Books of Note

MEDIA WORK: 'EVERYONE'S JOB IS ON THE LINE'
[SOURCE: I Want Media, AUTHOR: Patrick Phillips]
Shortly after the U.S. Labor Day holiday comes the publication of "Media Work," a new book exploring the changing nature of work for professionals in advertising, journalism, film and television production, and game development. Author Mark Deuze is a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., and journalism and new media at Leiden University in The Netherlands, his native country. He also maintains a personal blog on issues related to new media and digital culture. In "Media Work," Deuze researches the "work histories" of professionals employed in all kinds of media, in countries from Australia to South Africa to the United States. The goal of the book, he says, is to provide a better understanding of the contemporary realities of working in the media and help prepare the next generation for a career in this "exciting yet uncertain industry."
http://www.iwantmedia.com/people/people69.html

COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION: CRITICAL JUNCTURES AND FUTURE OF MEDIA
[SOURCE: The New Press]
In "Communication Revolution," Robert McChesney explains why we are in the midst of a communication revolution that is at the center of twenty-first-century life. Yet this profound juncture is not well understood, in part because our media criticism and media scholarship have not been up to the task. Why is media not at the center of political debate? Why are students of the media considered second-class scholars? McChesney’s concise history of media studies shows how communication scholarship has grown increasingly irrelevant in recent years, even as media became a decisive issue of our times. Now the burgeoning media reform movement, in which McChesney has been a key player, has made it even more clear that the revolution in communication calls for a transformation in the way we think about media.
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1692