Craig L. LaMay

Everette E. Dennis

Any quotation dictionary that includes an entry for "education" provides ample testimony that education is more than schools. From Aristotle to Oscar Wilde come warnings that education is no substitute for experience. Indeed, for some critics of schooling, we learn that formal education is antithetical to learning. "America's Schools and the Mass Media "collectively explore the contents of mass media and how it shapes educational programming and policy-making. The editors claim that American schooling for the past forty years has less to do with a learning agenda and pedagogy than with economic competition and national security. The editors and contributors to this important volume contend that American public schooling has historical roots as a crucible for democratic government. This ideal has not only grown increasingly suspect in recent years, but is now commonly assailed as a brake on both economic growth and intellectual excellence. The editors ask what minimum skills and knowledge one must possess in order to participate in the life of the nation, if not in the life of the mind. The essays by Gerald Grant, Bella Rosenberg, Charles T. Salmon, Joan Richardson, and Susan Tifft take direct aim at this issue, with surprising, but stimulating results. The volume begins with Myron Lieberman's "law" to wit, the "more important an educational question, the less people know about it." The remainder of the contributions aim Jo begin removing this law with a more salutary understanding. The twelve essays that constitute the work deal with the interplay of educational and media institutions; what students learn and how they learn it--with a special emphasis on the long and questionable history of corporate, special interest and government attempts to shape the beliefs of future citizens and present consumers. The volume closes with a full scale effort to review the nation's educational priorities, and how questions of school choice are entwined with those of media choice.

America's Schools and the Mass Media

There is no journalistic work more deserving of the designation âstoryâ than news of crime. From antiquity, the culture of crime has been about the human condition, and whether information comes from Homer, Hollywood, or the city desk, it is a bottom about the human capacity for cruelty and suffering, about desperation and fear, about sex, race, and public morals. Facts are important to the telling of a crime story, but ultimately less so than the often apocryphal narratives we derive from them. The Culture of Crime is hence about the most common and least studies staple of news. Its prominence dates at least to the 1830s, when the urban penny press employed violence, sex, and scandal to build dizzying high levels of circulation and begin the modern age of mass media. In its coverage of crime, in particular, the popular press represented a new kind of journalism, if not a new definition of news, that made available for public consumption whole areas of social and private life that the mercantile, elite, and political press earlier ignored. This legacy has continued unabated for 150 years. The book explores new wrinkles in the study of crime and as a mass cultural activityâfrom exploring the private lives of public officials to dangers posed by constraints to a free press. The volume is prepared with the rigor of a scholarly brief but also the excitement of actual crime stories as such. Throughout, the reader is reminded that crime stories are both news and drama, and to ignore either is to diminish the other. The work delves deeply into current problems without either sentimental or trivial pursuits. It will be a volume of great interest to people in communications research, the social sciences, criminologists, and not least, the broad public which must endure the punishment of crime and the thrill of the crime story alike.

The Culture of Crime

Edward C. Pease

Warnings of the death of the book and the degradation of literature have been prevalent for decades, yet books survive and book publishing remains a viable and important force with the media mix. At times, it is hard to distinguish book publishing from the rest of the media enterprise, since publishing houses are both independent entities and also part of newspaper, magazine, and electronic media empires. The oldest of the mass media, books were also the first to achieve a global presence, crossing easily over national and political boundaries from earliest times and serving as a venue for debate and development of thought. As testimony to their continued viability, publishing houses have been briskly bought up in the international marketplace by global media conglomerates. "Publishing Books "explores the current health and future prospects of books and the book publishing industry in the United States. It contains perspectives ranging from an insider view of publishing executives to those of agents, authors, booksellers, and readers. Dan Lacy provides an overview of the structure and economic history of book publishing. Jeremiah Kaplan predicts that books as we know them will disappear in the next century, although writers and readers will not. Gene D. Lanier contends that one worsening threat to books and publishing is the incidence of censorship. Other topics covered in "Publishing Books "include the importance of book reviews, the histories of New York's greatest bookstores, why there are so few book lovers among journalists, and the decline in quality of the writings of U.S. presidents. This volume also includes a section by Beth Luey reviewing six books on publishing. "Publishing Books "is a pioneering study of the history, current status, and future of books and their impact. It will be vital for publishers, editors, and librarians.

Publishing Books

Should environmental reporting offer advocacy or objectivity? How can the media explain complex issues of science and technology without oversimplifying? Does the prevailing definition of news limit the media's ability to report on the environment? Media and the Environment is the first book to explore these and other questions about how the media cover the environment.

Craig L. LaMay

Books

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