Overload

Starred review from October 2, 2017
In this 2016 election post-mortem, veteran reporter Schieffer (This Just In: What I Couldn’t Tell You on TV) interviews journalists at media organizations of all types, including NBC, the New York Times Company, Politico, and NPR, to find out how Americans are receiving and interpreting the overwhelming deluge of news—both real and fake. Schieffer shows how powerful events such as J.F.K.’s assassination, which was one of the first major news stories reported in real time on television, and the September 11 attacks, which saw the proliferation of misinformation on the internet, altered how news was presented and consumed for better or worse and set the stage for Donald Trump’s tumultuous 2016 campaign. The 24-hour news cycle and web-enabled communication technology enabled fake news sites to flourish (and profit) while traditional outlets often struggled to keep up. Schieffer maintains a optimistic outlook as he shows the rapid changes in news media. He notes how organizations are adopting new formats, such as podcasts, and revitalizing old-school ones, such as newsletters. Schieffer also highlights successes of smaller and equally vital outlets like the Texas Tribune, which successfully shifted to a fully free-access model, and the Root, an online magazine focusing on African-American culture that helped bring national attention to stories such as the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. This vital, impressive study adroitly sums up the current and ever-evolving state of news coverage and the vital need for journalism and educated readers alike.

September 15, 2017
These days, the news is the news. Accusations of fake news abound, while antagonistic salvos are fired at reporters, and administration officials declare the media to be the enemy of the people. Schieffer, former host of CBS's Face the Nation, is a giant of journalism; Schwartz, his co-author, is chief communications officer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Together, they examine the multiplicity of ways news is disseminated in the twenty-first century and ponder the irony that today's citizens are less informed, despite having more media choices than ever before. Providing overviews of venerable institutions such as the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as such more recent additions as Buzzfeed and Vox Media, the authors succeed at helping media consumers make wise choices about where to get the news by examining journalistic standards and challenges and offering conclusions about our current state of information saturation. Succinct, savvy, and shrewd, this read-in-one-seating treatise on the Fourth Estate provides a crucial tool for critical analysis.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)