In his new book, ¨Journalists and Their Shadows,¨ Patrick Lawrence describes his experience over decades as an editor and foreign correspondent of watching the media rise and fall in its ability to serve as a force to hold power accountable. Lawrence writes about the shadows, or authentic selves, that most journalists currently sacrifice in order to maintain employment in mainstream media outlets and the detrimental impact this has on public discourse. He also describes the antidote – an independent alternative media – and the current obstacles to creating a much-needed vibrant democratized media system.
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Patrick Lawrence is a writer and columnist. He has published five books and is now at work on his sixth. He served as a correspondent abroad for many years and is also an essayist, editor, and critic. Lawrence has taught at universities in the U.S. and abroad and lectures widely. He currently produces two commentaries (weekly and bi-weekly), primarily on foreign affairs and the media.
Lawrence was a correspondent and subsequently a columnist overseas for nearly thirty years, chiefly for the honorable and now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, the (also honorable, also defunct) International Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. He covered nearly every country in the region, a number of them extensively over many years. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his reportage from Korea during the last years of the dictatorships. Lawrence served as News Editor of the Herald Tribune’s Asian edition before returning to the United States, in 2010.
Apart from his staff work, Lawrence’s reportage, commentary, essays, criticism, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Business Week, TIME, The Washington Quarterly, World Policy Journal, The Globalist, The Nation, Asian Art News,and numerous other publications. He is now foreign affairs columnist at The Nation. He makes frequent television and radio appearances.