Book Review: The Newsphere: Understanding the News and Information Environment, by Christine M. Tracy

The Newsphere: Understanding the News and Information Environment. Christine M. Tracy. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 132 pp. $129.95 hbk. $34.95 pbk.In The Newsphere: Understanding the News and Information Environment, Christine M. Tracy seeks to position the citizen journalist movement, mainstream media industries, the growth in digital information sources, and the individual citizen within the frame- work of Neil Postman's media ecology theory and Teilhard de Chardin's cosmic conver- gence, human evolutionary theory. Tracy is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University.The term "newsphere" is an adaptation of Teilhard's term "noosphere," a word used to describe what the evolutionary philosopher saw as the "soul of the earth" that "rep- resents the total pattern of thinking organisms and their activity, including the patterns of their interrelations" (Teilhard, quoted, p. 112). Tracy argues that contemporary digi- tal news coverage reflects this interrelationship, which in turn has led to a breakdown of the hierarchy of production and delivery that previously created and controlled news. Thus, Teilhard's "noosphere" is apparent in what Tracy calls the "newsphere" of emerging digital information and news creation and change. In The Newsphere, news is "networked, participatory, relevant, and transparent" (p. 113), open to all citizens and professionals who care to create and share information and opinions. This new dynamic and dialogic interaction thereby creates a changing ecological system of exchanges among journalists and the public and changes our understanding of the meaning and credibility of public opinion, news, and information. "When viewed as an ecology, news is not a product to be consumed but a conscious act to engage with and produce shared information that has value in a community: This is how cultures and societies create their histories" (p. 21).Citing the work of James Carey and Michael Schudson, Tracy distinguishes media from journalism and journalism from news; in this new dynamic system, media are the forms in which news is disseminated, and journalism is the practice of and responsibil- ity for sharing that news. Understanding the flexibility and change in media forms and journalistic practice thereby becomes an essential component of studying media ecol- ogy. She includes a case study (written by Helen Nevius Adamopoulos) that offers an analysis of Baltimore, Maryland, media and content that was conducted by researchers from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism as an example of this type of media ecology research. Another case study of the widespread coverage of a 2009 Somali pirate capture of the Maersk Alabama and reactions to it in and across media and the blogosphere in the book provides an example of the specific narrative aspect of contemporary journalism storytelling across various media outlets and the ways in which mainstream media and bloggers can react to connect or correct such a story from various social, political, and economic contexts. …