Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
Journalism scholars want to make journalism better. They’re not quite sure how.
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
Jan. 23, 2013, 9 a.m.

Press Publish 3: Jay Rosen on the public, how the press thinks, and the production of innocence

The NYU professor and scholar talks about his intellectual influences, how he thinks the press did in 2012, and how much of an audience there’ll be for civic-minded journalism.

It’s Episode 3 of Press Publish, the Nieman Lab podcast! My guest this week is Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism professor and thinker about the ways of journalism.

Given that journalism is a profession centered around the idea of an audience, it’s a little bit disappointing how few journalism academics ever feel much need to engage with the general public. And the names that might come to mind as exceptions to that — Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman — were more fundamentally interested in media than in journalism proper. That’s why Jay has been so valuable to the field and, I’d argue, the profession — he’s an inside-outside voice pricking journalism when it needs to be pricked. His ideas, once shouted down in newsrooms, have become something closer to received wisdom for many. He’s changed the way people think about political reporting in particular, and he’s built an audience of his own for his thinking, both in and out of journalism.

My conversation with Jay touched on a lot of subjects: his entry into first journalism and then the journalism academy; the influence of James Carey, Postman, and McLuhan on his work; the Lippmann-Dewey debate and the changing conception of “the public” in journalism; the rise and quasi-fall of civic journalism; why we need a better horse-race journalism; how the press’ conception of itself evolves; how he’s trying to model a different kind of journalism education; whether I’m too much of a pessimist; and what he’d like to be remembered for. It’s an idea-packed hour; I think you’ll like it.

Listen

Download the MP3

Or listen in your browser:

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/niemanlab/PressPublish003.mp3]

Subscribe in iTunes

Subscribe (RSS)

Show notes

Jay Rosen’s college yearbook photo, 1978
“Why I am Not a Journalist: A True Story” (2010)
Nat Hentoff — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Press Clips, Village Voice
Wayne Barrett — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neil Postman — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monocle, the magazine Postman, Victor Navasky, and others founded
James W. Carey — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Publics — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Schudson, “The ‘Lippmann-Dewey Debate’ and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1986-1996” (2008)
“Jay Rosen on James Carey: An Appreciation” (2006)
“PressThink: An Introduction” (2003)
The four Twitter accounts that are followed by more than 10 percent of @NiemanLab’s followers
Civic journalism — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
U.S. newspaper circulation per 100 households, 1945-2009
“The Mutualized Future is Bright,” Alan Rusbridger, CJR (2009)
What Are Journalists For?, Jay’s book (1999)
Jay’s bio: “Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism (also called public journalism) over a ten-year period, 1989-99.”
“I Think Mr. McLuhan Is Trying To Tell Us Something,” Sylvan Meyer, Nieman Reports, June 1969
Christopher Lasch — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Argument Over Information,” Gerald Graff (2008)
The Church of the Savvy: “This is part of what’s so insidious about press savviness: it tries to hog realism to itself” (2009)
Horse race journalism — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucas Graves on the rise of fact-checkers
Romney pollster Neil Newhouse: “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
“‘CNN Leaves it There’ is Now Officially a Problem at CNN” (2011)
It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Why Political Coverage is Broken” (2011) (“the production of innocence”)
Studio 20 at NYU
The Local East Village at The New York Times
“‘Post-Industrial Journalism’: A new Columbia report examines the disrupted news universe”
C.W. (Chris) Anderson
Mark Coddington
Jonathan Stray
Greg Linch
Daniel Victor
Marshall McLuhan — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).
POSTED     Jan. 23, 2013, 9 a.m.
PART OF A SERIES     Press Publish
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
Journalism scholars want to make journalism better. They’re not quite sure how.
Does any of this work actually matter?
Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars
The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is being deliberated in both houses of Congress.
Going back to the well: CNN.com, the most popular news site in the U.S., is putting up a paywall
It has a much better chance of success than CNN+ ever did. But it still has to convince people its work is distinctive enough to break out the credit card.