Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlinis an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
CountryUnited States of America
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You're in the news business and you're in the business of arresting the attention of people and prying them away from what they take for granted. They must read the next day's paper and so on. While the desire to gain attention is a dynamic in journalism, it's not the only one. The predominant dynamic since journalism's inception has been the desire to capture the attention of people. Another dynamic is the extension of democratic enlightenment.
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Can't address the big fact that the bulk of life is taking place under the pressure of an onslaught of images.
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Again, the only trends that interest the corporate boys and girls are demographic and businesslike. I doubt the think tank reports interest them much.
framework
My business is the analytical framework.
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Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history.
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Americas are, for a variety of reasons, the most adept at producing the kind of entertainment that delivers easy satisfactions.
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The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.
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As I write at the end, if we step back and face the enormity of the torrent, then we have taken the first step to imagining what we might want to do about it.