I really love the book:
Allan Bell. 1991. The language of news media. Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, MA : Blackwell.
I just wish I had more time to really read it, and not scan it. It’s too detailed sometimes and presents rather common-sense facts, but I see it as a good description of the news-making process, and it perfectly arranges and conceptualises my own experience of working for the media. Just look at these elegant expressions:
“lexicon of newsworthiness” of the leads
“telegraphic syntax” of the headlines
headlines and their metaphors “stamp the newspapers individuality”
Another nice article on the media:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10584600600629711
These media theories are scarily true – I recognise the same patterns in my own work, which I did before CEU.