Reddit reviews The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

If you've not read Brooke Gladstone's book, The Influencing Machine, I highly recommend you check it out. Should be required media literacy reading. http://www.amazon.com/The-Influencing-Machine-Brooke-Gladstone/dp/0393342468

Two of my perennial favorites, which I'll add to some of the terrific suggestions below:

• 'The Elements of Journalism' by Kovach and Rosenstiel. Great grounding in the essential principles of the practice. There's also a decade-old online supplement.
  
  
• 'The Influencing Machine,' a graphic non-novel by Brooke Gladstone, offering an easy-to-read overview of a lot of thinking about journalism and media, including a discussion of journalism's real biases.
  
  But besides those, much of the writing, especially on technology, gets old very quickly, so as other people have pointed out, books aren't always your best route. Get yourself into the social media conversation about journalism, where you'll find people like @romenesko and @jayrosen_nyu and many many other astute and intelligent commentators taking on the issues that are going to shape your career. But those two books are a solid foundation of the ideas underlying journalism.