Reforming Journalism
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Is powerful, biblically principled journalism a lost art? In this three-part work on foundational concepts, practical techniques, and journalism’s agitated history, Marvin Olasky shows us how to become citizen-reporters and discerning consumers of news.
- Discusses how reporters should act in countries where Christians are a minority
- Explores issues of biblical objectivity, directed reporting, biblical sensationalism
- Provides a brief history of American journalism
- Part 1: Journalistic Foundations
- Part 2: Practical Applications
- Part 3: Progress and Regress
Marvin Olasky makes a compelling case for a journalism that tells the truth by embracing the principle of absolute truth and pursuing a clear-eyed view of human nature. Provocative, deeply researched, and engagingly written, Olasky’s book is both a master class in how-to journalism and a road map to a more accurate media guided by biblical principles. Every journalist should read this. And every Christian journalist should see it as a clarion call to be the moral conscience of a wider culture.
—Wayne Slater, Former senior political writer, The Dallas Morning News; co-author, Bush’s Brain
Marvin Olasky is a man of many talents, like Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an outstanding pastor, author, philosopher, missionary, and college president. Olasky has already written a groundbreaking history of modern journalism, exploring angles missed by other historians. He’s the editor of World magazine. He rediscovered the historical roots of Christian ministry to the poor in The Tragedy of American Compassion. He’s the historian of the pro-life movement. He also is like Mickey Mantle and other switch hitters in baseball. He can write for popular or academic audiences. In this new book he draws on all these skills and experiences to show a way forward for news coverage with wisdom and understanding to readers. His timing is good. Old media companies are running out of money. New media ventures are struggling. His proposed recovery is needed now more than ever
—Russ Pulliam, Columnist, The Indianapolis Star; director, Pulliam Fellowship; member, WORLD News Group board of directors
With hundreds of examples from the United States and China, Marvin Olasky shows how a new world of twenty-first-century journalism is arising from Christian journalists practicing what he calls biblical objectivity. Included as a bonus is June Cheng’s terrific short survey of Chinese journalism.
—Tony Carnes, Editor and publisher, A Journey through NYC Religions
Marvin Olasky (PhD, University of Michigan) is editor in chief of World and the author of twenty books, including Prodigal Press and The Tragedy of American Compassion. He is also dean of the World Journalism Institute and an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was a Yale Daily News and Boston Globe reporter and has published articles in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fortune. He taught journalism for twenty-five years at The University of Texas.