Issue :   
September 2019 Edition of Power Politics is updated.          September 2019 Edition of Power Politics is updated.
Issue:June' 2019

BOOK BAZAAR

A scholarly treat

M. R. Dua

Rachel Davis Mersey Is journalism really in danger of disappearing from our midst in the near future? And becoming extinct? Will journalism, in its totality, survive the relentless onslaught of the ubiquitous digital-era- abundant information that internet bombards on us intermittently, day in and day out? Can or will rapidly growing,daily multiplying news-sites, blogs, social media channels, such as Facebook, You Tube, Instagram, Twitter and the umpteen rest of them, replace and substitute the physical presence of journalism: the printed daily newspaper, television channel of a radio station, from our lives?
Author Rachel Davis Mersey’s book—Can Journalism be Saved? --rings a scary alarm that there can be a point in our lifetime when the journalism -that we have today – print or electronic – can vanish in thin air, or can fade away, if it doesn’t meet the individual’s interest.
Mersey opines the news media have excessively tended to cultivate “too much coverage of pop icon Michael Jackson...” (Incidentally, in India too, we’re witnessing pages and pages, shows and shows, being turned in and devoted to such news coverages of the Priyanka Chopras, Bhats, Bachchans, SRK (and other Khans.) “Fascinating,” she concedes, though all this may seem to be so. Her contention is that news is not just about content.The old concept of news of ‘man biting dog’ is ‘gone’. Today, it’s also about ‘how people use and interact with media products.
The author adheres to the view that the “audiences’ relationships with the news are now more complex than ever.” She warns of the ‘survival threat’ to current journalism if those ‘relationships’ become stronger.
In the author’s words, this book helps in constructing a new ‘survival’ model to establish ‘a future for serious reporting in the journalism story of our time.’ The aim, is to figure out how to preserve the journalism’s community-service function under the social responsibility model that has consumed the industry’s attention. This book vehemently avers that as ‘journalists do indeed perform useful work, it merits to be respected for its impact on the society.
Actually, the book’s thesis originates and is elaborated from the researches of Chicago’s Medill School of Journalism’s reputed faculty (where Mersey is associate professor) on the deeper and fuller ‘understanding and definition of news’ in the context of modern news media’s lack of apposite interpretation of news.
This publication is indeed a unique and scholarly treat.

The book under review rings a scary alarm that there can be a point in our lifetime when the journalism that we have today – print or electronic – can vanish in thin air, or can fade away, if it doesn’t meet the individual’s interest.