Bout of Books Day 6, or Yesterday's News

Yesterday was a writing day for me, so I didn't read very much, unless you count re-reading. I'm working on an academic essay that includes a discussion of Weapons of Democracy by Jonathan Auerbach. Weapons is an intellectual history of how early 20th century US reformers and politicians understood the field of "public opinion", the mass media, and how they interacted with the newly created field of public relations. While many of us have heard of Edward Bernays and George Creel, this slim book could serve both as a new introductory text for people unfamiliar with this field, as well as being an original contribution to an ongoing discussion about the history of American media and the Progressive movement.  Auerbach is also the editor of a recent Handbook of Propaganda Studies, and his work seems especially relevant now, given the attention we are currently giving to the problem of "fake news" and the president's attacks on the press. I was surprised to read, for example, that Theodore Roosevelt had attacked investigative journalists of his time, inventing the term "muck-raker" to describe them in a speech to the Gridiron Club, where he" worked himself into a fever pitch over 'hysterical sensationalism' and against those 'wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire existing order.' "