The American Reporter

April 1, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Two editors of a scholarly publication in journalism have opened themselves to endless bickering and criticism by generating a list of "Significant Journalism and Communication Books of the Twentieth Century."

Jean Folkerts of George Washington University, the editor of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, along with the journal's book review editor, Paula M. Poindexter of the University of Texas at Austin, are primarily responsible for the list.

They had help from members of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Members were asked to nominate books. Reviewers were queried, and any member attending last year's AEJMC convention in New Orleans had opportunity to submit nominations to the list.

Poindexter and Folkerts present the list they accumulated from the survey and judged with the help of a selection committee in the latest edition of the Quarterly. (Nor is there any interactive forum on AEJMC's Web site.)

It will be interesting to see the quibbling and nitpicking that inevitably results from publication of such lists. Unfortunately, the Quarterly affords no interactive letters to the editor section so most of the discussion and dissent will take place in the hallowed halls of the nation's journalism departments.

The editors present 33 books listed alphabetically by title. They contend they avoided any arbitrary "top ten or twenty" listing, and instead sought to ask questions such as what books left a lasting impression, what books should be required reading for incoming classes of journalism students and what books are essential to journalism libraries in the twenty-first century.

At least one colleague, the editors report, demurred forcefully, "We're a field governed by journal articles - not books!"

Not being a particularly involved journalism scholar, I confess familiarity with only about a third of the list generated by Poindexter and Folkerts. (By the way, I think it'd be a real service to know what journals govern research in the field as their colleague contends.)

The list includes best-sellers such as Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's "All The President's Men," and Gay Talese's tattler, "The Kingdom and the Power"; it covers the early 20th century with Walter Lippmann's classic "Public Opinion"; it acknowledges the revolutionary work of Canadian literary scholar Marshall McLuhan; and it touches on modern methods by including Philip Meyer's "Precision Journalism."

The biggest weakness with the Quarterly's list, as with many such listings, rests in its lack of any articulated justification for including each book.

Other than a brief introductory exposition of why Lippmann's book or the Woodward and Bernstein book deserved to be on the list, no exposition is offered to defend the choices.

This hardly seems wise or fair when espousing a century long "significance" to these volumes. What readers of the Quarterly deserve is a review essay, or at least an annotated list, that offers some argument for and support of the books included.

As it stands, the list is little more than a library-generated bibliography, the kind of exercise professors demand of students as a preliminary or first-step in any meaningful research.

By generating such a static and uncritical list, the editors have almost surrendered to their colleague's contention that books may not be "significant" to journalism and mass communcation researchers.

The editors, as do so many modern journalists, disdain the all-important "Why?" question. Here's the who, what when, where and how of books in journalism but without any compelling thought or opinion as to why these books are "significant."

I could join any nitpickers and note that books by mavericks such as Ben Bagdikian and not-so-maverick but erudite Tom Wicker are not on the list.

Scholars also seem to exhibit a disdain for biographies and autobiographies. I could locate none that I recognized on the list. Perhaps that's because academia is less interested in "story" than in "analysis."

In the end, Poindexter's and Folkert's list woefully underplays the "story" of journalism in the twentieth century.

For the record, here are the titles and authors on the Quarterly's list:

All the President's Men, Woodward and Bernstein.

The Bias of Communication. Innis.

Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Holsti.

Deciding What's News. Gans.

Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers.

Emergence of a Free Press and Legacy of Suppression. Levy.

The Emergence of American Political Issues: Shaw and McCombs

A Free and Responsible Press. Commission of Freedom of the Press.

A History of American Magazines. Mott.

A History of the Black Press. Pride and Wilson.

The Kingdom and the Power. Talese.

Knowledge is Power. (no author listed).

Making News. Tuchman.

Many Voices, One World. (The McBride Report).

Mediating the Message. Shoemaker and Reese.

Milestones in Mass Communication Research. Lowery and deFleur.

The Medium is the Massage. McLuhan and Fiore.

The Mirror Makers. Fox.

News that Matters. Iyengar.

Out of Order. Patterson.

The People's Choice. Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet.

A Place in the News. Mills.

The Powers That Be. Halberstam.

The Process and Effects of Mass Communication. Schramm and Roberts.

Public Opinion. Lippmann.

Precision Journalism. Meyer.

Prelude to Independence. Schlesinger.

Printers and Press Freedom. Smith.

Split Image. Dates and Barlow.

A Question of Sedition. Washburn.

Television and Human Behavior. Comstock, Chaffee, Katzman, McCombs and Roberts.

Television in the Lives of Our Children. Schramm, Lyle and Parker.

Understanding Media. McLuhan.

The Uses of Mass Communication. Blumler and Katz.

The Whole World is Watching. Gitlin.