Category: Review

Will the journalists of the future have to be programmers and businesspeople, too? Should we focus on supporting learners’ creativity and developing their personalities? How much teaching time should a lecturer spend on research techniques or writing style? These are the questions currently being considered by many involved in journalist training. Whether the learners are students at university, trainees in editorial offices, or undertaking further training online, they expect to be taught everything they need to know for a career in journalism. What do they want to learn? What should we be teaching them? We need to make a selection from all the skills and abilities we would like to get across.

In 2013, Marcus Bölz published a volume on football journalism in Germany. This work in media ethnography gave insight into the way sports journalism in regional newspapers is becoming professionalized and commercialized, given the media transformation, the crisis facing newspapers, and the audience’s fixation on entertainment/football.

Media literacy is the topic on everyone’s lips. Claims that journalism has descended into a lying press, elections are manipulated by fake news, and smartphone use by children and young people is out of control, have all led to a sense that there is a lack of media literacy, and that this deficit is a danger to society, democracy, and the personal wellbeing of young people.

The two key terms of the volume’s title – »autonomy« and »use value« – have gained »a particular topicality« (13) in recent years. The editors are very aware that the focus lies no longer only on the future of journalism in a digitalized world, but increasingly on its fundamental legitimation in society, certainly since New Year 2015/2016. Against this backdrop, the volume is a commemorative publication for the journalism studies expert Volker Wolff, who was Professor of Newspaper and Magazine Journalism at the Department of Journalism, Department of Communication, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

reviewed by Julia Lönnendonker / “Gendering War and Peace Reporting” examines the role of gender in war reporting. Reporting on war has traditionally been dominated by men. The editors consider whether the increasing presence of women – both as war reporters and as actors in the military and politics – has changed reporting from the front and whether the female perspective has led to a greater focus on the victims of war, rather than the technical and strategic aspects that dominated in the past. continue to article

reviewed by Guido Keel / Journalists make mistakes, just like any other profession. But long-serving Mainz-based communication studies expert Hans Mathias Kepplinger believes that these errors are more significant than most. In his view, they contribute directly to the loss of trust in the media – a problem for a democratic society that relies on its citizens being able to trust the media. continue to article

reviewed by Konrad Dussel / When covering the history of broadcasting, most writers limit themselves to cultivating a niche that understandably attracts little attention outside its narrow boundaries. But with her prize-winning dissertation under the supervision of Frank Bösch, Anna Jehle has now written a book that deserves broader appeal. continue to article

reviewed by Katherine M. Engelke / Why should we listen to journalists? According to Matt Carlson, the answer to this question lies in their journalistic authority. Having found only superficial reference to this topic in the literature up to now, (cf. 3), Carlson addresses both it and another question – Where does journalism get its authority from? – in his book. continue to article

The numerous authors in the anthology “Journalistic genres” provide portraits of 36 of these different attitudes, approaches, methods and concepts of journalistic work. The designations they propose for these are introduced in an unusual way with significant deficiencies. Many of the approaches, intentions and functions also overlap. continue to article

Do the media deliberately hide negative facts about refugees and Muslims? Did they have reasons for painting President Putin as the bad guy in the Ukraine conflict? Are they the mouthpiece of some kind of elite and just taking the public for a ride? To find answers, communication studies researchers Irene Neverla and Volker Lilienthal presented 16 perspectives from academia and practice in a lecture series aimed at ordinary citizens at the University of Hamburg. They then brought these perspectives together in an easy-to-read volume: Lügenpresse. Anatomie eines politischen Kampfbegriffs [Lying press. Anatomy of a political battle cry]. continue to article