Fifteen sparkling works of inside-out reportage--"Harper's" own house brand of "Submersion Journalism"--an unapologetically aggressive approach to reporting in an age of lies.
""A dazzling intellectual immersion....Consistently challenging, even demanding, Harper's power is in its ability to cause sometimes subtle, sometimes seismic shifts in a reader's world view.""--National Magazine Award citation for General Excellence, 2006
Over the past several years, "Harper's Magazine" has fostered an exciting brand of journalism, participatory, sometimes even undercover, in approach. The magazine's correspondents have infiltrated the Republican machine, from its lowliest canvassing operation to its corporate and evangelical elite, and they have posed as shady clients for sleazy blue-chip lobbying firms. They have shot machine guns, lounged in Vegas brothels, and peered into secret tunnels in Mexicali. They have terrorized art museums and touched off worldwide fads.
"Submersion Journalism" collects the best of this reportage--by celebrated authors (William T. Vollmann, Barbara Ehrenreich) and fresh new voices (Wells Tower, Jake Silverstein) alike--in a book that serves not just as a collection of striking stories but also as a proclamation in favor of truth-telling instead of managed "news" and PR spin. The book is a defense of the radically first-person dispatch, filed from exactly those points of view where a reporter is not supposed to be.
With articles by Charles Bowden, Adam Davidson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Steve Featherstone, Kristoffer A. Garin, Gary Greenberg, Jay Kirk, Willem Marx, Morgan Meis, Jeff Sharlet, Jake Silverstein, Ken Silverstein, Wells Tower, William T.Vollmann, Bill Wasik

Write It Real reduces the writing process to its essential core, providing prose writers with pragmatic guides directed solely to improving their words where it matters the most, on the page. This book covers every aspect governing the inside process of producing compelling prose. In doing so, it avoids the abstract and "philosophical" theories of so many writing guides, the nonsense that loses the reader in the layered, labyrinthine maze of grammar and technical excess. Valenti’s masterful book focuses instead on the time-tested, practical strategies that produce tangible—and sometimes instant—results. Write It Real will help writers of all abilities, from developing to the selling pro, refine their work into sparkling clarity, and to do it with renewed confidence that comes from fully understanding how writing works from the inside of creativity out to the reader. This guidebook combines the best of a handbook and a "how to" with insights and strategies refined over decades of the author’s prolific career as a journalist, writer, teacher, and speaker. A passionate take on and an illuminating look at a skill both mysterious and accessible, Write It Real’s 11 chapters take writers through the overlooked (because it’s obvious) and the obscure (because it’s overlooked). As a prose prescription, this "Rx" is nothing less than the 21st century’s answer to Strunk and White’s classic, The Elements of Style.

In the past few decades, sustained and overwhelming research attention has been given to EAL (English as an Additional Language) scholars’ English writing and publishing. While this line of research has shed important light on the scene of global knowledge production and dissemination, it tends to overlook the less Anglicized and more locally bound disciplines located at the academic periphery. This book aimed to fill the gap by examining the academic enculturation experiences of Chinese archaeologists through the lens of their disciplinary writing. Consisting of a situated genre analysis and a multi-case study, the textographic study disclosed the immense complexity of archaeologists’ texts, practices and identities. Important implications were generated for writing researchers and teachers as well as archaeologists and other HSS (the humanities and social sciences) scholars. This book would make a valuable reading for researchers and students of disciplinary/academic writing, second language writing and literacy studies.

With the "discursive turn" has come a distrust - a complete rejection by some - of theories that seek deeper reasons for surface phenomena. Rong Chen argues that this distrust, with its accompanying overemphasis on specificity and fluidity of linguistic meaning and social values, is unwarranted and unhelpful. Drawing on insights from social theories and various strands of pragmatics, he proposes a motivation model of pragmatics (MMP), contending that language use can be adequately, coherently, and elegantly studied via the motivation behind it in its varied and dynamic contexts. The model, with its well-laid out components, is then applied to (im)politeness research, cross-cultural pragmatics, diachronic pragmatics, discourse and genre analysis, conversation analysis, identity construction, and the study of metaphor, sarcasm, parody, and lying. MMP is thus a framework aimed at accounting for fluidity with stable notions, specificity with general principles, and differences with similar underlying factors. As such, the book should appeal to students of pragmatics, (im)politeness, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, communication, sociology, and psychology.

An accessible guide to the most important academic writing skills a student needs to write successful undergraduate dissertations and project reports on any HE course. This book will give the reader a sound grounding on what the whole business of dissertation and report writing is about, and will provide instantaneous, easily accessible answers to specific questions on all of the most important areas of planning, researching, writing, revising and referencing a successful dissertation or report.

This book examines ten major political scandals involving the White House in the past 50 years, revealing how the investigative reporters behind the stories uncovered the hidden truths. On numerous occasions, the dogged efforts of investigative journalists have led to a dissemination of information that had a direct effect on the course of American history—the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Watergate scandal, "Monicagate" of the Clinton administration, and the Enron accounting scandal. The Inside Stories of Modern Political Scandals: How Investigative Reporters Have Changed the Course of American History features in-depth interviews with all living journalists responsible for revealing major political scandals involving the White House, including Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters responsible for bringing the Watergate scandal to the light of day. The author presents a fascinating view into the "story behind the story" regarding the ten most momentous, modern-day political scandals in America. Containing both anecdotes from the investigative reporters involved and specific examples from published articles, this text reveals the specific methods used by these award-winning journalists to successfully pursue their stories and earn their titles as watchdogs of our government, our military, and big business.

A comprehensive and practical guide to writing a successful media paper or report, from selecting a topic to submitting the final draft. How to Write about the Media Today is the first book to offer students and media practitioners a comprehensive approach for researching and preparing a report, paper, or presentation on some aspect of today's mass communication. How to Write about the Media Today begins with a discussion of different types of media outlets—from traditional newspapers and television to the Internet—as well as an overview of contemporary directions in media studies. This is followed by a series of step-by-step strategies for selecting topics, conducting research, and writing cogently and engagingly about media-related events and issues. Because each chapter stands on its own, this resource can be read sequentially or consulted topic-by-topic as needed.