Lexington Books Converging Media, Diverging Politics: a Political Economy of News Media in the United States and Canada

What purpose does the news media serve in contemporary North American society? In this collection of essays, experts from both the United States and Canada investigate this question, exploring the effects of media concentration in democratic systems. Specifically, the scholars collected here consider, from a range of vantage points, how corporate and technological convergence in the news industry in the United States and Canada impacts journalism's expressed role as a medium of democratic communication. More generally, and by necessity, Converging Media, Diverging Politics speaks to larger questions about the role that the production and circulation of news and information does, can, and should serve. The editors have gathered an impressive array of critical essays, featuring interesting and well-documented case studies that will prove useful to both students and researchers of communications and media studies. Review Converging Media, Diverging Politics brings together important research that moves beyond documenting a crucial historical period; it also bravely and actively engages a politicized vision for a news media system that could do more.--H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online These days people think about the news media the way they think about the weather--you can complain all you want but there is nothing you can do about it. This book confronts this view by offering a definitive study of the news media in the U.S. and Canada, from newspapers to the 'net, and documents clearly and compellingly what people are doing to challenge the power of media giants and bring about genuine media democracy.--Vincent Mosco, Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society, Queen's University About the Author David Skinner is assistant professor in the Communication Studies Program at York University, Toronto. James R. Compton is assistant professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Mike Gasher is associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University, Montreal.