My first encounter with the esteemed and formidable David L. Paletz was making a losing bid for a new edition of his original textbook, The Media in American Politics. Eventually, I won a contract for a third edition, but in-between, we had much more fun editing a series, “Media and Power,” which started with Paradigm Publishers in 2007 and continued with Routledge as recently as 2023. A sampling of titles in the series conveys an inkling of David’s impish interests: Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope (about the Howard Dean campaign and its early use of the internet), Spinner in Chief (about presidential salesmanship), Sex and Violence (about the Hollywood censorship wars), Star Power (about American democracy in the age of the celebrity candidate), and Spectacle and Diversity (about transnational media and global culture), just to name a few. The author pool is as dashing as David himself, including everyone from Martin Tolchin and Zephyr Teachout to Roderick Hart, Cees Jan Hamelink, Christine Sylvester, and Janice Peck, among many more.
The series MO went like this: David would give me a list of people and topics, and I would make appointments with as many as possible to cram into a strictly circumscribed conference schedule at political science and communication studies meetings. Dinner recaps were mandatory. And then the relentless follow-ups would begin, David never letting any loose end lingering. Along the way I was privileged to meet David’s wife, the renowned Ibsen scholar, Toril Moi, and to visit them in their architectural wonder of a house during a beautiful early autumn day in 2022. I will not forget the many happy, funny, and intellectually engaging times we shared over thirty or more years of publishing together.
Jennifer Knerr
Editor and Publisher