Category: Review

By Fritz Hausjell and Wolfgang Langenbucher | The idea of selecting and presenting the best books written by journalists is a project of the Institute for Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna, co-founded by Hannes Haas (1957-2014) and compiled by Wolfgang R. Langenbucher and Fritz Hausjell. The project published its first recommendation list in 2002 in the quarterly journal Message, founded by Michael Haller. After the journal’s discontinuation, the selections were documented in the magazine Der österreichische Journalist [The Austrian Journalist] starting in 2015. In 2020 and 2021 the publication of the recommendation list had to be temporarily suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It found its new home, Journalism Research, in 2022.

Reviewed by Horst Pöttker | »Der Mond ist aufgegangen, die goldnen Sternlein prangen…« [The moon has risen, the golden stars are shining…] – Matthias Claudius’ lullaby has become such a staple that it has spawned numerous parodies, among others by Dieter Höss and Dieter Hildebrandt. Peter Rühmkorf’s spoof begins like this: »The moon has risen, / I, between hope and dangling, / don’t touch the sky.« Even such rather odd echoes of the song point to the part of Claudius’ work that paints him as a sensitive, occasionally sanctimonious, God-fearing poet, and as such, he certainly fit into the literary and cultural historical era of his time (1740-1815).

Reviewed by Nadine Klopfenstein Frei | When a journalist with a doctorate writes a book about how young people process the news, one might expect a sharp argument here or there, or at least a pointed pen. But Markus Wolsiffer exercised academic restraint in his book Das Nachrichtenverständnis junger Menschen. The author consolidated his dissertation into a nice volume on news processing by adolescents aged 14 to 21, also providing an overview of news research and its underlying theories.

Reviewed by Sebastian Köhler | Andreas Elter is considered one of the most theoretically and practically versed moving image journalism experts in this country. Prior to his current role as head of the »Moving Image« department at the ARD-ZDF Media Academy, he spent many years working as an editor and reporter at WDR, ZDF and RTL before becoming the nationwide Director of Studies for Journalism at a private university. According to Elter, he wrote this book between December 2019 and May 2021 – a time when Germany and much of the world were heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time of crisis, there was a considerable surge in the use of traditional media, similarly to the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Reviewed by Beatrice Dernbach | In fall 2022, Richard David Precht and Harald Welzer’s book Die Vierte Gewalt [The Fourth Estate] hit the media sector like a hurricane. In my three decades of teaching and research in media and communication studies and many years working as a journalist in newspaper editorial offices, I cannot remember another book on media ever having spent months on the bestseller lists or having triggered such outrage in the sector.

Reviewed by Jürg Häusermann | Alla Grigor’evna Bespalova was born in 1956. I imagine that she grew up reading Komsomol’skaja Pravda, listening to songs on Radio Mayak, and watching Soviet television shows. Horst Pöttker, born in 1944, was just learning to read when the first editions of the newspaper Bild appeared. Following the Manual of Journalistic Genres, they are now presenting the result of their collaboration, a collection of essays and materials entitled Media Systems in Germany and Russia.