Mainstream Organizations Research Articles

Are Rape Crisis Centers Feminist Organizations?

Although rape crisis centers began as feminist organizations, research exploring centers' current feminist identity is limited. Data from interviews with 63 staff, volunteers, interns, and directors affiliated with six rape crisis centers and programs located in four East Coast states are used to examine how they view feminism and whether they believe their rape crisis centers maintain a feminist ideology. Although most directors identified their organization as a feminist one, they also indicated that the feminist identity of rape crisis centers has changed over time as organizations increasingly collaborated with mainstream organizations and became less politically active. Because of the possible negative connotation of the word “feminism,” some directors and advocates spoke of their reluctance to advertise as a feminist organization for fear of alienating victims, potential volunteers, and/or funders.

The Promotion of Minority Group Rights as the Protection of Individual Rights and Freedoms for Immigrants: A Canadian Case Study

This study reports that SUCCESS was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1973 as a result of the failure of government agencies and mainstream organizations to provide accessible social services for newly-arrived Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. During its initial stage, the organization provided mainly basic settlement services. But SUCCESS has become a well-established multi-level service agency, providing a wide range of programs and services to both Chinese and non-Chinese. More importantly, it has created a home and a community to which immigrants feel they belong. It demonstrates that SUCCESS has played a significant role in promoting immigrant integration. Furthermore, it has built a bridge between the immigrant community and Canadian society at large. In addition, the study challenges the view of liberal universalism and provides an alternative model to interpret minority group rights, citizenship, and democracy.

Critical management studies and theagélasteethos

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the notion of carnival laughter in Bakhtin's examination of Rabelais's literary works. The paper suggests that what may be called, after Rabelais, theagélasteethos, the ethos of the men and women without laughter, remains a strong influence in some domains of critical management studies (CMS) as well as mainstream organization theory.Design/methodology/approachThe literature review discusses Russian literature theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of the writings of François Rabelais and related his concept of theagélasteto contemporary social and organization theory.FindingsSome proponents of CMS praise the critical thinking and the outlook on society established by its foundational writers Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. As a consequence, CMS tends to exclude the sources of joy, laughter and transgression and regard such social and human gestures and events as being frivolous and ephemeral. Therefore, CMS remains trapped within its own sphere of critical thinking and fails to address and understand significant components of everyday life.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper suggests that the notion of “critique” needs to be explored within the community of CMS researchers.Originality/valueDiscusses the concept of critique so central for both the CMS tradition of thinking and other domains of management studies in new terms.

Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities (review)

Reviewed by: Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities Nikolaos I. Liodakis Cheryl Teelucksingh , ed. Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. 202 pp. Index. $32.95 sc. Canadian social science has been long preoccupied with relationships of domination and subordination among and within ethnic and racialized groups. Under present conditions of capitalist globalization, we are witnessing an increase in capital movement and profits on the one hand, and restrictions in the movement of labour and world-wide increased levels of poverty and inequality on the other. Global and local demographics are changing; so is space. Despite the diminishing role of the state in certain areas, the Canadian state has been and continues to be actively engaged in the production, reproduction, and maintenance of hegemonic ideologies like multiculturalism/ interculturalism, in processes of racialization and ever-changing meanings of race, as well as in capitalist material relations and practices. We are also witnessing increasing ethnic/racialized group resistance against the power of the "dominant stakeholders." Claiming Space is an edited volume consisting of ten well-written chapters, primarily concerned with racialized spaces and the socio-political power/resistance relations that permeate them. It deals with processes of racialization and several urban manifestations of social inequality (13) from a postmodernist/post-structuralist perspective. In Teelucksingh's work (chapter 1), Soja's trialectics (from Lefebvre, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and post-colonialist theories) are coupled with Miles' conceptualization of racialization in order to provide the basic tenets of a flexible theoretical framework, and set the stage to examine issues central to Canadian social sciences: the production, reproduction of, and resistance to dominant [End Page 202] ethnic/racial culture(s), the urban spaces within which social relations operate, and critiques of the ideologies, processes, and material practices by which racialized populations —mainly new immigrants —are othered. Treating space as a) objective and subjective, b) material and metaphorical, and c) as both a medium and outcome of social life (6), contributors to this volume conceptualize, analyze and criticize various spaces in major Canadian cities, which constitute sites where socio-political and economic struggles occur. Such sites and struggles are both structural and individual (those of socially constituted subjects). In Canadian urban centres there exist many China-towns, Greek-towns, Little Italys and other ethnic neighoubrhoods and spaces within which the "stakeholders of power" act as agents in the reproduction of the particularities of spaces; spaces serve the socio-political and economic interests of power and its agents (9-10). Racial meanings and hierarchies found in those spaces are not treated as fixed or monolithic, but as part of the contexts within which they operate, as part of historical processes. They are historically specific, thus sensitive to context and fluid (4). Spatiality is material and symbolic; it is contested. Space is part of the outcome(s) of a myriad of struggles over its meaning(s) and constitution (8). Conflicts of self and other manifest themselves as conflicts over claims of space. The book may be divided thematically into two parts. The first treats space as concrete, physical, and objective. It includes chapters by Train (3), Panagakos (4), and Beneventi (8). Train examines the spatial conflicts between Toronto's Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish communities by analyzing how the former carved out their own space by building the Kehila Centre. This work shows that even othered communities are heterogeneous and that struggles over space occur within them as well. It demonstrates how "claiming space is about asserting the recognition and inclusion" (60) of minorized identities within already minorized groups, as well as society at large. As such, this is a very important piece of research, and it is a pity that there are not many qualitative analyses of such differences within other ethnic/racialized groups available in Canada. Panagakos, although referring to the exclusion of minorized subgroups (homosexual people) from mainstream organizations, is mainly concerned with how Calgary's Greek community is reinventing suburban spaces in order to accommodate (hegemonic) notions of ethnicity, patriarchy, age hierarchies, and multiculturalism (79). The role of the state in selling multiculturalism and that of the Greek Orthodox Church in stratifying the community (e.g., in terms of gender...

Trends in the Transnational Protest Movement

Trends in the Transnational Protest Movement Michael D. Richardson Sherlock Holmes once famously remarked that what was curious about the “incident of the dog in the night-time” was that the dog did not bark. Observers of the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, might have likewise noticed an uncharacteristic silence in the air. This year, the World Social Forum (WSF), which has staged annual anti-Davos protests since 2001 in cities from Porto Alegre to Nairobi, asked its members to stay home.1 Rather than hold a single, attention-grabbing counter-demonstration, the WSF encouraged activists across the globe to organize local press conferences and other events in their communities “to confront this important neo-liberal gathering of the elites.”2 This rejection of centrally coordinated protest in favor of a diffuse, grassroots effort reveals two important new trends in what has been called the “transnational protest movement,” or the “global justice movement.”3 For one thing, protesters have come to define themselves more by what they stand against than what they stand for . “What unites [the movement’s] different elements,” according to one scholar, “is not a demand for specific reforms, but the rejection of ‘global capitalism’ and its influence on culture and human relations.”4 A second key trend is the movement’s eschewal of a centralized, bureaucratic structure. Protests are organized via the Internet, but specific tactics and even agenda items are left to the discretion of activists on the ground.5 This approach has given rise to a string of loose activist networks that depend very little on a central leader or common ideology.6 On paper, at least, the protest movement appears to share many policy goals with more mainstream nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Indeed, the two groups have plenty of common ground to tread. But at the same time, a rift has grown between these potential allies as they struggle to be heard by governments, international institutions, and the general public.7 One activist author complained that many NGOs are “[l]lacking in imagination” and torn between competing impulses to work with the street movement, on the one hand, and to negotiate directly with power holders, on the other. As a result, some NGOs can actually become vehicles for the containment of political dissent.8 So long as this rift persists, activists risk being drowned out by NGOs that have well-cultivated ties to both political elites and the press.9 [End Page 155] The question remains as to how international organizations and governments such as the United States should respond to these trends in the protest movement. One approach has been avoidance. Massive urban protests in Seattle, Genoa, and elsewhere have led international conference organizers to move their meetings away from contentious city streets. The Group of Eight nations, for example, held its last summits in the small German town of Heiligendamm, and in 2008 at the remote Japanese island of Hokkaido. The other tactic has been to give NGOs a “seat at the table,” thereby permitting them to voice their concerns in the policymaking process.10 But so long as that seat is only open to established, mainstream organizations, it is safe to say that the transnational protest movement will live on. Footnotes 1. Dougherty, Carter. “Anti-Davos Takes a Breather.”International Herald Tribune . January 24, 2008, Finance Section, p. 16. 2. World Social Forum 2008. “World Social Forum 2008: A Global Day of Action and Mobilization.” http://www.wsf2008.net/eng/node/3621 . 3. There is some debate as to whether recent protests constitute a “movement,” but these terms are generally associated with the rise of global civil society and with widespread campaigns against states and international organizations that promote neo-liberal agendas. See Della Porta, Donatella, and Sidney Tarrow. “Transnational Processes and Social Activism: An Introduction.” In Transnational Protest & Global Activism , edited by Donatella Della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, p. 1–17. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. 4. Clark, John, and Nuno Themudo. “The Age of Protest: Internet-Based ‘Dot Causes’ and the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement.” In Globalizing Civic Engagement: Civil Society and Transnational Action , edited by John Clark, p. 109–126. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2003. 5...

5 Public Administration and Organization Studies

The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations—the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment—coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as corruption or misuse of power, from occurring) in a public organization environment. Insufficient concern about performance among public administration scholars is particularly unfortunate because over the past 15 years, there has occurred a significant growth of interest among practitioners in improving government performance. The origins and consequences of these developments are discussed, and a research agenda for organization studies research that takes the public sector seriously is proposed.

5 Public Administration and Organization Studies

The study of public organizations has withered over time in mainstream organization studies research, as scholars in the field have migrated to business schools. This is so even though government organizations are an important part of the universe of organizations—the largest organizations in the world are agencies of the U.S. government. At the same time, the study of public administration, once in the mainstream of organization studies, has moved into a ghetto, separate and unequal. Centered in business schools, mainstream organization research became isomorphic to its environment—coming to focus on performance issues, which are what firms care about. Since separation, the dominant current in public administration has become isomorphic with its environment. In this case, however, this meant the field moved backward from the central reformist concern of its founders with improving government performance, and developed instead a focus on managing constraints (i.e., avoiding bad things, such as corruption or misuse of power, from occurring) in a public organization environment. Insufficient concern about performance among public administration scholars is particularly unfortunate because over the past 15 years, there has occurred a significant growth of interest among practitioners in improving government performance. The origins and consequences of these developments are discussed, and a research agenda for organization studies research that takes the public sector seriously is proposed.

“Koe wai hoki koe?!”, or “Who are you?!”: Issues of trust in cross‐cultural collaborative research

Cross‐cultural research designs are increasingly employed in the New Zealand context to investigate a range of complex social and environmental issues. However, there is little guidance for researchers who work for mainstream organisations and hapū (subtribe(s)) and iwi (tribe(s)) on how to undertake cross‐cultural collaborative research. Trust is a key issue that makes cross‐cultural research possible and it is surprising that issues relating to trust have not featured widely in the literature. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences working cross‐culturally and collaboratively with a hapū in Northland, New Zealand. We discuss how a mainstream research organisation worked with a community health trust and developed a working relationship with a hapū, forming the basis of a community‐driven collaborative evaluation of a central government‐funded project. Key findings were the establishment of a tuākana‐tēina relationship (where teacher and learner are interchangeable) between the members of the collaborative research team and the employment of appropriate research methods to develop a research agenda that ensured everyone would benefit from the research.

Joint Ventures and Indigenous Tourism Enterprises

Collaborative ventures between indigenous Australians and mainstream organizations are increasingly promoted as solution to the problems affecting Aboriginal tourism enterprises. Drawing on case studies from Cape York and Gagudju National Park, this article analyzes the histories of two large-scale indigenous tourism enterprises and their divergent responses to insolvency. Current directions in indigenous tourism development policy are evaluated, including the role of Indigenous Business Australia and its relevance to the development of sustainable tourism enterprises. The article argues that the efficacy of collaborative arrangements in large-scale enterprises is limited by the presence of contrasting cultural values, social practices, and economic circumstances, and recommends a greater emphasis on cross-cultural understanding and comanagement in the development and management of indigenous tourism enterprises. Acknowledging that small-scale ecotourism and cultural tourism ventures may be more appropriate, the article suggests even these may not provide the expected benefits and calls for greater caution in indigenous tourism development strategies.

Surfacing Perversions of Democracy in the Workplace: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Project

Can democratic institutions contain conflict, division, and uncanny emotions with cultures of management that are frequently undemocratic? What distinguishes those institutions and organizations capable of containment from others? And, what are the psychodynamics at work in the perversion of democratic processes inside organizations? In this paper, we explore the psychodynamics of democracy in the workplace with a particular focus on unconscious and collusive forms of perverting democratic processes at work. We suggest that interpersonally and collectively the dialectical interplay between (1) autistic–contiguous, (2) paranoid–schizoid, and (3) depressive modes of experience and organized perceptions, which are necessary to the containment of divisions and conflicts in democratic organizations, is vulnerable to stress, anxiety, and psychological defenses that foster regression and collapse into more oppressive, authoritarian, and sadistic political cultures. With the objective of understanding perversions to democracy in the workplace, we find that a contemporary psychoanalytic view of organizations is more instructive than mainstream organization theory or that found in Foucault's writings on power and institutions.

Memories: Religion and Cultural Transmission

Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. (Cognitive Science of Religion Series.) AltaMira Press, 2004. Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Anthropology and comparative religion have had a love-hate relationship with the theory of evolution. In the early days of both disciplines, attempts to apply Darwin's theory analogically to cultural development played a crucial role (Sharpe 1975). But they got it all wrong. Edward Westermarck (1906-1908) was one of the few who really understood the theory of natural selection operating on random variation as well as its implications for the study of human behavior. Then times changed; after a few decades cultural evolutionism seemed to be a dead horse (see D'Andrade 2000). Sometimes dead horses tend to rise from the dead, however. Currently an evolutionary perspective to human behavior figures prominently in such fields of inquiry as human behavioral ecology, gene-culture coevolutionary theories, evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and even "memetics" (see Laland and Brown 2002). It is possible to study the biological constraints of human behavior, apply the idea of natural selection analogically to culture, or to explore how culture has changed human biology (cf. Ehrlich and Feldman 2003). [End Page 341] Whitehouse's book represents the so-called cognitive science of religion which is partly but only partly characterized by an evolutionary perspective (see Pyysiäinen and Anttonen 2002, Tremlin 2006). Whitehouse does not present explicit evolutionary arguments; on the contrary, he tries to show that religion cannot be explained merely by evolved mechanisms that are "triggered" under certain circumstances. He cites (20) approvingly Boyd and Richerson's (2000) view, according to which culture involves observational learning, although not everything people know is culturally transmitted. Yet Whitehouse neither makes explicit use of Boyd and Richerson's theoretical model nor even discuss it, although his own position vis-à-vis Pascal Boyer's evolutionary explanation of religion comes very close to Boyd and Richerson's gene-culture coevolutionary view (see Boyer 1994:266-287). While Richerson and Boyd's volume aims to provide a lucid exposition of the authors' formal theory of coevolution to non-specialists, Whitehouse wants to develop causal explanations of how psychological factors and sociopolitical organization interact in the transmission of religious traditions. Or, as he puts it: "This book sets out a testable theory of how religions are created, reproduced, and transformed" (1). The Modes of Religiosity After obtaining his Ph.D. from Cambridge, Whitehouse published Inside the Cult (1995), a vivid ethnography of a millenarian cult in Papua New Guinea. This cult consisted of a large and uniform mainstream organization together with a temporary small-scale movement which was emotional and innovative. Whitehouse coined the expression "modes of religiosity" to describe the fact that all religious traditions tend to develop either towards large-scale organizations characterized by orthodoxy and dry ritual routine (doctrinal mode), or towards small-scale communities placing emphasis on emotionally arousing rituals without any sanctioned interpretation of their meaning (imagistic mode). The modes theory has since been elaborated in a collective effort by scholars working in various disciplines. The theory was first evaluated by a number of anthropologists in a workshop at Cambridge University in December 2001 (Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004). In August 2002, historians and archaeologists of religion gathered in a workshop at the University of Vermont, USA (Whitehouse and Martin 2004). A year later, a third workshop was arranged with psychologists and cognitive scientists at Emory University in Atlanta (Whitehouse and McCauley 2005). In addition, Whitehouse himself has constantly [End Page 342] been developing the theory in the light of the ongoing debates (Whitehouse 1995, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2005). The present volume was put together soon after the workshop in Vermont. Whitehouse tackles Boyer's challenge armed with the distinction between "cognitively costly" and "cognitively optimal" religion (see Atran 2002). Boyer (1994, 2003) has forcefully argued that religious concepts and beliefs are effectively spread...

Journalists Imagining the European Public Sphere

This article aims to analyse journalists’ professional imagination in connection to EU news. A special attention is paid to the variety of ideas about European public sphere that inform (or fail to inform) journalists’ work. The article is based on 149 semi-structured qualitative journalist interviews conducted in the home offices of mainstream news organisations in ten European countries.The article takes up Charles Taylor’s idea that public sphere belongs to the key social imaginaries of modernity and treat journalists as important carriers of these social imaginaries. These professional imaginaries are traced by looking at how journalists perceive the locus of news, how they define their professional role vis-á-vis their audience, and finally, how they would describe the political and communication problems within the EU. From this reasoning three relatively coherent lines of thought were derived: classical professionalism, secular discourse, and cosmopolitan discourse. As a conclusion the article attempts to map out these different discourses in connection to modes of political communication.The three discourses detected in the article can be seen as contemporary versions of professionalism in European news organisations. As such, they do not give much ground to assume that a European public sphere would emerge out of national journalistic cultures. Given the emergent nature of publics and public spheres, this does not mean that such practices may not be developed outside journalism.

Models of Resistance: "Victims" Lead

This author has found through professional and personal experience that throughout the world, women directly affected by injustice have led demands for accountability. The purpose of this article is to challenge mainstream human rights groups to create a different type of partnership between themselves and the people for whom they advocate by seeking the involvement of "victims", including leaders of successful "victim-led" initiatives. This approach will result in more appropriate policy recommendations and will enhance both entities' capacity for outreach. Moreover, it will bring mainstream human rights organizations into greater compliance with their own stated values, as well as exemplifying the same respect, flexibility, and accommodation that these groups often recommend to governmental, political, and institutional entities.

Voluntary Organizations, Social Capital, and the Social Incorporation of Asian Indian Immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex

This article addresses the organizational life of Asian-Indian immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The analysis is framed in relation to the concept of social capital, and more specifically to differences between bonding and bridging social capital, and between ethnic social capital (embedded in ethnic associations) and cross-cultural social capital (embedded in mixed and more mainstream organizations). After a brief discussion of the growth of the Asian-Indian population in DFW, the article draws on examples of five different organizational forms—regional, religious, ethnic, pan-ethnic, and ethnic to mainstream—to explore how different forms of social capital are developed and deployed, as well as how nested hierarchies of identity are manifested and expressed. In the conclusion the article addresses the implications for our understanding of how dispersed immigrant populations in new suburban cities of immigration establish place through associations as well as what an analysis of these organizations contributes to ongoing debates about assimilation, incorporation, and the construction of community.

Moderate Muslims

Moderate Muslims

Beyond the mainstream: foucault, power and organization theory

While mainstream organization theory has contributed to making organizations a productive part of society, they have simultaneously contributed to the creation of a “dark side” of organizational existence that stifles the individual, frustrates the attainment of desired social ends and distorts many core values of democratic societies. Mainstream theory recognizes this “dark side,” but has been unsuccessful at suggesting how it might be ameliorated or avoided. The writings of Foucault, however, reveal not only how the “dark side” arises but also how it might be avoided so that organizations may develop and pursue interests in common with both society and the individual.

Welfare Interactions: Maori, Government and the Voluntary Sector in New Zealand

This article first examines Maori welfare interactions with government, mainstream voluntary sector organisations, and Maori service providers. It then discusses definitional, methodological and political issues which arise from a consideration of welfare and voluntarism across cultures in the New Zealand context. These are complicated by the selective, and sometimes contradictory application of different articles of the Treaty of Waitangi to social policy over time.This article has been peer-reviewed.

Bringing Space Back in: Organizing the Generative Building

In this article, we re.ect on architecture and management and organization theory, in terms of their mutual implications. We focus especially on a tacit implication in mainstream organization theory, which has an architectural genesis. In the past, management has been largely undergirded by a Cartesian rationality, one seen most clearly in the argument that structure follows strategy. Architecturally, this Cartesianism is present in the injunction that form follows function. Criticizing this point of view, we argue that organizations should be thought of as material, spatial ensembles — not just cognitive abstractions writ large. Linking space and organization in this way, we re.ect on the power that every spatial organization necessarily implies, both in negative and positive terms. After examining existing approaches to this issue, we discuss some positive power implications for management. We introduce the concept of the generative building that, instead of being a merely passive container for actions happening in it, contributes positively towards an organization’s capacities. We conclude with a re.ection on the impact of the generative building on management and processes of organizing.

Disruptive technologies: what future universities and their libraries?

Christensen's Theory of Disruptive Technologies predicts that mainstream organisations and industries can be made obsolete by new technologies that change the whole paradigm of the industries in which they operate. This paper demonstrates the relevance of the theory of disruptive technologies to academic libraries, higher education and the academic publishing industry. The way universities are organised and how they operate could change radically; scholarly communication could be transformed, placing academic publishers at risk; academic libraries may become irrelevant as new business models emerge. There are strategies that these organisations might adopt to limit the effect of such technologies and/or preferably transform them into sustaining technologies.

Coverage of Gay Males, Lesbians in Newspaper Lifestyle Sections

Coverage of sexual minorities in the mainstream press has garnered recent attention. The Project for the Study of Sexual Orientation Issues in the News conducted two studies that examined the portrayal of gays and lesbians in newspapers and the perceptions of readers about this coverage.1 One finding is that stories about homosexuality do not cover the everyday of sexual minorities. However, these studies have focused on either the entire newspaper or only the front-page section. There has been no published quantitative study of the lifestyle section of the newspaper. This study attempts to fill that void by examining the lifestyle sections of four major daily newspapers to analyze coverage of sexual minorities.Until the 1940s, American media basically ignored homosexuality.2 An analysis of the 356 stories about gays and lesbians that appeared in Time and Newsweek from 1947 to 19973 suggests that it was the Kinsey report on male sexuality published in 1948 that first drew reporters to the subject of homosexuality. The study confirms that articles before the 1960s were strongly critical of homosexuals. The gay rights movement of the 1970s and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s prompted changes in how the media covered sexual minorities, bringing significantly more coverage.4 The first few years of the 21st century have seen even more coverage of gays in newspapers. The New York Times announced in August 2002 that its Sunday Styles section would begin publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies along with the traditional heterosexual wedding announcements. Hundreds of other newspapers have followed suit. The issue of same-sex marriage has received constant coverage since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in November 2003 that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexuals.Although overall coverage of the gay community has improved, it is still lacking. A 2000 study of 363 gay male and lesbian journalists from mainstream organizations found dissatisfaction with coverage of the gay community.5 Respondents ranked quality of coverage of hot-button national stories far higher than local coverage of gay issues. A quote from one of the respondents in the 2000 study summed up this perception:I believe journalists fail to cover the gay community as a community. Editors forget that the community does more than hold a parade once a year. There are not enough stories that depict gay people as people.6Results from a 1990 ASNE survey7 of 205 gay and lesbian journalists echo this sentiment.This study is designed to examine how newspapers actually do cover the more ordinary lives of gays and lesbians. Instead of focusing on the hard news sections of the newspaper, as was the case with all of the quantitative studies mentioned above, this study will examine only the lifestyle section of the newspaper.A fair press must find ways to reflect all segments of society; likewise, the press cannot perpetuate derogatory stereotypes and consider itself an accurate source of news. Social science theorists examining the effects of media coverage of women and racial minorities suggest that negative and inaccurate portrayals of minority groups influence the manner in which those groups view themselves and are viewed by majority group members as well.8 Specifically, studies have shown that media portrayals of minorities influence self-esteem levels, tendency to stereotype and acceptance of violence, among other negative effects.9 Gross suggests that in an increasingly mediated world, under-representation in the mass media serves to maintain the powerless status of minority groups.10 Gross argues that because they have been mostly ignored or denied by the mass media, gays have been symbolically annihilated from the political and social landscape.Research QuestionsTo determine what steps newspapers could take to improve coverage of sexual minorities, it is first necessary to examine their current patterns of coverage. …