A well-researched study that will have limited appeal outside of the communications field.
A professor of journalism examines the ways in which private money co-opted American journalism in the name of profit.
At the end of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to deregulate the newspaper and TV news system. Susca argues that this action, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2021, allowed for a small group of private equity firms and hedge funds to increase the rate at which they bought newspapers and consolidated them. The author pinpoints 2003 as the year when private investment firm involvement in the newspaper industry began in earnest, citing the 40% stake Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners bought in Freedom Communications, Inc., a then–publicly held news corporation. During the next two decades, more such investments followed, all driven by the desire to “squeeze out more profits” for shareholders by “cutting staff, consolidating beats…closing bureaus and selling off landmark buildings” in communities all over the U.S. The result—especially in small towns—has been the creation of print and digital newspapers that ignore the stories most important to readers, such as those focusing on “children’s schools, crime, local commissions and elected boards.” This, in turn, has led to what Susca sees as a diminishing of the informative, watchdogging role media has been entrusted to play in democracy. Another disturbing byproduct of the “quality crisis” in journalism has been lessening of audience engagement with the news process itself. “When newspaper companies treat [readers] as consumers only,” writes the author, “their function as citizens is limited.” Media scholars will appreciate Susca’s careful analysis of evidence derived from such sources as court documents, congressional reports, corporate records, and in-depth personal interviews. As timely and incisive as her conclusions are, however, general readers may find the book to be too academic.
A well-researched study that will have limited appeal outside of the communications field.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780252087561
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Univ. of Illinois
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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