“Making the News sets forth the deceptively simple-sounding argument that the news agenda is not random but ’skewed’ so that few issues reach and remain on the front page. By applying new methods to explain these patterns irrefutably and on a broad scale, Amber E. Boydstun makes a valuable contribution to the literature on political communication.”

Regina Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin

"This is a seminal contribution about how the media work and influence democracy. Anyone interested in communication and democracy must read this book.”

James N. Druckman, Northwestern University

“Amber E. Boydstun’s observation that the mass media processes information disproportionately is important enough, but she gives us much, much more: a theory of the causes of the lack of proportion and extensive empirical analyses of the dynamics of disproportionality based on a decade of stories on the front page of the New York Times.  The result is a book that fully integrates the media with emerging theories of policy change. It will be widely read among media scholars as well as students of public policy, along with anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of media coverage.”

Bryan D. Jones, University of Texas at Austin

“In Making the News, Amber Boydstun offers a detailed, empirical account of how news is made and, while celebrating the ongoing spirit of the fifth estate, questions the apparently reactive basis on which editorial decisions are made. . . . Boydstun’s extensive research is collected in pages of data and case studies, including analyses of the ongoing coverage of the ‘War on Terror’ and why, by contrast, smaller news items become front-page stories.”

Times Literary Supplement

“[Boydstun’s] thoughtful approach, grounded largely in political science scholarship, will clearly be of interest to scholars working on media coverage of politics. . . . Recommended.”

Choice

“[An] important book. . . . Boydstun has successfully imported and recalibrated a robust policy-attention model for media coverage; rigorously tested it across a number of issues, timespans, and sources; and, using computer simulation, estimated the precise skew of media attention. . . . [Making the News] is very likely to inspire further research, signaling its importance for political communication scholars, especially for those interested in agenda-setting and framing research.”

Political Communication

“Boydstun demonstrates convincingly that existing theories on their own are inadequate to explain the familiar patterns in news coverage, and her book sets out to pull together these various perspectives to create and test a more complete theory of news generation that can account for the periods of explosive change and relative stability. . . . [Making the News] is an important contribution to political communication and a must-read for scholars and others who want to understand the impact of news media on the political system.”

Public Opinion Quarterly

“Boydstun’s research provides fresh insight into the role of the media as a political institution, especially in the book’s treatment of news attention as a dynamic concept for analyzing coverage over time. As a result, this book holds significance for scholars interested in journalism, media, public policy, political science, and the societal effects of news coverage. Ultimately, Boydstun provides important analysis that helps concisely explain how familiar and perpetual cycles of current events and news coverage shape democratic governance.”

Journalism