With traditional print media sinking under shrinking readerships, redundancies and declining advertising revenue, the imminent death of 'quality' journalism is being prophesied by academics, publishers and journalists. Are we losing a vital public sphere for interrogating those in power and creating local and national communities? Or is a moribund media status quo getting a long overdue shake up? Milissa Deitz argues that far from being the grave digger, the internet is in fact reinventing and reinvigorating 'citizen journalism'. More democratic through interactivity and participation, more immediately responsive to rapidly changing events and issues, we increasingly go online for our news. Far from undermining traditional journalism, a changing mediascape composed of dedicated online journals, blogs, social networking, twitter and mobile telephony, is returning journalism to its radical and democratic roots, recreating the feisty, informed public domain extinguished over the twentieth century by the concentration of media ownership in Australia.

‘It’s good to read a book that is optimistic about the future of journalism. Deitz is alive to the opportunities offered by new communications technology for changing the way we think about news. The result is a comprehensive and clear-eyed account of where we are and where we might be going. She makes a case for the continuing usefulness of journalism, if not journalists.’

Margaret Simons