States Newspaper Research Articles

Performing power, composing culture

This article examines how African political and discursive forms shape the seemingly universal practices of journalism at a state newspaper in Ghana. The daily work routine, relationships with sources, criteria of newsworthiness, narrative techniques - all are locally determined by Ghanaian standards of discourse and sociality. Local aesthetics of representation and discursive propriety establish a distinctive set of conventions for political speech and news writing. Through aesthetically ‘Africanized’ discursive styles and techniques, the state press constructs the authoritative social imaginary of the nation-state

Domestic Violence Presentation Raises Awareness in Student Reporters' Stories

Approximately 1.5 million women are abused annually.1 Considering newspapers' influence, it is important to examine the effects of awareness on violence coverage. This study specifically examined the effects of awareness on article content of student journalists.Raising media awareness is done to bring reporting practices closer to social norms.2 Few sources of journalistically focused information are available about domestic violence, the exception including the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma's Tips and Tools: A Guide for Journalists: Domestic Violence.3Scholars have studied journalistic representations of domestic violence, examining coverage that a) justifies violence, b) positively portrays the perpetrator, c) blames victims, d) uses inadequate sources and e) portrays violence as an isolated event. Meyers addresses journalism practices and violence against women. She writes that journalists cannot reflect society and be unaccountable for its ills when news lacks neutrality. She also argues that excusing abuse leads to victim blame by default.4 Her study found coverage using stereotypes and myths reinforces the idea of male supremacy.5Johnson found perpetrator and action justification her examination of two San Francisco newspapers.6 Bullock and Cubert studied domestic violence fatality coverage Washington state newspapers 1998. They examined the accuracy of how victims' experiences were reflected, violence as a social issue and patterns of portrayal.7 The author's analysis, focused on professional journalists, indicated results similar to the current study.8 Hall's study9 examined coverage of victims, perpetrators and frames used 2,200 stories from 35 U.S. newspapers. She found In the attempt to be balanced, reporters seem to inadvertently report misconceptions about domestic violence.10 Examining frames, Hall found 48.5 percent of the stories were framed for the greater good of society, 42.3 percent framed violence as isolated events and 9.5 percent framed it as part of relationships.The portrayals of violence as an isolated event was examined by The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence.11 The group report found that in all but one case, the murders were treated as unpredictable, although investigation eight of 12 cases revealed warning signs.12 Witness reaction focused on disbelief-a spontaneous reaction. Dependence on these sources resulted reporting violence as a problem of individual breakdown, not a social problem.13Johnson asked if inadequate sources perpetuate misconceptions. She also found police made statements affecting the perception of violence.It is inconceivable that little effort was made to consult with experts. Instead, reporters asked police to explain domestic violence. The result was dangerous, and misleading information was repeated media reports.14MethodThis study asks whether increasing reporters' awareness would result stories representing domestic violence more objectively.RQ1:Does raising awareness decrease the use of excuses for the perpetrator?RQ2:Does raising awareness decrease victim-blaming language?RQ3:Does raising awareness increase inclusion of information that presents domestic violence as an ongoing social issue and not an isolated event?RQ4:Does raising awareness impact sources used?RQ5:Does raising awareness increase inclusion of information beneficial to the victim?Fifty-six students undergraduate news and feature writing courses at a Midwestern university participated. A test group of 26 students was exposed to a 50-minute presentation by an advocate; a control group was unexposed. Each session included a pre-tested script with statistics and facts on domestic violence, discussion of media misrepresentation and suggestions for socially responsible coverage. The sessions were adapted from advocate suggestions: Hall's thesis, The framing of domestic violence newspapers;15 Johnson's Media guidelines for coverage of sexual assault and domestic violence;16 and the RICADVs Domestic violence: A handbook for journalists. …

Austrian Issue in the Mirror of Russian Media (1945-1955)

It should be pointed out that the attitude of Russians to Germany and to Austria at that time, as well as earlier, was always different. Nazi’s Germany was considered an evil aggressor, who annexed peaceful Austria in 1938, by force involving it into the World War II and so on. The confirmation of empirical observations can be easily found in the official Soviet press. For instance, still before the invasion of Vienna in April 1945, the main state newspaper of the Soviet Union “Pravda” wrote that:“Austria fell the first victim of the German aggression. (...) terrorist occupation by Germany, its predatory policy evoked in Austrian people feeling of hatred of Germans as those who’re guilty of all the hardships for the last seven years”. Certainly, the Soviet government did not put the sign of equality between Austria and, for example, Poland. Should an opportunity arise, the Kremlin press would use it to underline that “Austria is responsible for the participation in the war on a Hitler’s side...there are certain circles in Austria that though proclaimed “neutral position” relating to German-fascists’ occupation, in fact supported the regime of the German terror”. And the permanent mouthpiece of the Red Moscow- TASS (Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union) was indignant that during the November elections in 1945 in some regions of Austria “where the influence of Hitler’s men was stronger”, only 40-45% of people took part in elections.

Microfilm, Paper, and OCR: Issues in Newspaper Digitization. The Utah Digital Newspapers Program

The Marriott Library at the University of Utah (U of U) has a long history of large-scale newspaper projects beginning with the National Endowment for the Humanities' United States Newspapers Program (USNP) in the 1980s, in which the Library led the effort to catalog and microfilm Utah newspapers. This involvement continues today with the Utah Digital Newspaper (UDN) program, which is digitizing historic Utah newspapers, making them searchable and available on the Internet.

Media and Information: The Case of Iran

THE election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in May 1997 launched what many of his supporters hoped would be the most ambitious attempt in the Islamic world to bridge the divide between the public and private spheres. In the years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the conservative clerical establishment had systematically eliminated almost all traces of the democratic pluralist currents that had helped feed the original rebellion against the U.S.-backed shah. What is more, they fortified Iran’s traditional political despotism with an equally despotic reading of the Shiite Muslim faith, forcing dissent, debate, and differences of opinion to take refuge behind closed doors. Now the progressive movement that first began to take shape in the early 1990s and which later chose Khatami as its leader aimed to break the conservative clerical establishment’s monopoly on public discourse. The slogans and themes that emerged from the Khatami election campaign—and came to dominate his presidency—reflected many years of discreet discussion in reading circles, on the boards of small specialty journals, and in the halls of the religious seminaries . Their debut on the public stage, in the run-up to the election , was the opening shot in a struggle to reshape society and the state. At first, they decided to run only as a way of introducing their ideas to the public at large. Among their most prominent slogans were promises to introduce the “rule of law,” to foster “tolerance ” for competing ideas and to create a true “civil society” within the Islamic system. SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Fall 2003) Media and Information: The Case of Iran GENEIVE ABDO These goals were extremely ambitious considering Iran’s history of some 2,500 years of autocratic rule. Whether it was clerics in charge of the state, or the elites under the Pahlavi dynasty and its predecessors, public opinion had no role to play in influencing state affairs. Different elements of society did indeed create an otherwise unlikely alliance around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to bring about the 1979 revolution. But this coalition of nationalists , liberal Islamists, secularists, and leftists was soon sidelined as the clerics began to rule the state. The Khatami experiment was designed to address the imbalance between two competing visions of Islamic Iran that emerged in aftermath of the revolution. Was it an Islamic state ruled by the clerics, or a religious republic ruled by the people? In other words, the 1997 election was a resounding vote for enlarging the public sphere at the expense of what had become the private preserve of the ruling conservative clergy. Even in mundane ways, society expressed its desire to come out of hiding. Young men and women began socializing together in restaurants, cafes and parks—which was illegal. Rather than the chador, women began to opt for a more modern form of veiling—a long overcoat and headscarf—and the headscarves began slipping farther and farther from the forehead, revealing more and more hair. But despite society’s readiness to embrace a reform movement, the Khatami effort to establish republican rule was short-lived. Among the many myths about Iran in the United States is the notion that the level of public discourse that occurs—generally criticism of the Islamic state—could never be achieved in an Arab country. The lively debate in Iran, often on display in the press, gives the misleading impression that the potential for a free society is far greater than in most Arab societies. For example, there have always been opposition voices to varying degrees in the Iranian press since the revolution. And there were never official state newspapers such as Soviet Russia’s Pravda. But the roots of ultimate clerical control over the press date back to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911, when the senior clergy secured 878 SOCIAL RESEARCH for itself final say over freedom of expression in the name of religion . In fact, public discourse in Iran today has vast limitations and in no way compares to the kind of discussion we now see on al-Jazeera television and on other independent Arab networks and web sites. One reason is that it is easy to circumvent state...

A Comparison of Selected ‘Serious’ and ‘Popular’ British, Canadian, and United States Newspaper Coverage of Female and Male Athletes Competing in the Centennial Olympic Games

This study compares how selected ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ newspapers from three countries covered female and male athletes during the Centennial Olympic Games, 1996. From Canada, the Globe and Mailand Toronto Star; from Great Britain, The Timesand the Daily Mail; and from the United States, the New York Timesand USA Todaywere examined. Content analysis was used to compare all the articles and photographs of female and male athletes on the front pages and the sports sections of all six newspapers. Although differences were found, generally the results showed that, compared to their respective participation rates, female and male athletes competing in the Centennial Olympic Games received an equitable amount of coverage. Qualitative analyses indicated that female athletes received a comparable coverage with their male peers in article descriptors of their ‘physical appearance/attire’, ‘strength/athleticism’, ‘psychological characteristics’, and ‘family role’, and in ‘competing’, ‘non-competing’, ‘active’, and ‘posed’ photographs. This study confirmed that female athletes receive more newspaper coverage when they compete in major international competitions such as the Olympic Games. Reasons for the reasonably equitable amount of newspaper coverage of female athletes are outlined, with suggestions for improvement of newspaper coverage of female athletes.

A Comparison of Selected 'Serious' and 'Popular' British, Canadian, and United States Newspaper Coverage of Female and Male Athletes Competing in the Centennial Olympic Games: Did Female Athletes Receive Equitable Coverage in the 'Games of the Women'?

A Comparison of Selected 'Serious' and 'Popular' British, Canadian, and United States Newspaper Coverage of Female and Male Athletes Competing in the Centennial Olympic Games: Did Female Athletes Receive Equitable Coverage in the 'Games of the Women'?

Marketing, cultural hierarchy, and the relevance of critics: film in the United States, 1935–1980

A content analysis of United States newspaper advertisements for films documents that film marketing has increasingly relied on the strategy of reference to expert opinion. Whereas this practice was quite rare at the beginning of the time period under study, it became more common over time, with the largest increases occurring in the late 1960s. It is hypothesized that this phenomenon is a result of a fundamental shift in the United States film world whereby the nation's most popular form of entertainment was perceived as a legitimate art form. As an art world for film developed in the 1960s in the United States, audiences began to value and rely on critical assessments of films. Film studios capitalized on the new importance of critics by incorporating quotes from critics into advertisements. Two comparisons support this interpretation of the trends in film advertising. First, a comparison with advertisements for fiction literature, an established art form, demonstrates that while fiction advertisements employed critics' quotes from at least 1935, there was a convergence in the late 1960s in the rate at which advertisements for each art form employed critics' quotes. Furthermore, advertisements for foreign-language films, which were perceived as artistic from an earlier point in time, frequently incorporated critics' quotes prior to the 1960s, and only in the late 1960s do rates in English-language films' advertisements equal or surpass those for foreign-language film advertisements. The results support Shrum's (Shrum, W., 1996. Fringe and Fortune. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) contention that cultural hierarchy is at least partially maintained by a greater reliance on expert discourse for high than for popular art.

Anti-Communism, Race, and Structuration: Newspaper Coverage of the Labor and Desegregation Movements in the South, 1932–40 and 1953–61

The Southern labor and desegregation movements were organized at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee between 1932–40 and 1953–61, respectively. This historical sociology examines the role of journalism within the process of social reform by focusing on the labor and desegregation movements as racial “hot spots” of ideological tension and pragmatic transformation. A comparison of the relationship in news coverage in each movement period between the rhetoric of anti-Communism and the newspapers' normative fight against desegregation provides a point of critical analysis. In the interpretation of the resulting process of reforms, Anthony Giddens' (1984) theory of structuration supports the analysis of interactions between movement activists and their normative counterparts at the state's newspapers that ultimately produced social and institutional reforms.

Use of Washington State newspapers for submersion injury surveillance

Objectives—To evaluate the usefulness of newspapers as a surveillance tool for submersion injury, the proportion of submersion events and important details reported in Washington State newspapers was determined. It was...

A New Message: Compassionate Conservatism, African Americans, and the Republican Party

In 1997 and 1998, several Republican gubernatorial candidates in the South put forth a new message of “compassionate conservatism” on the campaign trail. This paper examines two of those campaigns in great detail by using interviews with political actors and analysis, content analysis of the states newspapers, and exit poll data. I show how two Republicans have attempted to win Black support: by building a relationship of trust in the Black community, stressing their religious background, and proposing a few programs that would provide African Americans some economic support. While the majority of African Americans are likely to continue voting for Democrats, Republicans do have the potential to significantly alter Democratic coalitions. I conclude that Republican appeals to Black voters will force Democrats to pay greater attention to African Americans which, in turn, will make the parties more responsive to Blacks.

Hazel and the "Hacksaw": Freedom Summer coverage by the women of the Mississippi Press

The only woman editor or publisher of the Mississippi press to openly support the civil rights movement in her 1964 Freedom Summer editorials was Hazel Brannon Smith, who defined the issue in positive terms and emphasized the importance of equal rights for all people, not just for whites. Eleven of the other seventeen women editors and publishers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, including "Hacksaw Mary" Cain of the Summit Sun, urged continued support of traditional white supremacy and resistance to the civil rights movement—in complete, and almost verbatim, agreement with the men who edited the state's newspapers. These findings, though historic and prior to the feminist movement of the 1970s, contradict the findings of a 1997 survey by the International Women's Media Foundation which suggested that women journalists offer a "different, more human perspective to the news."

Hazel and the "Hacksaw": Freedom Summer coverage by the women of the Mississippi Press

The only woman editor or publisher of the Mississippi press to openly support the civil rights movement in her 1964 Freedom Summer editorials was Hazel Brannon Smith, who defined the issue in positive terms and emphasized the importance of equal rights for all people, not just for whites. Eleven of the other seventeen women editors and publishers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, including "Hacksaw Mary" Cain of the Summit Sun, urged continued support of traditional white supremacy and resistance to the civil rights movement—in complete, and almost verbatim, agreement with the men who edited the state's newspapers. These findings, though historic and prior to the feminist movement of the 1970s, contradict the findings of a 1997 survey by the International Women's Media Foundation which suggested that women journalists offer a "different, more human perspective to the news."

Raising Lazarus: Revitalizing an In-House Microfilming Operation

The Oregon Newspaper Project (ONP) was established in 1952 as a joint venture between the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and the University of Oregon Library. Filming began the following year and has continued uninterrupted for 49 years. More than 15,000 reels of film have been produced, capturing one of the most complete archives of state newspaper publication in the nation.

Science in the News:

News media play critical rôles in public understandings of health issues. Media presentation of scientific evidence seems to involve the `facts', which are then discussed and interpreted by various `experts'. From an ethnomethodological or social constructionist perspective, however, news `facts' themselves are socially constituted. Examining how health science is reported thus offers important insight into the social construction of health policy problems. We offer an interpretive account of United States newspaper coverage of passive smoking during a time in which several major scientific studies of the issue were conducted and reported upon. We argue that newspaper journalists, through the use of several rhetorical devices, constructed an account of the passive smoking issue in which scientific `facts' were less important than moral `facts'. Rather than (or sometimes, in addition to) explicating science, newspaper coverage conveyed a moral narrative highlighting tensions between American cultural values of individual liberty and protection of the public health.

Print, Broadcast and Online Convergence in the Newsroom

Many colleges and universities training student journalists in campus media organizations are considering converging print, broadcast, and online into one organization to adapt to industry trends and the new technological environment. Some are asking prudent questions (Pratte,1997) about why journalism educators should undertake such a paradigm shattering activity how print, online, and broadcast can merge, how the new organization will run, and what problems to expect. Over five years, students and faculty at Brigham Young University created a converged newsroom that brought together student broadcast, print, and online journalism into one organization. This article examines the convergence experiment using data gathered from stakeholder interviews, document analysis, observation, and a survey of students. In the first section we discuss the industry and technology-driven rationale converging newsrooms in educational institutions. The second section of this article examines the first steps toward convergence using the future search process and whole systems planning. The third section describes the generic changes in converged newsrooms and the editorial process flow in the BYU newsroom. The final section examines problems created by convergence, including the identity and commitment of students, alignment with industry and curriculum, and the increased complexity of processes. There are immense time and resource costs associated with creating converged newsrooms in colleges and universities. Prior to initiating a convergence project, institutions should consider factors externally and internally driving convergence. External forces The last century has seen an evolution to newsroom organizations from competitive to cooperative and now, in some cases, to convergence. Competition between newspapers in the United States was the norm for more than 300 years (Shudson, 1995). During that time, journalists forged the way for many freedoms and rights under which all forms of mass media are protected today (Weaver & Wilhoit, 1986). In the 1920s and 30s the immediacy of radio began to affect newspapers circulation, and publishers had difficulty adjusting to the new competitive marketplace (Beasley, 1996). With television in the early 1950s, came a new and even more powerful competitor, and since then each medium has battled for market share (Boyd, 1993). But economic forces and new technological capabilities in the 80s and 90s brought some of the once competing media organizations under the same cooperative roof. Gannett, The Chicago Tribune Company, and others initiated cooperation between their electronic media holdings and print holdings in order to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. These cooperations kept the media organizations separate but found strategic touch points where information could be shared to make both organizations more competitive (Hammond and Porter, 1997). In the 90s increased return on investment expectations (Pavlik, 1996) and the emergence of the Internet has pressured media organizations to converge under the same organization. Pew Center Research (1998) indicates almost half of Americans are online. Information specific to the interests of the user, such as stock quotes, weather, traffic, etc., has drawn a large audience to Web sites. The Pew research suggests that increased Internet use creates an appetite for in-depth reporting and may channel readers to newspapers and magazines. It may also reduce time spent watching television. More are obtaining news from broadcast news Web site for (22%) and national newspaper Web site (16%) than Web site without affiliation (1998). This trend is important because it shows that the consumption patterns of news are changing. No longer are readers or viewers medium loyalists. A reader/viewer will see a story on one medium and follow the story, based on their own interests to another medium to get other views or greater depth. …

The Local Contours of Campaign Coverage

Research on presidential campaign coverage has mostly focused on national news sources. This article examines the more local contours of campaign coverage. News coverage of the nominating campaign in 16 top-circulating state newspapers is analyzed throughout one 10-week period in a campaign and found to vary considerably both in overall amounts and the amounts provided to individual candidates. A multivariate model that includes multiple layers of influence is estimated, and candidate coverage amounts are found to vary systematically in state newspapers depending on candidates' state-level reactions to the campaign environment, constraints at work in individual news organizations, and the shared professional norms of journalists about what makes a campaign story newsworthy. The results suggest that, depending on where they live, some citizens are provided a great deal of information about the campaign and others are provided much less. The implications of these findings for researchers studying the nature of campaign news coverage and its effects on learning are explored.

When Women Lose

Abstract This paper examines the press coverage of the 1993 Virginia and 1996 West Virginia gubernatorial elections. In both elections, the Democratic Party nominated female candidates, a first in both states. The research seeks to understand if the press was biased against the women candidates and whether or not that bias can be attributed to their gender. While the data collected from newspapers in both states show that the press was negative, the evidence suggests that the negativity was based primarily on issues other than gender.

Why Do the News Media Cover Certain Candidates More Than Others?

This article explores two approaches to campaign coverage in order to estimate their relative importance to state and national media coverage levels during presidential nomination campaigns: the horse race account and the campaign account. Using news coverage data from a sample of 21 state newspapers, three national newspapers, and the ABC World News Tonight, multivariate models of state and national candidate news coverage levels are estimated. The findings, although confirming the conventional wisdom that candidates who do well gain more media attention, also suggest that candidate activity can make a difference and that candidate factors can have a significant influence, whereas structural factors, such as the number of candidates competing, appear to have little influence on how the national and state media determine their distribution of coverage when other factors are present. Moreover, the state news media are strongly influenced by performance factors, but these are felt primarily through the priming influence of the national news media.

Newspapers; Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

This workshop detailed the United States Newspaper Program (USNP), covered the efforts of some state newspaper projects, and examined newspaper preservation issues. The workshop also dealt with the newspaper cataloging module recently issued by the Cooperative Online Serials (CONSER) Program and with electronic newspapers (e-newspapers).