Democratic Journalism Research Articles

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF JOURNALISM IN THE POLITICAL ADVOCACY OF HEALTH POLICY IN INDONESIA?

In this short commentary article, the complex association between journalism, health policy, and political campaigning in Indonesia is explained, in need of more scholarly expansion. Within those limitations, the paper does alert to the necessary function journalism serves intrinsic to the public discourse that drives health policy recommendations, as well as noting how this has been perverted by misinformation and dwindling faith in the media. The article examines how journalism (including digital and social media) has shaped health policy advocacy and public opinion and highlights the role of the media in health communication campaigns and policy reform. Through scrutiny of its role in health policy advocacy, with a broader look at how journalism roles have shifted over time. In this article, the author demonstrated that journalism is a bridge between health policy experts and the public, enabling a more informed democratic engagement with health policy. These conclusions highlight the need to build a nexus between democratic journalism and health policy advocacy for public health priorities in Indonesia. Keywords: health policy, journalism, political campaign

Journalism in Democracy: A Discourse Analysis of Twitter Posts on the Ferrerasgate Scandal

This research analyses the discourse on Twitter surrounding the “Ferrerasgate” scandal involving the Spanish journalist Antonio García Ferreras, director and host of the television show <em>Al Rojo Vivo </em>(La Sexta, Spanish TV channel). It examines the main object of criticism, the tone of the discourse, the argumentation made by users, as well as the existence of hate in their rhetoric. The tweets included in the study’s sample (<em>N </em>= 2,846), posted between 5 and 15 July 2022 and extracted on 16 July 2022, were examined in two complementary phases. The first entailed a quantitative content analysis of the messages and the second analysed whether hate speech was found in the sample as a whole. The Sketch Engine tool was used to determine whether “crypto hate speech” existed in the sample as a whole, and to whom it was targeted. The results reveal that “Ferrerasgate” sparked a debate that spilt over into journalism across the board, calling into question the media’s role in a democracy. The most prominent arguments were the condemnation of misinformation, lack of independence, and absence of professionalism in the journalism sector. It should be noted that most of the messages were destructive in tone; hate was found in the tweets analysed, although these did not represent a high percentage in relation to the total sample.

South African journalists’ conceptualisation of professionalism and deviations from normative liberal values

In this article the question is raised of what professionalism means in the context of South Africanjournalism, and if there are deviations from ideas of professionalism as defined in normativeliberal frameworks of the news media in terms of how South African journalists perceive their ownrole in society and as to how they define professionalism. The research is partially based on in-depth qualitative interviews with journalists from a crosssection of the South African news media, and asks questions about their own perceptions ofprofessional values and their own role in society. The interview findings point to South Africanjournalists articulating their role as one of neither watchdog nor lapdog – instead, the intervieweesall articulate their role as based on competing imperatives, in which concerns for the audience anda broader articulation of the public interest take precedent over more liberal conceptualisations ofthe role of journalism in democracy.

Racism and journalism: The dangers of returning to the ‘safe-space’ of objectivity

Although a contested term in journalism research, the need for a critique of objectivity is increased by responses to the current “crisis of journalism,” which have united around the rediscovery of sacred journalistic ideals such as truth, facts, and autonomy. In particular, objectivity must be critiqued for its role in the persistence of racism in liberal democratic journalism, a persistence that runs across different funding models and organizational structures. Objectivity, as a contested and flexible political concept, has proven incapable of addressing systemic racism. I argue that objectivity needs to be understood as an inherently political concept, which is as much proscriptive as descriptive in the way it shapes the field of journalism and the profession’s relationship to political and social life. Rather than return to the safe ground of autonomy, truth and facts, professional, liberal journalism must recognize its foundations within racially unequal political and social structures.

Н. И. ГРЕЧ И ВЛАСТЬ ДИСКУРСА

Nikolay Ivanovich Gretsch started teaching early. He compiled textbooks, educational and methodological manuals throughout his life that afterwards became objects of various reviews. This diversity is explained not only by the history of the Russian language teaching or by the shift in scientific paradigms in the history of Russian linguistics, but also by the influence of the dominant discourse on public attitude to the scholar. The rejection of N. I. Gretsch's grammars in teaching was connected with the evolution of comparative historical linguistics, with new trends in developmental psychology, and with changes in literary tastes in the 1850-60s. An equally significant reason was superficial reading of Gretsch's grammatical works. It was due to ideological reasons. Until the early 1850s, the attitude towards Greek textbooks was mainly influenced by teachers, grammarians, philologists. But after the curricula were replaced in 1856, the interest in Gretsch's works began to decline. Galakhov's critical publications and Dobrolyubov's poems played a significant role in this process. This article characterizes the attitude toward Gretsch's textbooks before and after the updating and changing the curricula in 1856, and highlights the role of democratic journalism in forming a negative attitude toward Gretsch as a linguist. It is not until the mid-1950s that the interest in the fields that Gretsch was studying, as well as in the linguist himself, was restored. The article provides a complete list of European grammars used by N. I. Gretsch, and comments on the scientist's philological environment.

Using a Headshot Assignment to Incorporate Critical Theory Into Photojournalism Classrooms

This case study uses a diversity and critical thinking exercise in a photojournalism class to show how journalism educators can incorporate race and gender conversations about ethics and judgment into traditionally skills-oriented courses. It is crucial that journalism students learn how to apply their skills properly in an era of social unrest, inequality, and dwindling media trust. Democratic citizenship and journalism are intertwined, but often the bigger ethical conversations are left out of skills-oriented courses. This can lead to a disconnect between the skills themselves and the responsibility of practicing the skills, especially when it comes to matters of power and representation. The field of photojournalism remains predominately White and male, which makes it all the more crucial for students to interrogate their own biases to ensure ethical coverage of their communities. The assignment asks students to make 36 portraits of strangers, and the subsequent classroom exercise has them confront their inherent biases by looking at the demographics of the people they photographed compared to the general population. Data for this case study consist of observations of the classroom conversations and a reflexive journalism exercise the students completed afterward. Findings indicate this exercise is a successful way to introduce racial and gender considerations as part of photojournalistic ethics and judgment. Students initially neglected to think about representation and diversity in their selection of people to photograph but afterward said they could effectively incorporate reflexivity into their work in an effort to provide more representative imagery and confront their own biases.

ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION GENRES IN NATIONAL JOURNALISM OF COLONIAL TURKESTAN (UZBEKISTAN)

The foundation of periodicals in Turkestan during the Tsarist Russia, the role of Jadid journalists in disseminating information, the tasks of the press in Uzbekistan during the rule of Bolsheviks, the essence of authoritarian, totalitarian views (theories) on information and their consequences have been analyzed in the article. The item entitled “Short Stories from the Life of Russian Tsars, Local and Other Types of Information” pointed out in the charter of newspaper “Turkiston Viloyatining Gazeti” (Newspaper of Turkestan Region) is considered to be the first official source on the theory of authoritarian publications in the current research, with particular emphasis on peculiarities of highlighting the information provided in it. The newspaper reports, particularly, the events related to Dukchi Eshon’s rebellion in Andijan in 1898, being an important milestone in history, have been utilized for several purposes. The information on availability of inevitable severe punishment for those who tried to rebel against the Tsarist colonists and rewarding those who knew, felt, and reported or resisted those milestones has been studied as a rule of authoritarian theory. It has been proven in the article that Jadid publications of the early twentieth century (“Taraqqiy”, “Khurshid”, “Shuhrat”, “Samarkand”, “Turon”, “Sadoi Turkiston”, “Sadoi Fergana”, “Tujjor”, “Hurriyat”, “Najot” newspapers) were aimed at achieving independence by informing the oppressed people of the colony about various events taking place not only in Turkestan, but also around the world, as well as spreading enlightenment and development among the nation. The article analyzes the views of the enlightened (Jadid) journalists and editors on the dissemination of trustworthy information to the public as promoting the idea of freedom, their attitude towards information and their practice to our today’s national democratic journalism. The concealment of information as of the one of the flaws of the Soviet totalitarian theory of the press, the historical roots of the process, Bolshevik’s policy, the decree on the press signed by V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin); the press, which became a weapon of repression during Stalin’s time, the removal of providing breaking news in 70 years of totalitarian society, the repression of all journalists who acted in this way as they wanted to hide the actual information from the people in order to keep them in a state of fear, and the collapse of such a society have been closely studied.

Spot News Versus Reportage: Newspaper Models, the Distribution of Newsroom Credibility, and Implications for Democratic Journalism in Mexico

This article describes social-organizational models that Mexican newspapers have evolved in response to competition from electronic media. The spot news model competes through simulation and cannibalization, and it is organized for efficiency. Its routine of speed and steep hierarchy keep newsroom credibility centralized among newspaper leaders, which makes it difficult for new sources to convince reporters to listen to them, and for reporters, in turn, to convince editors to publish new sources. The reportage model, in contrast, competes with electronic media through differentiation, emphasizing investigation and analysis over speed. Its newsroom is correspondingly organized according to a slower schedule and a flatter hierarchy. The reportage model therefore decentralizes newsroom credibility by allowing reporters the expertise and autonomy they need to put new sources into print. Though these two models represent simultaneous reactions to market competition, they have opposing effects on democratic journalism as measured by pluralism and accountability.

The enigma of news media development with multi-pronged ‘capture’: The Afghanistan case

This qualitative study of influences on a purposive sample of Afghan journalists was carried out in the year after the US military mission was declared over. After more than a hundred million dollars of Western government funding had been invested in development of liberal democratic journalism, the study found the paradox of news media ‘capture’. We conceptualize this phenomenon further into political, bureaucratic, foreign-donor, and violent-actor capture. The study concludes that in countries with heavy foreign intervention, where imported journalism values are layered upon previous and continued institutional arrangements and where violence and instability continue unabated, news media work is prone to ‘capture’ by a variety of actors outside media organizations. We suggest that future research could refine a typology with six distinct forms of capture – economic, political, cultural, legal, bureaucratic, and societal.

News Media Landscape in a Fragile State: Professional Ethics Perceptions in a Post-Ba'athist Iraq

During the years of Ba'athist dictator Saddam Hussein, media personnel were under tight control and tortured or executed when they strayed from the government line. In the decade following the fall of the Ba'athist regime, thousands of Iraqi journalists were trained in liberal democratic professional norms, and hundreds of news outlets opened even as some of the old patronage practices and violence continued. This study utilized Shoemaker and Reese's hierarchy of influences model to examine factors influencing a proxy indicator for professional ethics, the value of conflict of interest avoidance among a purposive sample of Iraqi journalists (N = 588). We found that the news media routines and ideological levels, though not strong, had the greatest influences on this conflict of interest avoidance perception criterion indicator, the proxy for professional ethics. The findings suggest a tension between liberal democratic journalism training at the routines level and ideological aspects, in some cases, such as ethnic identity and political ideology. Strong influences on perceptions of conflict of interest avoidance were the type of media platform/Western journalism training, Arab ethnicity over Kurdish ethnicity, ideology of “democrat” over Kurdish nationalist or Islamist. No influence was apparent for Internet use frequency or state versus nonstate media.

Un estudio de la homogeneidad entre las posturas editoriales y de las fuentes informativas en la prensa de referencia chilena

Se espera del periodismo que nutra la democracia a través de la aportación de contenidos públicos relevantes. La capacidad de la ciudadanía para discutir asuntos de importancia social depende de la disponibilidad de ideas, opiniones y antecedentes factuales que contribuyan a conocer y dar sentido a la contingencia desde las más variadas perspectivas posibles. Teniendo en cuenta que se califica a la concentración de la propiedad de la prensa en Chile de emblemática, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar sistemáticamente diarios de referencia chilenos, para establecer si las empresas de El Mercurio SAP y Copesa SA constituyen un duopolio ideológico que atenta contra el objetivo democrático del periodismo. Metodológicamente, se trata de un análisis de contenido comparativo de posturas adoptadas en editoriales y noticias en cinco periódicos para determinar si estos medios tienden a seleccionar fuentes informativas que coincidan con sus puntos de vista. Este revela que en Chile no se puede sostener de manera general o sistemática la hipótesis de una homogeneidad intra-medios. Sin embargo, los diarios analizados tendían hacia un comportamiento similar en términos de homogeneidad intra-medios, por cuanto tienden a comportarse de una manera parecida.

Making the case for war: A comparative analysis of CNN and BBC coverage of Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council

The normative role of journalism in democracy is well established: democracy depends on news media to facilitate self-government. But theories of the press point to structural limitations that inhibit the democratic ideal. To examine this contradiction, this article offers a comparative analysis of online news coverage by CNN and BBC of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003. Ethnographic content analysis is used to examine the coverage and to consider each outlet’s broad institutional context. The article concludes that structural limitations are less of a hindrance at the BBC, which is better situated to enhance rational–critical dialogue and democratic self-governance through inclusion of a greater diversity of sources and a wider array of opinion.

TOWARDS A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LOCATING ONLINE NEWS IN THE NEWS ECOLOGY

As, historically, has been common with newly emergent media, the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s was greeted with a discourse of revolutionary impacts, premised on a technological logic of development. In the case of news, the Web was expected to drive a more democratic, transparent and accountable journalism. This article argues that the application of a strong historical perspective to scholarship on online news is necessary to gauge the depth of any changes from and the strength of continuity with print and broadcast news. It examines the historical development of mass media and of journalism in the context of industrial capitalism to trace the emergence of the ‘news ecology’ that permeates print, broadcast and, now, online media. It examines this through a sample of websites maintained by Irish national and local newspapers, and the country's public service broadcaster, between 1994 and 2010.

Candida Rifkind. Conrades and Critics: Women, Literature, & the Left in 1930s Canada

CANDIDA RIFKIND Comrades and Critics: Women, Literature, & the Left in 1930s Canada Toronto, Buffalo, London; University of Toronto Press, 2009. viii + 268 pp. Recipient of the Ann Saddlemyer scholarly book award at the 2010 conference of the CATR/ACRT, Candida Rifkind's Comrades and Critics expands the vital field of scholarship that is rewriting our knowledge and our analyses of left-wing Canadian modernism. In the 1930s, Canadian women writers and cultural workers including Dorothy Livesay, Ruby Ronan, Anne Marriott, Irene Baird, Toby Gordon Ryan, Mildred Goldberg, Elsie Park Gowan, Minnie Evans Bicknell, Mary Reynolds, and Jim (Jean) Watts made crucial contributions to English-Canadian communist and social democratic journalism, poetry, fiction, and theatre. Rifkind surveys this work in historical context and addresses its place in national cultural memory and its reception in English-Canadian literary history. An introductory chapter on the Encounter points to the double duty of the English-Canadian literary left, to give creative expression to socialism and overturn the dominant literary (4), and goes on to frame the book's most original insights, which have to do with the gendered terms of the Socialist-Modernist encounter and its impact on the period's women artists and on their work. I would say, in my second-wave sort of way, that this book exposes the pervasive sexism of the most progressive discourses of English Canada in the 1930s. As Rifkind explains, the problem was not only that gender issues were explicitly subordinated to class and other struggles during the Comintern period, and then subordinated again in relation to the fight against fascism during the period of the Popular Front, although this did happen and it needs to be remembered. (My own view, and I know that I am not alone in this, is that one of the most important lessons of the twentieth-century revolutions is that we humans must not ever again leave our humanity behind in order to storm the barricades and expect to be able to pick it up again on the other side. But I digress.) The problem is more acute because the explicit sidelining of gender issues in the 1930s was exacerbated by the discursive and symbolic linkages between rugged masculinity, socialist progress, and modernist aesthetics, on one hand; and femininity, a decadent and despised bourgeoisie, and bad art, on the other: Women on the political left often had to subordinate questions of gender to those of class and ethnicity, and by the 1930s the gains made by pre-war socialist feminists and the suffrage movement of an earlier generation faltered (Newton 171). Across the Canadian left by the end of the 1920s, women's issues were being subordinated to class struggle and then, with the rise of European fascism in the early 1930s, fighting racisms and anti-Semitism at home and overseas. Women who were both socialists and modernists in 1930s Canada had to consequently find ways to accommodate themselves to the downplaying of women's issues in leftist politics and the contempt for any aesthetic perceived as feminine in modernist literature. Each of the women I foreground in this book struggled to do this in a different way; what unites them is an attempt to disassociate their female identities from the feminine metaphors and images typically used to criticize conservative artistic tradition as well as liberal bourgeois politics. (11) Add to this the fact that real economic and political power was concentrated in the hands of men, and the discouragements and detours performed by these women artists seem merely inevitable. …

THE RECIPROCITY OF JOURNALISM'S SOCIAL CONTRACT

This article traces the political-philosophical background of journalism's social contract metaphor. The social contract of the press finds its professional ideal in the intersection between republican and liberal philosophies originating with the classical philosophies of Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes. From these origins, the mechanism of contractual reciprocity is appropriated to the relationship between journalism and its audiences to expose hidden ideological traits within the profession. The concepts of rights and obligations found within a contractarian perspective thus offer a new way of conceptualising the role of journalism in democracy and the function of journalistic ideology. The press' social contract ideology entails a professional world-view that establishes journalism as a separate contractual partner with a mission to sustain the democratic order as it is expressed in the original political-philosophical social contract. This theoretical investigation of the ideological link between the two contractual metaphors reveals how journalism functions according to the contractual reciprocity principle, particularly with regard to its expectations of balanced rights and obligations within the democratic order.

The Crimean War in the British Imagination (review)

Reviewed by: The Crimean War in the British Imagination May Caroline Chan (bio) Stefanie Markovits, The Crimean War in the British Imagination (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. xi + 287, $95 cloth. Many readers will never look at a balaclava or a cardigan the same way after reading this engaging study about the Crimean War’s underexamined legacy in mid-Victorian novels, poetry, visual culture, and journalistic practices. Stefanie Markovits asks why this significant military conflict seems to have left little visible impress on mid-Victorian culture besides the figure of Florence Nightingale, Lord Cardigan’s name, and the woollen souvenir from the Balaklava battlefield. Answering the question shows how a vexed public sentiment produced a complicated, troubled response toward what ultimately became a failed war, and how a new journalism gave voice to this ambivalence. Markovits provides an extensive treatment of the Times, especially in the first chapter, while the subsequent chapters use the Examiner, the Illustrated London News, and Punch to present the new interactive journalistic practice influencing authors and artists attempting to capture the conflicted patriotism and wrestling with the implications of a stillborn British military masculinity at midcentury. The first and third chapters are notable in their ability to reexamine texts for their responses to public discourse about the Crimean War’s problems within a newspaper context. This is not to say the other chapters are not periodical-oriented, but that these two chapters offer instructive ways of performing work with periodicals and are impressive in persuading readers to reconsider the long but previously hidden reach of Crimean war discourse. The first chapter presents a compelling examination of how the Crimean War changed journalistic practices by situating it firmly within a mutual participatory relationship with its reading public, boosting a democratic journalism and the editorial power to influence policy (or to motivate individuals, such as Nightingale, to act). Markovits details how readers’ letters to the editor in the Times took on increased significance for their ability to supply much-needed information about conditions in the Crimea from soldiers’ letters, complementing war correspondents’ reports and responding to the imagined conditions. This dynamic is echoed in the third chapter, where Markovits shows how difficult it was for Tennyson to sympathize with Lord Cardigan’s “blunder” at Balaklava in his poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Markovits sees his hesitation as resulting from a belief that “a journalist is the Homer of this age . . . . The poet’s ‘frenzy’ is thus simultaneously a mark of excess and of sham” (126). The creation of Tennyson’s iconic poem was an exercise in negotiating the credibility [End Page 448] and relevancy gaps, as well as solidifying the troubling wartime identity. It would have been interesting to hear more on Markovits’s thoughts about the famous recording of Tennyson’s reading of this poem in relation to these reflections. After consistent close readings of numerous texts and newspaper articles in her chapters, Markovits achieves her goal of arguing persuasively that “the influence of the war on the literature and art of the day was broader than has been recognized . . . and that the relative paucity of more straightforward responses to the conflict may have owed something to the difficulty in embodying its ‘incidents’ and ‘details’ in a suitably patriotic fashion, not to mention a ‘picturesque’ one” (212). May Caroline Chan The College of Saint Rose May Caroline Chan May Caroline Chan is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. Her specialties lie in travel literature and Rudyard Kipling. Her most recent essays are “Orientalism Multiplied: Rudyard Kipling’s View of Easternness in India and East Asia” in On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture (2009) and “Canton 1857” in the upcoming Victorian Review special forum, “Beyond Britain.” Copyright © 2011 The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

THE MORALITY PLAY

One of the core questions in the research programme on media–government relations—with implications for democratic theory, journalism, governance, and international relations generally—is how the media can be influential. I argue here that the government (deliberately) and the media (as a function of their communicative acts) are involved in a never-ending conversation with moral implications that affect a government's capacity to lead or act. This theory is validated through empirical research, is falsifiable, and has explanatory force. It also supports or otherwise does not contradict key theories in political science about media–government relations including the rally-around-the-flag effect and the honeymoon period for new presidents. By contrast, the theory does take the research agenda away from the complexities of causality and the seeming importance of public opinion in that dynamic, while taking the field towards the study of communicative force in both inter-personal and inter-institutional relations.

Nationalism, News Media and Tolerance in Croatia

Since the end of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, Croatia has been in the process of becoming a new society. As part of this transition, the Croatian news media are aspiring to practice a more democratic and professional journalism promoting an open forum. As Croatia looks forward to joining the European Union, nationalism remains a challenge for objective news reporting. How can the Croatian news media help toward this new society and its need for more unity? The news media play a central role in presenting the debates, remembering there is no room for biased reporting or hate speech, and that all should be treated equally regardless of nationality, race, class or gender. This essay draws on John Stuart Mill's concepts of freedom of the press, character building and tolerance, and concludes that open-minded Croatian students who study and are trained in Western-style journalism that stresses independence and freedom of expression are the country's best hope for transforming Croatian media via truthful, fair, and balanced news reporting in the future.

Democratic Journalism and “Statelessness”

The starting premise of this article is that democratic journalism, no matter its specifics, is not viable as long as states are unable to perform key functions that cannot be delegated to other actors. For journalism, an intrusive state is as problematic as a tenuous, chaotic, and absent state. This point has not been sufficiently recognized and investigated in the literature on the current expansion and consolidation of a democratic press worldwide. “Statelessness,” a condition particularly affecting large swaths of the global South, deters the prospects for the affirmation of journalism that anchors democratic life. State absence facilitates anti-press violence, undermines the economic basis for news organizations, and weakens the rule of law. It remains unclear whether the press, an institution that has historically played key roles in building and renovating national identities and mediating civic engagement, can also make significant contributions to strengthening effective and democratic states. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which the press supports state-building processes. It is argued that although journalism as civic institution alone cannot address entrenched problems of violence, security, and lawlessness, it contributes to state-building through monitoring state actions, raising attention to problems, and identifying effective accountability mechanisms.

Books

Gans, Herbert J. (2003). Democracy and the News. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 168. Merritt, Davis and Maxwell McCombs (2004). The Two W's of Journalism: The Why and What of Public Affairs Reporting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 156. Perry, David K. (2003). The Roots of Civic Journalism: Darwin, Dewey, and Mead. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, pp. 151. During my first two decades as a reporter and editor in half a dozen newsrooms, I can't remember one discussion or training session centered on the theory of why we practice journalism. Writing, diversity, management workshops, yes, but a heady discussion on, let's say, the role of journalism in democracy, never. This does not mean we didn't consider our work crucial to democracy. As Herbert J. Cans points out in his book Democracy and the News, we just knew we were serving the public's right to know. Testing that assumption to see if we really were serving the public never entered the discussion. Maybe it seemed so apparent that it didn't need discussion. After all free societies have free presses; oppressed societies have Pravda and the worst tyrants imprison, kill, or cut the tongue out of anyone who tries to speak out freely. Therefore, working for the free press was working against tyranny and thus for democracy. End of discussion, now excuse me I have a deadline to meet. Then in the 1990s along came public journalism. Suddenly journalists like Davis Buzz Merritt, then editor of the Wichita Eagle, were letting academics like Jay Rosen, a professor from New York City, stick their heads into newsrooms and start talking about the relationship between journalism and democracy. And we are not talking just about Pravda vs. the New York Times; we are talking about whose theory of public life do you most closely follow: Walter Lippmann's or John Dewey's? Of course, that those types of questions might be asked in newsrooms was a sign that journalists were no longer ink-stained wretches. They are now college-educated professionals. However, from the point of view of University of Alabama journalism professor David K. Perry, they are not educated enough. He argues in The Roots of Civic Journalism: Darwin, Dewey, and Mead that their education reverberates from what one writer called vulgar pragmatism, which rejects all theory and focuses on the facts and practicality. Of course, anyone who has been in American newsrooms and worked with journalists would be hard pressed to argue with Perry's assessment. However, theory-based approaches aimed at current journalism reform have had effects. Public journalism grew out of a Deweyan theoretical view of democracy. Yes, public journalism took a pounding in the 1990s, but as Marty Linsky, in reviewing Rosen's book What Are Journalists For? wrote in the American Prospect: Rosen, Merritt, and their fellow travelers ... did just what they were complaining about not being able to do anymore: namely, to have public deliberation about a difficult, provocative, important question. In that sense, they showed that democratic deliberation is not dead-just that in a complicated, busy, information-overloaded world, the challenge of stimulating constructive dialogue is hard work. It requires skills not often possessed by glib polemicists: to learning, strategic thinking, listening, humility, and patience. I would argue the openness to learning is the hardest part for journalists. Maybe it is too late for journalists already in the newsrooms-but certainly not for our students. And that brings us to the Merritt and Maxwell McCombs book, The Two Ws of Journalism: The Why and What of Public Affairs Reporting. They say if you want change, wait a generation, thirty years. Don't expect change to happen like an injection. So that means that public journalism principles, which now date back to about 1988, might take another fifteen years to actually sink in. …