With a foreword from Michael Schudson, The Rise of Nonprofit Investigative Journalism in the United States examines the rapid growth, impact and sustainability of not-for-profit investigative reporting and its impact on US democracy and mainstream journalism. The book addresses key questions about the sustainability of foundation funding, the agendas of foundations, and the ethical issues that arise from philanthropically funded journalism. It provides a theoretical framework that enables readers to recognize connections and relationships that the nonprofit accountability journalism sector has with the economic, political and mainstream media fields in the United States. As battered news media struggled to survive the financial crisis of 2007-2009, dozens of investigative and public service reporting startups funded by foundations, billionaires and everyday citizens were launched to scrutinize local, state and national issues. Foundations, donors and many journalists believed there was a crisis for investigative journalism and democracy in the United States. This book challenges this and argues that legacy editors acted to quarantine their investigative teams from newsroom cuts. It also demonstrates how nonprofit journalism transformed aspects of journalistic practice. Through detailed research and practical discussion, it provides a comprehensive study of this increasingly important genre of journalism. The Rise of Nonprofit Investigative Journalism in the United States is an important text for academics and students of journalism, communications theory, media and democracy-related units, as well as journalists worldwide.

As cash-strapped metropolitan newspapers struggle to maintain their traditional influence and quality reporting, large national and international outlets have pivoted to serving readers who can and will choose to pay for news, skewing coverage toward a wealthy, white, and liberal audience. Amid rampant inequality and distrust, media outlets have become more out of touch with the democracy they purport to serve. How did journalism end up in such a predicament, and what are the prospects for achieving a more equitable future? In News for the Rich, White, and Blue, Nikki Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of field research, she illuminates how journalists decide what becomes news and how news organizations strategize about the future. Usher shows how newsrooms remain places of power, largely white institutions growing more elite as journalists confront a shrinking job market. She details how Google, Facebook, and the digital-advertising ecosystem have wreaked havoc on the economic model for quality journalism, leaving local news to suffer. Usher also highlights how the handful of likely survivors—well-funded media outlets such as the New York Times—increasingly appeal to a global, “placeless” reader. News for the Rich, White, and Blue concludes with a series of provocative recommendations to reimagine journalism to ensure its resiliency and its ability to speak to a diverse set of issues and readers.

-- Scott L. Althaus, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics

News consumers made cynical by sensationalist banners--"AMERICA STRIKES BACK," "THE TERROR OF ANTHRAX"--and lurid leads might be surprised to learn that in 1690, the newspaper Publick Occurrences gossiped about the sexual indiscretions of French royalty or seasoned the story of missing children by adding that "barbarous Indians were lurking about" before the disappearance. Surprising, too, might be the media's steady adherence to, if continual tugging at, its philosophical and ethical moorings. These 39 essays, written and edited by the nation's leading professors of journalism, cover the theory and practice of print, radio, and TV news reporting. Politics and partisanship, press and the government, gender and the press corps, presidential coverage, war reportage, technology and news gathering, sensationalism: each subject is treated individually. Appropriate for interested lay persons, students, professors and reporters. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2022 Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize. White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War. At the same time, a vibrant Black press fought to disrupt these efforts and force the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Journalism and Jim Crow centers the press as a crucial political actor shaping the rise of the Jim Crow South. The contributors explore the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters. They also examine the Black press’s parallel fight for a multiracial democracy of equality, justice, and opportunity for all—a losing battle with tragic consequences for the American experiment. Original and revelatory, Journalism and Jim Crow opens up new ways of thinking about the complicated relationship between journalism and power in American democracy. Contributors: Sid Bedingfield, Bryan Bowman, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kathy Roberts Forde, Robert Greene II, Kristin L. Gustafson, D'Weston Haywood, Blair LM Kelley, and Razvan Sibii

Designed to engage, inspire and challenge students while laying out the fundamentals of the craft, Principles of American Journalism introduces readers to the core values of journalism and its singular role in a democracy. From the First Amendment to Facebook, the new and revised edition of this popular textbook provides a comprehensive exploration of the guiding principles of journalism and what makes it unique: the profession's ethical and legal foundations; its historical and modern precepts; the economic landscape of journalism; the relationships among journalism and other social institutions; the key issues and challenges that contemporary journalists face. Case studies, exercises, and an interactive companion website encourage critical thinking about journalism and its role in society, making students more mindful practitioners of journalism and more informed media consumers.

This book is the first systematic study of investigative reporting in the post-Watergate era. The authors examine the historical roots, contemporary nature, and societal impact of this controversial form of reporting, which they call "the journalism of outrage." Contrary to the conventional wisdom that depicts muckrakers and policymakers as antagonists, the authors show how investigative journalists often collaborate with public policymakers to set the agenda for reform. Based on a decade-long program of research--highlighted by case studies of the life courses of six media investigations and interviews with a national sample of over 800 investigative journalists--they develop a new theory about the agenda-building role of media in American society.

A landmark narrative history of American media that puts race at the center of the story. Here is a new, sweeping narrative history of American news media that puts race at the center of the story. From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies. The writing is fast-paced, story-driven, and replete with memorable portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, heroes and villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system—such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system, like Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a remarkable national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos ’n’ Andy off the air. Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.

Journalism is in crisis, with traditional sources of news under siege, a sputtering business model, a resurgence of partisanship, and a persistent expectation that information should be free. In Covering America, Christopher B. Daly places the current crisis within historical context, showing how it is only the latest challenge for journalists to overcome. In this revised and expanded edition, Daly updates his narrative with new stories about legacy media like the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the digital natives like the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. A new final chapter extends the study of the business crisis facing journalism by examining the platform revolution in media, showing how Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are disrupting the traditional systems of delivering journalism to the public. In an era when the factual basis of news is contested and when the government calls journalists the enemy of the American people or the opposition party, Covering America brings history to bear on the vital issues of our times.

Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of journalism in the United State, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rrapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.