Thinking Clearly: a new book on journalism

I’ve written chapters in four books related to new media subjects. The latest arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Thinking Clearly is a compendium of journalism case studies edited by Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell, who head the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It contains chapters on McCarthyism, the Columbine school shootings, Watergate, and John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, among others. Reporters on the project include Geneva Overholser, former Washington Post ombudsman who often appears on PBS’s NewsHour; Jack Nelson, former Washington bureau chief of the LA Times; and Jon Margolis, a former long-time reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

I wrote the second chapter, Internet Journalism and the Starr Investigation. I posted it on my website here.

Amazon.com gives this summary of the book:

Written by professional journalists and classroom-tested at schools of journalism, these case studies are designed to provoke conversation about the issues that shape the production and presentation of the news in the new media age of the twenty-first century. This is no abstract ethics manual for reporters but rather a survey of real-life moments when people working in the news had to make critical decisions. In these episodes, questions of craft, ethics, competition, and commerce intertwine, affecting the way we, the consumers of news, understand the world around us. The case studies cover a range of topics — the commercial imperatives of newsroom culture, standards of verification, the competition of public and private interests, including the question of privacy — in a variety of settings: Watergate, the Richard Jewell case, John McCain´s 2000 presidential campaign, and the Columbine shooting, among others.

I’m told the case study I wrote is already being taught in journalism schools and university classrooms, such as Notre Dame. Cool.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.