A compelling behind-the-scenes look at the bitter bankruptcy battle over Marvel Comics describes the competition between tycoons Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn over control of the company and the ingenuity of Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad, the owners of Toy Biz, who outmaneuvered the two powerful moguls.

Product Description: American mass media are the world's most diverse, rich, and free. Their dazzling resources, variety, and influence arouse envy in other countries. Their failures are commonly excused on the grounds that they are creatures of the market, that they give people what they want...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: A comparative and global investigation on the role of the media in the move from authoritarianism to democracy in developing and post-communist countries. The text explores the cultural, economic, and political conditions that have shaped the media in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book fills a number of gaps in the 'community and crime' literature, makes important theoretical contributions, and is based on original research. Questions explored include: How do changes in the urban environment impact upon local (high crime) communities? How do changes in housing provision and consumption influence crime patterning? Can current community safety and urban policies address the needs of high crime, mixed tenure, inner-city areas? And how do community groups respond to neighbourhood change, crime and disorder...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: An analysis of mainstream media and community radio in the United States and Canada. The author argues that access to media and the equitable distribution of information resources are the major prerequisites to an open and democratic media sphere. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

This book presents an overview of what is suddenly happening within the relatively new field called computer-assisted reporting (CAR). The rapid rate at which personal computing is changing has made it a tool for journalists. And as personal computing grows, so do its applications in the media newsroom. To introduce journalists to computer-assisted reporting, this book describes how leading journalists are using personal computers for more than just writing in the news gathering process. American society has been inundated by a flood of computerized public and private records. Many records formerly kept on paper are now stored in computers. Many records that were never before kept are now retained in databases. And records that are not computerized can very easily be converted into databases. These developments have prompted journalists to become increasingly more involved with computers during the past decade. Much, if not most, news reporting now depends upon the use of computers. Knowledge of how to access and use computer databases is essential for the journalists of the future. This book focuses on the computerization of news reporting. Not only does the personal computer of the mid-1990s assist journalists by making writing easier, it makes reporting more efficient. The book begins with a demonstration of methods reporters can use to get more from their computers -- data retrieval and analysis, information storage, and dissemination of that information in both processed and unprocessed forms. The book concludes with a proposal for development of computer literacy in the newsroom. This is not a "how-to" book. It is best described as a "what's happening" book because it discusses current and future developments in the use of computers for information gathering by the news media. The single most important focus is on the changing nature of news reporting in the wake of down-sizing, down-pricing, up-powering, and up-speeding of business-type desktop and portable personal computers. Numerous new approaches to reporting and research have developed in the past decade in parallel with the evolution of personal computers. With these new techniques coming to the field of reporting in the mid-1990s, there is need for a book that covers both the merger of traditional information gathering methods and the newly developing ones. This book introduces readers to the new information gathering and analytical techniques evolving with new computer-based technology. (view table of contents)

What are the effects of increasing conglomerate ownership on the creation & dissemination of news & culture? These nine essays by leading media critics take probing looks at the dramatic changes of recent years. Includes: A fascinating overview of radio & TV history by Eric Barnouw; Richard Cohen & Gene Roberts write candidly on the decline of journalistic integrity & the effects of increasing profit expectations in the newsroom; Mark Crispin Miller, David Lieberman, & Pat Aufderheide discuss the dumbing-down of the publishing industry, the transformation of Hollywood, the increasing importance of merchandising & foreign rights in all media; & Thomas Frank examines advertising & the possibility of resistance to conglomerate control of the media.

Product Description: Anita Biressi examines the historical origins and development of true crime and its evolution into distinctive contemporary forms. Embracing a range of non-fiction accounts including true crime books and magazines, law and order television, and popular journalism, Biressi traces how they harness and explore current concerns about law and order, crime and punishment, and personal vulnerability...read more

Product Description: The relationship between crime and its representation in the mass media has long been a source of great concern to the general public. Anxieties about the criminogenic properties of the media, particularly in regard to young people, have increasingly influenced media policy and legislation debates...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Posing questions about the quality of life today, and our role as media consumers, this study attempts to analyze attitudes to the revolutionary changes affecting the media, encapsulated in the terms "digital revolution" and "multimedia"...read more

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This text collects together over ten years of research and writing on the practice and effects of investigative journalism in America, providing an insight into journalism as a catalyst for social and moral inquiry. Focusing on the work of a number of reporters, some of whom have won Pulitzer Prizes, this analysis is punctuated with interviews with those writers, who discuss why they chose to write particular stories, how stories are developed and the surprising revelations that often come with the territory. The writers featured include broadcast journalist Pam Zekman, "Boston Globe" reporter Jonathan Kaufman and "Chicago Tribune" reporter Bill Gaines. Among the stories discussed are Zekman's exposure of negligent elevator mechanics in "Elevator Rip-Off: An Open and Shut Case" and the under-reporting of rape by the Chicago police in "Killing Crime: A Police Cop Out", and Kaufman's study of racial discrimination in the workplace, in "The Race Factor". What emerges from this analysis of the practice and meaning of investigative reporting is journalism not as mere news, but as an essential form of knowledge about the social world and an embodiment of public moral discourse.

Product Description: Drawing on the diverse views of over 1,300 children in the UK between the ages of 6-12, "Dear BBC" discusses key controversies in the public sphere about children's relationship with the media, especially television drama. Máire Messenger Davies draws on material gathered from an audience research project commissioned by the BBC, based on surveys, structured discussions with children and interviews with program makers and policy makers...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: No longer preoccupied with the East-West divide, contemporary foreign policymakers now have to confront regional conflicts, peace-enforcing and humanitarian missions, and a host of other global problems and issues in areas such as trade, health, and the environment...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Is deliberative democracy the ideal goal of free speech? How do social movement organizations, activists, and political candidates use the media to frame their discourse? What responsibilities does the media have in maintaining or promoting democracy? In this broadly interdisciplinary volume, top scholars in communication, political science, sociology, law, and philosophy offer new perspectives on these and other intersections within democratic discourse and media...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Is deliberative democracy the ideal goal of free speech? How do social movement organizations, activists, and political candidates use the media to frame their discourse? What responsibilities does the media have in maintaining or promoting democracy? In this broadly interdisciplinary volume, top scholars in communication, political science, sociology, law, and philosophy offer new perspectives on these and other intersections within democratic discourse and media...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)