shape movement coverage. They reveal surprising gaps between contemporaneous coverage and current scholarly focus; for instance, the labor movement received the most journalistic attention of any movement of the twentieth century, but it is greatly understudied in comparison to how much it dominated the public sphere. Taking stock of news coverage across a century of movements thus illuminates movements that were influential in public discourse but have been neglected by scholars.Edwin Amenta is professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. His books include When Movements Matter and Bold Relief (both Princeton). Twitter @EdwinAmenta Neal Caren is associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Twitter @HaphazardSocCaleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Long before the current preoccupation with “fake news,” American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice, yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries, this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant. We see this play in pink slime local news sites and in the proliferation of truthers claiming to do their own research because of a deep distrust in the mainstream media.In Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History (Columbia UP, 2022) Tucher argues that the creation of outward forms of factuality unleashed new opportunities for falsehood: News doesn’t have to be true as long as it looks true. Propaganda, disinformation, and advocacy—whether in print, on the radio, on television, or online—could be crafted to resemble the real thing. Dressed up in legitimate journalistic conventions, this “fake journalism” became inextricably bound up with right-wing politics, to the point where it has become an essential driver of political polarization. In the book and in this conversation, Tucher explores how American audiences have argued over what’s real and what’s not—and why that matters for democracy.Andie Tucher the H. Gordon Garbedian Professor and the director of the Communications Ph.D. Program at the Columbia Journalism School.Jenna Spinelle is a journalism instructor at Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. She's also the communications specialist for the university's McCourtney Institute for Democracy, where she hosts and produces the Democracy Works podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

Hello media fans - The ABC is Australia's public broadcaster, for TV, digital and radio. Think BBC and CBC and NPR. Who Needs the ABC?: How Digital Disruption and Political Dysfunction Threaten the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Existence (Scribe, 2022) by Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins (Scribe 2022), charts how, in its 90th year, the best-trusted news organisation in Australia arrived at its current plight: doing the most it ever has, with less than it needs, under a barrage of constant criticism.This book examines the profound changes that have swept through the Australian media, technology, and political landscapes in the past decade, and explores the tense relationship between the ABC and governments of both stripes over the last 40 years. It dispels any complacency about the ABC’s future by charting the very real threat now posed by the Liberal– National Party coalition, and the damage that it has done to the ABC while in office.Who Needs the ABC? identifies the vital role that the ABC plays in Australia today: in its award-winning journalism, in its vast array of cultural programming on television, on radio, and online, and in the comprehensive service it provides to people across the country.At a time when the truth has to vie with obfuscation and misinformation, this book offers a rejoinder to the ABC’s critics, points to solutions that will see the ABC thrive, and answers the question posed here: Who Needs the ABC? We all do.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

When independent filmmakers, activists, and amateurs document the struggle for rights, representation, and revolution, they instrumentalize images by advocating for a particular outcome. Ryan Watson calls this "militant evidence."In Radical Documentary and Global Crises: Militant Evidence in the Digital Age (Indiana UP, 2021), Watson centers the discussion on extreme conflict, such as the Iraq War, the occupation of Palestine, the war in Syria, mass incarceration in the United States, and child soldier conscription in the Congo. Under these conditions, artists and activists aspire to document, archive, witness, and testify. The result is a set of practices that turn documentary media toward a commitment to feature and privilege the media made by the people living through the terror. This footage is then combined with new digitally archived images, stories, and testimonials to impact specific social and political situations.Radical Documentary and Global Crises re-orients definitions of what a documentary is, how it functions, how it circulates, and how its effect is measured, arguing that militant evidence has the power to expose, to amass, and to adjudicate.Gustavo E. Gutiérrez Suárez is PhD candidate in Social Anthropology, and BA in Social Communication. His areas of interest include Andean and Amazonian Anthropology, as well as Film poetics and aesthetics. You can follow him on Twitter vía @GustavoEGSuarez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism