Hard News Stories Research Articles

Reported speech and gender in the news: Who is quoted, how are they quoted, and why it matters

News stories have a well-defined generic structure, consisting of components such as headline, lede, and body, with reported speech a prominent feature, especially in hard news stories. Reported speech serves multiple purposes, from providing evidentiality and intertextuality to contributing to the construction of newsworthiness and to the context creation of news. It is also a site of potential bias in who is cited and how, including with respect to the gender of sources. Using a large corpus of English-language news stories for all of 2023 from the main five mainstream news outlets in Canada (over 370,000 articles from news websites), I examine the gender distribution of those quoted, the syntactic variation in the structure of quotes, and the types of reporting verbs. The study provides a comprehensive overview of the extend of gender bias in contemporary Canadian news, at the same time offering insights into the nature of reported speech in modern news and how it endures and evolves, including in news meant for digital-only publication.

Book Review: Evaluation Across Newspaper Genres: Hard News Stories, Editorials and Feature Articles by Jonathan Ngai

Book Review: <i>Evaluation Across Newspaper Genres: Hard News Stories, Editorials and Feature Articles</i> by Jonathan Ngai

Tuning Out (Political and Science) News? A Selective Exposure Study of the News Finds Me Perception

Individuals harboring perceptions that the “news will find me” (NFM) tend to be less active consuming traditional media, preferring news online and on social media. NFM has also been linked with lower political knowledge and political participation over time. What remains to be seen, however, is whether high-NFM individuals are in fact less likely to expose themselves to news once they do encounter it online. This preregistered study fills this gap in the literature by unobtrusively logging selection behaviors while U.S. adults browsed a mock news website featuring various hard and soft news stories. Consistent with our hypothesizing, NFM was associated with greater exposure to soft news. Additionally, we examined whether genre-specific NFM beliefs would predict less exposure to those news genres. We found support for this hypothesis in the context of science news, but for political news, this relationship depended on the news stories presented.

The Numbers Game: How Local Newspapers Used Statistics and Data Visualizations to Cover the Coronavirus Pandemic

Data and visualizations are an important part of local health news. Systematic data sourced from credible sources provide context to stories and educate audiences. Data visualizations help simplify complex statistical information and increase audience interactivity. Journalists associate statistics with objectivity, and use them to quantify risk in crisis situations. This study explores how local news used data to cover the coronavirus pandemic. We examined 170 data-driven articles published in the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle to examine the predominant data sources, data-driven narratives, and use of interactive elements. Results indicate reliance on government sources, prevalence of hard news stories, localization of statistics, contextual presentation of data, and abundant use of visualizations. However, the coverage lacked human-interest stories, interactivity in infographics, and failed to adequately reflect the diversity of the communities covered by the two newspapers. Data-driven stories did not always provide access to the underlying databases; nor did they always explain the methodology used to gather and analyze the data. While the readable format of the articles and the updates on infection rates can inform audiences, we argue that coverage that ignores broader data trends can cause readers to feel negative, which can push them toward news avoidance.

A Spectacle of Silencing: A Rural African-Canadian Woman’s Media Trial

This thematic case study explores international, national, and local media coverage of a conflict between Barb Reddick, a rural, working-class, African-Nova Scotian woman, and her nephew over the ownership of a winning ‘Chase the Ace’ lottery ticket. Beginning from general media valuation of lottery winners, and Canadian coverage of the Nova Scotia CTA lottery ‘craze’, we find when Reddick goes off script as loving aunt she is pathologized and degraded in a dramatic reversal from soft to hard news story. Reddick’s habitus and trust in journalists to support her counternarrative became the dramatic content of media spectacle-making – what we call a ‘spectacle of silencing’ – as well as her deviance from Canadian white rurality, and class and gender norms. Rather than mere ‘misrepresentation’ of minorities, we conclude that the dynamics of counternarrative struggle are embedded in reportage itself as spectacle, reproducing the legitimacy and authority of journalistic institutions through a symbolic violence of consensus making.

News consumption of hard and soft topics in Spain: Sources, formats and access routes

Abstract The variety of devices and the socialization of consumption have decentralized access to online information which is not retrieved directly from media websites but through social networks. These same factors have driven user interest towards a wider range of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ topics. The aim of this article is to identify the consumption of news on these topics among digital users in Spain. The methodology used is based on an analysis of the survey conducted as part of the Digital News Report 2017. Following this analysis, a conclusion has been reached that the most popular hard news stories in Spain are those related to the local and regional community itself, and to health and education, while the most popular soft news stories relate to lifestyles and arts and culture. The analysis has revealed that increased interest in news and greater topic specialization result in more diversified use of sources, formats, and complementary routes.

To Laugh or Not to Laugh: How Comedy News Versus Hard News Interacts with Individuals’ Levels of Political Cynicism and Political Efficacy to Impact the Agenda-Setting Effects

This experiment investigated how the same information presented as either hard news or comedy news interacted with individuals’ levels of cynicism and levels of efficacy to impact the agendasetting effects. The results indicated individuals who received the comedy news story and had increased levels of cynicism accepted the media’s agenda more than those who received the same information presented as hard news. However, individuals who received the hard news story and had increased levels of efficacy were more likely to cite the issue they received as compared to those who received the same information presented as comedy news.

Recontextualising NAPLAN: A functional analysis of evaluations in media texts

This paper explores the recontexualisation of issues surrounding NAPLAN test in the media through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics. In particular, this paper considers interpersonal meanings shared by journalists or media regarding the construal of NAPLAN test in Australian context. To obtain a comprehensive view regarding the construal, Appraisal analysis is deployed. Two different texts about a controversy of NAPLAN test in Australia are selected to be analysed: a hard news story and a comment piece. In addition to text analysis, an image accompanying the hard news story and a cartoon relating to the controversy of NAPLAN test are analysed to find out the realisation of meanings across two semiotic modes (texts and images). The results suggest that there are distinct patterns of realisation of evaluative meanings in these two texts. On the one hand, the hard news story tends to use indirect evaluation of either judgment or appreciation when dealing with the issue. On the other hand, evaluative meanings shared throughout the comment piece tend to be direct, negatively evaluating NAPLAN test and the educational system pertinent to the testing policy. In terms of text-image relations, results of analyses suggest that both texts and images orient readers to align with shared values regarding the construal of the controversial NAPLAN test in the Australian context.

Gender in local television news presentation: An analysis of TV news markets in the US Northwest

Television news anchors and reporters have become trusted guests in American households. An important factor regarding television news presentations is who presents the news to the audience, whether as an anchor or reporter. This study compared large and small market newscasts to explore connections or variations between markets regarding gender representation as news personalities in the northwest region of the US. Two specific research questions were developed to guide this study and three hypotheses were formed based on findings significant to recent research. Using a content analysis to analyse 119 news stories and packages from a total of 397 samples from 26 newscasts, this study’s results from the northwest indicate no significant difference between female and male news reporters in presenting both soft and hard news stories. Our results reveal no gender-vertical segregation – males and females more frequently present news stories that do not stereotypically match their gender.

Reinventing Local TV News: Innovative Storytelling Practices to Engage New Audiences

The growing crisis in U.S. local news is making it increasingly urgent that local television outlets both improve the quality of news produced and chart a path toward a sustainable future in which new audiences are recruited. The style and substance of traditional local television news stand at odds with the emerging practices and sensibilities of digitally native video news, the kind that is often preferred by younger audiences on web and mobile platforms. In this research report, we show how local broadcasters might rethink story segments to create a more engaging news product for younger audiences, particularly with regard to hard news stories.

The Role of Evaluative Language in News Translation : Focusing on Soft and Hard News

In the digital era, news consumption is not confined in geological boundaries. Technological advances bring the instant dissemination of news into life and allow news audience to consume events that occur far away almost in real time. The transmission has blurred the boundary between traditional media and new media, and the one between physical and virtual world. That is, what if a journalist applies news framing to the news translation process? This paper aims to investigate the gap between the ST and the TT created when the source news texts undergo a translation process. To achieve this aim, the appraisal theory developed by White (2003) is employed to identify a difference between the ST and the TT. Furthermore, we have attempted to identify differences between soft news stories and hard news stories while the STs from both news stories are translated into the TTs. Two time-sensitive events, Hugh Grant’s marriage and a U.S. and North Korea summit, were selected. The former (a soft news story) is extracted from the Telegraph and the latter (a hard news story) is from the Washington post. As a result, it was found that such strategies as attitude, engagement, and judgment were used when the source news texts from the hard news story are translated into the target news texts. Under the appraisal theory, the strategies involve evaluative language which refers to positive or negative language that judges the worth of entities. In general, it is said that a journalist frames the SS (especially from the hard news story) to convey his ideology to news consumers. Hypothetically, we assume that a similar framing process takes place in deriving the TT from the SS of the hard news story. Thus, we could conclude that the TT from the hard news story differs from the TT from the soft news story and that the difference can be explained within the framework of White’s appraisal theory.

Textual Architecture of a Selected Hard News in English: A Discourse Analysis Approach

This study deals with the analysis of a selected hard news through the adaptation of an eclectic model of analysis by the use of Van Dijk (1988), Bell (1991) and Halliday (1976) models of discourse analysis. Writing news stories is a problematic process because it is not a process of merely putting words together to form a text or report, but it involves the choice of the words and markers that conditioned by the purpose, place, and the readers. The study aims at proposing a theoretical framework for the macro- level analysis of news discourse. It covers the macro level analysis of the chosen hard news. The data of the study is an English news story taken from Washington Times newspaper published on 20th of August 2016. The results of the study display that English hard news stories show certain complexity in their structure. The writer of this hard news story aims at not only conveying information but arising the voice of protest against the government and the court of justice. Such analysis reaches to a conclusion, which emphasizes the idea that the field of discourse can be used for better understanding of the media.

Textual Architecture of a Selected Hard News in English: A Discourse Analysis Approach

This study deals with the analysis of a selected hard news through the adaptation of an eclectic model of analysis by the use of Van Dijk (1988), Bell (1991) and Halliday (1976) models of discourse analysis. Writing news stories is a problematic process because it is not a process of merely putting words together to form a text or report, but it involves the choice of the words and markers that conditioned by the purpose, place, and the readers. The study aims at proposing a theoretical framework for the macro- level analysis of news discourse. It covers the macro level analysis of the chosen hard news. The data of the study is an English news story taken from Washington Times newspaper published on 20th of August 2016. The results of the study display that English hard news stories show certain complexity in their structure. The writer of this hard news story aims at not only conveying information but arising the voice of protest against the government and the court of justice. Such analysis reaches to a conclusion, which emphasizes the idea that the field of discourse can be used for better understanding of the media.

Media Coverage of State Legislatures: Negative, Neutral, or Positive?*

ObjectiveTo evaluate how neutral newspapers are in their coverage of state legislatures and whether the tone of this coverage is affected by the partisan orientation of the newspaper's owners and by the focus of the stories.MethodsI examine hard news stories in four newspapers from two states, during April 2005, to assess the tone of coverage (positive, neutral, or negative) of their state legislatures and test whether tone varies with owner partisanship and focus of the particular news story on the whole legislature or individual legislators.ResultsThe majority of coverage (81 percent) is neutral in tone. There is no difference in tone when the newspaper's owners share the same partisan orientation as the state legislature compared to when they have a different partisan orientation. There is no difference in tone when the focus of the story is on the whole legislature instead of on individual legislators.ConclusionContrary to scholarship that suggests the media is negative toward political institutions (including legislatures), or partisan in its coverage, tone is largely neutral. When covering state legislatures, newspaper reporters adhere for the most part to the professional standard of objectivity or neutrality.

Clicks and Editorial Decisions: How Does Popularity Shape Online News Coverage?

Abstract Do clicks received by online news stories, independent of story quality, influence the way newspaper editors allocate journalistic resources to them, and if so, how? Combining a unique online news dataset obtained from a large Indian English daily newspaper and publicly available data about story characteristics, we provide evidence that editors respond to the clicks received by the first article of news stories by increasing the amount of follow-up coverage. We show that a standard deviation increase in clicks received by the first article of a story can expand the coverage of the story by three additional articles and its duration by three days. To establish causality, we use an instrumental variables strategy by exploiting ordinary power shortages and rainfall as exogenous shocks to readers' access to online news. An analysis of the content of stories demonstrates that editorial response to clicks is asymmetric for hard (i.e., economic, business events, world events) and soft (i.e., entertainment, sports) news stories. Additional coverage is only awarded to popular hard stories but not to the soft ones, suggesting that hard news may crowd out soft news stories, but not vice-versa. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy makers, managerial strategy, as well as the readers.

Social Media in Television News

This study employs the heuristic-systematic model to assess the influences of Twitter and Facebook comments compared to man-on-the-street interviews on audiences’ evaluations of news journalism. Comments from social network sites (SNSs) also varied in their use of appropriate grammatical form and internet lingo. Using a 2 × 3 × 2 between-subjects experimental design, participants responded on journalistic quality and credibility after watching a television news segment with different comment types. Results revealed that SNS comments, as heuristic cues, played a substantial role in affecting audiences’ evaluation of the news. Specifically, results found that Twitter comments received the highest perceptions of journalistic quality, especially when featured in hard news stories. Stories featuring SNS comments using internet lingo were received more favorably than those using normal language. The results suggest that Twitter comments possess journalistic value.

Book Review: Women and Journalism, by Suzanne Franks

Women and Journalism. Suzanne Franks. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. 85 pp. $28 pbk.In her short but insightful book, Women and Journalism, author Suzanne Franks spends much time pointing out the ironies and contradictions inherent in women's employment in journalism. Women outnumber men in most college journalism departments, and many who have entered the field in the last few decades are better educated than their male counterparts. Yet very few women hold top executive posts at media companies, and those who work in newsrooms are often paid less than their male colleagues. And, nearly fifty years after the second wave of feminism, women are still viewed primarily as feature rather than news writers. She subtitles her Introduction, Backwards and forwards, onwards and upwards.Women and Journalism accomplishes a lot in a short space, and it is written in a direct and concise style-there is little or no fat in this book, indicating that either Franks herself is a tight and seamless writer, or that she has an excellent editor. Numbers and survey results form the backbone of this book-making it credible-and Franks does not shout from a soapbox to bemoan the fact that women have yet to achieve equality in the newsrooms of the United States and much of Western Europe. But the book is far from dry and soulless, and would be compelling to anyone interested in newsroom employment and women in the media. Franks, a professor at City University London, is a former BBC producer, and the focus of the book is journalism in England. But she also discusses the media environment for women in the United States-which parallels that of England in many ways-so the book is relevant for American readers.Women and Journalism differs from books on similar topics for two reasons: first, the author maintains, advancing technology and the rapidly changing journalistic landscape have rendered obsolete the often-used term glass ceiling. Society and the media culture have become so complex that the term is an oversimplification, she believes. She examines the role of society and culture in shaping the industry because she believes the subject of women in journalism cannot be examined in a vacuum. For instance, she notes that sources quoted in hard news stories have always been predominately male, reinforcing the view that it is men who hold the real authority when discussing serious matters in Western society. She implies that until women are seen as authoritative in all aspects of society and are widely quoted as experts, their role in newsrooms may not change. …

Succulent Sins, Personalized Politics, and Mainstream Media’s Tabloidization Temptation

This study uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalism’s use of tabloid writing techniques affects online credibility. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey’s Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Tabloidized soft news stories were more credible than tabloidized hard news stories. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. An application of act utilitarianism suggests that tabloidization is an unethical method for increasing news readership.

Credibility in Context: How Uncivil Online Commentary Affects News Credibility

In the new media environment, hard news stories are no longer found solely in the “A” section of the paper or on the front page of a news Web site. They are now distributed widely, appearing in contexts as disparate as a partisan blog or your own e-mail inbox, forwarded by a friend. In this study, we investigate how the credibility of a news story is affected by the context in which it appears. Results of an experiment show a news story embedded in an uncivil partisan blog post appears more credible in contrast. Specifically, a blogger's incivility highlights the relative credibility of the newspaper article. We also find that incivility and partisan disagreement in an adjacent blog post produce stronger correlations between ratings of news and blog credibility. These findings suggest that news story credibility is affected by context and that these context effects can have surprising benefits for news organizations. Findings are consistent with predictions of social judgment theory.

Visual minimalism in hard news: thumbnail faces on the smh online home page1

Thumbnail images depicting the face of a social actor were the most common type of image used in hard-news stories on the home page of the Sydney Morning Herald online (smh online), a high-circulation Australian daily broadsheet, between 2002 and 2006. While not all online newspapers use such images to the same extent as the smh online, close-up thumbnails of faces are commonplace on online newspaper home pages in general. This paper examines the use of these “thumbnail faces” on the smh online home page. Over four years (and across four page-design periods), these images were used more frequently, despite the fact that they function in a very different way to traditional hard-news images. Thumbnail faces cannot “tell stories”, nor “provide evidence”, but they play an important interpersonal role in individual news stories, collectively on the home page, and over time in the discursive relationship between the smh online and its readership.