Have new communications technologies revitalised the public sphere, or become the commercial tool for an increasingly un-public, undemocratic news media? Are changing journalistic practices damaging the nature of news, or are new media allowing journalists to do more journalism and to engage the public more effectively?
With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy.
In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, New Media, Old News explores how technological, economic and social changes have reconfigured news journalism, and the consequences of these transformations for a vibrant democracy in our digital age. The result is a piercing examination of why understanding news journalism matters now more than ever. It is essential reading for students and scholars of journalism and new media.
Industry Reviews
This important book brilliantly explores the contradiction between the transforming potential of new technologies and the stifling constraints of the free market and corporate power Greg Philo Glasgow University Media Group In the great and significant debate about the future of news and information, Natalie Fenton has identified important new players and new ways in which society will be educated in the world in which they function. Few people have come so freshly and perceptively to describe the ethical and other challenges that occur when old reportorial modes are so substantially altered Monroe Price Director, Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania Everyone knows that the internet "changes everything." But hardly anyone has studied it systematically enough to say anything more specific about how exactly it changes things. Here's a collection that provides some real evidence about how the internet is and isn't changing journalism and political communication. The essays that make up this volume are rich with real-life data about the working lives of journalists, bloggers, politicians and more, and also with sophisticated insight about how technology interacts with political and economic change. The analysis it provides is broad and nuanced, giving a complex sense of the range of different forms of news and debate that exist online Dan Hallin Professor and Chair, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego This is journalism scholarship at its very best. New Media, Old News offers a radical and provocative assessment of the complexities of news, news media and journalism in the age of digital media and global news. Authoritative, yet accessible, this collection will undoubtedly shape scholarly and public debate about journalism and new media. But it also articulates a passionate commitment to the view that - more than ever - "news matters". This book is nothing less than essential reading for everyone interested in the past, present and future of news and journalism Bob Franklin Professor of Journalism Studies, Cardiff University
