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Class Struggle and the New York Mets: A Conversation with AM Gittlitz
With his riveting chronicle of the New York Mets baseball team, AM Gittlitz is emerging as a rising star in the field of popular social history.
13 Sept 2026
Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026)
Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The way news is delivered has changed dramatically and so has the way we consume it. Now, we no longer look to the news just to learn and be informed; we expect enjoyment as well. In Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It) (MIT Press, 2026), Jennifer Hoewe (Purdue University) explains how and why this shift toward news enjoyment occurred and what we can do to address the information crisis we now face. Evidence shows that enjoyment-driven decisions are leaving us less informed—despite what we might expect—because they lead us to ignore other news that matters. This book explains why we don’t always select the best sources of news, how we respond to the news sources we do select, and how that information impacts our political knowledge and decisions.
Hoewe also offers solutions for how to improve news creation and news use moving forward. Specifically, she shows how news consumers can escape their “self-righteous” consumption cycles; how news and social media companies can play a role in curbing our automatic amplification of enjoyable news; and how we can all do better when it comes to the information we seek and share.
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12 Sept 2026
Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of engagement. Conceptualizing these engagements collectively as a multimodal or mixed-media ecology of influence, Umejei highlights China’s ability to reach African audiences directly through Chinese media, indirectly through African news organizations, institutionally through partnerships, professionally through the journalists it trains, and infrastructurally through technologies implemented by Chinese firms.
Underlying the book is a strong normative concern about the implications of this expansion of Chinese media engagement for Africa’s democracy, leadership, developmental aspirations, and decolonization. In this regard, Umejei addresses the question: Is the emerging South–South media relationship helping to decolonize African journalism by weakening Western dominance, or is China principally replacing Western influence with a new form of Chinese influence? The book draws on semi-structured interviews with journalists across fourteen African countries, content analysis, policy documents, and publicly available materials.
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Who has been a guest on New Books in Journalism
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
David de Boer
Matthew Facciani
Dr Suruchi Mazumdar
Aatish Taseer
Arianne Edmonds
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
4.0 / 5
1 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 61 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
85
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
93
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Guest appearances
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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Questions about New Books in Journalism
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Caleb Zakarin host the show. Published by Marshall Poe.
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