Across America, newspapers that have defined their cities for over a century are rapidly failing, their circulations plummeting even as opinion-soaked web outlets like the Huffington Post thrive. Meanwhile, nightly news programs shock viewers with stories of horrific crime and celebrity scandal, while the smug sarcasm and shouting of pundits like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann dominate cable television. Is it any wonder that young people are turning away from the news entirely, trusting comedians like Jon Stewart as their primary source of information on current events? In the face of all the problems plaguing serious news, What Is Happening to News explores the crucial question of how journalism lost its way—and who is responsible for the ragged retreat from its great traditions. Veteran editor and newspaperman Jack Fuller locates the surprising sources of change where no one has thought to look before: in the collision between a revolutionary new information age and a human brain that is still wired for the threats faced by our prehistoric ancestors. Drawing on the dramatic recent discoveries of neuroscience, Fuller explains why the information overload of contemporary life makes us dramatically more receptive to sensational news, while rendering the staid, objective voice of standard journalism ineffective. Throw in a growing distrust of experts and authority, ably capitalized on by blogs and other interactive media, and the result is a toxic mix that threatens to prove fatal to journalism as we know it. For every reader troubled by what has become of news—and worried about what the future may hold—What Is Happening to News not only offers unprecedented insight into the causes of change but also clear guidance, strongly rooted in the precepts of ethical journalism, on how journalists can adapt to this new environment while still providing the information necessary to a functioning democracy.

What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism

Politics & Social Sciences

FULLER, Jack

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

When Charles Quinlan, an academic obsessed with jazz, starts exploring the life and death of Jackson Payne, a fictional tenor-sax player, he can't imagine where his research will lead. Told in a series of dazzling riffs by everyone from Payne's lovers to his fellow musicians, The Best of Jackson Payne is a novel that swings unlike any other.

The Best of Jackson Payne: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

News Values is a concise, powerful statement of the fundamental issues, ethical and practical, confronting newspapers today. Jack Fuller not only makes those issues clear, but offers a provocative new perspective on questions journalists should be asking themselves now in order to prepare for tomorrow. "Every talk show host should read this book. So should every newsroom cynic. . . . 'Pursuit of truth is not a license to be a jerk.' In all too many newsrooms, that statement would resound like a three-bell bulletin."—Martin F. Nolan, New York Times Book Review "[News Values] ought to be required reading not just for those who work for newspapers, but for all those who read and care about them. . . . [This book] seems destined to become one of those slim but important volumes people read for a long time to come."—Richard J. Tofel, Wall Street Journal "Fuller stays above the fray [of the many books on the media]: His is a deeply intellectual approach, one that provides serious context to the highly complicated issue of how the news 'works.'"—Duncan McDonald, Chicago Tribune Books "News Values has the touch and feel of knowledgeable, authentic caring about the kind of journalism than can help make society more cohesive, even human." —"Monitor's Pick," Christian Science Monitor

News Values: Ideas for an Information Age

News Values is a concise, powerful statement of the fundamental issues, ethical and practical, confronting newspapers today. Jack Fuller not only makes those issues clear, but offers a provocative new perspective on questions journalists should be asking themselves now in order to prepare for tomorrow. "Every talk show host should read this book. So should every newsroom cynic. . . . 'Pursuit of truth is not a license to be a jerk.' In all too many newsrooms, that statement would resound like a three-bell bulletin."—Martin F. Nolan, New York Times Book Review "[News Values] ought to be required reading not just for those who work for newspapers, but for all those who read and care about them. . . . [This book] seems destined to become one of those slim but important volumes people read for a long time to come."—Richard J. Tofel, Wall Street Journal "Fuller stays above the fray [of the many books on the media]: His is a deeply intellectual approach, one that provides serious context to the highly complicated issue of how the news 'works.'"—Duncan McDonald, Chicago Tribune Books "News Values has the touch and feel of knowledgeable, authentic caring about the kind of journalism than can help make society more cohesive, even human." —"Monitor's Pick," Christian Science Monitor

"A brilliant achievement. . . .Like the best work of Greene and Le Carré, it is more than genre fiction; it is literature. . . .[Convergence] is the most plausible, and perhaps the best spy novel ever written by an American." —Arthur Maling, Chicago Tribune"An intelligent, readable novel about two kinds of intrigue—international and bureaucratic. He succeeds admirably at both tasks."—Ross Thomas, Washington Post"A solid, provocative first novel about the 'deadly game of espionage' . . . Thoughtfulness and human frailty take precedence over action and suspense. Irony is the prevailing mode. . . . Fuller depicts intelligence work—its technical minutiae and its vaunted goals—convincingly. And he subtly weaves various parallels into complementary layers of potential convergence."—Jeffrey Burke, Wall Street Journal"A fast-moving, dramatic, thinking person's spy novel."—Nelson DeMille, Newsday

Convergence (Phoenix Fiction)

Fragments is a story about how war can make everything explosive—even love—and how two friends try to put the pieces of their lives together again. "[Fragments] makes the usual semi-autobiographical account [of the Vietnam War] . . . seem flimsy and discursive in comparison. . . . The shapeliness and sense of larger design [is] so elegantly executed in Fragments."—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "The plot is believable, the characters sharply drawn, the prose clean and distinctive. . . . Stand[s] with Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, James Webb's Fields of Fire, Josiah Bunting's The Lionheads and John Del Vecchio's The 13th Valley. . . . A strong, compelling novel."—Marc Leepson, Washington Post "There have been many books on Vietnam, and there will be many others. This is more a novel than the rest. . . . Fuller has reassembled the exploded grenade."—Bob MacDonald, Boston Sunday Globe "Should our children ask about Vietnam, we would not go wrong to place this book in their hands. . . . [Fragments] purveys more than information—it gives the war a literary form."—David Myers, New York Times "The best novel yet about the Vietnam War. . . . It ranks with Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's From Here to Eternity."—Daniel Kornstein, Wall Street Journal

Fragments (Phoenix Fiction)

Across America, newspapers that have defined their cities for over a century are rapidly failing, their circulations plummeting even as opinion-soaked web outlets like the Huffington Post thrive. Meanwhile, nightly news programs shock viewers with stories of horrific crime and celebrity scandal, while the smug sarcasm and shouting of pundits like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann dominate cable television. Is it any wonder that young people are turning away from the news entirely, trusting comedians like Jon Stewart as their primary source of information on current events? In the face of all the problems plaguing serious news, What Is Happening to News explores the crucial question of how journalism lost its way—and who is responsible for the ragged retreat from its great traditions. Veteran editor and newspaperman Jack Fuller locates the surprising sources of change where no one has thought to look before: in the collision between a revolutionary new information age and a human brain that is still wired for the threats faced by our prehistoric ancestors. Drawing on the dramatic recent discoveries of neuroscience, Fuller explains why the information overload of contemporary life makes us dramatically more receptive to sensational news, while rendering the staid, objective voice of standard journalism ineffective. Throw in a growing distrust of experts and authority, ably capitalized on by blogs and other interactive media, and the result is a toxic mix that threatens to prove fatal to journalism as we know it. For every reader troubled by what has become of news—and worried about what the future may hold—What Is Happening to News not only offers unprecedented insight into the causes of change but also clear guidance, strongly rooted in the precepts of ethical journalism, on how journalists can adapt to this new environment while still providing the information necessary to a functioning democracy.

Convergence

Non Renseigné

Birch, an ingenuous young American operative, finds himself trapped in a cross-five between Harper, his CIA control, and a Russian superspy from the KGB

Contemporary

Ballantine Books

Musicologist Charles Quinlan -- white, middle-aged -- has spent half his life immersed in jazz, and now he thinks he is ready to explain the life and work of one of its masters. The music, he believes, will show him the way past the accidents of birth and the disparities of experience that divide him from his subject, Jackson Payne. Payne appeared on the scene a fully formed jazz artist not long after returning from service in the Korean War. For two decades his tenor saxophone burned its way through a series of increasingly complex musical ideas. And then he flamed out. What had driven him? What had destroyed him? Is it possible for someone like Quinlan to break through the walls of race and poverty to an understanding of someone like Payne? In his quest, Quinlan listens to the men who served with Payne in combat, the women who loved him and believed his lies, the musicians who shared his addiction to hard bop and heroin. He discovers the family secrets that tortured Payne, the musical and spiritual doubts that haunted him. And in the end he has to struggle not only with Payne's obsessions but also with his own. Jack Fuller's novel works like the music it embraces. The voices of people close to Payne move in and out of the foreground like horns blowing solos in a dark nightclub. They take us into the world -- into the birth and the art -- of jazz, and into the lives of the extraordinary Americans who created it.

The Best of Jackson Payne

KNOPF

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by FULLER, Jack. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by FULLER, Jack

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by FULLER, Jack. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism

The Best of Jackson Payne: A Novel

News Values: Ideas for an Information Age

News Values: Ideas for an Information Age

Convergence (Phoenix Fiction)

Fragments (Phoenix Fiction)

What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism

Convergence

Convergence

The Best of Jackson Payne