JOUR 120a: The Culture of Journalism
Maura Jane Farrelly
Tue./Fri., 12:30-1:50; Olin-Sang 104
Office Hours: Tue./Fri., 2-4pm. Brown 327
Spring 2014
In 1841, the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle published a book in which he attributed a
term to the late eighteenth century Anglo-Irish statesman, Edmund Burke. “There are three
estates in Parliament,” Burke was said to have uttered – referring to the Lords Spiritual, the Lords
Temporal, and the House of Commons. “But in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth
Estate, more important than they all.”
Much has happened to Burke’s “Fourth Estate” since the days of the Enlightenment,
when the principles that were meant to govern the creation and dissemination of news in the West
were first formulated. Students in this course will examine these Enlightenment principles and
the role they play in our contemporary democratic system. They will be challenged to evaluate
the extent to which the principles are being “lived out” by the various members of the modernday news industry, and they will be exposed to some of the ideals and realities that journalists in
America face as they attempt to realize the obligations of their craft.
Reading Assignments:
The reading assignments for this course will be drawn from a collection of articles that
are available on LATTE, and from the following books, which are available for purchase in the
bookstore:
1. Alterman, Eric, What Liberal Media? The Truth About ‘Bias’ and the News
2. Berkowitz, Dan, Social Meanings of News
4. Goldberg, Bernard, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
5. Hamilton, James T. All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information
Into News
6. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall and Paul Waldman, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the
Stories that Shape the Political World
7. Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should
Know and the Public Should Expect
8. Rosenstiel, Tom and Amy S. Mitchell, Thinking Clearly: Cases in Journalistic
Decision-Making
Broadcast Assignments:
Students will be expected to listen to NPR’s “On the Media” each week and be prepared
to spend the first 10 – 15 minutes of every Tuesday’s class discussing the topics featured on the
program. “On the Media” airs on WBUR (90.9 FM) every Sunday, from 2 to 3 in the afternoon.
You can also listen to the program online at http://www.onthemedia.org. Sound files are posted
every Friday (i.e. two days before the program airs on WBUR).
Students should choose one story from each week’s show to write on. I will expect you
to turn in 2-3 typed paragraphs, in which you consider the implications that the story has for
journalists, news consumers, democracy, technology, politics, and/or the economy.
Half of your class participation grade (i.e. 5% of your overall grade) will be derived from
these written analyses. If you turn all of them in, you will receive a 100%. For each one that you
do not turn in, 5% will be subtracted from this portion of your class participation grade.
Newspaper Assignments:
At the beginning of each Friday class, I will administer a brief, multiple choice current
events quiz, drawn from the previous week’s New York Times (Note: the quiz will not include
news from that Friday’s edition, but it will include news from the previous Friday’s edition).
Copies of the Times are available for free in the campus center. You may also subscribe at the
education rate, which will give you unlimited access to web versions of the articles
(http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/CMHome.do?mode=CMHome). For the quiz, I will
draw only from the main section of the paper; I will not draw from the Business section, the Arts
section, etc. I will also not draw from wire articles/articles that do not have bylines.
Speaker Assignment:
The date has not been solidified yet, but the Journalism program is hoping to host a
lecture this semester by Major General Anthony Cuculo, former Chief of Public Affairs for the
U.S. Army. He will probably be speaking some time in early April. All students will be expected
to attend the lecture, unless you have received a pre-approved excuse from me. I will let you
know when the lecture will be taking place as soon as I know. Students who fail to attend the
lecture without a pre-approved excuse will have 20% deducted from their class participation
grade.
Classroom Requirements:
1. Class attendance and participation: This means that you must come to class, and that you
must read the required assignments and think about them before coming to class.
Participation will take the form of answering questions when asked and offering your
own, insightful questions/commentary. If you are shy, come and speak to me, and we
can talk about ways of getting you over that hurdle. I understand shyness, but I will not
accept it as an excuse for a lack of participation. Nor, of course, will I accept illpreparation as an excuse. Class participation will be 10% of your final grade (with half
of that 10% being drawn from the weekly “On the Media” assignments).
2. Weekly current events quizzes. I will drop your lowest quiz grade and then compute the
average of all your other grades. This average will make up 10% of your final grade.
3. A mid-term exam that will count for 20% of your final grade.
4. A jointly prepared in-class debate that will count for 15% of your final grade.
5. An 8-10 page paper that will count for 25% of your final grade (This topic will be
assigned later in the semester, and it WILL be posted on LATTE.)
6. A final exam that will count for 20% of your final grade.
A Note on Late Papers and Plagiarism:
All of the work that you turn in to me must be your own. If you are even slightly unclear about
what, exactly, constitutes plagiarism, I encourage you to come and speak to me before you begin
writing your big paper. Late papers will lose one third of a grade for every day that they are late.
Papers that are more than two days late will not be accepted.
Syllabus:
Tue., Jan. 14th: Hello
Enlightened Liberalism
Fri., Jan. 17th:
Arthur Cash, John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, Ch. 4
and 5, on LATTE
Journalism in crisis?
Tue., Jan. 21st:
Fri., Jan. 24th:
William Powers, “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal,” on
LATTE
“The Search for a New Business Model,” Pew Research Center, on
LATTE
Journalism in Theory
Tue, Jan. 28th:
Fri., Jan. 31st:
Kovach and Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism, Ch. 1, 2, and 3
Stephen Bates: Realigning Journalism with Democracy…, available on
LATTE at http://www.annenberg.northwestern.edu/pubs/hutchins/
Journalists as Teachers
Tue., Feb. 4th:
Kovach and Rosenstiel, Ch. 3, 7, 8, and 9
Journalists as Storytellers
Fri., Feb. 7th:
Dan Berkowitz, Ch. 22 and 23; Jamieson and Waldman, Ch. 1 and 2
Journalists as Custodians of Fact
Tue., Feb. 11th:
Jamieson and Waldman, Ch. 7 and 4; Kovach and Rosenstiel, Ch. 4;
Rosenstiel and Mitchell, Ch. 5
Journalists as Gatekeepers and Watchdogs
Fri., Feb. 14th:
Tue., Feb. 18th:
Fri., Feb. 21st:
Tue., Feb. 25th:
Dan Berkowitz, Ch. 4-8, 26; Rosenstiel and Mitchell, Ch. 7
NO CLASS (Winter Break)
NO CLASS (Winter Break)
Kovach and Rosenstiel, Ch. 6; Rosenstiel and Mitchell, Ch. 1 and 6
Mid-Term Exam
Fri., Feb. 28th:
in-class exam (NO CURRENT EVENTS QUIZ)
Debate Day #1
Tue., Mar. 4th:
NO “ON THE MEDIA”
1.) S. 673 (2009): Proposed “Newspaper Revitalization Act” – Yea or
Nay?
2.) S. 987 (2013) : Proposed “Free Flow of Information Act” – Yea or
Nay?
Journalists as Public Intellectuals
Fri., Mar. 7th:
Tue. Mar. 11th:
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, intro, Ch. 1, 2, and 5,
available on LATTE
Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals, Ch. 1 and 2, available on LATTE
News: How It’s Created and Funded
Fri., Mar. 14th:
Hamilton, Ch. 1, 2, and 6
News: How It’s Controlled
Tue., Mar. 18th:
Berkowitz, Ch. 18; Warner and Goldenhar, “The Cigarette Advertising
Broadcast Ban…” in Journal of Public Health Policy, available on
LATTE; Blake Fleetwood, “The Broken Wall…”, available on LATTE;
Hamilton, Ch. 3; Coke Memo to Publishers, available on LATTE; Justin
Fox, “Why Being Publicly-Held is Best,” Fortune Magazine, July, 2006,
available on LATTE
Fri., Mar. 21st:
“News Wars” (in class video)
Sophistry
Tue., Mar. 25th:
Excerpts from Plato’s Gorgias, available on LATTE
Journalists in their Communities
Fri., Mar. 28th:
Jamieson and Waldman, Ch. 6; Rosenstiel and Mitchell, Ch. 3 and 4
Tue., Apr. 1st:
Brooke Kroeger, “Mirage,” 257-280, in Undercover Reporting (on
LATTE)
NO CLASS (I have a conference in Macon, GA)
Fri., Apr. 4th:
Debate Day #2
Tue., Apr. 8th:
NO “ON THE MEDIA”
1.) Edward Snowden: Clemency or Prosecution?
2.) First Look Media: Welcomed Addition or Threat to Journalistic
Integrity?
Journalists in their Communities (continued)
Fri., Apr. 11th:
Tue: Apr. 15th:
Fri., Apr. 18th:
Tue., Apr. 22nd:
“A Hidden Life” (in class video – NO CURRENT EVENTS QUIZ)
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
The Charge of “Liberalism”
Fri., Apr. 25th:
Tue., Apr. 29th:
Final Exam
???
Bernard Goldberg, entire book
Eric Alterman, Ch. 1,2,7,8, and 9 PROFILE OF
JOURNALIST/PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL DUE