This book advances a journalistic theory of empathy, challenging long-held notions about how best to do journalism. Because the institution of journalism has typically equated empathy and compassion with bias, it has been slow to give the intelligence of the emotions a legitimate place in the reporting and writing process. Blank-Libra's work locates the point at which the vast, multidisciplinary research on empathy intersects with the work of the journalist, revealing a reality that has always been so: journalists practice empathy as a way to connect but also as a form of inquiry, as sincere and legitimate in its goals and aspirations as is objectivity.

This book advances a journalistic theory of empathy, challenging long-held notions about how best to do journalism. Because the institution of journalism has typically equated empathy and compassion with bias, it has been slow to give the intelligence of the emotions a legitimate place in the reporting and writing process. Blank-Libra's work locates the point at which the vast, multidisciplinary research on empathy intersects with the work of the journalist, revealing a reality that has always been so: journalists practice empathy as a way to connect but also as a form of inquiry, as sincere and legitimate in its goals and aspirations as is objectivity.

American democracy is built on its institutions. The Congress, the presidency, and the judiciary, in particular, undergird the rights and responsibilities of every citizen. The free press, for example, protected by the First Amendment, allows for the dissent so necessary in a democracy. How has this institution changed since the nation's founding? And what can we, as leaders, policymakers, and citizens, do to keep it vital?
The freedom of the press is an essential element of American democracy. With the guidance of editors Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, this volume examines the role of the press in a democracy, investigating alternative models used throughout world history to better understand how the American press has evolved into what it is today. The commission also examines ways to allow more voices to be heard and to improve the institution of the American free press.
The Press, a collection of essays by the nation's leading journalism scholars and professionals will examine the history, identity, roles, and future of the American press, with an emphasis on topics of concern to both practitioners and consumers of American media.

From the foreword by Geneva Overholser. What is it about really fine writers, how they delight, intrigue, compel us? Style, you say. But style is not something you begin with. Rather, it's what you end up with, a result of far more fundamental traits. Traits such as an ear and an eye and a heart, traits that Madeliene Blais has honed superbly well. This is a book well named: The Heart Is an Instrument: Portraits in Journalism. The heart is surely first among Blais's gifts. Whether she is writing about the famous--playwright tennessee Williams, novelist Mary Gordon--or about the least elevated among us--a teenage prostitute infected with the AIDS virus, a homeless schizophrenic--she brings to her subjects an incomparable empathy.

When a case containing dismembered human remains surfaced in New York's East River in June of 1897, the publisher of the ""New York Journal"" - a young, devil-may-care millionaire named William Randolph Hearst - decided that his newspaper would ""scoop"" the city's police department by solving this heinous crime. Pulling out all the stops, Hearst launched more than a journalistic murder investigation; his newspaper's active intervention in the city's daily life, especially its underside, marked the birth of the Yellow Press. In a work that studies the rise and fall of this phenomenon, David R. Spencer documents the fierce competition that characterized yellow journalism, the social realities and trends that contributed to its success (and its ultimate demise), its accomplishments for good or ill, and its long-term legacy. Most notable among Hearst's competitors was New York City's ""The World"", owned and managed by a European Jewish immigrant named Joseph Pulitzer. ""The Yellow Journalism"" describes how these two papers and others exploited the scandal, corruption, and crime among the city's most influential citizens, and its most desperate inhabitants - a policy that made this ""journalism of action"" remarkably effective, not just as a commercial force, but also as an advocate for the city's poor and defenseless. Spencer shows how many of the innovations first introduced during this period - from investigative reporting to the use of color, entertainment news, and cartoons in papers - have had a lasting effect on journalism; and how media in our day reflects the Yellow Press's influence, but also its threatened irrelevance within the broader realities of contemporary society.