Judith and William Serrin didn’t set out to engage in journalism bashing. There’s more than enough of that and not without reason.

Instead, the journalists/academics have written a book “about journalism and doing good.” There’s enough of that too, though readers of the more than 125 works explored may find that many are more a part of journalism’s proud history than of its often conflicted present.

“Some publishers and broadcast executives might as well be selling shoes as selling news,” they write in the introduction. “They have brought to the newsroom the values of the boardroom and allow Wall Street’s idea of the bottom line to be the mark of success.”

But then again. The Serrins add over the centuries “and continuing today” journalism has helped make America better. It’s those examples that make up their book Muckraking! The Journalism That Changed America, from The New Press, New York.

They point to journalism’s having “created” Yosemite National Park, northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area, the Appalachian Trail, the Everglades National Park, and the C&O Canal.

Their 38-page chapter on conservation looks at 12 examples dating between 1791 and 1975. They provide extensive excerpts and accompanying elaborating graphics, photos, and narrative for instance, on John Muir’s early calls to protect Yosemite Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Editor Les Line’s efforts to “reinvigorate” Audubon magazine, ending with his firing in 1991 “as part of a shake up for the society and the magazine.”

Knowledgeable readers of Muckraking! will have no trouble adding more, and more recent, examples of journalism’s “doing good” on conservation and environmental issues. That does not undercut the implication that there is perhaps less of that kind of journalism today than in days past.

But readers who care about environmental journalism and journalism generally will want to read beyond the chapter on conservation. Particularly helpful, perhaps, is the public health and safety chapter, with its 12 case studies, and the press on “the press” chapter, again with a dozen case studies.

Muckraking! may be particularly informative for those needing a better understanding of how and where responsible journalism can do work leading to a better society. For those more steeped in the better side of journalism, it can serve as a useful and highly readable refresher course, one that can help answer the question “Why exactly did I go into journalism in the first place?” amidst all the self-doubts that accrue over the course of one’s career.

Muckraking! The Journalism That Changed America, Copyright 2002, The New Press, New York, ISBN 1-56584-681-8, paperback, 392 pages, $25.