Matt Carlson – författare

Donald Trump might have been the loudest and most powerful voice maligning the integrity of news media in a generation, but his unrelenting attacks draw from a stew of resentment, wariness, cynicism, and even hatred toward the press that has been simmering for years. At one time, journalism's centrality in reporting and interpreting important events was relatively unquestioned when a limited number of channels and voices produced a consensus-based news environment. The collapse of this environment has sparked a moment of reckoning within and outside journalism, particularly as professional news outlets struggle to remain solvent. Alternative voices compete for attention with and criticize the work and motivations of journalists, even as a growing number of journalists question their core norms and practices. News After Trump considers these struggles over journalism to be about the very relevance of journalism as an institutional form of knowledge production. At the heart of this questioning is a struggle to define what truthful accounts look like and who ought to create them or determine them in a rapidly changing media culture. Through an extensive accounting of Trump's relationship with the press, and drawing on in-depth interviews with journalists and textual analysis of news events, editorials, social media, and trade-press discussions, the book rethinks the relevance of journalism by recognizing the limits of objectivity and the way in which journalism positions certain actors as authority figures while rendering the less socially powerful invisible or flawed. This ethos of detachment has staved off vital questions about how journalism connects to its audiences, how it creates enduring value in people's lives (or not), and how diversity needs to be understood jointly at the level of production, reporting, and audience in order to rebuild trust.

Donald Trump might have been the loudest and most powerful voice maligning the integrity of news media in a generation, but his unrelenting attacks draw from a stew of resentment, wariness, cynicism, and even hatred toward the press that has been simmering for years. At one time, journalism's centrality in reporting and interpreting important events was relatively unquestioned when a limited number of channels and voices produced a consensus-based news environment. The collapse of this environment has sparked a moment of reckoning within and outside journalism, particularly as professional news outlets struggle to remain solvent. Alternative voices compete for attention with and criticize the work and motivations of journalists, even as a growing number of journalists question their core norms and practices. News After Trump considers these struggles over journalism to be about the very relevance of journalism as an institutional form of knowledge production. At the heart of this questioning is a struggle to define what truthful accounts look like and who ought to create them or determine them in a rapidly changing media culture. Through an extensive accounting of Trump's relationship with the press, and drawing on in-depth interviews with journalists and textual analysis of news events, editorials, social media, and trade-press discussions, the book rethinks the relevance of journalism by recognizing the limits of objectivity and the way in which journalism positions certain actors as authority figures while rendering the less socially powerful invisible or flawed. This ethos of detachment has staved off vital questions about how journalism connects to its audiences, how it creates enduring value in people's lives (or not), and how diversity needs to be understood jointly at the level of production, reporting, and audience in order to rebuild trust.

News is generally considered to be a good thing, and staying informed an essential expectation for participating in public life. Yet, we are also surrounded by a variety of voices telling us not to use news. We are told to steer clear of news for many reasons, including that it is full of bias and fakery, its negativity impairs our well-being and mental health, it promotes harmful stereotypes of marginalized communities, and it is uninteresting and unimportant. Discouraging the News focuses on who creates boundaries around what's good or bad, useful or useless, indispensable or tainted, and why they do it. This book draws on a global array of contemporary examples, ranging from physical violence against journalists to the perceived threat of artificial intelligence, to demonstrate how common news discouragement has become. We should not ignore these efforts to keep us from news but instead ask how they collectively shape what we think and what we do. Delving into the discourses and practices of news discouragement strengthens our understanding of key debates involving what legitimate ways of knowing should look like, whether cultural and political pluralism is possible, what our individual responsibility to the collective should be, and ultimately who has the authority to tell us about the world we share.

News is generally considered to be a good thing, and staying informed an essential expectation for participating in public life. Yet, we are also surrounded by a variety of voices telling us not to use news. We are told to steer clear of news for many reasons, including that it is full of bias and fakery, its negativity impairs our well-being and mental health, it promotes harmful stereotypes of marginalized communities, and it is uninteresting and unimportant. Discouraging the News focuses on who creates boundaries around what's good or bad, useful or useless, indispensable or tainted, and why they do it. This book draws on a global array of contemporary examples, ranging from physical violence against journalists to the perceived threat of artificial intelligence, to demonstrate how common news discouragement has become. We should not ignore these efforts to keep us from news but instead ask how they collectively shape what we think and what we do. Delving into the discourses and practices of news discouragement strengthens our understanding of key debates involving what legitimate ways of knowing should look like, whether cultural and political pluralism is possible, what our individual responsibility to the collective should be, and ultimately who has the authority to tell us about the world we share.

When we encounter a news story, why do we accept its version of events? Why do we even recognize it as news? A complicated set of cultural, structural, and technological relationships inform this interaction, and Journalistic Authority provides a relational theory for explaining how journalists attain authority. The book argues that authority is not a thing to be possessed or lost, but a relationship arising in the connections between those laying claim to being an authority and those who assent to it. Matt Carlson examines the practices journalists use to legitimate their work: professional orientation, development of specific news forms, and the personal narratives they circulate to support a privileged social place. He then considers journalists' relationships with the audiences, sources, technologies, and critics that shape journalistic authority in the contemporary media environment. Carlson argues that journalistic authority is always the product of complex and variable relationships.Journalistic Authority weaves together journalists' relationships with their audiences, sources, technologies, and critics to present a new model for understanding journalism while advocating for practices we need in an age of fake news and shifting norms.

When we encounter a news story, why do we accept its version of events? Why do we even recognize it as news? A complicated set of cultural, structural, and technological relationships inform this interaction, and Journalistic Authority provides a relational theory for explaining how journalists attain authority. The book argues that authority is not a thing to be possessed or lost, but a relationship arising in the connections between those laying claim to being an authority and those who assent to it. Matt Carlson examines the practices journalists use to legitimate their work: professional orientation, development of specific news forms, and the personal narratives they circulate to support a privileged social place. He then considers journalists' relationships with the audiences, sources, technologies, and critics that shape journalistic authority in the contemporary media environment. Carlson argues that journalistic authority is always the product of complex and variable relationships.Journalistic Authority weaves together journalists' relationships with their audiences, sources, technologies, and critics to present a new model for understanding journalism while advocating for practices we need in an age of fake news and shifting norms.

Matt Carlson confronts the promise and perils of unnamed sources in this exhaustive analysis of controversial episodes in American journalism during the George W. Bush administration, from prewar reporting mistakes at the New York Times and Washington Post to the Valerie Plame leak case and Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS News.     Weaving a narrative thread that stretches from the uncritical post-9/11 era to the spectacle of the Scooter Libby trial, Carlson examines a tense period in American history through the lens of journalism. Revealing new insights about high-profile cases involving confidential sources, he highlights contextual and structural features of the era, including pressure from the right, scrutiny from new media and citizen journalists, and the struggles of traditional media to survive amid increased competition and decreased resources.

This book explores ways in which the increasingly ‘measurable’ news audience has had an impact on journalistic practices, in an era when digital platforms provide real-time, individualizable, quantitative data about audience consumption practices. Considering the combination of digital technology that makes measurable journalism possible, the contributors to this volume examine the work of various actors involved in aspects of measurable journalism both inside and outside the newsroom and confront the normative implications of the data-centric trends of measurable journalism. Including examples from across the globe, the book balances hopes for increased engagement or impact with fears that economic prioritization will hurt journalism’s standing in the public sphere.This book will be of interest to those studying journalistic practices in the modern world, as well as those studying media consumption and emerging digital technologies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

This volume revisits what we know about the relationship between journalists and their sources. By asking new questions, employing novel methodologies, and confronting sweeping changes to journalism and media, the contributors reinvigorate the conversation about who gets to speak through the news. It challenges established thinking about how journalists use sources, how sources influence journalists, and how these patterns relate to the power to represent the world to news audiences.Useful to both newcomers and scholars familiar with the topic, the chapters bring together leading journalism scholars from across the globe. Through a variety of methods, including surveys, interviews, content analysis, case studies and newsroom observations, the chapters shed light on attitudes and practices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Belgium and Israel. Special attention is paid to the changing context of newswork. Shrinking newsgathering resources coupled with a growth in public relations activities have altered the source-journalist dynamic in recent years. At the same time, the rise of networked digital technologies has altered the barriers between journalists and news consumers, leading to unique forms of news with different approaches to sourcing. As the media world continues to change, this volume offers a timely reevaluation of news sources.

This volume revisits what we know about the relationship between journalists and their sources. By asking new questions, employing novel methodologies, and confronting sweeping changes to journalism and media, the contributors reinvigorate the conversation about who gets to speak through the news. It challenges established thinking about how journalists use sources, how sources influence journalists, and how these patterns relate to the power to represent the world to news audiences.Useful to both newcomers and scholars familiar with the topic, the chapters bring together leading journalism scholars from across the globe. Through a variety of methods, including surveys, interviews, content analysis, case studies and newsroom observations, the chapters shed light on attitudes and practices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Belgium and Israel. Special attention is paid to the changing context of newswork. Shrinking newsgathering resources coupled with a growth in public relations activities have altered the source-journalist dynamic in recent years. At the same time, the rise of networked digital technologies has altered the barriers between journalists and news consumers, leading to unique forms of news with different approaches to sourcing. As the media world continues to change, this volume offers a timely reevaluation of news sources.

This book explores ways in which the increasingly ‘measurable’ news audience has had an impact on journalistic practices, in an era when digital platforms provide real-time, individualizable, quantitative data about audience consumption practices. Considering the combination of digital technology that makes measurable journalism possible, the contributors to this volume examine the work of various actors involved in aspects of measurable journalism both inside and outside the newsroom and confront the normative implications of the data-centric trends of measurable journalism. Including examples from across the globe, the book balances hopes for increased engagement or impact with fears that economic prioritization will hurt journalism’s standing in the public sphere.This book will be of interest to those studying journalistic practices in the modern world, as well as those studying media consumption and emerging digital technologies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

The concept of boundaries has become a central theme in the study of journalism. In recent years, the decline of legacy news organizations and the rise of new interactive media tools have thrust such questions as "what is journalism" and "who is a journalist" into the limelight.Struggles over journalism are often struggles over boundaries. These symbolic contests for control over definition also mark a material struggle over resources. In short: boundaries have consequences. Yet there is a lack of conceptual cohesiveness in what scholars mean by the term "boundaries" or in how we should think about specific boundaries of journalism.This book addresses boundaries head-on by bringing together a global array of authors asking similar questions about boundaries and journalism from a diverse range of perspectives, methodologies, and theoretical backgrounds.Boundaries of Journalism assembles the most current research on this topic in one place, thus providing a touchstone for future research within communication, media and journalism studies on journalism and its boundaries.