Journalism and Crime

Bethany Usher is Director of Education for postgraduate studies at the School of Arts and Culture at Newcastle University and a senior lecturer in journalism theory and practice. Prior to becoming an academic, Usher was a journalist, working as a staff correspondent for several national and regional newspapers, including as a crime correspondent.

• 1 Introduction. 2. Early modern origins of crime news and journalism. 3. The 18th century carnivalesque crime conversation. 4. Rhetorical wars: Old guards, new radicals and the (de)criminalisation of the "lower orders". 5. From Newgate to New Journalism, via New York: Crime journalism as transatlantic phenomenon. 6. Tabloidism triumphant! 7. Neoliberal tabloidism and hypercriminality. 8. Conclusion: what’s to be done?

Although crime reporting is one of the foundational discourses of journalism, it has received less critical attention than many other areas of news. And much of what it has received has focused on its most unsavoury characteristics. Bethany Usher argues convincingly that if we are to understand the nature of crime journalism – and indeed attempt to improve it – we need to understand the relationship between journalism and crime from their origins to the present day. To this end she has produced a ground-breaking work which takes a critical transdisciplinary approach to the subject. Combining theoretical frameworks from a wide range of disciplines, the result is a book which goes well beyond journalism studies and into history, sociology and political analysis. It also succeeds admirably in its aim of being a call to arms. Professor Julian Petley, editor of the Journal of British Cinema and Television and editorial board member of British Journalism Review.This book was a joy to read! Written in a scholarly, yet accessible, manner it engages with some of the key debates in journalism today but does so by taking a systematic and thoroughly researched historical perspective. I fully endorse the author's argument that in order to understand how contemporary crime journalism might work better in the public interest, there are many key lessons to be taken from the past.Professor Jamie Medhurst, editor of Media History.