Media Journal: Reading and Writing About Popular Culture (49)

There is a major distinction between those who absorb media images as spectators, and those who absorb them as commentators. Responding to images as a journalist, broadcaster, essayist, or critic, requires keen precision and a unique originality. In today's media-saturated environment, the only way to be heard over the din of all the other news reports and commentaries is to write and respond in a manner that is fresh and inviting. MEDIA JOURNAL is a reader containing 40 selections focusing on cultural studies, the media and popular culture. The authors have organized the book by asking readers to do three things: to keep media journals in which they reflect on the uses they make of the voices and images of popular culture, to read and respond to the work of other media critics, and to try their hands at writing media criticism themselves. Readings are drawn from a wide range of writings, and are selected for their liveliness, contemporaneity, and insight. Updated readings better address the diverse media culture of the 1990s. Each reading selection is followed by: "Coming to Terms"--understanding the author in one's own words; "Reading as a Writer"--looking at style and strategy; and "Writing Criticism"--making an author's words and ideas a source for one's own writing. Journalists, writers, cultural historians, critics, philosophers, and anyone interested in popular culture, the media, and cultural studies.