Helen Benedict, social justice:
The First Casualty by Philip Knightley. This is a history of war reporting in both the US and the UK from the Crimean War until today — in other words, a history of reporting, censorship and the relationship between journalists and the government. Knightley writes in lively, lucid prose, and will give students a perspective that will inform everything they read from now on.
Richard R. John, history of communication:
Paul Starr’s Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (2004) is the best single-volume history of American communications policy. Though Starr only takes the story up to the Second World War, his analysis of the political context in which communications media (including journalism) has evolved provides a welcome corrective to common assumptions about the relationship of the government and the press.
Richard Wald, media and society:
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, an almost-true account of newspaper reporting in Africa that is well-written, funny, and depressingly accurate.
Disturbing that a journalism professor would cite "Giant Pool of Money." Not just the deep conflicts between Planet Money's funding and the type of reporting it ostensibly does, or Adam Davidson's many many pro-financial industry activities, statements, and reporting, but also just the fact that that specific show goes so far out of its way to present a picture that absolves any agents of any responsibility for the crisis: "It's just too complex! No one could have known!" This explanation is a little less compelling when Ally Financial is paying Planet Money's bills.
#1 Posted by kabosht, CJR on Mon 10 Sep 2012 at 07:04 PM
Some serious stresses and strains seem to be emerging for young journalists.
Nothing to do with their education, of course.
If you can educate a journalist in ten months, good luck.
I would set 20 months as a minimum.
Columbia should lead the way in doing so.
What is missing in the recommendations, many of which are interesting, is a comprehensive program for the study of Human Culture.
Over two years, journalism schools should run a live curriculum in History and Politics, with relentless absorption of media cycles.
Bookstore sections in International Politics, for example, are fast moving and interesting. One of the dullest areas in school must be history, and also social studies. Here the textbooks should be retired and live curricula tested unrelentingly.
A systemic lapse in education in journalism is the failure to teach students how to make independent assessments in subject areas such as Religion and Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Linguistics, and Literature.
In the Human Culture Journalism Program, students would not only assimilate "Cognition" by Mark Ashcraft, but also learn how to perceive the limitations of experimental cognitive science. There are no experiments in memory, language, and pattern perception that would constitute learning experiences so that students would be able to significantly enhance their cognitive capacity.
There is no understanding in either psychology or journalism of what such experiments should do. There never will be in journalism, unless students master "Cognition," the COBUILD English Grammar, the Norton Critical Edition of the King James Old Testament, and "The Wings of the Dove"--some of the most remarkable products of Human Culture.
Then they would be prepared to be true education reporters--but not in the now deadest area in American journalism.
#2 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Tue 11 Sep 2012 at 03:06 PM