Pop Culture is News, Not Clickbait, University Professor Says in New Book

The book “Pop Culture, Politics, and the News” makes an impassioned appeal to the field of journalism. It urges media outlets and editors to give pop culture and entertainment journalism a higher level of importance and to devote a greater amount of resources to covering these topics. The book reveals, primarily via interviews with industry insiders, that there is a general consensus inside the business that entertainment journalism is falling short of its true potential.

“This news is seen as quite profitable, but it’s also seen as a low-reputation field, not as valued,” says Penney. “While this news is seen as quite profitable, it’s also seen as a low-reputation field.” We truly do need journalists who cover pop culture and the entertainment industry to help us comprehend the ways in which politics and pop culture are interacting with one another. The issue is that the economics of this system are structured in such a manner that this kind of news is a low-cost technique to capture people’s attention.

According to Penney, major publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have the resources to take on this type of storytelling. However, “not every news company has the ability to do high-quality reporting, to hire full-time critics, and to not rely on fast turnaround freelance work used to fill a news hole.” It is more about those who have and those who do not have.