ROB ANDERSON is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University. He is the author of Students as Real People: Interpersonal Communication and Education (1979)
-author of Before the Story: Interviewing and Communication Skills for Journalists (1989), Questions of Communication: A Practical Introduction to Theory (1993), and Accounting and Communication (forthcoming) and co-editor of The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, Voice, and Community (forthcoming).
ROBERT DARDENNE is Associate Professor at the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg. He has also had a distinguished career as an investigative reporter, writer, and editor in New York, Washington, D.C., Louisiana, and Mexico City. His writing has appeared in the Journal of American Culture and in Media, Myths and Narratives, edited by James Carey (1988).
GEORGE M. KILLENBERG is Professor in the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg. He is the author of Public Affairs Reporting: Covering the News in the Information Age (1992), and co-author, with Rob Anderson, of Before the Story: Interviewing and Communication Skills for Journalists (1989).

Arguing in the first book-length exploration of a conversational and dialogic model for journalism that accurately reporting the news is a surprisingly limiting if not disabling mission, the authors draw optimistically on past strengths of the media, especially print journalism, to reform and redefine a more ecumenical, constructive, participative, and democratically responsive role for journalism's institutional future. The book's scope is wide, and it includes many current trends: minority voices, contextualizing the news, providing interactive community forums, reconciling informational and entertainment functions, creating public opinion, and understanding the nature of bias.

Foreword: Making the News Relevant to Democracy by John J. Pauly
Introduction
Reconsidering Journalism: News within a Democratic Dialogue
The Conversation of Journalism: A Metaphor for News
News and Realities: Exploring Practice and Promise
Ecumenical Journalism: The Multicultural and Multidisciplinary Commons
Connecting with Community: Journalism and Responsibility
The Listening Role for Journalism: A Place in Public Conversation
Newstelling: Once upon a Time in Journalism
Journalism's Emerging Agenda: Toward a Journalism that Communicates
Index