Week 5
I, Journalist
How do we decide what is and isn’t journalism?
How do we decide who is and isn’t a journalist?
How are these questions complicated by the Internet?
Why does it even matter?
Week 5
Today’s objectives
Name That News… a discussion
History
Theory
(The Law)
Lenses
Discussion
Name that news…
You decide based on…
• Institution/identity
• Form/format
• Content
• Source
• Style
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History
The past holds needed clues
“It seems to me I’ve heard that song before…”
Consider the rise of:
• Telegraph
• Radio
• Television
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History
Sound familiar?
“I do not know whether the great commercial and social
advantages of the telegraph are not counterbalanced by its
political evils. … The public mind throughout the interior
is kept in a constant state of excitement by what are
called ‘telegrams.’ ”
President James Buchanan, letter to
New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett,
December 1860
History
Sound familiar?
“Radio broadcasting in this country is not entitled to press
privileges…. The best it can do, in routine reporting, is to put
a smattering of the news on the air, thus distracting interest
from legitimate newspaper news service.”
Editor & Publisher, “The Radio Menace,”
unsigned editorial, November 1933
History
Sound familiar?
At the Republican National Convention of 1964, angry that
they had to share press space with broadcast journalists,
some print reporters slashed the cables carrying television
transmissions, briefly shutting down live coverage.
Recounted in James L. Baughman,
“Republic of Mass Culture” (1997), at 118
Sound familiar?
“I’m worried about the bloggers.”
Former New York Times reporter
Judith Miller, public address,
Dec. 7, 2006,Topeka, Ka.
History
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.”
Santayana
“Hegel was right when he said that we
learn from history that man can never
learn anything from history.”
Shaw
Theory
Why turn to theory?
• A good theory is a framework
for understanding.
• It helps us see patterns.
• It helps us interpret those patterns.
• It helps us divine from those patters
where we’ve been, where we are
and where we might be going.
Theory
Patterns?
Resistance
Adoption
Definition: journalist
Theory
Diffusion of Innovations
Everett M. Rogers – 1962
“Diffusion is the process by which an innovation
is communicated through certain channels
over time and among members of a social system.”
Classic S Curve
+
Rogers’ Diffusion
Bell Curve
Theory
Innovators :: Early Adopters :: Early Majority :: Late Majority :: Laggards
Implications
What do these lenses help us see?
Definition: journalist
Findings: context
Trend: Innovation
1849
1995
WWW public
AP founded
Trend: Professionalization
Implications
Assumption: Time
Centrifugal: Innovations
exerting outward pressure
on definitional boundary
Tension point:
Recurring area
of disagreement
Centripetal: Professional
mores pressing to hold
boundary intact
The Law
How has all this played out in the law?