Institute Of Journalism Research Articles

FOUNDATION-FUNDED JOURNALISM

This paper looks at examples of journalistic institutions that receive prior funding (as opposed to post facto reward) from charitable foundations. It examines ProPublica in the United States (financed by the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation), Transitions Online in Eastern Europe (financed initially by the Open Society Institute) and the Centre for Public Inquiry in Ireland (closed down by its sole funder, Atlantic Philanthropies, after a government and press campaign against its executive director). Drawing on the sociological literature about foundations, it raises questions about the purposes of philanthropy, about the transparency of media that use philanthropically funded material, and about the assumption of a unitary “public interest” common to both philanthropy and to traditional journalism. It concludes that both a critical understanding of foundations themselves and a consideration of the case-studies presented should encourage wariness about philanthropic funding as an unproblematic model for the future of journalism.

The Media Activism of Latin America’s Leftist Governments: Does Ideology Matter?

Has Latin America’s left turn mattered in media politics? Does ideology impact governments’ practices and policies regarding media and journalistic institutions? Through an empirical assessment of discourses on the media, of direct-communication practices, and of media regulation policies on the part of the recent leftist governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela, this paper stresses the existence of a specific media activism on the part of leftist governments in Latin America. While showing that the current binary distinctions that stress the existence of two lefts - populist and nonpopulist - obscure important commonalities and continuities, the author also demonstrates that it is the existence of certain institutional and structural constraints that best accounts for the differ-ences among the various leftist governments in Latin America. In sum, the paper challenges the prevailing neglect of ideology as a relevant factor in explaining developments in government–media relationships in the region.

Journalism Education in Ireland

The start of journalism education in Ireland is generally dated from the 1960s with the setting up of the journalism course in the College of Commerce, Rathmines. However, there were some earlier initiatives in the first decade of the 20th century. A series of lectures was organised by the Institute of Journalists in Trinity College Dublin in 1908-9 (Hunter, 1982; Institute of Journalists, 1909) and journalism is said to have become a degree subject in Queens College/University College Cork around the same time (Stephenson and Mory, 1990; Murphy, 1995). These efforts appear to have rapidly faded. They coincide with similar initiatives in Britain which were also unsuccessful, in contrast to the United States, where journalism education was developed in several locations such as the universities of Missouri, Wisconsin and Columbia University, New York, which to this day, remain strong providers in the field.

Bloggers rip into a journalistic institution

Bloggers rip into a journalistic institution

The opposition between mediacentric and socieocentric paradigms

This paper identifi es and discusses two trends of journalism research in Brazil. In short, the hegemonic trend – the so-called ‘mediacentric’ trend – seeks to look at the impact journalism has on society by disseminating an authoritarian and biased world view. The counter-hegemonic trend – the so-called ‘sociocentric’ trend – takes into account the power of journalism, but considers it susceptible to pressures and seeks to look at the trade-off s made by organized groups in civil society and journalistic institutions. This paper argues for the second trend and considers it as an analytical stance that is less naive and more realistic. That accounts for the complexity of political game and the correlation of forces in society.

"... But There Are Miles to Go" Racial Diversity and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1922-2000

Although receiving little attention beyond its own membership, a meeting in Dallas, October 6, 1990 was a turning point for one of the most neglected diversity encounters in American journalism. At its board meeting, directors of the 68-year-old American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), the largest professional organization of its kind, elected William A. Hilliard, editor of the Portland Oregonian, to the office of treasurer in April, 1991. (1) As such, Hilliard rose on the ASNE leadership ladder to become the Society's first black president in 1993. (2) To a cynical few, Hilliard's election was yet another example of public relations and tokenism on the part of the predominately white, male society started with five members in 1922 and which has since become a major professional organization for 900 newspaper editors. Similar charges were made when members of the ASNE board of directors elected Katherine Fanning of The Christian Science Monitor treasurer and put her on the leadership ladder to become the first female ASNE president in 1987. For some, the lingering image of ASNE still is the 1950s photo appearing on the cover jacket of a 1974 history (3) of the Society showing dozens of smiling, all-white male editors displaying their hometown newspapers. Eight years later, ASNE president Thomas Winship of the Boston Globe condemned editors for their failure to encourage, recruit and hire minorities. Our casual attitude toward minority employment is particularly embarrassing because our mission is semipublic and because it is protected by constitutional guarantees. Yet newspapers, with a nearly all-white face, attempt to portray accurately a mixed society. (4) Nudged slightly by the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on integration of public schools, and the 1968 Kerner Commission's indictment of the media for its contribution to civil disorders, as well as by a handful of members such as Winship, ASNE belatedly exerted its collective influence to create an awareness and challenge to ASNE to provide greater institutional leadership. After a half century of inattention, ASNE eventually became a catalyst rather than a neutralizing agent to encourage its membership toward greater recruiting, hiring and promotion practices to integrate black and other minority journalists into the mainstream of American journalism. In 1998, however, representatives of minority journalism organizations and others charged that ASNE still needed to assume greater responsibility in the diversity effort. (5) At its first meeting of the new century, a report indicated that the quarter century effort to make newsrooms reflect America's racially diverse population had failed to narrow the gap. The ASNE president reported that although had been made there are miles to go. (6) The official Proceedings of the ASNE as well as minutes, correspondence, interviews, addresses by its presidents, and its Bulletin house organ help trace and document the issue which became one of the priorities for ASNE and other journalistic institutions in the last quarter of the 20th century. This case study attempts to view the issue of institutional inattention and indifference in the context of what historian Ira Berlin describes as time and place. (7) Using a longitudinal approach, it documents what ASNE president Tom Winship described as the glacial progress of ASNE from moral, philosophic and institutional indecision to political and economic reality stationing the foundation for Hilliard to become the first black ASNE president. It documents through the use of proceedings and minutes as well as secondary sources, the role of individual ASNE members and other mainstream newspaper editors, particularly those from the South, who played prominent roles both to advance but primarily detain institutional diversity. It describes how they helped prepare the way for heterogeneity by fighting against segregation and for better educational opportunities for blacks as well as other minority groups and women (8) from indifference and neglect to a strategy of moderation, and finally a sense of urgenc y. …

Journalists and the ‘Professional Ideal’ in Britain: the Institute of Journalists, 1884–1907*

Abstract This article examines the early history of the Institute of Journalists as a case study of occupational development in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It argues that disagreements over the putative meaning of ‘professional’ led to widespread belief that journalists’ interests were best served by organizing as a trade union rather than as a ‘professional organization’. Drawing on trade periodicals, memoirs and journalism handbooks, this article illustrates the complexities of the ‘professional ideal’ and underscores the ambiguous position of the ‘mental labourer’ in British society.

Journalism's `discursive events' and sociopolitical change in Sweden 1925-87

This article reports on a study which tries to define types of discursive event produced by the journalistic institution and relate these events to three different sociopolitical and historical situations in Sweden. As well as a strong substantive and historical argument, there is also a methodological argument about the way in which discursive practices have to be analysed at both micro (for example, grammar and word frequency) and macro (for example, text constructions, modes of address) levels in order to be correlated with discursive formations and shifts in the social order. Linguistic, content and sociostructural aspects are brought together to produce three complex time-tableaux, each of which is given synchronic as well as diachronic attention.

Being Jewish in the Other Germany: An Interview with Thomas Eckert

Thomas Eckert, born in 1953 in East Berlin, is a third generation socialistJewishjournalist. His maternal grandfather Hermann Budzislawski (1901-1978) was the founder and, after 1934, Editor-in-Chief of Die neue Weltbiihne, a wellknown left liberal journal in prewar Germany. In exile in the United States during the 1940s, he worked as a ghostwriterfor Dorothy Thompson. After the war he returned to the German Democratic Republic and was appointed Director ofthe Institute ofJournalism at the University ofLeipzig. Budzislawski's daughter, Beate Eckert, worked for many years with the East German television, radio, and news agency. Thomas Eckert, her son, was a journalist in East Berlin. He is currently writing a doctoral dissertation injournalism at the Free University in West Berlin. He also writes for Radio Free Berlin.

A Press Charter for Britain?

Efforts to introduce a ‘closed shop’ in the British newspaper industry have led to a great deal of controversy over the past two years. Also under discussion has been the question of a Press Charter, which some journalists feel is essential under the circumstances if the freedom of the British press is to be safeguarded, while others are opposed to it. Below we print an abbreviated version of a debate broadcast on the BBC programme ‘The Editors’ on 10 October 1976. The participants included two representatives of the National Union of Journalists, the General Secretary of the rival Institute of Journalists, the editors of two leading London papers, spokesmen for the Guild of British Newspaper Editors, the Newspaper Publishers Association and the Newspaper Society, as well as a foreign observer of the British scene in the person of an American correspondent in London. The discussion was chaired by George Scott, editor of the BBC'S weekly magazine The Listener.

Den politiske presse - En analyse af danske avisers politiske orientering

Contemporary media and press theory (e.g. Cook: “Governing with the News”, Hallin & Mancini: “Comparing Media Systems”) tend to agree on the decline of the political press. As news media get more commercial, their political influence is based on their role as independent journalistic institutions and not through ties to the political parties. However, recent developments in the Danish newspaper market seem to contradict this assumption. As free newspapers challenge older morning papers, we simultaneously experience the expansion of a politically neutral and purely commercial press, and a repoliticized press giving more prominence to opinions and values. Political parallelism between part of the press and the political institutions seems to persist.

Fifty Years in Fleet Street

With the exception of general labouring, no profession, craft, trade, or occupation throws its gates so widely open to all and sundry, including rogues and “wise guys”, as Fleet Street, or the newspaper world. And the true Fleet Street man is peculiarly vulnerable to the attentions of the rogues and others, because, while he is one of the most knowledgeable of individuals, he is by training, and very often also by nature, an observer and a critic, not a doer. He seldom can make a fortune for himself, but is open to be used and abused in making fortunes—and large ones—for others. He is also very much an individualist, and so he and his colleagues can seldom agree on common action. Hence the opportunity of the exploiters and financial manipulators. Characteristically, you have not one, but two professional bodies representing the Fleet Street man—the Institute of Journalists, founded last century under Royal Charter, and the National Union of Journalists, founded before the first World War by a few Manchester journalists, which, instead of being Royal, or anything like it, linked itself to the Trade Union Congress, with wage and working conditions as its ruling concern.

University and Educational Intelligence

A CONFERENCE on women in industry will be held under the auspices of the Industrial Reconstruction Council on Tuesday, October 22, at 6 p.m., in the hall of the Institute of Journalists, 2 and 4 Tudor Street, E.C.4. The subject will be introduced by Miss Lilian Dawson, after which the discussion will be open.. No tickets are necessary.