Have new communications technologies revitalised the public sphere, or become the commercial tool for an increasingly un-public, undemocratic news media? Are changing journalistic practices damaging the nature of news, or are new media allowing journalists to do more journalism and to engage the public more effectively?

With massive changes in the media environment and its technologies, interrogating the nature of news journalism is one of the most urgent tasks we face in defining the public interest today. The implications are serious, not just for the future of the news, but also for the practice of democracy.

In a thorough empirical investigation of journalistic practices in different news contexts, New Media, Old News explores how technological, economic and social changes have reconfigured news journalism, and the consequences of these transformations for a vibrant democracy in our digital age. The result is a piercing examination of why understanding news journalism matters now more than ever. It is essential reading for students and scholars of journalism and new media.

About the Author
Natalie Fenton is a Professor of Media and Communications and Co-Head of the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. She has published widely on issues relating to civil society, radical politics, digital media, news and journalism and is particularly interested in issues of political transformation, radical media reform and re-imagining democracy. She was Vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the campaign group Hacked Off for 7 years and is currently Chair of the UK Media Reform Coalition. Her books include New Media: Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (Sage, 2010); Misunderstanding the Internet co-authored with James Curran and Des Freedman (Routledge, 2016); Digital, Political, Radical (2016, Polity); Media, Democracy and Social Change: Re-imagining Political Communications co-authored with Des Freedman, Gholam Khiabany and Aeron Davis (Sage, 2020) and The Media Manifesto co-authored with Lina Des Freedman and Justin Schlosberg and Lina Dencik (Polity, 2020).

Reviews
This important book brilliantly explores the contradiction between the transforming potential of new technologies and the stifling constraints of the free market and corporate power
Greg Philo
Glasgow University Media Group

In the great and significant debate about the future of news and information, Natalie Fenton has identified important new players and new ways in which society will be educated in the world in which they function. Few people have come so freshly and perceptively to describe the ethical and other challenges that occur when old reportorial modes are so substantially altered
Monroe Price
Director, Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Everyone knows that the internet "changes everything." But hardly anyone has studied it systematically enough to say anything more specific about how exactly it changes things. Here's a collection that provides some real evidence about how the internet is and isn't changing journalism and political communication. The essays that make up this volume are rich with real-life data about the working lives of journalists, bloggers, politicians and more, and also with sophisticated insight about how technology interacts with political and economic change. The analysis it provides is broad and nuanced, giving a complex sense of the range of different forms of news and debate that exist online
Dan Hallin
Professor and Chair, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego

This is journalism scholarship at its very best. New Media, Old News offers a radical and provocative assessment of the complexities of news, news media and journalism in the age of digital media and global news. Authoritative, yet accessible, this collection will undoubtedly shape scholarly and public debate about journalism and new media. But it also articulates a passionate commitment to the view that - more than ever - "news matters". This book is nothing less than essential reading for everyone interested in the past, present and future of news and journalism
Bob Franklin
Professor of Journalism Studies, Cardiff University

Book Information
ISBN 9781847875747
Author Natalie Fenton
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Sage Publications Ltd
Publisher Sage Publications Ltd
Weight(grams) 350g