Leo's Journalism Blog

Thursday, 3 November 2011

Page One: Inside the NYT

Fro our final lecture this year, we watched a preview screening of the documentary Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times. The documentary covered a wide range of stories and the way they are researched and presented internally, including the Wikileaks release of diplomatic press cables, the management crisis at
The Tribune Company, and more.

I found the documentary, while completely adequate as a study of the NYT's internal processes, was even more interesting as a case study of a few of the more colourful employees at the newspaper company. In particular, the Media columnist David Carr was an extremely interesting character; having overcome drug addiction in his youth to end up the journalists' journalist at (arguably) the world's most important newspaper, Carr was an interesting combination of gruff, no-nonsense conversational style and an idealistic - almost romantic - view on the way the world should be.

The documentary also had a couple of valid points on the ongoing debate into the long-term legitimacy of print journalism. An interesting point I had not considered before. Many of the sites that we get our news off for free currently are indexes or regurgitations of the NYT's (and others') paid for journalism. This introduces somewhat of a paradox to the news argument: can we only get news for free if someone else, somewhere, is paying?

Thursday, 27 October 2011

Assignment: Annotated Bibliography

JOUR1111 ASSIGNMENT

Annotated Bibliography

Ewart, J. (2004). Challenging journalists' thinking about their role and journalism. Australian Journalism Review, 26(2), 99-113. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/browseJournalTitle;res=APAFT;issn=0810-2686

The Journalism Education Association of Australia – a professional body – publishes the Australian Journalism Review. This article was contributed by Dr Jacqui Ewart, a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University, based on extensive research and her experience working in the media industry. In this article, Ewart discusses journalists' perceptions of themselves in relation to their function as 'information providers' versus their function as bastions of a stable, functioning and non-corrupt democracy. Changing the way that journalists think about their responsibilities, she argues, “[is the] first step in ensuring a healthier, more effectively functioning public sphere and ultimately making journalism better for practitioners and consumers alike.” In the words of one of her interviewees, she concludes that “public journalism meant journalists moved beyond simply telling the public things to interpreting information with them and helping to find solutions.” Ewart's case studies are effective in demonstrating the universality of this idea of a 'public mandate' affecting journalistic standards, including both Australian and international media sources. However, the text may have been better served by including a non-commercial media outlet as a baseline from which to examine the effects of a long-standing organisational commitment to public journalism. Overall, the article does adequately and in some detail support Ewart's claims about the perception and prosecution of public journalism.

Helbig, K. & MacDonald, A. (2011, October 28). MP demands gay couples respect heterosexual views. The Courier-Mail, p. 22.

The Courier-Mail is a News Corporation paper which aims to make a profit. As the only major player in the Brisbane metropolitan news market, it most closely reflects the views of the middle-class majority (although often utilising language and imagery to affect a working-class, egalitarian bent). Politically it stands on the right side of the political spectrum, with conservative values given primacy. The authors are both relatively young journalists who have worked inside News Corporation papers for their entire careers to date, and can be as such expected to toe the editors' line. The referenced article details the recent comments of Independent QLD MP Rob Messenger in reaction to Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser's private member's bill to legalise civil unions. Typical of the paper's coverage of politically hot topics, the story manages to position conservative values as paramount without overtly owning to them: as in this story, the majority of the story is given to the right-wing diatribe of Messenger; followed by multiple quotes from another right-wing Parliamentarian on a related issue. The Labor government is given one paraphrased sentence in reply and the final paragraph mentions hastily the fact that the MP in question has recently been censured for multiple breaches of parliamentary ethics. The article, ostensibly part of the ongoing debate around legalising same-sex marriage, gives no voice to the gay community or any gay individual or any retaliatory statement regarding Messenger's comments. It gives space only to the political elite. This story is an excellent example of how “newsroom culture and routines together play a more important part than individual journalists” (Richards, 20002) in determining how a story will be presented by media outlets who don't instil in their journalists a culture of public journalism.

(2011, October 28). Qld MP asks gays to explain 'heterophobia'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/qld-mp-asks-gays-to-explain-heterophobia-20111027-1mlrv.html

The Sydney Morning Herald, while it has generally earned a reputation as being a more 'liberal' newspaper than its competitors, operates as a venture of Fairfax Media and thus has the same profit motivations as the Courier-Mail. SMH's 'intellectual' broadsheet is aimed at a slightly different audience. However, as the ABC's The Hamster Wheel and Media Watch frequently point out, Australian physical papers and their online counterparts often have significantly different constitutions. No authors are attributed in this article, with AAP being stated as the source. The SMH's coverage of this story is an improvement on, but ultimately in the same class as, the Courier-Mail's. Once again, the majority of the text is taken up with Messenger's views. Again, there is no direct reply to his claims at all. And again the story finishes with a related spat – over homophobic comments made by a Liberal MP and Labor condemnation of the former – with the conservative side getting more than double the quotation. It is safe to conclude that again the commercial media has failed to publish objective and useful public journalism.

Higgins-Devine K. (Writer). (2011 October 27). Drive [Radio broadcast]. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

From this outlet, the radio program Drive on 612 ABC Brisbane, we finally see Ewart's predicted benefits of journalists perceiving themselves as fulfilling a public role. ABC is obviously the country's most prolific public media outlet and the one which has a long and consistent history of serving the public need. Kelly Higgins-Devine has been the presenter of Drive for almost ten years and as such can be classed as one of Ewart's 'facilitator[s] of democracy'. The program gives a full and unabridged version of Messenger's speech at Parliament. Higgins-Devine then gives the show to Paul Martin, the executive director for a gay and lesbian community body called Healthy Communities. Martin, the only voice of dissent in the three articles, calls to account the contradictions and hypocrisies in Messenger's speech. This demonstrates the key principles of public journalism: balance and objectivity, the importance of giving voice to minority parties and views, and more specifically giving voice to the non-politically elite on issues of politics. In conclusion, we can see that Dr. Ewart's scholarly article has valid points to make about the significance of journalists' self-perceptions in providing quality public journalism.

Reference List

Bromley, M. (2005). Adjusting the focus: levels of influence and ethical decision-making in journalism. Australian Journalism Review, 27(1), 57-76. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/fullText;dn=200508632;res=APAFT

Helbig, K. & MacDonald, A. (2011, October 28). MP demands gay couples respect heterosexual views. The Courier-Mail, p. 22.

Higgins-Devine K. (Writer). (2011 October 27). Drive [Radio broadcast]. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Richards, I. (2002). Filling in the gaps: politics and contemporary journalism in the Australian press. Australian Journalism Review, 24(2), 9-20. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/fullText;dn=200302368;res=APAFT

Sunday, 16 October 2011

Week 11 Lecture: Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism is "what someone, somewhere, wants to suppress," says Lord Northcliffe (of The Times and The Daily Mail). The purpose of investigative journalism is to give those without voice a hearing, and to hold the powerful to account. Investigative journalists take their views on society's norms and morals and find breaches, and more importantly, people or agencies or forces to blame for these breaches. They are private investigators, corruption watchdogs, and when at their best, champions of the underdog.

In contrast, a large portion of contemporary 'journalism' is a regurgitation of official lines, reporting on the symptoms of problems rather than their causes. Investigative journalism is more piecemeal, more detailed and in depth, more complex, more time-consuming, and not guaranteed to produce anything that will be a commercially successful story. However, both public and commercial media purport to continue to support investigative journalism, as it is seen by most to be in the public interest.

There are countless methods at the disposal of the modern investigative journalist in a interconnected world of communication and data. Some of these include:
- Interviews
- Observations
- Analysing Documents
- Briefings
- Leaks
- Trespass
- Theft

Finally we looked at the future of investigative journalism, including the challenges of funding in a increasingly diversified and harder to monetise environment. We also examined the possibility of social media services covering at least part of the gap that industry-sponsored investigative journalism used to fill.

Saturday, 15 October 2011

Week 10 Lecture: News Values

Our work on News Values this week followed directly on from the Agenda Setting Lecture I summarized last week. If the mass media on the whole is capable of agenda setting, then what are the 'news values' that individuals and groups in the industry to use to deem what is newsworthy? Ultimately, by what factors do all the players in the media market facilitate the setting of agendas?

These factors vary outlet to outlet, culture to culture. Various academics have identified prominent or common factors, including:
- Negativity
- Proximity
- Recency
- Currency
- Continuity
- Uniqueness
- Simplicity
- Personality
- Predictability
- Exclusivity
- Size
and many others.

The lecture also encompassed what the apparent conflict between current and ideal news values means for the profession of journalism, in a media landscape increasingly driven by the (formerly passive) consumers of news, who are increasingly getting input into the news values debate.

Week 9 Lecture: Agenda Setting

This week's lecture was on Agenda Setting. Agenda Setting is a theory of mass communication which states that as people get their views of reality increasingly from forms of mass communication, and as mass communication is of necessity a filter which devotes limited time to a certain amount of topics (less so the internet and more so traditional news media i.e. papers, tv), then therefore what the mass media choose to report on is in some way related with what people view as important.

Agenda setting in the mass media is interrelated with the political forces from legislators, as well as from the public itself. It is also internecine to the media industry, with elite 'agenda-setting outlets' setting the scope of conversation for the industry as a whole. It can be forced and thus used as a propaganda tool (in the negative sense as well: that is, by concealing stories as well as determining their relevance).

The various aspects of agenda setting are as follows:
- Media Gatekeeping
- Media Advocacy
- Agenda Cutting
- Agenda Surfing
- The diffusion of News
- Portrayal of an Issue
- Media Dependence

Week 8 Lecture: Public Media

This week we dealt with the role of Public Media in the general cultural milieu. This included Australian public media outlets such as ABC and the SBS; as well as international institutions like BBC and the PBS. These state owned bodies co-operate and compete with other community bodies such as 4ZZZ and Briz 31. Community broadcasters such as the aforementioned are funded by commercial advertising in a similar model to commercial stations, but have not-for-profit charters committing to a role of a 'public' broadcaster.

We talked about public media's role in a democratic society as a protector of the democratic process (in exposing corruption, informing the voting public) as well as a vehicle for fostering the national conversation. In terms of news and current affairs, public media (especially in Australia where the great majority of media is owned by the Fairfax-News Corp. oligarchy, see last post) has a special role in the media landscape as an impartial (non-commercially motivated) reporter.

The challenges faced by public media both historically and currently are manifold; from achieving true independence from political forces, to staving off future budget cuts and remaining relevant in a world of fast-paced technological change, most significantly in the media industry. However, public media has advantages that the commercial world does not: being able to seamlessly merge into the field of online journalism without a complete rearrangement of the subscription model (that is, that they do not have one).

Friday, 30 September 2011

Assessment: Storytelling exercise

For this assessment, I present a photo-journal of my recent trip down to the NSW Far North Coast. I travelled with my band mates Thomas Schultz, Joseph Kennedy and Ben Drew.