Wrapping up the year grateful for how people have engaged with “Avoiding the News”, the book Ben Toff, Ruthie Palmer, and I published at the beginning of the year. Sharing it with the world has, as we hoped it would be, been the beginning of a wider conversation, not the final word.
In the book, we draw on hundreds of interviews as well as survey data to show that news avoidance is not “just” a response to the content on offer in the news. but also fundamentally shaped by who we are, what we believe, and the tools we rely on. It happens at the intersection between identity, ideology, and infrastructures, and tends to compound existing inequalities.
We have had numerous conversations with journalists and editors concerned about the fraying connection between much of the news and much of the public, a chance to discuss the book with participants at the International Journalism Festival, with experienced journalists and editors at the World News Media Congress, and seen reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere engage with the work. There also continues to be a vibrant community of academics researching the phenomenon in various ways, some of them contributing to a special issue of Journalism Studies on the topic.
The book has also been named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, an award given by the American Library Association’s Choice Reviews to “outstanding works for their excellence in presentation and scholarship, the significance of their contribution to the field, their originality and value as an essential treatment of their subject”.
We hope journalists and those who care about journalism will continue to engage with the analysis we present and the issues we identify.
If you are curious about the book, you can read an excerpt here where we identify the groups more likely to be consistent news avoiders, if you are interested in our thoughts on how journalists could respond, we discuss some options here.
The book is available here from the publisher, Columbia University Press, with a 20% discount using the code CUP20SM.
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