RECOMMENDED BOOKS, ARTICLES
AND WEB SITES
Updated: 9-2011
Alphabetized List -- Journalists in Popular Culture
POPULAR CULTURE
Luksic, Nicola, Thucydides: The First Journalist with IDEAS Producer Nicola Luksic, CBC Radio, August 21, 2011 9:00 PM. About 2,500 years ago, Thucydides travelled ancient Greece, gathering stories about a brutal war that plunged the ancient world into chaos. He set high standards for accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness in his reporting. IDEAS producer Nicola Luksic explains why his account of the Peloponnesian War is relevant today
O'Boyle, Lenore, The Image of the Journalist in France, Germany, and England, 1815-1848. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Apr., 1968), pp. 290-317 Published by: Cambridge University Press. The study can best be focused through comparison of the attitudes towards the newspaper press, and the image of the journalist in these societies: what was the newspaper press judged to be, how did the journalist see himself, and how was he viewed by other social groups. It may be objected at the outset that journalism does not qualify as a profession, and if one adopts a rigorous definition of a profession, stressing possession of a systematic body of knowledge acquired through a long specialized training, then the objection is valid. Decisive, however, is the fact that journalism was commonly regarded in the nineteenth century as a profession and is now. It requires considerable education and experience, and the journalist does as a rule have access to certain information denied the ordinary person.
Saltzman, Joe, Analyzing the Images of the Journalist in Popular Culture: A Unique Method of Studying the Public's Perception of Its Journalists and the News Media: “A long-neglected, fertile field for research virtually untapped by journalism and mass communication scholars”by Joe Saltzman, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC), A Project of the Norman Lear Center, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. By analyzing the images of the journalist in popular culture over the centuries, the researcher can offer a new perspective on the history of journalism as well as the delicate relationship between the public and its news media. The anger and lack of confidence most of the public has in the news media today is partly based on real-life examples they have seen and heard, but much of the image of the journalist is based on images burned into the public memory from movies, TV and fiction. These images of the journalist have an enormous influence on how the public perceives and judges the news media and they have a profound effect on public opinion and consequently, the public’s support of the effectiveness and freedom of the news media. Many of these images come from age-old sources, long forgotten yet still relevant in the 21st century. Variations of this paper were delivered at the “Media History and History in the Media” conference at the University of Wales, March 31-April 1, 2005 at Gregynog, Wales, and at the Association for Education for Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) in San Antonio, Texas, August 12, 2005.
Saltzman, Joe, Herodotus as an Ancient Journalist: Reimagining Antiquity's Historians as Journalists, The IJPC Journal, Volume II, Fall, 2010, pp. 153-185. This paper was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in a scholar-to-scholar History Division Referred Paper Post Session on Friday, August 6, 2010 in Denver..
Willis, Garry, Rome’s Gossip Columnist: When the first-century poet Martial turned his stylus on you, you got the point, The American Scholar, Spring 2008. Wills is professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University. All translations in this essay are his. Marcus Valerius Martialis, c.40–c.102 C.E., "was like later gossip columnists, out night after night prowling for what they can devour by denouncing. He is a Walter Winchell in elegiac distichs. Or, more properly, he is like the gossip columnist in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, who makes a living off the absurdities and vices of his own society by mocking them. He is a complicitous critic, half enjoying what he sneers at, mixing entertainment with revulsion. He is a reforming voyeur, a compromised Savonarola. It is a complex role, not reducible to any one of its components."