What most of us know about media history begins and ends with Citizen Kane. The exploits of media moguls and visionary business leaders - these are the tales that fill media histories in the United States. What's missing is a crucial part of the picture : the rank and file of journalism, and the conditions under which they produced and participated in the business off journalism. Newsworkers supplies this side of the story. Focusing on the period from the 1850s through the 1930s, the contributors show how issues of labor and class have been far more important in the formation of media institutions than previous accounts concede. These essays recover the history of ethnic and cultural diversity - including the contributions of women - that have enriched the process of communication.
Over the last forty years, new technology and rapid concentration of ownership have caused fundamental changes in North American newspapers. Newsworkers' unions have struggled to protect their members and to reinvent themselves to keep up with the relentless pace of change in the workplace, and recent strikes such as that of Seattle newspaper workers highlight the ongoing challenges. This engaging and accessible book focuses on how the Newspaper Guild--the main union for reporters and editors--adopted a strategy of labor convergence, joining with other media workers in the large and diverse Communications Workers of America union. McKercher also looks at the nationalism of Canadian newsworkers who instead joined an all-Canadian union similar to CWA and explores a case study on an extreme form of labor convergence in Vancouver. She concludes that while labor convergence is a work in progress, it is a promising development for newsworkers and their unions, helping them adjust to change and perhaps expand into new areas of the communication sector.
This text is a companion to McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, but can be used independently. It is a resource of statements drawn from communication studies, media sociology and cultural studies.
This Reader presents classic news studies representing several methodologies and approaches to guide students in their initial exploration into the topics.
There is little argument that mass media news projects a particular point of view. The question is how that bias is formed. Most media critics look to the attitudes of reporters and editors, the covert news policy of a publisher, or the outside pressures of politicians and advertisers. Manufacturing the News takes a different tack. Mark Fishman’s research shows how the routine methods of gathering news, rather than any hidden manipulators, determine the ideological character of the product. News organizations cover the world mainly through “beats,” which tend to route reporters exclusively through governmental agencies and corporate bureaucracies in their search for news. Crime, for instance, is covered through the police and court bureaucracies; local politics through the meetings of the city council, county commissioners, and other official agencies. Reporters under daily deadlines come to depend upon these organizations for the predictable, steady flow of raw news material they provide. It is part of the function of such bureaucracies to transform complex happenings into procedurally defined “cases.” Thus the information they produce for newsworkers represents their own bureaucratic reality. Occurrences which are not part of some bureaucratic phase are simply ignored. Journalists participate in this system by publicizing bureaucratic reality as hard fact, while accounts from other sources are treated as unconfirmed reports which cannot be published without time-consuming investigation. Were journalists to employ different methods of news gathering, Fishman concludes, a different reality would emerge in the news—one that might challenge the legitimacy of prevailing political structures. But, under the traditional system, news reports will continue to support the interests of the status quo independently of the attitudes and intentions of reporters, editors, and news sources.
Making the News provides a cross-national perspective on key features of journalism and news-making cultures and the changing media landscape in contemporary Europe. . Focusing on the key trends, practices and issues in contemporary journalism and news cultures, Paschal Preston maps the major contours of change as well as the broader industrial, organizational, institutional and cultural factors shaping journalism practices over the past two decades. Moving beyond the tendency to focus on journalism trends and newsmaking practices within a single country, Making the News draws on unique, cross-national research examining current journalism practices and related newsmaking cultures in eleven West, Central and East European countries, including in-depth interviews with almost 100 senior journalists and subsequent workshop discussions with other interest groups Making the News links reviews and discussions of the existing literature to original research engaging with the views and experiences of journalists working at the 'coal face' of contemporary newsmaking practices, to provide an original study and useful student text.
Argues that the bias of mass media is largely created by its dependence on government and corporate bureaucracies as the main source of raw news material
Events around the world are broadcast by giant media players such as CNN, BBC and NHK amongst others. This book explores how powerful political and economic agendas in the national media environment influence the production processes.
This edited collection brings together leading scholars from around the world to discuss the consequences and implications of precarious labor conditions within the modern news industry. In 14 original chapters, contributors address global concerns in journalism across all platforms, based on the assumption that unstable employment conditions affect the extent to which journalists can continue to play their historically crucial role in sustaining democracies. Topics discussed include work conditions for freelancers and entrepreneurial journalists as well as the risks facing conflict reporters, precarity in media start-ups, unionization and other collective efforts, policies regulating journalistic labor around the world, and the impact of hedge fund money on newswork. Drawing on case studies and data from South America, Africa, the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe, the book highlights how media outlets are forcing newsworkers to work harder for less money, and few countries are proactive in alleviating the precarity of journalists. Newswork and Precarity is a valuable addition to an important still-emerging area in journalism studies that will be of interest to both professionals and scholars of journalism, media studies, sociology, and labor history.
