Kimberly Meltzer – författare

Through the lens of TV news anchors, this book examines the impact that television news has had on traditional journalistic standards and practices. While TV news anchors boost the power, adulation, and authority of journalism in general, internally, the journalistic community feels that anchors undermine many key journalistic values. This book provides a historical overview of the impact they have had on American journalism, uncovering the changing values, codes of behavior, and boundaries of the journalistic community. In doing so, it reveals that challenges to journalistic standards provide an opportunity to engage in debate that is central to maintaining journalism’s identity, and demonstrate the ability of the community to self-regulate. The result is that news anchors are kept in check by the community, and the community is prompted to reexamine itself and evolve. The book’s findings also offer suggestions for thinking about how journalists are dealing with the latest technological challenges posed by the internet and mobile technology.

Explores how journalists think and talk about changes in the news environment, with a focus on the increase in opinion and commentary.From News to Talk examines what journalists think about the movement toward often opinionated, sometimes uncivil, talk in news. It provides an important intervention in debates about the future of news by investigating what journalists themselves perceive as the forces affecting this movement, the effects of this shift on audiences and political culture, and how the movement from news to talk affects their roles and authority in society. Drawing on more than thirty interviews with journalists and other industry professionals and a decade of published journalistic materials, Kimberly Meltzer uncovers the technological, economic, cultural, and political forces affecting the movement toward opinion and commentary-or talk-in television, online, print, and radio news. From CNN's Brian Stelter, to Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, and many other journalists from CBS, USA Today, POLITICO, and HuffPost, the interviewees are key figures in journalism. Her analysis centers around several key case studies, including the increase in opinionated talking heads on television and the ushering in of a new era of talk and entertainment programs, the strategy by CNN to broaden its definition of news by adding non-news programs, and the bevy of star journalists starting their own self-branded sites.