Will the use of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and smart machines be the end of journalism as we know it—or its savior? In Newsmakers, Francesco Marconi, who has led the development of the Associated Press and Wall Street Journal’s use of AI in journalism, offers a new perspective on the potential of these technologies. He explains how reporters, editors, and newsrooms of all sizes can take advantage of the possibilities they provide to develop new ways of telling stories and connecting with readers. Marconi analyzes the challenges and opportunities of AI through case studies ranging from financial publications using algorithms to write earnings reports to investigative reporters analyzing large data sets to outlets determining the distribution of news on social media. Newsmakers contends that AI can augment—not automate—the industry, allowing journalists to break more news more quickly while simultaneously freeing up their time for deeper analysis. Marshaling insights drawn from firsthand experience, Marconi maps a media landscape transformed by artificial intelligence for the better. In addition to considering the benefits of these new technologies, Marconi stresses the continuing need for editorial and institutional oversight. Newsmakers outlines the important questions that journalists and media organizations should consider when integrating AI and algorithms into their workflow. For journalism students as well as seasoned media professionals, Marconi’s insights provide much-needed clarity and a practical roadmap for how AI can best serve journalism.

A directory to North American daily newspapers whose articles are online in full text; includes geographic and newsmaker indexes.

China’s news sector is a place where newsmakers, advertising executives, company bosses, and Party officials engage one another in contingent and evolving arrangements that run from cooperation and collaboration to manipulation and betrayal. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with journalists, editors, and executives at a newspaper in Guangzhou, The Currency of Truth brings its readers into the lives of the people who write, publish, and profit from news in this milieu. The book shows that far from working as mere cogs in a Party propaganda machine, these individuals are immersed in fluidly shifting networks of formal and informal relationships, which they carefully navigate to pursue diverse goals. In The Currency of Truth, Emily H. C. Chua argues that news in China works less as a medium of mass communication than as a kind of currency as industry players make and use news articles to create agreements, build connections, and protect and advance their positions against one another. Looking at the ethical and professional principles that well-intentioned and civically minded journalists strive to uphold, and the challenges and doubts that they grapple with in the process, Chua brings her findings into conversation around “post-truth” news and the “crisis” of professional journalism in the West. The book encourages readers to rethink contemporary news, arguing that rather than setting out from the assumption that news works either to inform or deceive its publics, we should explore the “post-public” social and political imaginaries emerging among today’s newsmakers and remaking the terms of their practice.

"How to Write, Produce and Report Quality Television News is in a Paperback format"--Editor.

John Allen Paulos is a master at shedding mathematical lights on our everyday world:What exactly did Lani Guinier say about quotas?What is the probability of identifying a murderer through DNA testing?Which are the real risks to our health and which the phony ones?Employing the same fun-filled, user-friendly, and quirkily insightful approach that put Innumeracy on best-seller lists, Paulos now leads us through the pages of the daily newspaper, revealing the hidden mathematical angles of countless articles. From the Senate, the SATs, and sex to crime, celebrities, and cults, Paulos takes stories that may not seem to involve mathematics at all and demonstrates how mathematical naïtéan put readers at a distinct disadvantage.Whether he's using chaos theory to puncture economic and environmental predictions, applying logic and self-reference to clarify the hazards of spin doctoring and news compression, or employing arithmetic and common sense to give us a novel perspective on greed and relationships, Paulos never fails to entertain and enlighten.Even if you hated math in school, you'll love the numerical vignettes in this book.

Preformulating the News is a study of press releases and of how they anticipate the requirements of journalistic writing. Drawing from a large corpus (Dutch and English), it is argued that the genre’s peculiar audience-directedness can be related to a number of metapragmatic textual features and that this sheds light on the asymmetries of what can be termed the ‘newsmaking’ and ‘news management’ processes. In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.e. ‘projected’, discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a ‘preformulating’ role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake of the 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested that the study’s findings support a hegemonic view of the media. In analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.

From 2002 to 2008, the Bush administration argued that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, despite years of inconclusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspection reports. In the absence of substantive evidence, much of the debate was conducted via public forums with a heavy persuasive element to the discourse. This book offers an in-depth consideration of the rhetoric surrounding Irans controversial nuclear programme. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, examining speeches, interviews, news reports, online message boards and newspaper layouts during the Bush Presidency (2000-2008). Engaging with visual grammar and narrative, the book looks at layouts from the Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post, amongst others. The book points out, using rhetorical theory and discourse analysis, the conditions that lent credibility to the Bush administrations position by examining the arguments Bush and his political surrogates put forward, and the discourse strategies that influenced which ideas gained salience and which were downplayed. Political communication and Foucaults theory of governmentality are brought in to articulate the implications regarding the influence, importance and expansion of executive power.

This book is designed to serve as a reliable research companion to students of American government as they navigate their undergraduate programs. It is a no-nonsense guide that assists students as they develop research questions, explore the literature, make use of Web-base resources, analyze data, and present findings.