Where Ideas Go to Die : The Fate of Intellect in American Journalism / Michael McDevitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDevitt, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social control.

Democracy.

Intellectual life.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 259 pages)

Other Title:

Where Ideas Go to Die

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Where Ideas Go to Die explores the troubled relationship of US journalism and intellect. A defender of common sense, the press is irked at intellect yet often dependent on its critical autonomy. A postwar observation from Richard Hofstadter applies to contemporary journalists: "Men do not rise in the morning, grin at themselves in their mirrors, and say: 'Ah, today I shall torment an intellectual and strangle an idea!'" The book nevertheless documents the prowess of news media in the policing of intellect. Control extends beyond suppression of ideas and ways of thinking to the aggressive rendering of dissent into deviance. The social control of intellect by journalism is accompanied by social control of journalism in newsrooms and in classrooms where norms are cultivated. Anti-intellectualism consequently operates like dark matter in media, a presence inferred by its effects rather than directly observed or acknowledged. When journalists anticipate a punitive public, the reified resentment is no more real than the fiction of omnipotent citizens in democratic theory, yet the audience imagined compels how intellect is rendered in the news as nuisance, deviance, or object of ridicule. Journalism's contribution to the social control of ideas is poignantly democratic: audiences are cast in consequential roles that affirm their wisdom in a closed, self-referential system. The book concludes with a discussion about what intellectual journalism would look like. Interviews with 25 "dangerous professors" demonstrate how alliances in the academic-media nexus can seed intellect in newswork.

Contents:

Journalism and intellect : a vexed relationship

Peopling of the journalistic imagination : four kinds of anti-intellectualism

Eclipse of reflexivity in the rise of Trump

The academic-media nexus

Policing of intellectual transgressions : news as a recursive regime

Social drama at macro and micro levels : the fractal control of dissent

Deviant in residence : idea rendering and repair in the parochial press

Closing of the journalism mind : anti-intellectualism among college students

In my buggy : how dangerous professors seed intellect in a hybrid field

What intellectual journalism would look like.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-751944-X