Category: Review

Reviewed by Fabian Prochazka Journalism is just one of many things on offer in the digital public sphere. User-generated content sticks to news like limpets on a ship’s hull: It is a rare article that finds readers without comments, ›likes,‹ or a friendly recommendation in the family WhatsApp group. But how does this ›metacommunication‹ shape the way recipients assess quality?

Reviewed by Lukas Herzog / In his practitioners’ manual as part of the Gelbe Reihe series, Sven Preger brings together two phenomena that are the subject of intense discussion at the moment: podcasts and storytelling. He thus finds it impossible to omit the trigger for the ongoing boom in podcasting, the American production Serial, addressing it right at the beginning in order to dispel some of what he considers common misconceptions on the success of the series.

Reviewed by Ralf Spiller / The terms storytelling and narrative have become buzzwords, states Michael Müller right on the first page of his book, and would be evaluated very differently, in part also negatively. He contends that as »storytelling animals,« we humans would be thinking in narrative structures in a wide array of areas.

Reviewed by Steven Thomsen / It is more than 30 years since the spirit of this book began its long journey through the institutions. Men and women in print journalism, who were given a copy of Michael Haller’s Die Reportage during their own degree or apprenticeship, are themselves now teaching and researching, leading departments and editorial offices, guiding trainees, or giving advanced training to deskmen and reporters.

Reviewed by Silke Fürst / Having paid little attention to local journalism in the past, journalism research is now taking much more of an interest in the field. This is linked both to the vital role local journalism plays and to the challenges presented by digitalization and the competition for attention and advertising revenue. Even today, local journalism, and the local press in particular, is extremely important not just to many users, but also to community life in villages and towns, as well as ensuring a diversity of information within the media system as a whole.

Reviewed by Hans-Dieter Kübler / The fact that the political reunification of the two German states on October 3, 1990 was preceded by economic annexation or infiltration in the form of fusions, joint ventures, pricing policy, and confidential agreements with the financially strong West is sufficiently known and has been the subject of a great deal of research. The author of this book argues that one particularly symptomatic and momentous example – as a paradigmatic conflict between the market interests of large-scale journalism and small publishing houses on the one hand and alternative reform concepts and noble democratic ideals of press freedom on the other – is the aggressive annexation and restructuring of the GDR press market using West Germany as a template.