Main Newspapers Research Articles

When Literature Meets the Press: Trends in the Literary Supplements of Daily Newspapers in Israel, from the 1950s to the 1990s

This paper examines trends and changes in the Israeli literary supplements, investigates the tense relationship between literature and the printed media, and outlines the social and cultural processes that literary supplements reflect and echo. The research analyzed a sample of 540 literary supplements published in five main newspapers in Israel over a period of fifty years, since the establishment of the state in 1948. In addition, twelve interviews were conducted with present and former editors of the literary supplements. Two main trends—one relates to "form" while the other to "matter"—can be identified in the literary supplements within the fifty years of Israel's statehood. The first trend is shrinkage in their size; the second trend can generally be referred to as "popularization." This has led to the inclusion of pulp literature in literary supplements. As a consequence, literary supplements are in transition from progressive "mini literary periodicals" that publish new works of young writers to a mid-stream conservative supplement that does not take risks.

The Secular Holy Scriptures

This article investigates the tension between the sacred and the secular in the modern press, by examining the role of the holiday literary supplements. It analyzed a sample of 1050 supplements, published in seven main newspapers in Israel over a period of 52 years, since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In addition, a dozen interviews were conducted with present and former editors of the literary supplements. The main argument is that the literary supplements constitute a secular ritual. Speaking broadly we may call these literary supplements `The Secular Holy Scriptures'. This argument stems from the timing of publishing these supplements (every holiday eve); the writers featured (first-rank authors); the themes and subjects dealt with ('festive' and `high culture' topics); and the significance they acquire, over and above the weekday issues and other sections of holiday editions. Although the case study focuses on Israeli daily newspapers, we believe that, with some adjustments, the main arguments can be usefully applied to other cultures as well, to throw light on the role of the media in the creation of modern culture and civil religion.

Norwegian “Bokmål”: Present, Past and Future

The article presents the Norwegian majority official standard language “Bokmål” – its history, its present status and especially its present development – both to readers who are acquainted with the subject and to readers who are not. Some controversial aspects of Bokmål are discussed, such as its different varieties, its delimitation, especially with respect to the private standard “Riksmål”, its origin and the question of to what extent there is a spoken Bokmål. In connection with the delimitation of Bokmål, the article introduces the distinction between “prescribed” and “factual” norms – and the norm concept itself – and argues for the necessity of distinguishing clearly between the prescribed and the factual Bokmål. The last part of the article is devoted to the present development of Bokmål, both as it is regulated and as it is practised. The latest official reforms which have been proposed are reviewed and discussed. The language policy of the main newspapers are reviewed, as is the use of Bokmål, in the press as well as in the literature.

The Remaking of the Italian Community in London: L'Italia Nostra and the Creation of a Little Fascist Italy during the 1930s

This paper explores the attempts made by Italian Fascists to develop Fascist sympathies in the Italian community in London during the 1930s. Using a combination of autobiographical accounts and articles published in the main Italian newspaper in Britain, L'Italia Nostra, the means by which this was achieved are discussed. The importance of mutual aid, official involvement in community activities and the use of history to inculcate Fascist interpretations of national pride are all discussed.

Media reports of rural health and safety: a review of articles published in The Land newspaper.

The Land is one of the main newspapers that service Australia's rural community. A content analysis of reports on health issues in The Land was undertaken for the period April 1998 to October 1999 (76 editions, 10 336 pages). Fifty-four articles were published, with most being about causes of farm injury. Very few articles concerning non-injury health issues facing rural residents were published. People working in health promotion should consider The Land to be an under-utilised vehicle for news and commentary on rural health and safety issues.

MEDIA REPORTS OF RURAL HEALTH AND SAFETY: A REVIEW OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE LAND NEWSPAPER

ABSTRACT: The Land is one of the main newspapers that service Australia's rural community. A content analysis of reports on health issues in The Land was undertaken for the period April 1998 to October 1999 (76 editions, 10 336 pages). Fifty‐four articles were published, with most being about causes of farm injury. Very few articles concerning non‐injury health issues facing rural residents were published. People working in health promotion should consider The Land to be an under‐utilised vehicle for news and commentary on rural health and safety issues.

O papel das pesquisas de opinião pública na consolidação da democracia: a experiência latino-americana

Desde inícios dos anos 80, as pesquisas políticas e de opinião pública na América Latina têm se constituído num evento central ao processo de democratização. Quase todos os dias, os principais jornais e redes de TV da cada país nos informam sobre estudos focados sobre assuntos vinculados ao desenvolvimento político das novas democracias. Grande parte do que conhecemos sobre essas instituições é produto de pesquisas. Mas, qual têm sido as conseqüências disso? Este artigo mostra que essas pesquisas definem interações centrais entre elites políticas e cidadania nesses países, e que têm um papel central no seus processos de democratização.

A National Response to Paedophilia and Child Murder

In August 1996, Belgium was deeply shocked to learn of the rape and murder of several young girls by a group of paedophiles. In the wake of these events, the Belgian population displayed symptoms of collective emotional shock and bereavement. We endeavoured to come to terms with these feelings as a community. We immediately sent an open letter to all children, which was published in the country’s main newspapers. We then organized a group debriefing on national television on a very popular children’s programme. This article deals mainly with the processes involved in this debriefing session. Further complications later developed involving, among others, abused children and their families. In order to help them, in addition to individual interventions, we again used the press and radio and TV programmes. When the population eventually began to emerge from the shock and bereavement, we acted to prevent excesses by, among other things, writing an ‘open letter to child abusers’.

Just Before the Fall

The article tries to develop a better understanding of the role of discursive formations in the establishment of a nationalist claim. Nationalist discourses are defined as a distinctive subset of those discursive practices directed to transform, through the drawing of a boundary, a given audience in a solidary community, characterized by an internal, socially constructed similarity and by an external, socially constructed difference. It is argued that such a cultural approach may also help clarify some controversial issues in the sociology of nationalism, such as the meaning of the frequently made distinctions between `ethnic' and `civic' nationalism. It is argued that, while useful in identifying two crucial rhetorical resources, such distinction is troublesome when applied to nationalist actors. The empirical focus of the article is an analysis of a sample of articles published in the main Italian newspapers about the secessionist campaign of the Northern League in 1996. An analysis of their contents makes it possible to highlight the plurality of discursive strategies employed by social actors in order to advocate or oppose a nationalist claim. It is shown how all the actors involved adopt rhetorical themes belonging both to `ethnic' and `civic' templates.

Negotiating modernity and tradition: Newspaper debates on the ‘modern girl’ in the Irish free state[1

In the newly created Irish Free State the role of women provoked concerns among politicians, priests and the press. In particular, the ‘modern girl’ with her knee‐length dresses and shingled hair came to epitomise the extremes of modern living. This paper examines the debates about the Irish modern girl in the context of nation‐building in the aftermath of colonialism. While nationalist discourses frequently represent women as symbols of idealised motherhood, I argue that it is equally important to consider nationalist representations of ‘evil’, ‘deviant’ women. Such negative representations necessitate male control and authority over women, not only to ‘protect’ the nation but also to ‘protect’ women from their own base instincts. Although locating my analysis within the specificity of the Irish context, I suggest that rather than merely seeing the Irish case as unique or idiosyncratic it may be useful to draw on feminist analyses cross culturally. My discussion focuses on a case study of the three main newspapers in the Irish Free State during the mid‐1920s, the Irish Times, Irish Independent and Cork Examiner. These newspapers are useful in offering a ‘narrative of the nation’ and contributing to the definition of an appropriate post‐colonial national identity. The ‘modern girl’ appears as a contested symbol. For some she represented freedom, independence and modern lifestyles, while for others the modern girl represented a threat to tradition, morality and the virtues of Irish women and the Irish nation. The Irish newspapers illustrate the various negotiations around this apparent dichotomy of modernity vs tradition.

An evaluation of public concerns about water management in the Palestinian Territory pre, during, and post the national uprising

We have evaluated the extent of public concerns about water management in the Palestinian Territory (PT) through a survey of the main Palestinian newspaper over the last thirteen years divided in three periods: pre (1984–1987), during (1988–1991), and post national uprising period (1992–1996). The public concern in the PT about various water management aspects was clear and influenced by the prevailing political conditions indicating (1) poor concerns in the first and second period where full Israeli military control of the PT and harsh practices prevailed with relatively more emphasis on regional water issues and (2) extensive-strong concerns in the third period when the peace process started and a partial lift of some of the Israeli water practices took place, along with an increased freedom in expressing public concerns which was granted with more emphasis on local issues and problems. Lack and limitation of water available to Palestinians, alternative solutions, and water quality and pollution control constituted the overwhelming majority of the topics of concern to the public for the three periods studied. Palestinian concerns were always greater than regional ones for the three periods and all of the topics considered. Public concern in the PT about all other water management aspects was poor and negligible especially in the first two periods. A massive increase in public concern has been observed in the third period in which the public expressed their concern over most water management aspects, indicating a possible change in public attitude toward water and water management and reflecting the change of the political status by the start of the peace process and the signing of the peace agreements.

The British Popular Press and the Early Cold War

Britain's role during the early years of the cold war has come under intense scrutiny in the past decade. As a result, it is now known that London rather than Washington played the leading part in forcing the pace towards confrontation with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. However, relatively little is known still about the British public's reaction to this policy. By examining arguably the chief public opinion former during this period, the ‘popular’ press, this paper hopes to shed new light on the roots and development of cold war values in Britain. The attitudes of the main newspapers to certain key events overseas between 1945 and 1949 are outlined, as is the relationship between Attlee's Labour government and the press in relation to foreign affairs. Ultimately, the chief purpose of the article is to assess the part played by the ‘popular’ press in the emergence, or orchestration, of a cold war ‘consensus’ in Britain by the beginning of the 1950s.

Doctors pass off spoof research as fact

A group of Dutch doctors is attempting to pass off spoof scientific research as fact in an attempt, they claim, to show the thin line between truth and fiction in medicine. One regional Dutch newspaper has already published a fake article, believing it to be true, about a “gene bus” that the public could attend to test their genetic predisposition to fatal diseases. It stated that the results of tests for Alzheimer's disease were kept secret because “the high percentage could cause social unrest in the village.” The story appeared in the Leeuwarder Courant, Friesland's main newspaper. It was then picked up by the national newspaper De …

An annotated bibliography of nineteenth century New Zealand songbooks

Abstract The three works under review represent the first three volumes in the Canterbury Series of Bibliographies, Catalogues and Source Documents in Music, the aim of which is to “document diverse aspects of the musical heritage of the Canterbury province” in New Zealand. The first volume is Selected Source Readings on Musical Activity in the Canterbury Settlement, edited by Brian W. Pritchard. Newspapers provide a valuable insight into the history of our past, especially for matters of cultural concern and as Pritchard describes them, “central forums for the propagation and exchange of ideas and attitudes”. His small volume uses newspapers as a source for material to cover “aspects of music making in which attitudes, philosophies and ideals from the homeland [England] have most clearly directed and influenced the colonial situation”. Short extracts have been drawn from the two main newspapers published in the Canterbury settlement, the Lyttleton Times and the Press. The documents include advertisements...

A FAMILY MATTER: NIGHT AND DAY AND OLD KENSINGTON

R E A D E R S of Virginia Woolf's letters are aware that the publication of Night and Day was accompanied by a contretemps concerning the character of Mrs Hilbery, the eccentric mother of the book's heroine. The novelist had based Mrs Hilbery on Lady Ritchie, an elderly relative on her father's side, and had succeeded to perfection in capturing the erratic intelligence and civilized garrulity of her original. Perhaps sensing that she risked causing offence, she had allowed Lady Ritchie to read the novel in manuscript, an experience which the eighty-one-year-old woman did not find altogether pleasant.1 We do not know when Lady Ritchie was shown the manuscript, but it cannot have been many months before her death, which occurred on 26 February 1919. In,her day, Lady Ritchie had been a novelist of some celebrity, and her passing was noticed in the main newspapers and literary journals. Virginia Woolf was invited to contribute an obituary article to the Times Literary Supplement.2 Considering the contents of her forthcoming novel, she must have approached the task with a certain compunction. She recorded in her diary that she did not find it easy.3 In the event, she ignored her subject's personality almost entirely; but her three columns of literary criticism remain the most penetrating assessment of Lady Ritchie's novels yet written. By this article, which is warmly appreciative in the main, Virginia Woolf had made amends to Lady Ritchie herself. The reactions of the Ritchie family, however, had still to be faced, and there was a second reason why trouble might be anticipated from that quarter. Chapter 7 of Night and Day was to contain a paraphrase of the most private and pathetic episodes in the life of Lady Ritchie's father, the novelist W. M. Thackeray. Some details are changedThackeray is made into a poet and renamed Alardyce, and the fact of his wife's madness is obscured; but the ruin of his marriage and the

Okinawan Reversion in Retrospect

ANY PEOPLE in Okinawa wonder why they favored reversion IVI. now that the prices are higher under Japanese commented a member of Japan's House of Councillors, Kyan Shinei, after his re-election inJuly I974. There were always conflicting estimates of how strongly native Okinawans wanted to return to Japan, of how much they like the Japanese, or disliked the American military government which ruled them from I 945 to I 972. Disagreements of this type are best revealed in public opinion polls which are the basis of this article, but even they are not always clear. Anyone wishing to study the impact of reversion on Okinawan opinion should also consult Americans with long experience in the islands, Japanese officials and their Okinawan counterparts, and experts among the Okinawan academic and business communities. This article* is based mainly on the author's interviews in Tokyo and Naha in the summer of I974, and on poll data obtained over the years from the two main newspapers in Naha (the Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo). It deals first with the cultural self-perceptions and Okinawan expectations of Japan, then with the economic costs of return to Japanese control, and finally with the critical issue of American military bases and the presence of 5,500 Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in Okinawa. It is too early to reach firm conclusions about the impact of the 27 years of American rule, although Professor Mikio Higa of the University of the Ryukyus has noted that according to a study of this problem the task is badly needed, and that his own institution was engaged only in piecemeal studies of the American period.' Part of the problem

Italy: From Interventionism to Fascism, 1917-1919

Between the end of 1916 and beginning of 1917 in Italy, as in all the other countries of warring Europe, the situation underwent a decisive change. The check in military operations after the Austrian victory in the Trentino, the difficulties which sprang from the prolongation of the war beyond all expectations and from its unexpected dimensions, created widespread concern and rising tensions. These were manifested at the mass level in popular disturbances, and on the political level in a violent attack by the interventionist groups against the forces which had been opposed to Italy's entry into the war (Giolittians, socialists, and in part Catholics). It was this division between 'interventionists' and 'neutralists' (or pacifists) which distinguished the Italian political scene, even after Italy's entry into the war. The interventionists identified these opposing forces with the parliament elected in 1913 by universal suffrage under Giolittian influence; hence their attacks on parliament and the government, accused of weakness and of harbouring 'internal enemies'. The interventionists demanded that power be handed over to a restricted group of experts. The campaign was picked up by the main newspapers, from the Corriere della Sera to the Messaggero and the Giornale d'Italia, from the nationalist Idea Nazionale to Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia and the democratic interventionist Azione socialista.

The Leningrad Collection of Zemstvo Publications

The collection of Zemstvo Publications (Kollektsiia zemskikh izdanii) in Leningrad is undoubtedly the most important source of materials for the study of the zemstvo institutions which existed in Russia from 1864 to 1917. Because the work of these institutions touched every phase of Russian society, the collection is valuable for countless other topics as well. Containing approximately 100,000 volumes, it was formed in the 1950s from the library of the former Free Economic Society. It is little publicized and has not been utilized, even by Soviet scholars, to the degree it deserves. As of June 1966 the collection had been used, according to the staff, by only two American scholars, although access to it is granted to almost any scholar who has a card for the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, of which it is a branch.The collection is one of the fonds which make up the Fondy Vol'nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (Fonds of the Free Economic Society), which are housed in a room of the Fontanka Embankment Library at 36 Fontanka Embankment, Leningrad, approximately three blocks from the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. In the same building are the main library's newspaper collection and newspaper reading room and various other reading rooms for graduate and undergraduate students.