News Values: Ideas for an Information Age [Paperback]

Jack Fuller (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226268802 | ISBN-13: 978-0226268804 | Publication Date: November 8, 1997

News Values is a concise, powerful statement of the fundamental issues, ethical and practical, confronting newspapers today. Jack Fuller not only makes those issues clear, but offers a provocative new perspective on questions journalists should be asking themselves now in order to prepare for tomorrow.

"Every talk show host should read this book. So should every newsroom cynic. . . . 'Pursuit of truth is not a license to be a jerk.' In all too many newsrooms, that statement would resound like a three-bell bulletin."—Martin F. Nolan, New York Times Book Review

"[News Values] ought to be required reading not just for those who work for newspapers, but for all those who read and care about them. . . . [This book] seems destined to become one of those slim but important volumes people read for a long time to come."—Richard J. Tofel, Wall Street Journal

"Fuller stays above the fray [of the many books on the media]: His is a deeply intellectual approach, one that provides serious context to the highly complicated issue of how the news 'works.'"—Duncan McDonald, Chicago Tribune Books

"News Values has the touch and feel of knowledgeable, authentic caring about the kind of journalism than can help make society more cohesive, even human." —"Monitor's Pick," Christian Science Monitor

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fuller, the publisher of The Chicago Tribune, is one of the more thoughtful and accomplished media executives in America, a throwback to the days when publishers were more than bean-counters in expensive suits. Besides being a former reporter, editorial writer, and editor, he holds a law degree and has authored five novels. This wake-up call for the beleaguered media comes down to a simple but too-often unspoken creed: the trade of journalism, Fuller argues, "does not exempt [the media] from the basic moral imperatives that guide all other human relationships." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Fuller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, lawyer, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize^-winning editorial writer, offers a very thoughtful book about "the underlying public values a newspaper serves and the implications of those values for journalists' behavior." With bitter labor disputes at big-city dailies, burgeoning competition from TV and the Internet, and public disgust at "the media," his timing is exquisite. Journalists and those disgusted with the media will agree that he starts at just the right place: the nature of the claim to truth that newspapers implicitly make. He follows with a consideration of the rhetoric newspapers employ and concludes with a discussion of the future of newspapers. The rhetoric Fuller employs is uneven. Much of his discussion of journalistic truth is heavily laden with references to Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Plato and reads like a lecture by a philosophy professor. At other times, he uses his experiences as a reporter to make a point, and convoluted sentences are replaced by direct ones. News Values isn't a beach book, but it will appeal to those deeply interested in journalism and newspapering. Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 266 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226268802
• ISBN-13: 978-0226268804
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, March 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Paperback)

This is simply an excellent book written by an obviously very bright, perceptive and experienced writer and editor in the newspaper industry. I have been practicing and/or teaching journalism for 20 years--and therefore have read a lot of books about journalism (the newspaper industry in particular)--and yet was quite impressed. The book's section on why journalists need to be better-educated, better-trained and more specialized alone justifies the book's publication. If only there were more evidence of Jack Fuller's insights, skills, philosophies, and conclusions in his company's Chicago Tribune--which in many ways does not, on a day-to-day basis, live up to its reputation.

2 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Big Debarcle, April 20, 2000

By 

Ben Dover (Wagga Wagga, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Hardcover)

Look the book did touch on the basic ideas of news valus & relationships to simiology etc. but it failed in adiquite explination.

The conclusion were equaly febal not really touching on thing like an authors personal idiologies and how they may effect an article.