Journalism’s Roving Eye is a prodigious account of a specific form of newsgathering—foreign correspondence—that has long been buffeted by pressures to cut costs and waning public interest in what happens abroad, even before the more recent challenges posed by the Internet. Journalism has a raffish and colorful past, but the annals of foreign reporting are particularly suited to the storytelling that Hamilton provides. His book is an expansive narrative that also underscores serious questions about what is happening now.
Not just for journalism hounds, Journalism’s Roving Eye ladles from the last two and a half centuries a detailed history of American reporting from abroad. Hamilton, a former foreign correspondent turned academic, assembles the components of the big foreign-reporting machine—the editors, publishers, reporters, fixers, and shooters as well as technologies such as transoceanic telegraph cables, television, the geosynchronous satellite, the personal computer, and the Internet—to produce an authoritative book. There is nothing like it in the library. [Best Books of 2009]
Not just for journalism hounds, Journalism’s Roving Eye ladles from the last two and a half centuries a detailed history of American reporting from abroad. Hamilton, a former foreign correspondent turned academic, assembles the components of the big foreign-reporting machine—the editors, publishers, reporters, fixers, and shooters as well as technologies such as transoceanic telegraph cables, television, the geosynchronous satellite, the personal computer, and the Internet—to produce an authoritative book. There is nothing like it in the library. [Best Books of 2009]
"Journalism's Roving Eye is an alluring and enlightening piece of work. Hamilton... spurns plodding narrative in favor of an intelligent tour, full of unexpected pleasures and plums. The book, in its scope, detail, and sheer mastery, is a major achievement. — James Boylan, Columbia Journalism Review
"Not just for journalism hounds, Journalism's Roving Eye ladles from the last two and a half centuries a detailed history of American reporting from abroad. Hamilton, a former foreign correspondent turned academic, assembles the components of the big foreign-reporting machine — the editors, publishers, reporters, fixers, and shooters as well as technologies such as transoceanic telegraph cables, television, the geosynchronous satellite, the personal computer, and the Internet — to produce an authoritative book. There is nothing like it in the library." — Slate Magazine
"Journalism's Roving Eye is a prodigious account of a specific form of newsgathering—foreign correspondence—that has long been buffeted by pressures to cut costs and waning public interest in what happens abroad, even before the more recent challenges posed by the Internet. Journalism has a raffish and colorful past, but the annals of foreign reporting are particularly suited to the storytelling that Hamilton provides. His book is an expansive narrative that also underscores serious questions about what is happening now." — Foreign Affairs
"Journalism's Roving Eye is a remarkable achievement and deserves to be ranked as the definitive history of American news coverage of the rest of the world. [It] should remind people of the richness of foreign reporting and the value of such journalism in an era where we are all citizens of the world." — Dallas Morning News
"This monumental yet eminently readable book starts to fill a major hole in mass communication history literature: the development of foreign correspondence." — Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
