Books, media, memory, and public evidence.
New Books in Journalism treats books as starting points for careful conversations about research, institutions, and historical evidence. Recent episodes move from a magazine’s rise to education culture wars, conservative media criticism, wartime memory, podcast scholarship, and contemporary political interpretation.
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New Books in Journalism is a book-centered interview series with a strong interest in how journalism, scholarship, and public memory shape one another. Its conversations are measured rather than hurried. A typical episode begins with a recently published work, then follows the author into the larger questions behind the project. The result is less a news recap than a patient inquiry into evidence, institutions, and interpretation. Recent episodes suggest a broad definition of journalism. A magazine’s early history becomes a case study in the movement from upstart publication to durable presence. A study of conservative opposition to the press becomes an examination of how the idea of liberal media gained force across political life. Discussions of education culture wars and a political figure’s place in history bring political language, intellectual frameworks, and institutional memory into the same room. Other episodes move through wartime remnants, Soviet manipulation, family memoir, and the uneasy relationship between truth, propaganda, and what people choose to believe. The show also turns the lens back on audio itself. Its podcast-intellectual panels ask whether recorded storytelling can count as research, how universities reward public scholarship, and how narrative work changes the boundary between academic output and journalism. The atmosphere is calm and bookish. It gives guests time to explain methods, define terms, and place one story inside a longer chronology. That patience is part of the appeal, though it also means some episodes carry the texture of academic panels, network announcements, and long answers. The show is strongest for listeners who like ideas to develop in public. It is especially good at connecting individual books to broader questions about media power, institutional incentives, political myth, and historical record. Rather than flattening a topic into a thesis, it keeps returning to process: how a story was found, what counts as proof, and why certain narratives persist.
Made for: Suited to serious readers, media-history followers, journalists, scholars, and podcast listeners who prefer patient context over quick commentary. It is especially useful for people interested in how books turn reporting, research, and public argument into durable knowledge.
What sets it apart: The series stands apart by treating journalism books as intellectual infrastructure, not just publication events. Its interviews connect author process, institutional stakes, and historical consequence with unusual patience.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Author conversations make the methods behind journalism history visible, from archival investigation and family records to the institutional standing of audio scholarship.
New Books in Journalism turns author interviews into close examinations of how accounts of the past are researched, assembled, and presented. Conversations move comfortably between journalism and history, with questions that invite guests to explain their sources, uncertainties,…
An abortion-rights mailer becomes a clue; your curiosity gets to do detective work.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, measured panel on how audio work can earn academic recognition through policy, incentives, and institutional pressure.
Academic scholarship becomes the focus of a practical institutional argument as the panel tracks how audio work might be recognized inside existing academic systems.
A family photograph of supposed Hitler ashes opens into a clear-eyed look at propaganda, memory, and belief.
Hitler and My Mother-in-Law turns on a family encounter with a strange charge: Pat, the author's potential mother-in-law, shows a 5-by-7 photograph of herself pointing at what looked like ashes, then says the military told her to tell people they were Hitler's ashes.
A sharp panel on podcasting as research, craft, and argument.
The panel treats podcasting less as a format than as a way of thinking. It keeps coming back to process, citations, incentives, and the strain of turning reporting into an argument that works in sound.
A thoughtful conversation that ranges from journalism to John Major to poetry.
The conversation is strongest when it lingers on John Major's public image, from his height and charisma to the class snobbery that may have shaped how he was received.
A careful interview about abortion rights, fundraising, and the machinery behind political retreat.
Rebecca Buchanan and Amy Littlefield build a measured account of how abortion rights were shaped by law, money, messaging, and compromise. The discussion moves cleanly from Littlefield's reporting background into the archival trail behind Killers of Roe, tracing the Hyde…
A careful panel on how audio work starts to count inside academic life.
This conversation centers on a practical academic question: when does audio work, or a multimedia project, become scholarship? It moves through categories, deans, provosts, professional organizations, and funding agencies, showing how a grant or a course can shift a project from…
A measured discussion of The Liberator, Black citizenship, and family history.
Caleb Zakrin speaks with Ariane Edmonds about We Now Belong to Ourselves, J.L. Edmonds, The Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America, centering Jefferson Lewis Edmonds and the Los Angeles-based Liberator.
Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor track the US-Iran war and Trump's foreign policy moves.
Tanya Beckett and BBC World Service guests unpack one global question each week.
National security through consequences, not noise.
Connecticut talk with sharp civic instincts.
Muslim politics with no soft edges.
Ariane Edmonds discusses her book 'We Now Belong to Ourselves,' which explores the life of her great-great-grandfather Jefferson Lewis Edmonds and his Los Angeles newspaper, The Liberator.
This panel discussion, moderated by Robert Boynton, explores whether podcasting can save universities from insularity and declining humanities enrollments.
This episode features an interview with John Bechtold about his book 'U.S.
This episode features an interview with author Peter Richardson about his 2026 book 'Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine,' exploring the magazine's origins, cultural impact, and evolution from counterculture upstart to enduring media institution.
This episode features an interview with Mark Hlavacik about his new book 'Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars', exploring the historical conflicts in education policy and ideology.
This episode features an interview with author John B.
This episode features an interview with A.J.
At NYU's 2025 'Podcast Intellectuals' conference, Barry Lam says academia trades in 'rep and prestige,' not the monograph, while Joy Connolly asks Fichte's question, 'To whom do we owe?'.
Therese Swoboda and Jane Semeca center the conversation on Pat Hartwell, a war reporter whose story includes the military telling her to describe a photograph as Hitler's ashes.
A special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities Vault podcast from the New Books Network captures a conference conversation on podcasting as original scholarship.
This episode features a panel discussion with intellectuals Benjamen Walker and Fanny Gribenski as part of a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities Vault podcast.
The host introduces Glenn O'Glazer as an author, journalist, and poet.
Rebecca Buchanan speaks with Amy Littlefield about *Killers of Roe: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights*.
This episode features an interview with Howard W.
This episode features an interview with Clint Smith about his bestselling book 'How the Word Is Passed,' which examines the history of slavery across America.
This episode features an interview with James Rodgers about his book 'Assignment Moscow,' discussing his experiences as a foreign correspondent reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin.
This episode features an interview with Matthew Facciani about his book 'Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It' (Columbia UP, 2025), exploring the origins, spread, and solutions to misinformation.