Walter Lippmann’s Ghost: An Interview With Michael Schudson

Abstract

An esteemed scholar conducts an enlightening examination of the enduring issues of the press as a democratic institution, the professionalization of the journalist, journalism schools, liberalism, and science. This imagined one-on-one conversation with Walter Lippmann is lightly humorous yet offers important insights on the accountability of the government by the press in days gone by and on the accountability of the press to the public in our digital age.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Unannounced and generally unreported, Walter Lippmann’s ghost attended the International Communication Association annual conference in Seattle in 2014. Michael Schudson, Columbia Journalism School professor, sociologist, and media scholar, was there and managed to obtain this exclusive interview (it has been edited slightly to bring it up to date).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Schudson

Michael Schudson (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1976) is Professor of Journalism and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books and articles, which include Discovering the News (Basic Books, 1978), The Sociology of News (W. W. Norton, 2011), and The Rise of the Right to Know (Harvard, 2015).