Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism, James T. Hamilton
Hamilton, a Stanford University professor, explains how high-quality journalism helps to hold government and businesses accountable. His impressive study, which won the prestigious Goldsmith Award, delves into the positive effect that investigative journalism can have for citizens and consumers, and describes how time-consuming and expensive such work is—an especially important consideration when journalism’s business model is changing so rapidly.
“The Expanding News Desert,” Penny Muse Abernathy
Abernathy is the leading academic expert on “news deserts,” those regions that have no substantial source of local news. A former executive at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, she specializes in digital media economics at the University of North Carolina. Her 2018 report is essential to understanding the new ecosystem of news as it documents in detail the decline and loss of local news organizations around the United States.
Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now, Alan Rusbridger
Few journalists have had as successful or consequential a career as has Rusbridger, the longtime top editor of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Not only did he lead the transformation of the paper into a digital powerhouse with worldwide influence; he was at the helm when his paper exposed the phone hacking scandal by Rupert Murdoch’s New International, and worked with Edward Snowden to reveal the National Security Agency’s global surveillance system in 2013. The way journalism works now is contained here.
“Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions,” PEN America
This report, directed by the staff of the prominent free-expression organization, features case studies of journalism in decline, written by journalists based in North Carolina, Michigan, and Colorado. They show how the loss of local news outlets has led to lower levels of government accountability, high potential for corruption, and less public awareness of important regional issues. The report calls for a new infusion of public funding and increased philanthropic support for local journalism.
Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society, Victor Pickard
This University of Pennsylvania professor calls for a reinvention of journalism in order to deal with underlying structural problems, not only in the business model of news but in the ways false information is spread in the social-media era. Using the election of Donald Trump as a way to examine these issues, Pickard places the current journalism crisis in historical perspective.