Where Ideas Go to Die

Reviews / Votes

One of the book's chief strengths is the way its substantive chapters take a multimodal approach to interrogating how anti-intellectualism manifests in journalistic text, practice, and education. ... One leaves this book with a deeper understanding of how an obligation to preserving enduring normative standards can leave practitioners, educators, and advocates alike blind to all the ways journalism's institutional arrangements are built on a compromise with more unsavory realities. * Mass Communication and Society * In this provocative and timely book, McDevitt guides us through the many ways that journalism is not a neutral conduit but an active shaper of what ideas make it into the public arena. There are no conspiracy theories here. Instead, we see how journalistic ideologies and practices converge to constrain what can be thought at any time. * Matt Carlson, University of Minnesota * McDevitt offers an insightful and provocative study of the anti-intellectualism that characterizes so much of mainstream journalism in the United States. Not an indictment of journalists but a critique of journalism, McDevitt focuses on taken-for granted newsroom norms and the consequences of their ideological underpinnings. This book adds a new and important chapter to the history of the culture of modern American journalism. * Theodore L. Glasser, Stanford University * This book is an eye-opener. If you've thought of journalism as being a knowledge profession, this book will lead you to think again. McDevitt systematically unveils the anti-intellect strain that cuts through American journalism and journalism education. Readable and illuminating, the book is a must read for everyone in the journalism field, and for those who care about the quality of the information on which our democracy depends. * Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard University * McDevitt provides a fresh and timely perspective on journalism's current predicament, arguing that the press must free itself from the forces of anti-intellectualism if it is to resist the post-truth illiberal assault. The populist wave attacks elite-based expertise, but being historically dubious of expertise has left journalism ill-equipped to push back. Without its own intellectual autonomy, the press risks both catering to a public running on emotion or passively accommodating the currupting power of special interests. * Stephen D. Reese, University of Texas at Austin * a welcome critique of the behind-the-scenes of journalistic practice, rhetoric, and control * Robert E. Gutsche, Jr., Lancaster University, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly *