It’s Episode 3 of Press Publish, the Nieman Lab podcast! My guest this week is Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism professor and thinker about the ways of journalism.

Given that journalism is a profession centered around the idea of an audience, it’s a little bit disappointing how few journalism academics ever feel much need to engage with the general public. And the names that might come to mind as exceptions to that — Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman — were more fundamentally interested in media than in journalism proper. That’s why Jay has been so valuable to the field and, I’d argue, the profession — he’s an inside-outside voice pricking journalism when it needs to be pricked. His ideas, once shouted down in newsrooms, have become something closer to received wisdom for many. He’s changed the way people think about political reporting in particular, and he’s built an audience of his own for his thinking, both in and out of journalism.

My conversation with Jay touched on a lot of subjects: his entry into first journalism and then the journalism academy; the influence of James Carey, Postman, and McLuhan on his work; the Lippmann-Dewey debate and the changing conception of “the public” in journalism; the rise and quasi-fall of civic journalism; why we need a better horse-race journalism; how the press’ conception of itself evolves; how he’s trying to model a different kind of journalism education; whether I’m too much of a pessimist; and what he’d like to be remembered for. It’s an idea-packed hour; I think you’ll like it.

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Show notes

Jay Rosen’s college yearbook photo, 1978

“Why I am Not a Journalist: A True Story” (2010)

Nat Hentoff — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Press Clips, Village Voice

Wayne Barrett — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neil Postman — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monocle, the magazine Postman, Victor Navasky, and others founded

James W. Carey — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Publics — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Schudson, “The ‘Lippmann-Dewey Debate’ and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1986-1996” (2008)

“Jay Rosen on James Carey: An Appreciation” (2006)

“PressThink: An Introduction” (2003)

The four Twitter accounts that are followed by more than 10 percent of @NiemanLab’s followers

Civic journalism — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

U.S. newspaper circulation per 100 households, 1945-2009

“The Mutualized Future is Bright,” Alan Rusbridger, CJR (2009)

What Are Journalists For?, Jay’s book (1999)

Jay’s bio: “Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism (also called public journalism) over a ten-year period, 1989-99.”

“I Think Mr. McLuhan Is Trying To Tell Us Something,” Sylvan Meyer, Nieman Reports, June 1969

Christopher Lasch — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Argument Over Information,” Gerald Graff (2008)

The Church of the Savvy: “This is part of what’s so insidious about press savviness: it tries to hog realism to itself” (2009)

Horse race journalism — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lucas Graves on the rise of fact-checkers

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse: “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

“‘CNN Leaves it There’ is Now Officially a Problem at CNN” (2011)

It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Why Political Coverage is Broken” (2011) (“the production of innocence”)

Studio 20 at NYU

The Local East Village at The New York Times

“‘Post-Industrial Journalism’: A new Columbia report examines the disrupted news universe”

C.W. (Chris) Anderson

Mark Coddington

Jonathan Stray

Greg Linch

Daniel Victor

Marshall McLuhan — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia