Edited books
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis (ed.) 2015. Local Journalism: the decline of newspapers and the rise of digital media. I.B. Tauris, London.
The first chapter is available for free download here [PDF], and the book can be purchased through the usual routes including the publisher or Amazon.
The contributors include, amongst others, Andrew Williams, C. W. Anderson, David Domingo, Florence Le Cam, Julie Firmstone, Matthew Powers, Nikos Smyrnaios, Piet Bakker, and Stephen Coleman.
For more than a century, local journalism has been taken almost for granted. But the twenty-first century has brought major challenges. The newspaper industry that has historically provided most local coverage is in decline and it is not yet clear whether digital media will sustain new forms of local journalism. This book provides an international overview of the challenges facing changing forms of local journalism today. It identifies the central role that diminished newspapers still play in local media ecosystems, analyses relations between local journalists and politicians, government officials, community activists and ordinary citizens, and examines the uneven rise of new forms of digital local journalism. Together, the chapters present a multi-faceted portrait of the precarious present and uncertain future of local journalism in the Western world.
Endorsements–
“This is a detailed, research-based and comparative account of developments in local news and journalism at a time of structural change and transition in local news ecosystems. It reasserts the significance of local news and journalism for local communities and their economic, political, social and cultural life and sets a benchmark for future studies of local news and journalism during a period of change and uncertainty.”
Bob Franklin, Professor of Journalism Studies, Cardiff University.
“Journalism is changing, nowhere more rapidly than in locally produced news. This book provides an on-the-ground glimpse of these changes as they are taking place across Europe, the UK, and the United States. An invaluable snapshot of a fast-moving process…and an important touchstone for research yet to be done!”
David Ryfe, Director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa.
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Kuhn, Raymond & Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.) 2014. Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective. I.B. Tauris, London.
Overview here. The book includes contributions by, amongst others, Carsten Reinemann, Aeron Davis, and Frank Esser. The first chapter available for download here [pdf], book on Amazon here.
The twenty-first century has already seen dramatic changes affecting both journalism and politics. The rise of a range of new digital and networked communication technologies combined with the stagnation and decline of many traditional mass media has had a profound impact on political journalism. The arrival of new digital media has affected the ways in which politicians communicate with the public, with or without journalists as intermediaries. Newspapers that once held political leaders to account are now struggling to survive; broadcasters that once gathered whole nations for the evening news are now faced with innumerable new competitors; online-only media, such as blogs and social networking sites, are changing how we communicate. This book provides a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the state of political journalism in Western Europe today, including the many challenges facing journalists in this important period of transition.
Endorsement–
This book investigates important changes in political journalism in a comparative perspective. It captures trends like the acceleration of the news cycle, audience fragmentation, and the rise of digital media as well as interactions between these new tendencies and traditional concerns like the close links often cultivated by journalists looking for stories and politicians looking for publicity. The reader can learn a lot from this book.
Paolo Mancini, Professor, Università di Perugia and co-author of Comparing Media Systems
Review–
Political Journalism in Transition remains one of the most comprehensive, interdisciplinary comparative analysis of political journalism that is currently in print. Any analysis that features these confounding and intersecting historico-political elements could have easily resulted in a heady, impractical work, but this bipartite anthology offers a complete resource that is straightforward and digestible. It is a handy, relevant resource for scholars of political journalism and critical media studies worldwide, as well as for news and public affairs practitioners who stand to gain from a nuanced understanding of the factors, both obvious and overlooked, that are shaping political journalism today.
Joseph Peralta, LSE Review of Books
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Levy, David A. L. & Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.) 2010. The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford.
The book is available from the University of Oxford Online Store here. It’s a steal at £19.95 including postage & packing. It includes a range of essays on how the business of journalism is changing around the world today, with contributions by, amongst others, Frank Esser, Michael Schudson, and Daya Thussu. More here, and the executive summary here.
Endorsements–
The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy, as the only rigorous global survey of a situation usually discussed on the basis of anecdote and unproved assertion, is an indispensable and necessary work. It ought to open the way for real progress in reinventing journalism.
Nicholas Lemann, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
This is a very detailed and rich analysis of the structural changes in today’s business of journalism: the media in many countries face a deep crisis caused both by new technologies and more general economic circumstances while in others they are experiencing rapid growth. In both cases the entire structure of the field is undergoing a dramatic change in terms of professional practice and in how media are organized and run. This book represents an indispensable tool for all those who want to understand where journalism and democracy are going today.
Paolo Mancini, Professor at Università di Perugia and co-author of Comparing Media Systems (Cambridge, 2004)
The book has been reviewed in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism Studies, Journalism, and the International Journal of Digital Television.
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Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, Ole Dahl Rasmussen & Ole Wæver (eds.) 2007, 10×10, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle (UK). Available through Amazon. More from the publisher here.
A set of essays about the good books that inspired good social scientists. Contributors include B. Guy Peters, Chantal Mouffe, Elinor Ostrom, James M. Buchanan, Joseph H.H. Weiler, Kenneth Waltz, Richard Katz, and Thomas Hylland Eriksen [pre-publication draft of the introduction here].
Endorsements–
10×10 is a wise reminder of the power that certain monumental canonical texts of the past, veritable cathedrals of ideas, have had and continue to have in the minds of significant thinkers. Even in an age focused on increasing opportunities for publishing made possible by new technologies, it is often from these same great arteries of thought that fresh and sustained thinking is drawn.
Frank A. Moretti, professor, Teachers College, Columbia University
10×10 gives a unique insight into the relations great academics have with great books. It brings together very important works, very prominent scholars, and the personal and often very different views they have of both classics and less well-known, sometimes surprising, sources of inspiration.
Ove K. Pedersen, professor, Copenhagen Business School
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