Smarter Summer Reads: a journalist's shortlist

By Fabiola Carletti

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.  ~Oscar Wilde

When a journalist as smart as Kathryn Gretsinger lets you in on her summer reading short list, you pay attention.

As fellow student Jodie Martinson once said, Kathryn is a “professional human being." She is  fantastic at what she does — both as a UBC professor and a CBC journalist — and, true to form, she recently took the time to share the source of some of her smarts with her students.

Below you'll find her 15 suggested summer reads. Please feel free to add your own favourites in the comments.

• The New Journalist – Paul Benedetti, Tim Currie, Kim Kierans
• The News about the News – Downey and Kaiser
• A Little History of the World – E.M. Gombrich
• The Chaos Scenario – Bob Garfield
• We the Media – Dan Gillmor
• Sound Reporting – Jonathan Kern
• The Elements of Journalism – Kovach and Rosensteil
• Asking Questions – Paul McLaughlin (Hey! This is a former prof of mine. I can vouch for this one!)
• Convergent Journalism – Quinn and Flak
• REPORTING:  Writings from the New Yorker – David Remnick
• Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
• The  Elements of Style - Strunk and White
• On Writing Well - William Zinsser
• What’s happening to News: The information explosion and the crisis in journalism – Jack Fuller
• A History of Canadian Journalism - William Craick

Fabiola Carletti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. She recently graduated summa cum laude from York University, having earned an honours double major in Professional Writing and Communication Studies. Her digital footprints are all over the internet, but you can learn more about her by reading her blog, or chasing her around on twitter. 

Photo credit: Gibson Claire McGuire Regester on Flickr