New books on the media industries (and related book review assignment)

As the midterm assignment for my Media Industries graduate seminar (new syllabus to be posted soon), students write up book reviews of recent publications. 

The main requirements I have for selecting a book include:

1. The book has to have been published in the last three years, thereby increasing the odds that the student can publish their review;
2. A reasonable amount of the book has to focus on the media industries. (I leave the exact amount open for discussion between myself and the student – they need to make the case.); 
3. Students have to be able to identify a venue to which they could send it for publication. Prior to writing their reviews, students are advised to read the submission instructions as well as look at sample reviews in a range of journals (e.g., Popular Communication, Cinema Journal, Television and New Media, Scope, etc.). Ideally, those students who are satisfied with their reviews can subsequently send them out for publication.

I tried this assignment for the first time last spring and the students told me they found it to be a worthwhile exercise. They were able to spend a week of the semester focusing on a subject that was of interest to them while also learning to craft an essay that suited the particular (and peculiar?) demands of the scholarly book review format.

A few caveats about this list: I have not had a chance to read many of the books on the list, and thus cannot speak to the extent to which all are focused explicitly on the media industries per se.  Also, not all of the books are by media studies scholars. Indeed, there is a rich body of work on the media industries being generated by journalists, mediamakers, media activists and legal scholars, among others. Further, if I knew the book was going to be released soon and saw that it was already listed on Amazon, I put it on the list.  It would be wonderful if could hyperlink each book to Amazon or add some articles to my list as well, but I can’t set aside that kind of time, at least right now.

Many of the books listed here have been recommended to me by others. Thanks in particular to Ben Aslinger, Jennifer Holt, Cynthia Meyers, and Mark Stewart for their suggestions. I also recommend checking out Aymar Jean Christian’s blog for a more extensive list of canonical essays and books.

If you have recommendations for additional books that I might include, please let me know. I hope this list can prove useful for others trying to keep track of this type of work which, much to my joy, seems to be getting larger and more diverse every year.

Books on the media industries (since 2008) below the jump:

In Media Res, Two Months In (and the Fall 2010 Call for Curators)

It's been a little over two months since I started serving as Coordinating Editor for In Media Res. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a terrific group of Georgia State grad students to help with the administrative, recruiting and technical tasks. I am pleased with how all is progressing thus far, and we have a (long and growing) list of additional goals for the site that we hope to institute over the course of the next several months.

One of the most immediate changes we have decided to enact involves moving away from individual open submissions to focusing instead solely on theme weeks. We have found that the best conversations can be generated when a group of people are focused on discussing the same topic over the course of the week. We also hope that this set-up can prove valuable pedagogically, as an entire week's conversation might be assigned for a class to read, watch and comment on.

I would love to hear any suggestions you might have regarding additional improvements we can make to the site. In addition, if you have used posts for either teaching or research purposes, please let me know -- it is helpful for us to get a better sense of how the site is used (as well as how you might like to use it in the future). You can email me at aperren at gsu dot edu or through the In Media Res email address (inmediares.gsu at gmail dot com).

Another change we are implementing involves meeting to arrange our schedule on a quarterly basis. Individual In Media Res staff members handle a given week. Each theme week coordinator then decides whether they would like to recruit curators on their own or have their week be part of the general quarterly call. We will meet in early November to plan for our spring schedule, so if you have any ideas for future theme weeks -- or would like to help coordinate one -- please do contact us.

Below the fold are the weeks for the Fall 2010 Schedule for which we are currently accepting proposals from interested curators.

New Publications!

I'm happy to report that a couple of articles that I worked on last year have come out in the past few weeks. Both of these articles came out quite quickly (at least in terms of scholarly publishing).

The first piece, "Business as Unusual: Conglomerate-Sized Challenges for Film and Television in the Digital Arena," is part of a special issue from the Journal of Popular Film and Television on the state of TV edited by Ron Simon and Brian Rose. I feel honored to be included in the company of Jonathan Gray, Victoria Johnson, Laurie Ouellette, Derek Kompare, Daniel Chamberlain, Denise Mann and Max Dawson. My essay surveys the diverse ways that film and TV divisions of media conglomerates are circulating their content online. Even since I completed it last summer, certain companies have shifted their strategies. Nonetheless, I hope it provides a useful snapshot of a particular historical moment.

The second piece, "Producing Filmed Entertainment," is a chapter in Mark Deuze's new edited collection, Managing Media Work. This essay looks at how decisions made with regard to labor, technology, locations, and marketing are having a substantial impact not only on the opportunities and constraints facing those working in production but also on the types of commercial film and television content shown on various screens. Again, I'm excited to be included with the diverse group of cultural studies, communication, media studies and management scholars in this collection.

I also recently wrote about my experiences at Comic-Con for the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Media and Cultural Studies website, Antenna. I'm hoping to blog more about the event here in the next few days... 

A New Look, A New URL

Media Industries and Other Stuff was a good starter name, sure, but it proved to be far too clunky and unwieldy. Please welcome the newly re-branded and oh-so-simple The Media Industries (http://www.themediaindustries.net/).  (As long as you think this re-branding effort is better than, say, the one shown above, I'm happy.)

Along with a new name, you will notice that the site has a spiffy new look. I have also gone through and updated the links throughout, adding some new ones and deleting dead ones. As always, please do contact me via Twitter (http://twitter.com/aperren) or email (aperren at gsu dot edu) if you have any suggestions.

Advice for Aspiring Film & TV Writers: A Chat with Burn Notice's Michael Horowitz

As part of research for an essay (forthcoming), I recently interviewed Burn Notice staff writer, Michael Horowitz. After years of developing a career as a feature film writer, Horowitz transitioned into television writing at the start of the second season of Burn Notice. We chatted at length about how much more fulfilling he often found writing for TV to be these days, as opposed to writing for feature films. During the course of our conversation, he also offered some useful advice for those interested in writing for both film and television, which I wanted to pass on here.

AP: Do you have any recommendations for people who want to become writers?

MH: There is some basic advice that I got a long time ago. Everybody who is trying to do any version of this, I think will succeed. If you really want to write anything for film or television, there is no better litmus test: Write ten scripts and throw them away. And just keep powering through. Everybody just gets obsessed with their first script. Stuck on it forever.

AP: Yes.

MH: And I think nothing gets you better faster than writing a script, giving it to some friends. Have them read it and give you notes. Then go do a revision – actually go through and take it all the way to the end, you know, like two drafts. Then throw it away. Because it’s terrible. And then do it again. I legitimately think I would say do ten [different scripts] if you can. I sort of wish I could go back in a time machine to the college me, when I had endless stamina for writing and all the time in the world and liked to stay up all night. Write ten and throw them away. Five is more reasonable for people, but just keep powering through stuff. If you want to do TV, if you want to do hour-long series, you should be writing one episode of every show.