A contribuição de jornalistas-escritores na produção de coffee table books

• Ano de defesa: 2011
• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Francisco S. Barbosa da
• Orientador(a): Salles, Cecilia Almeida
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Estudos Pós-Graduados em Comunicação e Semiótica
• Departamento: Comunicação
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: Livro; Jornalismo; Literatura
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Book; Journalism; Literature
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::COMUNICACAO
• Link de acesso: https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/4276

The objective of this study is to become familiar with the world of coffee table books, to place them historically, culturally and in relation to the market, and to propose a means of conceptualizing and producing them, in order to classify their content, in line with the journalism and literature of journalist-authors. The books are not born but, rather, become coffee table books, based on given product, purpose and usage characteristics: they are big, replete with photos, illustrated, ideally short texts, luxury finishing, and are a uniquely made to be shown to the public, and not hidden on bookshelves. We separated these works, according to their content and presentation, into three categories: institutional or made to order , sponsored, and for exclusively commercial purposes. By researching their history, one finds that exactly the particularities that distinguish this type from the other books, that is, beauty and lavishness, end up tarnishing their image. When their editorial content is poorly done, they are seen as superficial, vain, redundant, superfluous, and prejudiced, especially those that we placed in the made to order category, which will receive the greater part of our interest. It is no wonder that those who produce these books do not call them coffee table books. By analyzing the works published over the past decade, and following-up the productive process of professionals from the editing business, supported by a bibliography of theorists from journalism, literature and contemporary society, we found that, when carefully developed, usually with a journalist-author at the head of the project, these books can no longer be seen as a mere decorative piece, but, rather, as sources of information and entertainment. Given the nature of the coffee table books, made to be consulted casually and randomly, we present the hypothesis that the short texts, in article format, like a story and, to a lesser degree, a chronicle, they can be one of the most efficient forms of narrative for capturing the attention of the reader, and giving credit to the works, whose market has been systematically and consistently growing