Democracy, Inc.

David S. Allen is an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is the coeditor of Freeing the First Amendment: Critical Perspectives on Freedom of Expression.

• Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1A 1. The Rise of Corporate Rationalization 2. Corporate Rationalization and Discourse Democracy: Seeking Alternatives Part 2 3. Professionalization of the Press and Law: Routinization and Management 4. Defining a Professional Mission: The Law and the Question of Public Representation Part 3 5. Corporate Ownership and the Press: Collapsing Distinctions 6. Public Television, Parks, Parades, and Rest Areas: Managing the Property of Public Life 7. Resisting Corporate Rationalization: Toward a Discourse Theory of the First Amendment Notes Index

"From a master's hand, wall-to-wall argument not limited to the cranium but invigorating our conscience as well. This erudite book is destined for the classics, in the legacy of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems, and Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. High-energy ideas on another order of magnitude, taking public life back from corporate ideology and re-creating it with discourse democracy instead."--Clifford G. Christians, author of Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age"Democracy, Inc. is an important and illuminating book. In an approach entirely consistent with his theory, Allen presents a clearly reasoned argument in place of table-pounding denunciations of the corporatization of the press and law. He attributes the problems of democracy neither to conspiracies nor to unbridled greed, but to the structure of a particular brand of capitalism whose modes of support he clearly identifies in law, making clear the route to real reforms in the process."--Thomas Streeter, author of Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States