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Foreign Rights: Forthcoming: Media StudiesThis Gaming Life by Jim Rossignol Guerrilla News by Adam L. Penenberg Negotiating 9/11 by Laura C. Robinson Owning the Olympics edited by Monroe Price and Danial Dayan This Gaming Life: Travels in Three CitiesJim Rossignol Rights: World In recent years, computer and video games have achieved new levels of sophistication and credibility. Quite apart from the enormous amount of revenue they generate (7 billion dollars in 2005), educators and researchers have praised the new genre of networked games known as MMOGs (massively multi-player online games) for offering important new learning environments. Others predict that games will soon be elevated to the status of books and film, attracting reviews and commentary in the most prominent cultural outlets. This prediction is supported by the rise of what is known as The New Games Journalism (NGJ). Based initially in the UK but increasingly influential in the US as well, the NGJ marks a striking departure from the trade and industry oriented publications that once covered this area. Its practitioners disavow any intention to sell products and write about games instead in a distinct literary manner which combines personal experience with broad cultural analysis. This Gaming Life, Rossignol's first book, at once employs and develops the conventions that have defined NGJ as a genre. Part memoir, part ethnography, part journalistic essay, this beautifully written, thoughtful and richly detailed narrative portrays gaming cultures in three cities, London, Seoul, and Reykjavik in a way which should appeal to readers with little, no, or a considerable gaming experience. Jim Rossignol is one of the leading practitioners of the NGJ; and his articles have appeared in numerous publications, including PC Gamer (UK), The Escapist, Wired, and The Guardian. Spring 2008 Guerrilla News: How to Succeed as a Journalist Now That the Old Rules Don't ApplyAdam Penenberg Rights: World Many journalists and editors are pessimistic for the future of journalist with the rise of the Internet, but there is great opportunity. In Guerrilla News, Adam Penenberg discusses his experience as a journalist and gives how-to hints and guidelines on how to succeed as a journalist in today's world. He offers suggestions and solutions for web viedo, blogs, and investigative reporting. In addition, Penenberg examines in detail how to come up with story ideas for magazines, websites, and newspapers, including a section on pitching to editors and spinning to publicists. Furthermore, the book looks at the ethics and law of online and guerrilla journalism today. Guerrilla News concludes with a look at the future of the book, from hardcover and paperback to electronic. Penenberg examines the e-Book, print on demand, and other potential business models for book publishing. Adam L. Penenberg is a journalism professor at New York University and assistant director of the Business & Economic Reporting Program. In 1998, while a staff editor at Forbes.com, he garnered national attention for unmasking Stephen Glass as a fabulist, as portrayed in the 2003 film Shattered Glass (Steve Zahn plays Penenberg). His first book, Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America (Perseus Books, 2000), was excerpted in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and his second, Tragic Indifference: One Man’s Battle with the Auto Industry over the Dangers of SUVs (HarperBusiness, 2003), was optioned for the movies by Michael Douglas. A former columnist for Slate and Wired News, Adam is currently a contributing writer for Fast Company magazine. Fall 2008 Negotiating 9/11Laura C. Robinson Rights: World September 11, 2001 marks a pivotal moment in world geopolitics. Just as its reverberations continue to reshape the imperatives of policymaking and statecraft, it also has changed the ways in which ordinary individuals around the world understand themselves as individuals and as members of larger collectivities. In the days after 9/11, individuals all over the world temporarily shift their attention away from issues close to home to the moral and political implications of attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. The events act as a catalyst in two ways, provoking immediate and strongly worded reactions from the public. First, the terrorist attacks act as a stimulus that pushes people to participate in online discussion spaces in unprecedented numbers. Second, September 11th acts as a stimulus that makes people explicitly state latent beliefs about the social world, their place in it, and their understanding of the United States’ role on the global stage. In the U.S., expressions of grief and shock are mixed with calls to arms and proclamations of national unity. Outside the U.S., however, the voices of those condemning the terrorist attacks are resisted by those who blame the United States for the events of 9/11. In many countries across Europe and South America, denunciations of the U.S. and American foreign policy overshadow denunciations of the attacks and their perpetrators. No matter the thematic focus of their comments, the individuals who offer their opinions make explicit rarely articulated assumptions about states, societies, and politics in the multipolar world of the 21st century. Negotiating 9/11 examines pro- and anti-American views in Brazil, France, and America since September 11th. Robinson addresses several core problematics in global studies of media, culture, and identity, namely: How do local social, political, and cultural environments influence the ways in which individuals and groups use new media in culturally specific ways? In so doing, how do individuals and groups craft national and transnational, as well as context-dependent identities? The work addresses these interrelated questions by examining three discourse fora devoted to the same topic: the meaning and implications of September 11th. Laura C. Robinson is currently conducting research on digital inequality at the University of Southern California, where she received a two-year postdoctoral fellowship. Fall 2008 Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New ChinaEdited by Monroe Price and Daniel Dayan Rights: World Since Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee in 2001, it has been widely anticipated that they will be a highly significant media event. The media attention that the Beijing Olympics have received has, in fact, begun to transform China internally and globally, and these evolving changes merit close analysis. The significance of this event derives largely from the way it offers China the opportunity to project a revised image of itself and its global role to national and international audiences. This opportunity is nevertheless fraught with potential risks. As a media event, the official narratives are vulnerable to interruption and contradiction, perhaps especially because their efficacy depends on symbolic elements which are simultaneously powerful and fragile. Owning the Olympics offers new perspectives for examining the Olympic Games and examines the ways in which key actors struggle to retain or upset the symbolic constitution of this major event. In short, Owning the Olympics describes the battlefield on which competing actors and interests vie to determine the meaning of this global happening. Monroe Price is Adjunct Full Professor at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Project for Global Communication Studies. Daniel Dayan is Professor of Media Sociology at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. Spring 2008 |
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