Open AccessREVIEW: How ‘alternative’ media can again be mainstream
Author(s) -
David Robie
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
pacific journalism review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 2324-2035
pISSN - 1023-9499
DOI - 10.24135/pjr.v18i2.277
Subject(s) - mainstream , fourth estate , alternative media , journalism , media studies , sociology , element (criminal law) , publishing , power (physics) , news media , estate , project commissioning , political science , law , physics , quantum mechanics
Review of Challenging the News: The Journalism of Alternative and Community Media, by Susan Forde. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2011, 214pp. ISBN 978 0230243576 (pbk)Ironically, alternative and independent media were not always marginalised. Less than two centuries ago, they were the ‘mainstream’. They being the radical and working class media of Europe and the new world colonies. This is a central point made in Susan Forde’s Challenging The News in her search to find a refocused critique of the Fourth Estate notions that make sense of the contemporary alternative media’s role. An essential element, she concludes, is the ‘key importance that someone is watching the watchers; that media power itself must be monitored, assessed, critiqued, and challenged. Alternative journalists provide that critique’ (p. 169).