Republic of Denial

Alan Brinkley

The most intelligent explanation anyone has yet offered of the painful dilemmas facing the American press in the late twentieth century.

Mark Jurkowitz

Fast-paced but far-reaching. . . . challenges tinkerers and tweakers to recognize that the nation is in deeper trouble than they might think.

Tracy Lee Simmons

Masterly. . . . [This book] graph[s] the seismic shifts altering the channels through which we are informed about public affairs.

Publishers Weekly

These are bad times for both the American press and American politics, observes Janeway in his broad overview of the linked machinery of politics and journalism. Hemorrhaging its own credibility, today's media establishment seems more embattled than ever. The same could be said of American politics: a disaffected public has traded confidence in democracy for jaded cynicism. Those two conditions add up to a recipe for disaster, writes Janeway, a former editor-in-chief at the Boston Globe who now directs the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. He argues that a confluence of forces in both the news business and politics has plunged America into a dark night of the soul, from which we are unlikely to awaken anytime soon. Sketching the jarring trajectory of our nation after such events as the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy's assassination and, of course, Vietnam, Janeway plugs in other variables such as the consolidation of print and broadcast media and the insatiable appetite of 24-hour cable news. The upshot is that the quality most needed by journalists now--a critical skepticism toward government--is being replaced by market research at newspapers driven more by the bottom line than a sense of civic duty. While Janeway's thesis is not strikingly original, those interested in how headlines are made will appreciate his analysis of the crumbling barrier between the newsroom and the boardroom--and the dismaying notion that serious journalism has itself become just one more niche market. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Columbia Journalism Review

There has been a crowd of diagnosticians taking the temperature of journalism and politics, and finding both very ill. Michael Janeway's analysis in Republic of Denial stands out as more coherent and relevant than most. Janeway, a former newspaperman (briefly editor of The Boston Globe) and journalism-schoolman (Northwestern and Columbia), bases his argument historically, suggesting that as recently as mid-century American journalism and American politics were engaged in a shared enterprise, the construction of a common, forward-moving national narrative. But unpopular wars, cultural strife, and faltering journalism broke the thread. While deploring present-day politics and politicians, Janeway also faults the owners and managers of the news media for abandoning their commitment to journalism as an ingredient of public life in favor of journalism as product, its content dictated by consumer whims. He credits working journalists with struggling to maintain professional standards of public relevance but fears that their work is being lost in a sea of inconsequence.

Gregg Easterbrook

Janeway's book is erudite and well written...

Washington Monthly

Mark Jurkowitz

Fast-paced but far-reaching. . . . challenges tinkerers and tweakers to recognize that the nation is in deeper trouble than they might think.
—Boston Globe

Tracy Lee Simmons

Masterly. . . . [This book] graph[s] the seismic shifts altering the channels through which we are informed about public affairs.
—Washington Post Book World