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An inside account of dramatic changes in journalism in Philadelphia news organizations
Rebuilding the News
Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age
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C.W. Anderson
Listen to an interview with C.W. Anderson about changes in Philadelphia media from WHYY's "NewsWorks", 24 April 2013.
C.W. Anderson was a guest on "WURD" (900 AM, Philadelphia), 25 April 2013.
Breaking down the walls of the traditional newsroom, Rebuilding the News traces the evolution of news reporting as it moves from print to online. As the business models of newspapers have collapsed, author C. W. Anderson chronicles how bloggers, citizen journalists, and social networks are implicated in the massive changes confronting journalism.
Through a combination of local newsroom fieldwork, social-network analysis, and online archival research, Rebuilding the News places the current shifts in news production in socio-historical context. Focusing on the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Anderson presents a gripping case study of how these papers have struggled to adapt to emerging economic, social, and technological realities.
As he explores the organizational, networked culture of journalism, Anderson lays bare questions about the future of news-oriented media and its evolving relationship with "the public" in the digital age.
Excerpt
Reviews
"Anderson explores whether and how emerging online news has changed the practice of reporting. Using a variety of research techniques including ethnography, social-network analysis, and archival content research, he takes an in-depth look at one city (Philadelphia) to study changes in journalism from the 1990s to the present.... Scholars in journalism and organization sociology will appreciate Anderson’s meticulous methodology and his analysis of the responses of journalists and news organizations to a rapidly changing environment."
—Library Journal
In this video clip, C.W. Anderson talking about his new book Rebuilding the News on PA Books.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Timeline of Digital News: Developments in Philadelphia and Nationally
Introduction: Local Journalism on the Brink
Part I. How Local Journalism Went Online
1. Philadelphia’s Newspapers Go Online (1997–2008)
2. Alternate Paths in the Transition to Online Journalism (2000–2008)
Part II. Local Newswork in the Digital Age
3. A Day in the Life of Twenty-First-Century Journalism (July 16, 2008)
4. How News Circulates Online: The Short, Happy News Life of the Francisville Four (June 2008)
Part III. Building News Networks
5. What We Have Here Is a Failure to Collaborate (2005–2009)
6. Dark Days and Green Shoots (2009–2011)
Conclusion: Reporting and the Public in the Digital Age
Appendix: Methodology
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author(s)
C.W. Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island (City University of New York.) He has published in numerous academic journals, and writes occasionally for the Nieman Journalism Lab and the Atlantic Online. He has contributed chapters to edited volumes, including The Social Media Reader, Making Our Media, Making Online News, and the Journalism Studies Handbook.
Subject Categories
Mass Media and Communications
Philadelphia Region
Technology