Draws on media's past strengths to define a more responsive role for journalism's future. This work covers many current trends: minority voices, providing interactive community forums, reconciling informational and entertainment functions, understanding bias and creating public opinion.

Arguing in the first book-length exploration of a conversational and dialogic model for journalism that "accurately reporting the news" is a surprisingly limiting if not disabling mission, the authors draw optimistically on past strengths of the media, especially print journalism, to reform and redefine a more ecumenical, constructive, participative, and democratically responsive role for journalism's institutional future. The book's scope is wide, and it includes many current trends: minority voices, contextualizing the news, providing interactive community forums, reconciling informational and entertainment functions, creating "public opinion," and understanding the nature of bias.