The Fourth Estate At The Fourth Wall

New media are often greeted with suspicion by older media. The Fourth Estate at the Fourth Wall explores how, when the commercial press arrived in France in 1836, popular theater critiqued its corruption, its diluted politics, and its tendency to orient its content toward the lowest common denominator. July Monarchy plays, which provided affordable entertainment to a broad section of the public, constitute a large, nearly untapped reservoir of commentary on the arrival of the forty-franc press. Vaudevilles and comedies ask whether journalism that benefits from advertisement can be unbiased. Dramas explore whether threatening to spread false news is an acceptable way for journalists to exercise their influence. Hollinshead-Strick uses both plays and novels to show that despite their claims to enlighten their readers, newspapers were often accused of obscuring public access to information. Balzac’s interventions in this media sphere reveal his utopian views on print technology. Nerval’s and Pyat’s demonstrate the nefarious impact that corrupt theater critics could have on authors and on the public alike. Scholars of press and media studies, French literature, theater, and nineteenth-century literature more generally will find this book a valuable introduction to a cross-genre debate about press publicity that remains surprisingly resonant today.

Building the Fourth Estate reveals the crucial part played by the Mexican media in the country's remarkable recent political transformation. Based on an in-depth examination of Mexico's print and broadcast media over the last twenty-five years, Chappell Lawson traces the role of the media in that country's move toward democracy, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship between changes in the press and changes in the political system. In addition to illuminating the nature of political change in Mexico, Lawson's findings have broad implications for understanding the role of the mass media in democratization around the world. -- from back cover.

A red-hot reporter for the Boston Free Press, Zoe Alison, is in desperate search for the investigative half of their partnership, Carol Caletti, which would have been touted as the modern day Woodward and Bernstein, had there been public knowledge of their association. Caletti remained in the shadows, doing her work, lifting rocks to see what grubby thing crawled from underneath, which Alison could then report to the world. But shadows became dark. Caletti is nowhere to be found, and just when they were about to publish the story of all stories. Lisa Sheed, an on again-off again private investigator who now makes her living investigating companies to invest in as a day trader, has been sought by Alison to find her partner. Alison all but begs Sheed to take the case. The police are not taking the disappearance seriously. The newspaper Alison works for isn't taking it seriously. "Probably undercover investigating a story," is the prevailing sentiment about Caletti. "She will turn up, it's only been a few days." But Zoe knows her partner. She always stays in communication, even when digging for dirt. Dirt becomes quicksand as powerful forces converge to bury the story and the investigator. Full of twists and turns, The Fourth Estate delivers a thriller, investigating how stories get buried or told and the dangers reporters face to tell the truth. How the rich and powerful dictate what the truths are. And how tangled up in that mess, the very lives of these women are at stake.

Despite recent corporate scandals, the United States is among the world’s least corrupt nations. But in the nineteenth century, the degree of fraud and corruption in America approached that of today’s most corrupt developing nations, as municipal governments and robber barons alike found new ways to steal from taxpayers and swindle investors. In Corruption and Reform, contributors explore this shadowy period of United States history in search of better methods to fight corruption worldwide today. Contributors to this volume address the measurement and consequences of fraud and corruption and the forces that ultimately led to their decline within the United States. They show that various approaches to reducing corruption have met with success, such as deregulation, particularly “free banking,” in the 1830s. In the 1930s, corruption was kept in check when new federal bureaucracies replaced local administrations in doling out relief. Another deterrent to corruption was the independent press, which kept a watchful eye over government and business. These and other facets of American history analyzed in this volume make it indispensable as background for anyone interested in corruption today.

“Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time.” --Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dagmar Shaw is back in Hollywood, with a plan to lasso a series of emerging technologies into a revolutionary new form of entertainment. Sean Makin is a washed-up child actor clinging to life on reality television, until Dagmar offers him the chance to be a star. Sean’s past, however, holds the darkest of secrets, and now it looks as if that secret threatens to break loose in a new cycle of violence and murder. Sean’s determined to succeed, even if the path to stardom is splashed with blood. But the ultimate secret is Dagmar’s, and Sean has to decide how much to pay in order to find out what’s on the other side of the fourth wall. “ . . . the blending of mystery-thriller, SF, and traditional Hollywood-story elements is hugely successful. It’s one of those ambitious, genre-bending books in which you keep seeing, as you read, ways the story could fall apart under its own weight—but it never does. Surely the best of the Dagmar Shaw series and one of the author’s finest novels.” --Booklist (starred review) “This is an ambitious novel, blending elements of science fiction, thriller and Hollywood epic into one wildly inventive narrative. It’s the kind of genre-bender that you can spend a lot of time trying to describe, or you can simply say: go read it, right now.” --David Pitt, Winnipeg Free Press

What if humour is more of a natural discipline rather than a humanistic science? In his book Encyclopædia Comédica - A serious journey to funny realms the author Benjamin Leuteritz tries to get to the bottom of the smallest particles of humour and to find out what makes us laugh. He takes the reader on a journey where no eye remains dry.

What is it to 'cock a snook', where is the land of Nod, and who was first to go the extra mile? Find the answers to these questions (and many more!) in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms. This dictionary uncovers the meanings of myriad phrases and sayings that are used daily in the English language, encompassing more than 10,000 figurative expressions, similes, sayings, and proverbs. More than 400 idioms have been added to this new edition, and comprise recently coined and common sayings alike. New additions include 'back of the net', 'drag and drop', 'go it alone', 'how come?', 'if you ask me', 'make your skin crawl', and 'woe betide'. Illustrative quotations sourced from the Oxford corpora give contextual examples of the idioms and their standard usage, and many entries include background information on the origins of the idiom in question. An updated thematic index makes for easy navigation, and anyone who is interested in the origins and diversity of English vernacular will have hours of fun browsing this fascinating dictionary.

This authoritative and up-to-date A-Z covers all aspects of interpersonal, mass, and networked communication, including digital and mobile media, advertising, journalism, and nonverbal communication. This new edition is particularly focused on expanding coverage of social media terms, to reflect its increasing prominence to media and communication studies as a whole. More than 2,000 entries have been revised, and over 500 new terms have been added to reflect current theoretical terminology, including concepts such as artificial intelligence, cisgender, fake news, hive mind, use theory, and wikiality. The dictionary also bridges the gap between theory and practice, and contains many technical terms that are relevant to the communication industry, including dialogue editing, news aggregator, and primary colour correction. The text is complemented by biographical notes and extensively cross-referenced, while web links supplement the entries. It is an indispensable guide for undergraduate students of media and communication studies, and also for those taking related subjects such as television studies, video production, communication design, visual communication, marketing communications, semiotics, and cultural studies.

Combining his expertise as a national security correspondent and research academic, Paul Lashmar reveals how and why the media became more critical in its reporting of the Secret State. He explores a series of major case studies including Snowden, WikiLeaks, Spycatcher, rendition and torture, and MI5's vetting of the BBC - most of which he reported on as they happened. He discusses the issues that news coverage raises for democracy and gives you a deeper understanding of how intelligence and the media function, interact and fit into structures of power and knowledge.