Category Archives: Journalism

Surmounting five riddles of the information sphere

Posted on January 31, 2021 by Luke Ford

Martin Gurri writes: “The hypothesis, which seems to me the most fertile,” wrote Walter Lippmann back in 1922, “is that news and truth are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished.” Lippmann found truth in the analysis of … Continue reading →

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Slouching Toward Post-Journalism

Posted on January 31, 2021 by Luke Ford

Martin Gurri writes: Traditional newspapers never sold news; they sold an audience to advertisers. To a considerable degree, this commercial imperative determined the journalistic style, with its impersonal voice and pretense of objectivity. The aim was to herd the audience … Continue reading →

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Trolling Journalists and the Risks of Digital Publicity

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Luke Ford

Professor Silvio Waisboard writes in 2020: * Fresno Bee educational reporter Mackenzie Mays became the target of online trolling after she published stories on sex education and teen pregnancy in local schools in early 2018. In one story, she reported … Continue reading →

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Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Luke Ford

Historian Claire Bond Potter writes in this 2020 book: * Political Junkies is a history of how Americans got hooked on alternative media and ended up craving satisfaction that politics can never deliver. It is about how, beginning after World … Continue reading →

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All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Luke Ford

Matt Bai writes in this 2014 book: In his 1978 memoir, Theodore White, the most prolific and influential chronicler of presidential politics in the last half of the twentieth century, made John Kennedy and most of the other candidates he’d … Continue reading →

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