Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It

Essays by Thomas Frank, Clay Shirky, David Simon, and others: "Anyone concerned about the state of journalism should read this book." --Library Journal

The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere, and academic publications. Yet, until now, we have lacked a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new and shifting terrain.

In Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights, celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled thirty-two illuminating pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Featuring some of today's most incisive and influential commentators, this comprehensive collection contextualizes the predicament faced by the news media industry through a concise history of modern journalism, a hard-hitting analysis of the structural and financial causes of news media's sudden collapse, and deeply informed proposals for how the vital role of journalism might be rescued from impending disaster.

Sure to become the essential guide to the journalism crisis, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights is both a primer on the news media today and a chronicle of a key historical moment in the transformation of the press.

Author: Robert W. McChesney
Publisher: New Press
Published: 05/03/2011
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781595585486


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/15/2011 pg. 100
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2011
Booklist 05/01/2011 pg. 53
Reference and Research Bk News 10/01/2011 pg. 192

About the Author
Robert W. McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of several books on the media, including the award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy, and a co-editor (with Ben Scott) of Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism (both available from The New Press). He lives in Urbana, Illinois.

Victor Pickard is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His research on the politics and history of media has been published widely in anthologies and scholarly journals. He lives in New York City.