New Books in Journalism

From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on the front lines of U.S. national security. My first guest is one of the most fascinating people I've interviewed. Former NCIS Special Agent in Charge Mark Fallon is a national security consultant, scholar, and expert in counterintelligence and counter...

In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. While diplomacy between states is the visible face of international relations, this “informal diplomacy” is usually less visible but no less powerful. Information politics can be found in propaganda, Internet politics, educational exchanges, tourism, an...

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground f...

Why has trust in the news media declined? How can we combat biased reporting and the spread of misinformation? And how do these challenges compare to the media landscape during America’s founding era? Join us as we explore these pressing questions with William English, a political economist and Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonou...

What is it like to be a foreign correspondent in Thailand? How can someone develop sufficient understanding of this complex society to write effective news stories about Thai politics and business? In this podcast, Francesca Regalado, until recently a Bangkok correspondent for the Japanese-owned online news magazine Nikkei Asia, discusses her three years of reporting on Thailand - under three very...

Chris Stowers, longtime photographer, credits a fellow journalist for the title of his latest memoir, Shoot, Ask...and Run (Earnshaw, 2025). The journalist’s advice to a young Chris, just starting out, went like this. Shoot: Take the photo when the opportunity arises. Then, if someone notices that you took a photo, “ask” for permission to use the photo. Finally, if the subject seems annoyed, “run”...

Contemporary developments in communications technologies have overturned key aspects of the global political system and transformed the media landscape. Yet interlocking technological, informational, and political revolutions have occurred many times in the past.  In Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society (Stanford UP, 2024), John Alekna traces the h...

In Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke UP, 2020), Vanessa Freije explores the causes and consequences of political scandals in Mexico from the 1960s through the 1980s. Tracing the process by which Mexico City reporters denounced official wrongdoing, she shows that by the 1980s political scandals were a common feature of the national media diet. N...

Microchips in our vaccines, stolen elections, climate change denial--in the face of a bewildering range of misbeliefs that stem from mistrust of informational sources, exposure to misinformation and disinformation, and partisan polarization, it's easy to dismiss those who disagree with us as "delusional", "psychotic", or merely "ignorant". But what if none of these judgments are supported by how w...

On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army in the Sinai, had hobbled their British and US allies, and were liberating Palestine. It was a lie. For the rest of his life, populations in the Middle East vilified Said for his duplicity. However, the truth was that, by 1967, all the world's major...

Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker editor Katharine S. White. White helped build the magazine’s prestigious legacy and transform the 20th century literary landscape for women. In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walke...

How can we better protect survivors? How can we learn from their stories without causing further harm? With a pen in one hand and watercolours in the other, graphic journalist Dan Archer embarks on an investigation into human trafficking and how comics can be used to empower survivors and raise awareness of human rights issues. Based on years of research and reporting, Voices from Nepal: Uncoverin...

How do we discern what is factual from what isn’t? In this episode, Dr. Colleen Sinclair joins us to discuss the functions of disinformation, and to unpack how our own biases, emotions and vulnerabilities influence what we are willing to believe. Our guest is: Dr. H. Colleen Sinclair, Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology at Louisiana State University. She takes a theory-grounded, mult...

In this podcast, Matthew talks about his late entry into entrepreneurship, taking advantage of opportunities that emerged as Kindle offered a new way to distribute books. In his career as a journalist with well known business publications he enjoyed talking to entrepreneurs, even having his editor turn down his pitch to interview Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Starting a business was something he had...

In 2019, journalist and writer Peter Hessler traveled with his family to China. He’d gotten a gig as a teacher of writing—nonfiction writing in particular—in what he’d hoped would be a sequel to his 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. But plans changed—radically. At the very end of 2019, the COVID-19 virus emerges in Wuhan, leading to chaos as officials frantically try to figure out ho...

Growing up in a remote corner of the world’s largest rainforest, Pio, Maria, and Oita learned to hunt wild pigs and tapirs, and gathered Brazil nuts and açaí berries from centuries-old trees. The first highway pierced through in 1960. Ranchers, loggers, and prospectors invaded, and the kids lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed by the government to assimilate, they strug...

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210. Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime stories spanning the legendary city’s history, each with...

Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current state of American democracy rooted in the American pragmatist tradition. Robert Danisch analyzes the characteristics of communication systems and communication practices that inhibit or enhance democratic life. In doing so, this book provides a detailed...

In this episode, I sat down with Alex Keller, then a Digital Content Producer at CBS News Texas, to talk about his unconventional career path. From studying biology and neuroscience to earning an MA in history, Alex’s journey is a testament to the unexpected ways history skills can shape careers. We dove into how his history background prepared him for his role at CBS, where he uses storytelling t...

This week on Madison’s Notes, we welcome Ramesh Ponnuru, renowned journalist and Editor of National Review. In this episode, we dive into his journey, starting with his formative years at Princeton University, where he began shaping his intellectual perspective as an undergraduate. We explore the highlights of his career in journalism, the principles that guide his writing, and his unique insights...

Today I talked to David Tereshchuk about his memoir A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter (Envelope Books, 2024) Tereshchuk leapt from a bleak childhood in a small town on the English-Scottish borders to a precocious high-flying career as a TV reporter, first in London, then in New York. During his years as a journalist, he managed to elicit revealing statements from tyrants...

Join us as we discuss Yaroslav Trofimov’s recent publication, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024). We dive into the history of his journalism, the personal account of his reporting, and the ongoing war on Ukraine. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very of...

Elia Powers' book Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality (Rutgers UP, 2024) explores how journalists from historically marginalized groups have long felt pressure to conform when performing for audiences. Many speak with a flat, “neutral” accent, modify their delivery to hide distinctive vocal attributes, dress conventionally to appeal to the “average” viewer, and mai...

In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) brings to life the remarkable relationships Whit...

In 2005, Brad Balukjian left his position as a magazine fact-checker to pursue a dream job: partner with his childhood hero, The Iron Sheik (whose real name was Khosrow Vaziri), to write his biography. Things quickly went south, culminating in the Sheik threatening Balukjian’s life. Now seventeen years later, Balukjian returns to the road in search of not only a reunion with the Sheik, but somethi...