Radio College

Radio Guide | Recommended Readings

The titles below primarily address a free press and the stewardship of a free, informed and democratically-based society. See also: http://www.iwantmedia.com/books.html.

The Media Monopoly: With a New Preface on the Internet and Telecommunications Cartels
by Ben H. Bagdikian, Beacon Press 2000 (originally 1983)

The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting: Creating Alternative Media
by David Barsamian, South End Press 2001

The New New Journalism
edited by Robert S. Boynton, Random House 2005

The New News Business: A Guide To Writing And Reporting
by John Chancellor and Walter R. Mears, HarperPerennial 1995

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
by Noam Chomsky, New Press 2002

Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History
by Ralph Engelman, Sage 1996
a biography of broadcaster Fred Friendly is due in 2006 from Columbia University Press

Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy
by James Fallows, Pantheon Books 1996

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown & Company 2005

Custodians of Conscience
by Theodore Lewis Glasser and James S. Ettema, Columbia University Press 1998

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Pantheon 1988

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect
by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil, Crown and Three Rivers Press 2001

Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network (American Subjects Series)
by Matthew Lasar, Temple University Press 2000

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 2005

The Sound and the Story: NPR and the Art of Radio
by Tom Looker, Houghton Mifflin 1995

Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television
by Jerry Mander, William Morrow & Co., 1978

Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (Open Media Series)
by Robert W. McChesney, John Nichols and Barbara Ehrenreich, Seven Stories Press 2002

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
by Robert Waterman McChesney, New Press 2000/University of Illinois Press 1999

A Mathematician Reads The Newspaper
by John Allen Paulos, HarperCollins BasicBooks 1995

Innumeracy
by John Allen Paulos, Hill & Wang 1989

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
by Edward W. Said, Vintage Books 1997 (originally Pantheon 1981)

The Tuning of the World, reprinted as Our Sonic Environment and the Soundscape: The Tuning of the World.
by R. Murray Schafer, Knopf, 1977; Destiny Books 1994

Handbook for Acoustic Ecology
by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax, World Soundscape Project 1978
updated CD-ROM by Barry Truax

Independence And Integrity II: A Guidebook For Public Radio Journalism
by Alan G. Stavitsky, NPR/PRI/PRNDI 1995 & 2003

Radiotext(e)
by Neil Strauss (Editor), Metatext Press 1993

Who Owns The Media? Global Trends and Local Resistances
by Pradip Thomas and Zaharom Nain, Southbound in association with WACC and Zed Press 2004

The Last Empire Essays, 1992-2000
by Gore Vidal, Doubleday 2001

United States: Essays, 1952-1992
by Gore Vidal, Random House 1993

Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America
by Jesse Walker, New York University Press 2001
Walker's commentary on Jack-FM as imitation iPod radio

Information Anxiety 2
by Richard Saul Wurman, David Sume and Loring Leifer, Que 2000

A People's History of the United States,
A People's History of the United States: The Wall Charts
by Howard Zinn, New Press 1997

The Future of History: Interviews With David Barsamian
by Howard Zinn, Common Courage Press 1999

The Politics of History
by Howard Zinn, University of Illinois Press 1990

The Twentieth Century: A People's History
by Howard Zinn, HarperPerennial 1998

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