Media/Discourse: Editorial introduction

McHoul, A. (1991) Media/Discourse: Editorial introduction. Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, 5 (1). pp. 4-8.

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Abstract

When Tom O'Regan asked me to edit a volume of Continuum on 'media discourse', I didn't know what I was in for. Not only didn't I realise the labour involved (from the enforced obsequiousness of soliciting on three continents, to the tedium of changing Harvard references to MLA, to the anxieties of unreturned proofs, to the interface between ten different wordprocessors and a desktop publishing program in three different computer systems ...); not only that, I was unsure what direction to take - as it were, 'intellectually'. I never professed to have any expertise in media. The nearest I ever got was when Griffith University asked me (as a job candidate) to submit a course outline for a Part-time BA course on film, even though the post I'd applied for was in sociology! When I want to know about media, I usually rely on picking the brains of Tom himself, David Wills, Josko Petkovic or John Hartley.