How Organizations Adapt to News Media.

Thomas Schillemans new book analyzes the mediatization of public organizations. His study is the first of its kind as previous related studies have more explicitly explored the mediatization of politics or other phenomena such as fashion, play, music, or religion. Organizations may be conceived of as phenomena as well, but they are also formal groups of actors that are, precisely, organized and therefore can be analysed as actors practicing organization. When Thomas Schillemanns worked for a public organization in Holland, he found that the news was an ever-present companion for his colleagues and himself. At present, Schil-lemanns researches public administration at Utrecht University, and he has set out to study the mediatization of public services from a governance perspective. One good reason for doing so is that public and third sector service providers in Holland feature in a third of the daily news outputs. In the UK and Australia, the number is even higher (p. 15). The book is among many recent empirical studies of mediatization that follow more theoretically informed works on mediatization by, for instance (and to mention just a few)