...to bring you an important message from CJR Daily. I referred to the then-unpublished study "A Measure of Media Bias" in my 602 term paper, "Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the media." In the paper, I am dismissive of it, as I am of all content analysis of journalism because it seems so entirely subjective. In fact, I have a hard time with all quantitative studies that try to take complex, subtle interactions and ideas and reduce them to numbers (see also the first paragraph of this post about Infromation Science research).
I think that in general, the worlds of academic media studies and journalism need to learn how the other works so that they can actually help each other. In this case, I side with CJR. So here, for your reading pleasure, and to save myself from having to write the rant: the CJR Daily article ripping into Groseclose and Milyo.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
The idea of professionalism
Note: This is part three of the serialization of my term papers. This section of "Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalism" follows directly from this first post in the series.
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Eliot Freidson (1994) dates the organization of professions to the post-industrial era, when work became less focused on the performance of tasks, and more on the acquisition and application of specialized knowledge (pp. 95–96). He defines a profession as an occupation so well organized that its members can realistically envisage a career over most of their working years, a career during which they retain a particular occupational identity and continue to practice the same skills no matter in what institution they work. A similar form of organization is to be found in the skilled trade or craft, though the craft cannot claim the same kind of knowledge-based skill as can the profession (p. 101).
Journalism certainly fits this idea of a profession, as opposed to a craft. Aside perhaps from academic researchers, what profession could be said to be more knowledge-based that journalism? While it is true that journalism’s knowledge base is not specialized nor even permanent, journalists must gather, digest and transmit huge amounts of knowledge in the course of their daily working lives. The work of journalists can be more clearly compared to that of researchers (though with a different intended audience) than to that of, say, woodworkers. Information, to coin a phrase, is not wood.
In an earlier book, Freidson (Freidson, 1986) suggested the relationship between professions and the power that they wield. “Professional groups, including scientists and academics, are often represented as the creators and proponents of particular bodies of knowledge that play important roles in shaping both social policy and the institutions of everyday life” (p. ix). This knowledge brings power and responsibility, and as the arbiters of general knowledge—as opposed to the specific knowledge of the professions Freidson mentions by name—this power and responsibility is amplified. Though he is perhaps the leading writer on professionalism (see also Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977), Freidson does not mention journalists in either of his general books on the topic. Banning (1998) notes that “Discussion of the professionalization of journalism in the literature on professionalism is conspicuous by its absence” (p. 159).
Banning argues that professionalization is not a cluster of attributes, but rather a process, best expressed as a scale. This particular historical study does not even take a stance on whether or not journalism is a profession, but instead traces the changing attitudes of nineteenth and twentieth century journalists toward themselves.
In another examination specifically of journalism professionalism (Soloski, 1989), one researcher offers up a similar definition of professionalism that, on its face, actually seems less applicable to journalism:
For a profession to exist, it must secure control over the cognitive base of the profession. To do this a profession requires (1) that a body of esoteric and fairly stable knowledge about the professional task be mastered by all practitioners, and (2) that the public accepts the professionals as being the only individuals capable of delivering the professional services. (p. 210)
While there are some skills that a journalist needs that seem esoteric (use of editing and page-layout computer software, database manipulation, interviewing skills), the most clearly esoteric are the technical skills, and those are the most volatile. And as for point (2), journalism as a profession seems to have the highest propensity for an “I could do that” reaction from the general public. Laypeople don’t feel that way about surgeons or structural engineers, but many—if not most—people with solid general educations are capable of asking questions and turning the resulting information into a coherent story.
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Eliot Freidson (1994) dates the organization of professions to the post-industrial era, when work became less focused on the performance of tasks, and more on the acquisition and application of specialized knowledge (pp. 95–96). He defines a profession as an occupation so well organized that its members can realistically envisage a career over most of their working years, a career during which they retain a particular occupational identity and continue to practice the same skills no matter in what institution they work. A similar form of organization is to be found in the skilled trade or craft, though the craft cannot claim the same kind of knowledge-based skill as can the profession (p. 101).
Journalism certainly fits this idea of a profession, as opposed to a craft. Aside perhaps from academic researchers, what profession could be said to be more knowledge-based that journalism? While it is true that journalism’s knowledge base is not specialized nor even permanent, journalists must gather, digest and transmit huge amounts of knowledge in the course of their daily working lives. The work of journalists can be more clearly compared to that of researchers (though with a different intended audience) than to that of, say, woodworkers. Information, to coin a phrase, is not wood.
In an earlier book, Freidson (Freidson, 1986) suggested the relationship between professions and the power that they wield. “Professional groups, including scientists and academics, are often represented as the creators and proponents of particular bodies of knowledge that play important roles in shaping both social policy and the institutions of everyday life” (p. ix). This knowledge brings power and responsibility, and as the arbiters of general knowledge—as opposed to the specific knowledge of the professions Freidson mentions by name—this power and responsibility is amplified. Though he is perhaps the leading writer on professionalism (see also Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977), Freidson does not mention journalists in either of his general books on the topic. Banning (1998) notes that “Discussion of the professionalization of journalism in the literature on professionalism is conspicuous by its absence” (p. 159).
Banning argues that professionalization is not a cluster of attributes, but rather a process, best expressed as a scale. This particular historical study does not even take a stance on whether or not journalism is a profession, but instead traces the changing attitudes of nineteenth and twentieth century journalists toward themselves.
In another examination specifically of journalism professionalism (Soloski, 1989), one researcher offers up a similar definition of professionalism that, on its face, actually seems less applicable to journalism:
For a profession to exist, it must secure control over the cognitive base of the profession. To do this a profession requires (1) that a body of esoteric and fairly stable knowledge about the professional task be mastered by all practitioners, and (2) that the public accepts the professionals as being the only individuals capable of delivering the professional services. (p. 210)
While there are some skills that a journalist needs that seem esoteric (use of editing and page-layout computer software, database manipulation, interviewing skills), the most clearly esoteric are the technical skills, and those are the most volatile. And as for point (2), journalism as a profession seems to have the highest propensity for an “I could do that” reaction from the general public. Laypeople don’t feel that way about surgeons or structural engineers, but many—if not most—people with solid general educations are capable of asking questions and turning the resulting information into a coherent story.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the media
Note: This is part 2 of a multi-part series of my term papers from the fall. In this installment, the abstract from my Research Foundations final project (This is unconnected to the previous post.):
Abstract
Observers and critics of American journalism argue about the nature of bias in newspapers, magazines, and television journalism. They agree, however, that bias of some kind is rampant. Accusations of bias in news reporting have risen at almost the same time as the ideal of objectivity has taken hold within the profession, coming to a head in the early 2000’s with a flurry of books by pundits, humorists, and serious critics from both sides of the ideological aisle. While the debate raged in the popular press, academic inquiry into the nature of bias in American journalism took three paths. Political economists of the media focus on the incentives for journalists to produce biased reporting—either to feed a desire for biased reporting, or to please corporate parents of media companies. Other scholars perform content analysis of journalism, trying to determine whether or not the news is actually as biased as partisan critics would have it. A third group looks at the effects of bias in the media on audiences, through the lens of audience studies.
This study takes a new approach, trying to determine whether or not the people who become journalists are prone to become opinion leaders because of their innate psychological makeup. Disregarding the contentious issue of defining political liberals and conservatives, this study adopts the theory of John L. Holland, a psychologist who developed a career interest inventory. In Holland’s theory, each person fits into three of his categories, and he predicts that journalists fit into the category he calls “enterprising.” Enterprisers are people who seek opportunities to persuade and influence. If journalists are, as Holland classifies them, “enterprisers,” then those who seek to limit bias in journalism may be fighting a losing battle.
Abstract
Observers and critics of American journalism argue about the nature of bias in newspapers, magazines, and television journalism. They agree, however, that bias of some kind is rampant. Accusations of bias in news reporting have risen at almost the same time as the ideal of objectivity has taken hold within the profession, coming to a head in the early 2000’s with a flurry of books by pundits, humorists, and serious critics from both sides of the ideological aisle. While the debate raged in the popular press, academic inquiry into the nature of bias in American journalism took three paths. Political economists of the media focus on the incentives for journalists to produce biased reporting—either to feed a desire for biased reporting, or to please corporate parents of media companies. Other scholars perform content analysis of journalism, trying to determine whether or not the news is actually as biased as partisan critics would have it. A third group looks at the effects of bias in the media on audiences, through the lens of audience studies.
This study takes a new approach, trying to determine whether or not the people who become journalists are prone to become opinion leaders because of their innate psychological makeup. Disregarding the contentious issue of defining political liberals and conservatives, this study adopts the theory of John L. Holland, a psychologist who developed a career interest inventory. In Holland’s theory, each person fits into three of his categories, and he predicts that journalists fit into the category he calls “enterprising.” Enterprisers are people who seek opportunities to persuade and influence. If journalists are, as Holland classifies them, “enterprisers,” then those who seek to limit bias in journalism may be fighting a losing battle.
Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalism
Introduction (Note: This is the first part of a multiple-part series that I am tentatively calling "My Fall 2005 term papers")
A.J. Liebling, the journalist, press critic and general bon vivant, attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University before starting his career. His assessment of his education was famously less than sanguine. He once wrote that “the program had ‘all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A & P’” (qtd. in Remnick, 2004). His comment, while probably unduly harsh, represents an undeniable strain of anti-intellectualism in American journalism. (Liebling, of course, was complaining that Columbia’s journalism program was anti-intellectual, not that the practice of journalism should be.) Michael Lewis, in his scathing essay on journalism schools in The New Republic (Lewis, 1993), quoted one columnist who said, “All we do is ask questions and type and occasionally turn a phrase. Why do you need to go to school for that?” Nevertheless, journalism schools have continued to exist in more than one form for over a century—though the form that they should take is far from settled.
For about the same period, journalists have debated—both actively and passively—whether or not their line of work constitutes a profession (though the first stirrings of professionalism can be dated even earlier). Many prefer to see themselves as practitioners of a craft or a trade. Others believe that as collectors and disseminators of information for a mass audience, monitors of power, protectors of democracy, and an unofficial fourth branch of the government, they deserve the same professional prestige as lawyers, engineers, or architects. Journalists enjoy special protections in the United States, owing to their specific mention in the Bill of Rights; however, it is this special protection that may be preventing them from coalescing into a formal, coherent profession. Journalists cannot control entry into their own body because in the United States, anyone can be a journalist. Therefore, the professionalization of journalism must take place as a socialization process—a process in which journalism schools can play in instrumental part.
A.J. Liebling, the journalist, press critic and general bon vivant, attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University before starting his career. His assessment of his education was famously less than sanguine. He once wrote that “the program had ‘all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A & P’” (qtd. in Remnick, 2004). His comment, while probably unduly harsh, represents an undeniable strain of anti-intellectualism in American journalism. (Liebling, of course, was complaining that Columbia’s journalism program was anti-intellectual, not that the practice of journalism should be.) Michael Lewis, in his scathing essay on journalism schools in The New Republic (Lewis, 1993), quoted one columnist who said, “All we do is ask questions and type and occasionally turn a phrase. Why do you need to go to school for that?” Nevertheless, journalism schools have continued to exist in more than one form for over a century—though the form that they should take is far from settled.
For about the same period, journalists have debated—both actively and passively—whether or not their line of work constitutes a profession (though the first stirrings of professionalism can be dated even earlier). Many prefer to see themselves as practitioners of a craft or a trade. Others believe that as collectors and disseminators of information for a mass audience, monitors of power, protectors of democracy, and an unofficial fourth branch of the government, they deserve the same professional prestige as lawyers, engineers, or architects. Journalists enjoy special protections in the United States, owing to their specific mention in the Bill of Rights; however, it is this special protection that may be preventing them from coalescing into a formal, coherent profession. Journalists cannot control entry into their own body because in the United States, anyone can be a journalist. Therefore, the professionalization of journalism must take place as a socialization process—a process in which journalism schools can play in instrumental part.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
"NPR Activists and Classical Monks"
Bailey, G. (2004). NPR activists and classical monks: Differentiating public radio formats. Journal of Radio Studies, 11(2), 184–193.
Theory and background: Bailey’s study was funded by a group of radio broadcasters who wanted to understand their audiences. Non-commercial radio stations in major markets have shifted away from their previous “crazy-quilt” programming to adopt a single format. In markets that supported a commercial classical music station, the public radio station usually abandoned music to concentrate on news. In other markets, two public stations would usually each take one of the classical or news formats. The stations wanted to know why, despite their similar demographics, there is little or no crossover between the audiences of classical music radio stations and National Public Radio news stations. Bailey discusses the “uses and gratifications” paradigm, which many researchers had abandoned because of methodological questions—namely that “uses” require quantitative data, and “gratifications” demand more exploratory research. Since surveys had already quantitatively established that there was little crossover between news and classical listeners, the researchers set up focus groups to explore gratifications.
Design: The research team identified four NPR stations, four noncommercial classical music stations, and two commercial classical stations that met strict criteria of broadcasting and audience service. The researchers deliberately chose disparate markets in several different American cities. The researchers aggregated their funding so that they could conduct 20 focus groups in their eight chosen markets, thus increasing their study’s external validity. Respondents were chosen for the focus groups by random interval samples from two sampling frames: a list of current and lapsed subscribers; and a telephone list of college graduates in target ZIP codes. This dual frame ensured that each focus group would involve both radio subscribers and non-subscribers. In the telephone screening, respondents were asked to describe their radio listening by unaided recall.
The 20 focus groups each consisted of 12 listeners. For the first 45 minutes of each session, the moderator asked what stations the respondents listened to and why. Bailey reports one particularly effective question that asked respondents how they would feel if a particular station were to go off the air. The remainder of each focus group session asked respondents to respond to brief samples of radio play from unfamiliar stations in order to get at “deeper, and more grounded expressions of how listener needs may or may not be fulfilled by radio programming” (p. 189).
Alternatives: In a world of infinite funding, the validity of the study might have been improved by conducting individual interviews with respondents, rather than focus groups, since social pressures might influence responses. A mailed survey could have reached a larger population, though that would not have allowed the researchers to play snippets of the radio programming to respondents, and would probably have resulted in less detailed responses, and given the stated qualitative nature of this study, a survey would have been less appropriate.
Theory and background: Bailey’s study was funded by a group of radio broadcasters who wanted to understand their audiences. Non-commercial radio stations in major markets have shifted away from their previous “crazy-quilt” programming to adopt a single format. In markets that supported a commercial classical music station, the public radio station usually abandoned music to concentrate on news. In other markets, two public stations would usually each take one of the classical or news formats. The stations wanted to know why, despite their similar demographics, there is little or no crossover between the audiences of classical music radio stations and National Public Radio news stations. Bailey discusses the “uses and gratifications” paradigm, which many researchers had abandoned because of methodological questions—namely that “uses” require quantitative data, and “gratifications” demand more exploratory research. Since surveys had already quantitatively established that there was little crossover between news and classical listeners, the researchers set up focus groups to explore gratifications.
Design: The research team identified four NPR stations, four noncommercial classical music stations, and two commercial classical stations that met strict criteria of broadcasting and audience service. The researchers deliberately chose disparate markets in several different American cities. The researchers aggregated their funding so that they could conduct 20 focus groups in their eight chosen markets, thus increasing their study’s external validity. Respondents were chosen for the focus groups by random interval samples from two sampling frames: a list of current and lapsed subscribers; and a telephone list of college graduates in target ZIP codes. This dual frame ensured that each focus group would involve both radio subscribers and non-subscribers. In the telephone screening, respondents were asked to describe their radio listening by unaided recall.
The 20 focus groups each consisted of 12 listeners. For the first 45 minutes of each session, the moderator asked what stations the respondents listened to and why. Bailey reports one particularly effective question that asked respondents how they would feel if a particular station were to go off the air. The remainder of each focus group session asked respondents to respond to brief samples of radio play from unfamiliar stations in order to get at “deeper, and more grounded expressions of how listener needs may or may not be fulfilled by radio programming” (p. 189).
Alternatives: In a world of infinite funding, the validity of the study might have been improved by conducting individual interviews with respondents, rather than focus groups, since social pressures might influence responses. A mailed survey could have reached a larger population, though that would not have allowed the researchers to play snippets of the radio programming to respondents, and would probably have resulted in less detailed responses, and given the stated qualitative nature of this study, a survey would have been less appropriate.
A Milestone
I keep this Microsoft Word file on my desk called "everygradassignment.doc." I just pasted in that last reading summary, and I am quite proud to say that I just surpassed 10,000 words written for the semester in my two classes. I'm hoping that with 15- and 18-page term papers still to be written, I'll double that before Christmas.
Maybe "hoping" isn't quite the right word.
Maybe "hoping" isn't quite the right word.
The end of the reading summaries
Pettigrew, K. E., & McKechnie, L. E. F. (2001). The use of theory in information science research. Journal of The American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), 62–73.
Shera, J. H. (1972). Communication, culture, and the library. In The foundations of education for librarianship (pp. 81–108). New York: Wiley.
Webber, S. (2003). Information science in 2003: a critique. Journal of Information Science, 29(4), 311–330.
I hope that I can admit without fear of reprisal that in my reading this semester, when a discipline makes the transition from those papers that make a grand call for a theory (whether in information science, communication processes or even my own field of media studies) to the actual research that is produced in support of those clarion calls, I am repeatedly rather disheartened. In preparation for the last class, we read Bush (1945), who may have been a little bit dreamy when he wrote of the Memex, and its potential to change the world. This week we read Pettigrew and McKechnie (2001), who, in their search to discover whether or not Information Science researchers refer to theories, code journal articles and reduce their findings to a number (34% of articles in IS, as it turns out, refer to theory). While this might be useful, it seems like an awful lot of work for a few percentages that could be reasonably guessed at by a reader well-versed in the literature. And it reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the meaning of life is also reduced to a single number. To my mind, it’s oversimplification. At any rate, in their study of 1160 articles, they found an average of less than one theory cited per article, and concluded that most of the theories originated in the social sciences (45.4%) or in IS itself (29.9%). Pettigrew & McKechnie write that “if fields such as information science (IS) are to delineate disciplinary boundaries… then they require their own theoretical bases” (p. 62). They seem to be saying that IS doesn’t count as a discipline without theory of its own.
Shera (1972) writes that “It is man’s capacity for organizing information into large and complex configurations, and his ability to transmit that information to other men, that is the great glory of the human species” (p. 84). In this way, he seems to be echoing Carey (1989), who quotes Dewey as saying that “of all things, communication is the most wonderful” (p. 13). Shera also agrees with Carey in advocating a cultural view of communication (though Shera applies this to Information Science and library studies where Carey uses it for media studies). In other words, they seem to be performing the same task for their respective disciplines: arguing that communication creates culture. Shera also discusses secondary communication, where a graphic record—writing or pictures—intervenes between the two people who are communicating. Shera then launches, appropriately, into a history of the library, which is the physical manifestation of the accrual of culture. (He quotes Alfred North Whitehead who gives credit to writing for the intellectual progress of mankind, and without citing him, invokes Brookes (1980), in arguing for Popper’s World III as the basis for IS research.) Shera writes that libraries began as elite private institutions and gradually became aggressively democratic institutions such as the public library with its drive to bring knowledge to the common man (p. 106). He argues, stirringly, that libraries can be instruments of social cohesion.
Webber (2003), however, finds less cohesion in the field of IS, as she sets out to determine the then-current status of the discipline. She concludes that, yes, IS is a discipline, though it is one of varied approaches and research problems. In embracing this diversity, she seems to side against those who would call IS “fragmentary.” She also dismisses writers such as Pettigrew & McKechnie who believe that a discipline needs a grand theory and focused research methods to be a discipline at all. She cites a growing body of research, and an international community of researchers as proof that it is a discipline. She outlines the idea of hard vs. soft and pure vs. applied, saying that Pettigrew & McKechnie are criticizing IS for not being a hard, pure science (one that uses empirical research to support explanatory theory). But Webber writes that IS is clearly an applied science, one in which the research is often directly applicable to practitioners, and one that includes both hard and soft elements in its research. Using this schema, she shows that the internecine debates of IS are not unique—and exist in many disciplines. As a British writer, she devotes the second half of her literature review to the state of Information Science in the UK.
Being somewhat skeptical of grand unifying theories and an over-emphasis on quantitative research, I tend to want to agree with Webber’s conclusion that the various “specialisms” that she identifies can all contribute to a more complicated vision of information science than a grand, unifying theory would seem to support.
But hey, that’s just me.
Shera, J. H. (1972). Communication, culture, and the library. In The foundations of education for librarianship (pp. 81–108). New York: Wiley.
Webber, S. (2003). Information science in 2003: a critique. Journal of Information Science, 29(4), 311–330.
I hope that I can admit without fear of reprisal that in my reading this semester, when a discipline makes the transition from those papers that make a grand call for a theory (whether in information science, communication processes or even my own field of media studies) to the actual research that is produced in support of those clarion calls, I am repeatedly rather disheartened. In preparation for the last class, we read Bush (1945), who may have been a little bit dreamy when he wrote of the Memex, and its potential to change the world. This week we read Pettigrew and McKechnie (2001), who, in their search to discover whether or not Information Science researchers refer to theories, code journal articles and reduce their findings to a number (34% of articles in IS, as it turns out, refer to theory). While this might be useful, it seems like an awful lot of work for a few percentages that could be reasonably guessed at by a reader well-versed in the literature. And it reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the meaning of life is also reduced to a single number. To my mind, it’s oversimplification. At any rate, in their study of 1160 articles, they found an average of less than one theory cited per article, and concluded that most of the theories originated in the social sciences (45.4%) or in IS itself (29.9%). Pettigrew & McKechnie write that “if fields such as information science (IS) are to delineate disciplinary boundaries… then they require their own theoretical bases” (p. 62). They seem to be saying that IS doesn’t count as a discipline without theory of its own.
Shera (1972) writes that “It is man’s capacity for organizing information into large and complex configurations, and his ability to transmit that information to other men, that is the great glory of the human species” (p. 84). In this way, he seems to be echoing Carey (1989), who quotes Dewey as saying that “of all things, communication is the most wonderful” (p. 13). Shera also agrees with Carey in advocating a cultural view of communication (though Shera applies this to Information Science and library studies where Carey uses it for media studies). In other words, they seem to be performing the same task for their respective disciplines: arguing that communication creates culture. Shera also discusses secondary communication, where a graphic record—writing or pictures—intervenes between the two people who are communicating. Shera then launches, appropriately, into a history of the library, which is the physical manifestation of the accrual of culture. (He quotes Alfred North Whitehead who gives credit to writing for the intellectual progress of mankind, and without citing him, invokes Brookes (1980), in arguing for Popper’s World III as the basis for IS research.) Shera writes that libraries began as elite private institutions and gradually became aggressively democratic institutions such as the public library with its drive to bring knowledge to the common man (p. 106). He argues, stirringly, that libraries can be instruments of social cohesion.
Webber (2003), however, finds less cohesion in the field of IS, as she sets out to determine the then-current status of the discipline. She concludes that, yes, IS is a discipline, though it is one of varied approaches and research problems. In embracing this diversity, she seems to side against those who would call IS “fragmentary.” She also dismisses writers such as Pettigrew & McKechnie who believe that a discipline needs a grand theory and focused research methods to be a discipline at all. She cites a growing body of research, and an international community of researchers as proof that it is a discipline. She outlines the idea of hard vs. soft and pure vs. applied, saying that Pettigrew & McKechnie are criticizing IS for not being a hard, pure science (one that uses empirical research to support explanatory theory). But Webber writes that IS is clearly an applied science, one in which the research is often directly applicable to practitioners, and one that includes both hard and soft elements in its research. Using this schema, she shows that the internecine debates of IS are not unique—and exist in many disciplines. As a British writer, she devotes the second half of her literature review to the state of Information Science in the UK.
Being somewhat skeptical of grand unifying theories and an over-emphasis on quantitative research, I tend to want to agree with Webber’s conclusion that the various “specialisms” that she identifies can all contribute to a more complicated vision of information science than a grand, unifying theory would seem to support.
But hey, that’s just me.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
World I, World II, World War II, and World III
Brookes, B. C. (1980). The foundations of information science. Part I. Philosophical aspects. Journal of Information Science, 2, 125–133.
Bush, V. (1945). As we may think [Electronic Version]. The Atlantic Monthly, 176, 101-108. Retrieved Nov. 10, 2005 from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush.
Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1051–1063.
Vannevar Bush (1945) found himself, as an academic and a scientist (one who had been instrumental in the U.S. War effort), swamped by the amount of research that academic specialization had caused to be produced. The body of published work far outstripped the ability of a single scholar to access and assimilate it. He imagines some fanciful aids to research—a walnut-sized, forehead-mounted camera, for instance—but also called for the creation of something very much like the modern computer, attached to a searchable, hyperlinked Internet. “For mature thought,” Bush writes, “there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter, there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.” For processing observations and data, and adding them to the body of common knowledge, Bush proposes a machine he calls a “memex,” a desk in which a researcher’s books, records and communications would be stored and easily accessed via microfilm for the purpose of association—which is how Bush writes that the human mind works. The memex would create “associative trails” which could themselves be accessed, and even shared with colleagues. The present-day realization of Bush’s dream need not be elaborated upon (or even named, though I do above) for the connection to be clear.
Bush’s thought that the goal of research is to add to a common body of knowledge meshes well with Popper’s world of objective knowledge, as outlined in Brookes (1980). This is Popper’s “World III,” the first two being the physical world (World I) and the subjective worlds of individual human perception (World II). World III encompasses the sum of “human thought embodied in human artefacts, as in documents of course but also in music, the arts, the technologies” (Brookes 1980, p. 127). Brookes argues that this World III should be the basis for the theoretical and practical work of information science. The practical work would be the collection and organization of the knowledge in World III (he writes that librarians are have only worked with archiving the physical documents, not in assimilating and combining their content), and the theoretical work would be to study the interactions between World III and World II, the subjective world of perception. Brookes proposes his own hypothetical machine (though unlike Bush’s, his is a theoretical tool—a metaphor) called a “perceptron” (p. 132). Since it is a machine that can be tuned to pick up certain types of information, what it gathers can be called objective—though as soon as it is transmitted to a human researcher, it becomes subjective. This, to Brookes, is an ideal and a problem for further study. Brookes ends, quite inspiringly, actually, with a call to information scientists to recognize Popper’s World III as a basis for research. He points out that it is the only one created by humans, showing that there is something special about humans and returning us to some of the anthropocentric glory that Copernicus and Darwin (rightly) diminished.
Saracevic (1999) takes these philosophical foundations (those of Bush and Popper) and places them at the beginning of an outline of information science as a discipline. He points out the discipline’s three “powerful ideas”: information retrieval, relevance, and interaction; and he defines “information” in the broadest sense: cognitively processed messages that appear in a relational context (p. 1054). Saracevic writes that information science divides into two clusters: the domain cluster, which includes information analysts of various sorts, and the retrieval cluster, which is mainly interested in applied usages. Within the information retrieval (IR) cluster, there is a paradigm split between those who study systems exclusively and those who acknowledge a human user of the IR systems. Saracevic argues that the important problem here is to find a theory that can encompass both ends of the spectrum. Educational and professional divisions follow similar philosophical lines. On the topic of relevance, the important problem is finding a way to make systems relevance (responses to queries) more compatible with other types of relevance (what users actually search for). Saracevic ends with this as the most important topic for further research in the discipline.
I find it quite instructive to read these essays in chronological order and to watch a discipline move from dreamy theorizing to practical solutions to real problems. I’m personally more attracted to the theory in information science, and I can find great personal utility in Popper’s three worlds, especially in one of my research interests, which is the process of canonization of written works—how a book or an article becomes a “classic.” I also like the idea, which Brookes mentions in passing, that a small change in information can lead to a huge change in understanding. It’s an idea like that that makes the incremental work of scholarly research worthwhile—and tolerable.
Bush, V. (1945). As we may think [Electronic Version]. The Atlantic Monthly, 176, 101-108. Retrieved Nov. 10, 2005 from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush.
Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1051–1063.
Vannevar Bush (1945) found himself, as an academic and a scientist (one who had been instrumental in the U.S. War effort), swamped by the amount of research that academic specialization had caused to be produced. The body of published work far outstripped the ability of a single scholar to access and assimilate it. He imagines some fanciful aids to research—a walnut-sized, forehead-mounted camera, for instance—but also called for the creation of something very much like the modern computer, attached to a searchable, hyperlinked Internet. “For mature thought,” Bush writes, “there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter, there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.” For processing observations and data, and adding them to the body of common knowledge, Bush proposes a machine he calls a “memex,” a desk in which a researcher’s books, records and communications would be stored and easily accessed via microfilm for the purpose of association—which is how Bush writes that the human mind works. The memex would create “associative trails” which could themselves be accessed, and even shared with colleagues. The present-day realization of Bush’s dream need not be elaborated upon (or even named, though I do above) for the connection to be clear.
Bush’s thought that the goal of research is to add to a common body of knowledge meshes well with Popper’s world of objective knowledge, as outlined in Brookes (1980). This is Popper’s “World III,” the first two being the physical world (World I) and the subjective worlds of individual human perception (World II). World III encompasses the sum of “human thought embodied in human artefacts, as in documents of course but also in music, the arts, the technologies” (Brookes 1980, p. 127). Brookes argues that this World III should be the basis for the theoretical and practical work of information science. The practical work would be the collection and organization of the knowledge in World III (he writes that librarians are have only worked with archiving the physical documents, not in assimilating and combining their content), and the theoretical work would be to study the interactions between World III and World II, the subjective world of perception. Brookes proposes his own hypothetical machine (though unlike Bush’s, his is a theoretical tool—a metaphor) called a “perceptron” (p. 132). Since it is a machine that can be tuned to pick up certain types of information, what it gathers can be called objective—though as soon as it is transmitted to a human researcher, it becomes subjective. This, to Brookes, is an ideal and a problem for further study. Brookes ends, quite inspiringly, actually, with a call to information scientists to recognize Popper’s World III as a basis for research. He points out that it is the only one created by humans, showing that there is something special about humans and returning us to some of the anthropocentric glory that Copernicus and Darwin (rightly) diminished.
Saracevic (1999) takes these philosophical foundations (those of Bush and Popper) and places them at the beginning of an outline of information science as a discipline. He points out the discipline’s three “powerful ideas”: information retrieval, relevance, and interaction; and he defines “information” in the broadest sense: cognitively processed messages that appear in a relational context (p. 1054). Saracevic writes that information science divides into two clusters: the domain cluster, which includes information analysts of various sorts, and the retrieval cluster, which is mainly interested in applied usages. Within the information retrieval (IR) cluster, there is a paradigm split between those who study systems exclusively and those who acknowledge a human user of the IR systems. Saracevic argues that the important problem here is to find a theory that can encompass both ends of the spectrum. Educational and professional divisions follow similar philosophical lines. On the topic of relevance, the important problem is finding a way to make systems relevance (responses to queries) more compatible with other types of relevance (what users actually search for). Saracevic ends with this as the most important topic for further research in the discipline.
I find it quite instructive to read these essays in chronological order and to watch a discipline move from dreamy theorizing to practical solutions to real problems. I’m personally more attracted to the theory in information science, and I can find great personal utility in Popper’s three worlds, especially in one of my research interests, which is the process of canonization of written works—how a book or an article becomes a “classic.” I also like the idea, which Brookes mentions in passing, that a small change in information can lead to a huge change in understanding. It’s an idea like that that makes the incremental work of scholarly research worthwhile—and tolerable.
Friday, November 04, 2005
What, are you Mad?
McChesney, R. (2000). So much for the magic of technology and the free market: the World Wide Web and the corporate media system. In A. Herman & T. Swiss (Eds.), The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory (pp. 5–35). New York: Routledge.
Norris, V. P. (1984). Mad economics: an analysis of an adless magazine. Journal of communication, 34(1), 44-61.
Schiller, D., & Mosco, V. (2001). Introduction: integrating a continent for a transnational world. In V. Mosco & D. Schiller (Eds.), Continental order? Integrating North America for cybercapitalism (pp. 1–34). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Despite having aced my high school AP macroeconomics course, I’ve come late to an appreciation of economics and its worldview. In this week’s readings, I’ve started to see the utility of political economy in looking at media, but I’m personally more impressed with it on the micro level than at the macro. Schiller and Mosco (2001) take a very macro view, examining the longitudinal liberalization of trade regulation that has allowed telecommunication and media corporations to conglomerate and spend their capital on foreign direct investment and become transnational corporations, mostly—as this is the focus of their book—in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. I find the fact that the cultural exceptions were the last restrictions to go quite interesting, and maybe a topic for further study. And I find the general trend toward ever-larger communications conglomerates troubling. But in general, I see this essay mostly as background.
I’m more interested in McChesney (2000), who economically analyzes the claim that the Internet “will set us free” (p. 5). He demonstrates that free markets tend not to result in free competition, but in oligopolies of large corporations (p. 9). Small companies do have influence in the market, spending money on risky research and development programs, but they then tend to be purchased by larger, established companies if they are successful. McChesney writes that large media companies will continue to dominate even on the Web. These large companies have deep pockets and are therefore willing to wait out smaller companies who will determine what applications of the technology will make money. They can also advertise themselves on their existing media networks; transfer their content online with little added cost; and reap the benefits of advertising. I think McChesney is probably right in his overall thesis, that large corporations will continue to dominate online, but I think he might be too gloomy about journalism in particular. A.J. Liebling said that “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” which has always previously been true: the barrier to entry was much too high for most independent journalism. But even if media giants do dominate the Web, its now almost-zero barrier seems to allow even one-man operations to be able to exist and for networks like blogs to be able to promote them adequately. I disagree that, as McChesney says dismissively, “journalism is not something that can be undertaken piecemeal by amateurs working in their spare time” (p. 29). Who says? Maybe it’s better done by those with training and institutional support, but for the same reason that there is no licensing for journalists in this country, it is almost impossible to limit who is a journalist, and while corporate monsters may dominate, and small media companies may die out or be bought, non-corporate, non-profit journalists can find an audience for the first time. I think a purely economic analysis leaves these independent voices out.
Norris (1984) takes the most microeconomic approach to media, and to me was the most interesting—and because of his specific topic, the most fun. He analyzes the financial data of Mad magazine to see whether—and why—a magazine with no ads could be profitable, which flies in the face of the magazine world’s received wisdom. Magazines have high fixed costs, such as rent for office space and employee salaries (though they generally have small editorial staffs) and variable costs that mostly come from the cost of printing, meaning that their marginal costs (the price of printing one more issue) are low. Because old magazines hardly sell, the publisher assumes the risk of printing costs, paying for all unsold copies (and explaining why many magazines are post-dated by a month or two). Mad’s publisher prints 1.9 million copies of the magazine, and sells about half of them, though there is no way to know in advance which half will be bought. The cover price and the circulation determine whether or not the magazine makes a profit, since the printing costs are relatively unchanged. Interestingly, adding advertisements may increase the fixed costs of publishing a magazine substantially, since that would require adding a sales staff and their overhead, which might not be outweighed by advertising income. Since magazine demand is generally inelastic, the same qualities that make a magazine appealing to advertisers would also allow the publisher to charge a higher cover price without losing circulation (p. 60). Despite this convincing argument, I can’t imagine that a single magazine has canned its ad department in the 20 years since Norris’s essay was published. Maybe this is because ads lend legitimacy to a magazine, somehow separating them from journals or newsletters. In many cases, I imagine that this is because ads are a large part of the appeal of certain magazines—fashion, car, and technology magazines come to mind. I like the pragmatism of this application of economics, and could see using this approach in my own work, though I also see utility in McChesney, and can at least appreciate Schiller and Mosco.
Norris, V. P. (1984). Mad economics: an analysis of an adless magazine. Journal of communication, 34(1), 44-61.
Schiller, D., & Mosco, V. (2001). Introduction: integrating a continent for a transnational world. In V. Mosco & D. Schiller (Eds.), Continental order? Integrating North America for cybercapitalism (pp. 1–34). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Despite having aced my high school AP macroeconomics course, I’ve come late to an appreciation of economics and its worldview. In this week’s readings, I’ve started to see the utility of political economy in looking at media, but I’m personally more impressed with it on the micro level than at the macro. Schiller and Mosco (2001) take a very macro view, examining the longitudinal liberalization of trade regulation that has allowed telecommunication and media corporations to conglomerate and spend their capital on foreign direct investment and become transnational corporations, mostly—as this is the focus of their book—in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. I find the fact that the cultural exceptions were the last restrictions to go quite interesting, and maybe a topic for further study. And I find the general trend toward ever-larger communications conglomerates troubling. But in general, I see this essay mostly as background.
I’m more interested in McChesney (2000), who economically analyzes the claim that the Internet “will set us free” (p. 5). He demonstrates that free markets tend not to result in free competition, but in oligopolies of large corporations (p. 9). Small companies do have influence in the market, spending money on risky research and development programs, but they then tend to be purchased by larger, established companies if they are successful. McChesney writes that large media companies will continue to dominate even on the Web. These large companies have deep pockets and are therefore willing to wait out smaller companies who will determine what applications of the technology will make money. They can also advertise themselves on their existing media networks; transfer their content online with little added cost; and reap the benefits of advertising. I think McChesney is probably right in his overall thesis, that large corporations will continue to dominate online, but I think he might be too gloomy about journalism in particular. A.J. Liebling said that “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” which has always previously been true: the barrier to entry was much too high for most independent journalism. But even if media giants do dominate the Web, its now almost-zero barrier seems to allow even one-man operations to be able to exist and for networks like blogs to be able to promote them adequately. I disagree that, as McChesney says dismissively, “journalism is not something that can be undertaken piecemeal by amateurs working in their spare time” (p. 29). Who says? Maybe it’s better done by those with training and institutional support, but for the same reason that there is no licensing for journalists in this country, it is almost impossible to limit who is a journalist, and while corporate monsters may dominate, and small media companies may die out or be bought, non-corporate, non-profit journalists can find an audience for the first time. I think a purely economic analysis leaves these independent voices out.
Norris (1984) takes the most microeconomic approach to media, and to me was the most interesting—and because of his specific topic, the most fun. He analyzes the financial data of Mad magazine to see whether—and why—a magazine with no ads could be profitable, which flies in the face of the magazine world’s received wisdom. Magazines have high fixed costs, such as rent for office space and employee salaries (though they generally have small editorial staffs) and variable costs that mostly come from the cost of printing, meaning that their marginal costs (the price of printing one more issue) are low. Because old magazines hardly sell, the publisher assumes the risk of printing costs, paying for all unsold copies (and explaining why many magazines are post-dated by a month or two). Mad’s publisher prints 1.9 million copies of the magazine, and sells about half of them, though there is no way to know in advance which half will be bought. The cover price and the circulation determine whether or not the magazine makes a profit, since the printing costs are relatively unchanged. Interestingly, adding advertisements may increase the fixed costs of publishing a magazine substantially, since that would require adding a sales staff and their overhead, which might not be outweighed by advertising income. Since magazine demand is generally inelastic, the same qualities that make a magazine appealing to advertisers would also allow the publisher to charge a higher cover price without losing circulation (p. 60). Despite this convincing argument, I can’t imagine that a single magazine has canned its ad department in the 20 years since Norris’s essay was published. Maybe this is because ads lend legitimacy to a magazine, somehow separating them from journals or newsletters. In many cases, I imagine that this is because ads are a large part of the appeal of certain magazines—fashion, car, and technology magazines come to mind. I like the pragmatism of this application of economics, and could see using this approach in my own work, though I also see utility in McChesney, and can at least appreciate Schiller and Mosco.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Carey Me Home
Carey, J. W. (1989). A cultural approach to communication. In Communication as culture: Essays on media and society (pp. 13–36). New York: Routledge.
Gitlin, T. (1978). Media sociology: The dominant paradigm. Theory and society, 6. 205–253.
Hall, S. (1992). Encoding/decoding. In Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson.
Hall (1992), in what seems to me to be unnecessarily dense prose, outlines a semiotic model of mass communications in which a message is encoded into a symbolic system of some kind—words, images, words and images—and then decoded again by an audience. Both ends of this process are framed by various cultural influences: “frameworks of knowledge,” “relations of production,” and “technical infrastructure” (p. 130). Hall intends this model to replace the behaviorist model that he (among others) believes has overwhelmed mass communications research. He proposes three positions from which a transmitted, encoded message can be decoded: “dominant-hegemonic,” in which the audience receives exactly the message the encoder intended; “negotiated code,” in which the audience takes the message with qualifications, adaptations and objections; and “oppositional code,” in which the audience rejects the message entirely (pp. 136–138).
Gitlin (1978) is also quite concerned with picking apart what he has identified as the dominant paradigm of mass communications research, Lazarsfeld’s “personal influence” model and the behavioral studies of media’s effects. Gitlin particularly discusses the “two-step flow of communications” theory that “opinion leaders” influence the general population, instead of the mass media doing so directly. Gitlin argues that this improperly diminishes the influence of the media, and that measuring short-term opinion change is an inadequate way to measure the influence of the media. Gitlin roots his argument in an historical analysis of Lazarsfeld’s “administrative” approach to social science, and his relationships with the sources of his funds—particularly the Rockefeller Foundation, CBS, and a publisher named Mcfadden who sponsored a particular study of Lazarsfeld’s and may have (Gitlin argues this case) influenced the choice of variables and subjects (p. 236). Gitlin does not offer a particular new paradigm to replace this other so much as call for one. Media sociology, Gitlin writes, “could work, in other words, to show a dynamic but determinate media process articulated with the whole of political culture” (p. 239). And in a footnote, he refers to “the alternative approach of cultural studies, influenced by Marxist cultural theory and semiological “readings” of content” which he calls “the most promising angle of analysis” (p. 246). The semiological analysis leads directly back to Hall (1992), and also segues well into Carey (1989).
I took a class with James Carey at Columbia, and as a journalism student, I had a vague idea that he was a bigshot, but his class, “Critical Issues in Journalism,” which he co-taught with a journalist, was not particularly heavy on theory. Still, it was the highlight of my Fall, since it was the one of only a couple of classes I had that dealt with ideas. Now as I make a career shift from journalism to media studies, he’s become a hero to me. I found myself boxing in passages and littering the margins with asterisks—my sign to myself that I am excited by ideas. I particularly enjoy Carey’s insight that “communication is not some pure phenomenon we can discover; there is no such thing as communication to be revealed in nature through some objective method free from the corruption of culture” (p. 31). To Carey, culture is a human construction, and communication is the constant production and reproduction of that culture. This is the “ritual” view of communication, one more closely linked to “community” than to the transmission of messages. In this view, the ritual of reading a newspaper helps to construct or reinforce a view of the world more than it transmits information (though he allows that a newspaper can do that as well). Carey works well with Hall in that both endorse the semiotic view of communication as constructed symbols, though Hall seems to be using the “transmission model” that Carey mostly rejects as stultifying. What excites me so much about Carey is that he acknowledges that acts of communication are rooted in historical time, and that he is willing to mine the disciplines of “biology, theology, anthropology, and literature” for ways of looking at communication (p. 23).
Gitlin, T. (1978). Media sociology: The dominant paradigm. Theory and society, 6. 205–253.
Hall, S. (1992). Encoding/decoding. In Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson.
Hall (1992), in what seems to me to be unnecessarily dense prose, outlines a semiotic model of mass communications in which a message is encoded into a symbolic system of some kind—words, images, words and images—and then decoded again by an audience. Both ends of this process are framed by various cultural influences: “frameworks of knowledge,” “relations of production,” and “technical infrastructure” (p. 130). Hall intends this model to replace the behaviorist model that he (among others) believes has overwhelmed mass communications research. He proposes three positions from which a transmitted, encoded message can be decoded: “dominant-hegemonic,” in which the audience receives exactly the message the encoder intended; “negotiated code,” in which the audience takes the message with qualifications, adaptations and objections; and “oppositional code,” in which the audience rejects the message entirely (pp. 136–138).
Gitlin (1978) is also quite concerned with picking apart what he has identified as the dominant paradigm of mass communications research, Lazarsfeld’s “personal influence” model and the behavioral studies of media’s effects. Gitlin particularly discusses the “two-step flow of communications” theory that “opinion leaders” influence the general population, instead of the mass media doing so directly. Gitlin argues that this improperly diminishes the influence of the media, and that measuring short-term opinion change is an inadequate way to measure the influence of the media. Gitlin roots his argument in an historical analysis of Lazarsfeld’s “administrative” approach to social science, and his relationships with the sources of his funds—particularly the Rockefeller Foundation, CBS, and a publisher named Mcfadden who sponsored a particular study of Lazarsfeld’s and may have (Gitlin argues this case) influenced the choice of variables and subjects (p. 236). Gitlin does not offer a particular new paradigm to replace this other so much as call for one. Media sociology, Gitlin writes, “could work, in other words, to show a dynamic but determinate media process articulated with the whole of political culture” (p. 239). And in a footnote, he refers to “the alternative approach of cultural studies, influenced by Marxist cultural theory and semiological “readings” of content” which he calls “the most promising angle of analysis” (p. 246). The semiological analysis leads directly back to Hall (1992), and also segues well into Carey (1989).
I took a class with James Carey at Columbia, and as a journalism student, I had a vague idea that he was a bigshot, but his class, “Critical Issues in Journalism,” which he co-taught with a journalist, was not particularly heavy on theory. Still, it was the highlight of my Fall, since it was the one of only a couple of classes I had that dealt with ideas. Now as I make a career shift from journalism to media studies, he’s become a hero to me. I found myself boxing in passages and littering the margins with asterisks—my sign to myself that I am excited by ideas. I particularly enjoy Carey’s insight that “communication is not some pure phenomenon we can discover; there is no such thing as communication to be revealed in nature through some objective method free from the corruption of culture” (p. 31). To Carey, culture is a human construction, and communication is the constant production and reproduction of that culture. This is the “ritual” view of communication, one more closely linked to “community” than to the transmission of messages. In this view, the ritual of reading a newspaper helps to construct or reinforce a view of the world more than it transmits information (though he allows that a newspaper can do that as well). Carey works well with Hall in that both endorse the semiotic view of communication as constructed symbols, though Hall seems to be using the “transmission model” that Carey mostly rejects as stultifying. What excites me so much about Carey is that he acknowledges that acts of communication are rooted in historical time, and that he is willing to mine the disciplines of “biology, theology, anthropology, and literature” for ways of looking at communication (p. 23).
Future Employees of the A&P
1. Journalism education gets a bad rap from both sides. Universities find journalism schools anti-intellectual, more akin to business schools than to law schools, but without the rich alumni to justify promoting them on campus. And the profession doesn’t have much use for formal education in journalism either. The New Yorker writer and Columbia University journalism graduate A.J. Liebling said it most famously when he wrote that “the program had ‘all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A & P’” (Remnick, 2004). Because of these perceptions, a methodical study of perceptions of journalism education is needed. Since a study of the quality of a journalism education is outside the realm of this exercise, it is useful to focus instead on perceptions of the value of journalism education. And to study this, this exercise looks at a group of people who have the ability to assign a monetary value to it: prospective employers of journalists. Operationally, this group would be editors who hire and manage journalists at magazines, newspapers, and online publications. This exercise works with the following research question: How does a journalist’s education affect his desirability to prospective employers?
2. To explore the possible answers to this question, I propose the following two hypotheses, and their corresponding null hypotheses:
H1: There is a relationship between having a degree from a journalism school and level of success in a journalism career.
H0: There is no relationship between having a degree from a journalism school and level of success in a journalism career.
H2: Editors show a clear preference for hiring journalists with journalism degrees over those without journalism degrees.
H0: Editors show no clear preference for hiring journalists with journalism degrees over those without journalism degrees.
H1 tests for a simple relationship between the variables of having a journalism school degree and success in a journalism career. This is a weaker, two-tailed hypothesis. H2 looks for a directional relationship between having a journalism degree and likelihood of being hired. Though easier to reject, this is a stronger, one-tailed hypothesis.
3. Since having a journalism degree or not is a simple dichotomous measure, I will operationally define a “level of success in a journalism career,” as referred to in H1. Level of success in a journalism career can be defined as the percentage of change in a participant’s salary over the most recent continuous ten years of the participant’s employment. Since journalism careers are often volatile (and changing jobs can even be a sign of success, not failure), “continuous employment” does not necessarily mean that the participant was employed at the same publication for all ten years. The percentage change in salary represents the assumption that the journalist’s career is advancing. Freelance journalists will not be included, since, in effect, they hire themselves, and their possession of a journalism degree would not have to impress anyone to gain employment. An alternative measure of success, honors and awards received for journalistic work, was rejected because too few awards exist to measure meaningfully. Another alternative, employer satisfaction with the journalist’s work, was rejected under the assumption that higher employer satisfaction would also result in higher salaries for the journalist, which is the measure under consideration.
4. A second variable in this exercise, taken from H2, can be defined in several different ways. That variable is “editors’ preference for hiring journalists with journalism school degrees,” and can be defined as follows:
a. Dichotomous measure: editors can be asked whether or not they have ever hired a journalist who holds a journalism school degree. Answers will fall into two categories: yes, they have; or no, they have not.
b. Nominal measure: applicants for journalism jobs can be classified into (at least) four categories:
1. Journalism school graduates with a bachelor’s degree
2. Journalism school graduates with a master’s degree
3. Liberal arts graduates with a bachelor’s degree
4. Liberal arts graduates with a master’s degree
c. To establish an ordinal measure, editors can be asked to respond to the following prompt: Rank the following attributes of journalism job applicants in order (highest to lowest) of desirability:
• A journalism degree
• A liberal arts degree
• Professional experience as a journalist
• Other professional experience
• Publication history
• A journalism internship
• Writing ability as shown in published stories
• Writing ability as shown on an employer-proctored writing test
d. The ordinal measure proposed in part c. could easily be adapted to serve as a Likert-type scale. The prompt could be rephrased to read: “Rate the importance of each of the following attributes of a prospective employee on a scale of 1–7, with 1 equaling ‘not important at all,’ and 7 equaling ‘extremely important.’” Then, each of the above attributes would be listed with a Likert scale matching the prompt underneath it.
e. In order to measure the concept of editors’ perceptions of journalism degrees as valuable when hiring journalists as a ratio measure, a researcher could simply ask how many employees the editor has who hold journalism degrees. Since having four employees with journalism degrees means that an organization has twice as many such employees as an organization with only two, this is a natural ratio measure. In order to facilitate comparison of news organizations of different sizes, the researcher could express the number as a percentage of the total number of employees.
In researching H2, these five operational definitions have varying degrees of utility. The dichotomous measure, for instance, would not be of much value in finding results. If anything, it could be used to disqualify one category of editors from participation in the study if that were desired. However, the “no” category might be interesting to include in the study, and it is also covered in definition e., the ratio measure. Similarly, the nominal measure could be used to sort respondents into categories for study with one of the other measures, but is not very useful on its own. The ordinal measure in definition c. and the Likert scale in definition d. are quite similar in that they ask about the importance of various attributes to editors when they are hiring. The Likert scale would be preferable though, since the ordinal data collected in c. would also appear in d., and Likert scales have the advantage of being able to be analyzed as ratio data as argued by Labovitz (Labovitz, 1971).
5. One potential threat to the validity of H2 would result from a sampling bias. For example, if the study were to survey only editors who were themselves graduates of journalism schools, the generalizability of the results to the entire universe of editors would be reduced. While the internal validity of the study would be increased by such a limitation, there are threats to the external validity (Krathwohl, 1998). If journalism school graduate editors disproportionately favor journalism school graduates (which certainly has face validity) in comparison to other editors, the relationship of the variables would be shown to hold, even if it did were not true across the entire population of editors in the real world. This would be a Type I error. Random assignments of respondents from a sampling frame—in this case a list of editors—would reduce the effects of this sampling bias (Sudman, 1983).
These hypotheses could also be affected by a local history threat to validity. For example, if a chain of newspapers employing a number of respondents in the study were to suffer systemic financial problems and institute a wage freeze for several years, the percentage change in journalists’ salaries for those years would be zero, thus invalidating the operational definition of “success” for those journalists. The hypothesis would appear to be rejected, even though the real-world principle might still hold. This would be a Type II error. To preserve validity, those cases could be eliminated, but that might significantly reduce the sample size, thus threatening validity in other ways (Krathwohl, 1998, pp. 515, 527).
References
Krathwohl, D. R. (1998). Methods of educational and social science research: an integrated approach (Second ed.). Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.
Labovitz, S. (1971). The assignment of numbers to rank order categories. American Sociological Review, 35, 515–525.
Remnick, D. (2004). Introduction: reporting it all. In Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer (pp. ix–xxvi). New York: North Point Press.
Sudman, S. (1983). Chapter 5: Applied sampling. In P. H. Rossi, J. D. Wright & A. B. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of survey research. Orlando: Academic Press, Inc.
2. To explore the possible answers to this question, I propose the following two hypotheses, and their corresponding null hypotheses:
H1: There is a relationship between having a degree from a journalism school and level of success in a journalism career.
H0: There is no relationship between having a degree from a journalism school and level of success in a journalism career.
H2: Editors show a clear preference for hiring journalists with journalism degrees over those without journalism degrees.
H0: Editors show no clear preference for hiring journalists with journalism degrees over those without journalism degrees.
H1 tests for a simple relationship between the variables of having a journalism school degree and success in a journalism career. This is a weaker, two-tailed hypothesis. H2 looks for a directional relationship between having a journalism degree and likelihood of being hired. Though easier to reject, this is a stronger, one-tailed hypothesis.
3. Since having a journalism degree or not is a simple dichotomous measure, I will operationally define a “level of success in a journalism career,” as referred to in H1. Level of success in a journalism career can be defined as the percentage of change in a participant’s salary over the most recent continuous ten years of the participant’s employment. Since journalism careers are often volatile (and changing jobs can even be a sign of success, not failure), “continuous employment” does not necessarily mean that the participant was employed at the same publication for all ten years. The percentage change in salary represents the assumption that the journalist’s career is advancing. Freelance journalists will not be included, since, in effect, they hire themselves, and their possession of a journalism degree would not have to impress anyone to gain employment. An alternative measure of success, honors and awards received for journalistic work, was rejected because too few awards exist to measure meaningfully. Another alternative, employer satisfaction with the journalist’s work, was rejected under the assumption that higher employer satisfaction would also result in higher salaries for the journalist, which is the measure under consideration.
4. A second variable in this exercise, taken from H2, can be defined in several different ways. That variable is “editors’ preference for hiring journalists with journalism school degrees,” and can be defined as follows:
a. Dichotomous measure: editors can be asked whether or not they have ever hired a journalist who holds a journalism school degree. Answers will fall into two categories: yes, they have; or no, they have not.
b. Nominal measure: applicants for journalism jobs can be classified into (at least) four categories:
1. Journalism school graduates with a bachelor’s degree
2. Journalism school graduates with a master’s degree
3. Liberal arts graduates with a bachelor’s degree
4. Liberal arts graduates with a master’s degree
c. To establish an ordinal measure, editors can be asked to respond to the following prompt: Rank the following attributes of journalism job applicants in order (highest to lowest) of desirability:
• A journalism degree
• A liberal arts degree
• Professional experience as a journalist
• Other professional experience
• Publication history
• A journalism internship
• Writing ability as shown in published stories
• Writing ability as shown on an employer-proctored writing test
d. The ordinal measure proposed in part c. could easily be adapted to serve as a Likert-type scale. The prompt could be rephrased to read: “Rate the importance of each of the following attributes of a prospective employee on a scale of 1–7, with 1 equaling ‘not important at all,’ and 7 equaling ‘extremely important.’” Then, each of the above attributes would be listed with a Likert scale matching the prompt underneath it.
e. In order to measure the concept of editors’ perceptions of journalism degrees as valuable when hiring journalists as a ratio measure, a researcher could simply ask how many employees the editor has who hold journalism degrees. Since having four employees with journalism degrees means that an organization has twice as many such employees as an organization with only two, this is a natural ratio measure. In order to facilitate comparison of news organizations of different sizes, the researcher could express the number as a percentage of the total number of employees.
In researching H2, these five operational definitions have varying degrees of utility. The dichotomous measure, for instance, would not be of much value in finding results. If anything, it could be used to disqualify one category of editors from participation in the study if that were desired. However, the “no” category might be interesting to include in the study, and it is also covered in definition e., the ratio measure. Similarly, the nominal measure could be used to sort respondents into categories for study with one of the other measures, but is not very useful on its own. The ordinal measure in definition c. and the Likert scale in definition d. are quite similar in that they ask about the importance of various attributes to editors when they are hiring. The Likert scale would be preferable though, since the ordinal data collected in c. would also appear in d., and Likert scales have the advantage of being able to be analyzed as ratio data as argued by Labovitz (Labovitz, 1971).
5. One potential threat to the validity of H2 would result from a sampling bias. For example, if the study were to survey only editors who were themselves graduates of journalism schools, the generalizability of the results to the entire universe of editors would be reduced. While the internal validity of the study would be increased by such a limitation, there are threats to the external validity (Krathwohl, 1998). If journalism school graduate editors disproportionately favor journalism school graduates (which certainly has face validity) in comparison to other editors, the relationship of the variables would be shown to hold, even if it did were not true across the entire population of editors in the real world. This would be a Type I error. Random assignments of respondents from a sampling frame—in this case a list of editors—would reduce the effects of this sampling bias (Sudman, 1983).
These hypotheses could also be affected by a local history threat to validity. For example, if a chain of newspapers employing a number of respondents in the study were to suffer systemic financial problems and institute a wage freeze for several years, the percentage change in journalists’ salaries for those years would be zero, thus invalidating the operational definition of “success” for those journalists. The hypothesis would appear to be rejected, even though the real-world principle might still hold. This would be a Type II error. To preserve validity, those cases could be eliminated, but that might significantly reduce the sample size, thus threatening validity in other ways (Krathwohl, 1998, pp. 515, 527).
References
Krathwohl, D. R. (1998). Methods of educational and social science research: an integrated approach (Second ed.). Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.
Labovitz, S. (1971). The assignment of numbers to rank order categories. American Sociological Review, 35, 515–525.
Remnick, D. (2004). Introduction: reporting it all. In Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer (pp. ix–xxvi). New York: North Point Press.
Sudman, S. (1983). Chapter 5: Applied sampling. In P. H. Rossi, J. D. Wright & A. B. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of survey research. Orlando: Academic Press, Inc.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
In Theory
Bateson, G. (1996). Communication. In H. B. Mokros (Ed.), Interaction and identity: Information and Behavior (Vol. 5, pp. 45–70). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication theory, 9(2), 119–161.
Deetz, S. A. (1994). Future of the discipline: The challenges, the research, and the social contribution. In S. A. Deetz (Ed.), Communications yearbook 17. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I began my reading this week with Craig (1999), which may have been a mistake in terms of absorbing concepts. Craig believes that communication theory can and should become a unified field of study through the use of a “constitutive metamodel,” and that the existing multidisciplinary traditions can be seen within this frame as seven different “vocabularies” (pp. 120–121). He argues that a dialogical/dialectical model, in which the various traditions are aware of how they complement each other and how they disagree, can unite the various disciplines contained within the field. I had trouble coming to a working definition of “constitutive” (in the context of communication) as I read, but because of the seven approaches to theory that Craig outlines, I came to think of “constitutive” as meaning “comprised by” in that the seven traditions make up communications theory as Craig sees it. I’m fairly sure now that this isn’t how Craig intended “constitutive” to be read, but I do think it’s still a fair way to look at his essay.
Deetz (1994) agrees with Craig that communication studies is in need of a clearer theoretical basis, and it is from Deetz that I take a definition of “constitutive” that makes me comfortable: “From a constitutive conception, all expression is derived from a more fundamental set of discursive practices in which the things that are to be expressed by messages are constitutively produced through messages” (p. 573). Deetz presents this constitutive communication view of the world as being in opposition to an information view, in which messages are transmitted whole rather than being constructed between participants in the communication. He calls this theoretical view of the world a discipline3, “a relatively organized way of attending to the world that explains how things came to be as they are” (p. 567). (He defines a discipline1 as an academic department and a discipline2 as a “field of study,” which is where he believes communication studies was when he wrote (p. 567)). Deetz advocates a pragmatic, political approach to communication studies, with active participation (a communication model) preferable to manufactured consent (transmission). Slightly off the main thesis of this paper, but also interesting to me as a media scholar, Deetz also contends that “Objectivity was oversold for the sake of prestige for clusters of elite researchers, journalists, teachers, and owners of knowledge” (p. 587).
Bateson (1996) appears to be the discussion of theory that accompanies a multidisciplinary study called The natural history of an interview. This, I discovered through research, was an unpublished 1971 book, and the context helps explain the content of the essay—and my discovery of context fits in well, actually, with Bateson’s discussion of context as informing a method of inquiry (pp. 55–56): I was able to look at Bateson’s article from a higher level of Gestalt. Predating both of the above theorists, Bateson relies on the theories of communication that most directly impinge on the study at hand. He comments on Freudian ideas of the unconscious and the Gestalt idea of punctuated experience. The discussion that he subheads “Interaction” reads strikingly like a version of Deetz’s (1994) constitutive theory of communication. He also compares orders of communication to orders of learning, and points out something that seems to be a constant issue for communication studies: “that we deal with entities whose behavior is by no means describable in terms of linear equations and monotone logic” (p. 67).
Somewhere in the middle of the Deetz (1994) article, I became annoyed with the entire premise for what he—and also Craig (1999)—were attempting. I like both of their overarching, unifying communication theories, but I feel like the motives for creating them in the first place are reactionary. As Deetz writes, communication departments earn little respect on campuses, and communication textbooks are not good (p. 565). But a large part of me feels like these theorists are theorizing merely because they want to justify the fact that the various disciplines of communication have found themselves lumped together for the reasons outlined by Delia (1987) and Peters (1999) in last week’s readings. Craig (1999) calls this state of things at its best “productive fragmentation” (p. 122). And I like his unifying theory better since it retains many of the various disciplinary approaches as separate but communicating entities within the new discipline. Still though, I feel as if other disciplines had the theories before they had the academic departments, and I wonder if that makes those the stronger disciplines, at least theoretically. Or maybe, as Deetz writes (echoing, it would seem, a common assertion), communication studies is still in its adolescence. I’m still unsettled about the usefulness of these unifying theories.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication theory, 9(2), 119–161.
Deetz, S. A. (1994). Future of the discipline: The challenges, the research, and the social contribution. In S. A. Deetz (Ed.), Communications yearbook 17. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I began my reading this week with Craig (1999), which may have been a mistake in terms of absorbing concepts. Craig believes that communication theory can and should become a unified field of study through the use of a “constitutive metamodel,” and that the existing multidisciplinary traditions can be seen within this frame as seven different “vocabularies” (pp. 120–121). He argues that a dialogical/dialectical model, in which the various traditions are aware of how they complement each other and how they disagree, can unite the various disciplines contained within the field. I had trouble coming to a working definition of “constitutive” (in the context of communication) as I read, but because of the seven approaches to theory that Craig outlines, I came to think of “constitutive” as meaning “comprised by” in that the seven traditions make up communications theory as Craig sees it. I’m fairly sure now that this isn’t how Craig intended “constitutive” to be read, but I do think it’s still a fair way to look at his essay.
Deetz (1994) agrees with Craig that communication studies is in need of a clearer theoretical basis, and it is from Deetz that I take a definition of “constitutive” that makes me comfortable: “From a constitutive conception, all expression is derived from a more fundamental set of discursive practices in which the things that are to be expressed by messages are constitutively produced through messages” (p. 573). Deetz presents this constitutive communication view of the world as being in opposition to an information view, in which messages are transmitted whole rather than being constructed between participants in the communication. He calls this theoretical view of the world a discipline3, “a relatively organized way of attending to the world that explains how things came to be as they are” (p. 567). (He defines a discipline1 as an academic department and a discipline2 as a “field of study,” which is where he believes communication studies was when he wrote (p. 567)). Deetz advocates a pragmatic, political approach to communication studies, with active participation (a communication model) preferable to manufactured consent (transmission). Slightly off the main thesis of this paper, but also interesting to me as a media scholar, Deetz also contends that “Objectivity was oversold for the sake of prestige for clusters of elite researchers, journalists, teachers, and owners of knowledge” (p. 587).
Bateson (1996) appears to be the discussion of theory that accompanies a multidisciplinary study called The natural history of an interview. This, I discovered through research, was an unpublished 1971 book, and the context helps explain the content of the essay—and my discovery of context fits in well, actually, with Bateson’s discussion of context as informing a method of inquiry (pp. 55–56): I was able to look at Bateson’s article from a higher level of Gestalt. Predating both of the above theorists, Bateson relies on the theories of communication that most directly impinge on the study at hand. He comments on Freudian ideas of the unconscious and the Gestalt idea of punctuated experience. The discussion that he subheads “Interaction” reads strikingly like a version of Deetz’s (1994) constitutive theory of communication. He also compares orders of communication to orders of learning, and points out something that seems to be a constant issue for communication studies: “that we deal with entities whose behavior is by no means describable in terms of linear equations and monotone logic” (p. 67).
Somewhere in the middle of the Deetz (1994) article, I became annoyed with the entire premise for what he—and also Craig (1999)—were attempting. I like both of their overarching, unifying communication theories, but I feel like the motives for creating them in the first place are reactionary. As Deetz writes, communication departments earn little respect on campuses, and communication textbooks are not good (p. 565). But a large part of me feels like these theorists are theorizing merely because they want to justify the fact that the various disciplines of communication have found themselves lumped together for the reasons outlined by Delia (1987) and Peters (1999) in last week’s readings. Craig (1999) calls this state of things at its best “productive fragmentation” (p. 122). And I like his unifying theory better since it retains many of the various disciplinary approaches as separate but communicating entities within the new discipline. Still though, I feel as if other disciplines had the theories before they had the academic departments, and I wonder if that makes those the stronger disciplines, at least theoretically. Or maybe, as Deetz writes (echoing, it would seem, a common assertion), communication studies is still in its adolescence. I’m still unsettled about the usefulness of these unifying theories.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
From ontology to pragmatism
I apologize if posting nothing but weekly reading responses to academic articles in the communication field gets boring, but it's a direct result of my not really having much time to do other things. This week, we move on to the history of the field of communication, which developed as its own field mostly after WWII. For some reason, I struggled with writing this one more than I did the first two. Maybe that comes from trying to summarize and analyze 100 pages of dense history in less than three pages.
Delia, J.G. (1987). Communication research: A history. In C. Berger & S. Chafee (Eds.), Handbook of communication science (pp. 20–98). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Peters, J. D. (1999). Introduction: The problem of communication. In Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication (pp. 1–31). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delia (1987) and Peters (1999) both, nominally, have the history of communication (and I intentionally use Peters’s singular formulation of the word) as their subject, but their titles alone hint at their differences in approach. Delia looks at the history of communication as a field of academic research, seemingly slogging out from the trenches of the various fields out of which he contemporary communication research has grown—sociology, social psychology, political science, and even literature (p.26)—and tracing how the various disciplinary concerns of these approaches to a similar subject of research led to the creation of a new, and in his view poorly-defined discipline of communication research which still struggles to define what constitutes its boundaries. Peters swoops in from a much more ontological perch—trying to come to a definition of his own and struggling with the concept of communication before narrowing in to discuss the development of its various constituent and precursor disciplines.
Delia’s earth-bound, pragmatist, approach has helped me come to terms with the definitional boundaries of the field of communication. I had always been a bit bewildered at how many seemingly different approaches various institutions take to what they each call communication. As an undergraduate, I was in proximity to the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, which skews toward the study of political communications. There are schools that seem to equate communications with semiotics. Some are practically schools of journalism. Delia argues that communication as a discipline arose out of the confluence of the rise of mass communication technologies in the 20th Century, the work of philosophers such as Dewey, propaganda theorists and public opinion analysts such as Lippmann, and the Chicago school of sociological research, which emphasized scientific methods. Delia cites Lazarsfeld as a crucial player in uniting the various strands of communication research in the 1940s (p. 53).
In the post WWII-period, the term “communications” first appeared as a subject of research, and through the 1950s and ’60s, the social science approach to communication pushed humanistic and qualitative approaches out of the mainstream. Delia argues that the incorporation of communications research into journalism schools and speech programs further separated mass communication research from interpersonal communications in the academy. He also believes that this has been limiting since journalism and speech, while intimately connected to communications research, are not where the study came from originally (p. 86). At any rate, it explains my perception of the fragmentation of schools of “communication,” but also continues (perhaps in a beneficial way) my perplexity at the boundaries between communications and media studies. It also links well with the interdisciplinarity of information science described in Rayward (1996) It is also interesting to note that Delia attributes journalism schools’ eagerness to absorb communications studies to the desire for more academic seriousness in these schools that often still command less respect than other more explicitly research-based disciplines.
Though Peters (1999) is willing to discuss communications as far back as cavemen, he only pins the beginnings a few years earlier than Delia does. He also agrees with Delia that the term suffers from confusion, though consistent with his own approach, he defines it as “conceptual confusion” rather than Delia’s disciplinary mixing: “’communication’ in much contemporary discourse exists as a sort of ill formed, undifferentiated conceptual germ plasm,” Peters writes (p. 6). Peters’s account of the history of communication studies takes in more theorists and philosophers than social scientists. Lippmann is here as in Delia, but so is Wittgenstein, so is Heidegger, so is Dewey—and so are Kafka, Beckett and Eliot. Peters is less concerned with approaches to a field than with “visions” of communication. He does however agree that the visions and the academic incarnations of those visions are fragmented, and in his view the best way to tackle the study of communications is to find a path somewhere between what he calls “the dream of communication” and a more pragmatic approach that admits that despite the failings of communication, people must find a way to go on with their business.
Delia, J.G. (1987). Communication research: A history. In C. Berger & S. Chafee (Eds.), Handbook of communication science (pp. 20–98). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Peters, J. D. (1999). Introduction: The problem of communication. In Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication (pp. 1–31). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delia (1987) and Peters (1999) both, nominally, have the history of communication (and I intentionally use Peters’s singular formulation of the word) as their subject, but their titles alone hint at their differences in approach. Delia looks at the history of communication as a field of academic research, seemingly slogging out from the trenches of the various fields out of which he contemporary communication research has grown—sociology, social psychology, political science, and even literature (p.26)—and tracing how the various disciplinary concerns of these approaches to a similar subject of research led to the creation of a new, and in his view poorly-defined discipline of communication research which still struggles to define what constitutes its boundaries. Peters swoops in from a much more ontological perch—trying to come to a definition of his own and struggling with the concept of communication before narrowing in to discuss the development of its various constituent and precursor disciplines.
Delia’s earth-bound, pragmatist, approach has helped me come to terms with the definitional boundaries of the field of communication. I had always been a bit bewildered at how many seemingly different approaches various institutions take to what they each call communication. As an undergraduate, I was in proximity to the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, which skews toward the study of political communications. There are schools that seem to equate communications with semiotics. Some are practically schools of journalism. Delia argues that communication as a discipline arose out of the confluence of the rise of mass communication technologies in the 20th Century, the work of philosophers such as Dewey, propaganda theorists and public opinion analysts such as Lippmann, and the Chicago school of sociological research, which emphasized scientific methods. Delia cites Lazarsfeld as a crucial player in uniting the various strands of communication research in the 1940s (p. 53).
In the post WWII-period, the term “communications” first appeared as a subject of research, and through the 1950s and ’60s, the social science approach to communication pushed humanistic and qualitative approaches out of the mainstream. Delia argues that the incorporation of communications research into journalism schools and speech programs further separated mass communication research from interpersonal communications in the academy. He also believes that this has been limiting since journalism and speech, while intimately connected to communications research, are not where the study came from originally (p. 86). At any rate, it explains my perception of the fragmentation of schools of “communication,” but also continues (perhaps in a beneficial way) my perplexity at the boundaries between communications and media studies. It also links well with the interdisciplinarity of information science described in Rayward (1996) It is also interesting to note that Delia attributes journalism schools’ eagerness to absorb communications studies to the desire for more academic seriousness in these schools that often still command less respect than other more explicitly research-based disciplines.
Though Peters (1999) is willing to discuss communications as far back as cavemen, he only pins the beginnings a few years earlier than Delia does. He also agrees with Delia that the term suffers from confusion, though consistent with his own approach, he defines it as “conceptual confusion” rather than Delia’s disciplinary mixing: “’communication’ in much contemporary discourse exists as a sort of ill formed, undifferentiated conceptual germ plasm,” Peters writes (p. 6). Peters’s account of the history of communication studies takes in more theorists and philosophers than social scientists. Lippmann is here as in Delia, but so is Wittgenstein, so is Heidegger, so is Dewey—and so are Kafka, Beckett and Eliot. Peters is less concerned with approaches to a field than with “visions” of communication. He does however agree that the visions and the academic incarnations of those visions are fragmented, and in his view the best way to tackle the study of communications is to find a path somewhere between what he calls “the dream of communication” and a more pragmatic approach that admits that despite the failings of communication, people must find a way to go on with their business.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Weekly reading summary #2
D’Andrade, R. (1986). Three scientific world views and the covering law model. In D.W. Fiske & R.A. Shweder (Eds.), Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities (pp. 19–41). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rayward, W. B. (1996). The history and historiography of information science: Some reflections. Information Processing & Management, 32(1), 3–17.
Said, E. (1993). The politics of knowledge. In C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (Eds.), Race, identity and representation in education (pp. 306–314). New York: Routledge.
D’Andrade (1986) presents the covering law model of science, which states that science consists of the search for laws, generalized across a series of events, that explain and predict the chain of events. (pp. 19–20) He argues that this model applies well to physical sciences, less well to natural sciences, and more problematically to “semiotic” sciences. He writes that these are three separate worldviews and that the social sciences, which fit into the category of semiotic sciences, need not feel constrained by the covering law model. The semiotic sciences explore the creation of an imposed order rather than explaining a natural order. They require a creative, interpretive path to discovery of this order. (p. 23) Critics point out the intersubjectivity of social science—the degree to which one even can have different meanings for different people—and some directly reject any science that deals with interpretation of meanings. (p. 31) D’Andrade contends that narrowing the range of possible interpretations through data collection can strengthen research. (p. 33)
Rayward (1996) writes that Information Science’s diffuse and undefined nature poses problems for its historians, and that the field’s interdisciplinarity is a dominant theme. (pp. 3–5) He spends much of his essay explaining the divide between Library and Information Science and Computer and Information Science, but eventually concludes that since so much current (in 1996) research in the former led to the latter, the differences no longer matter, if they ever did. Therefore historians of Information Science can appropriate any discipline they feel is necessary to tell the stories of the field. Information Science, as it is currently understood, appeared with the advent of new information processing machines after World War II. Because of this brief history, most academic treatment of Information Science fits into Braudel’s idea of the durée courte, or short-term history. (pp. 12–13) Rayward suggests two approaches to studying this history: synchronic, which focuses on the various academic endeavors of a single period; and diachronic, which studies a single issue, method, or approach over more than one time period, as defined by the individual researcher. (pp. 13–14)
In Said’s essay (1993), he argues that a politics based strictly upon racial or nationalist identity is insufficient for a post-imperialist, postcolonial world. The original movements of cultural and minority identity activism were meant to include works by previously ignored or undervalued writers and thinkers in the canon, rather than elevating them to a place of honor above the canon. For aiding his thinking, Said credits Frantz Fanon, who warned against “the hijacking of common sense by bureaucrats, technical experts and jargon-wielding obfuscators” (p. 309). This directly echoes (or rather, foreshadows, in real time) last week’s essay by McMurtry. Said specificially describes an incident in which he was excoriated for not including non-European thinkers in a chapter about European intellectual history. Said writes that some circumstances certainly warrant the inclusion of such writers but that simply including a list of their names would undervalue their contributions. I encountered a similar situation when writing a proposal for a new course. The one black member of the department’s curriculum committee demanded that I add “some black names” to the list of required readings, even though the field’s introductory classics have been dominated by white writers.
Despite having no previous academic interest in library and information science, I find myself very much drawn to the interdisciplinarity of it, since my field, media studies, is similarly poorly defined. Rayward’s definition of Information Science as an “interdiscipline” would work well in helping me to define my own field. Since I am interested in the history of the media—and of attempts to understand it—I could directly appropriate Rayward’s discussion of the synchronic and the diachronic for my own work. Even aside from history however, I am heartened by the concept of an “interdiscipline” since my own interests in media studies encompass the fields of sociology, education, history, literature and cultural studies—which has often made it difficult to define myself.
I am also encouraged by D’Andrade’s three-world-view model, since the first two weeks of my readings in the Ph.D. program have focused heavily on the social science experimentation mode of research, which is not how I envisioned the bulk of my own work before matriculating. I have already taken in much of the value of this evidentiary approach, but have been struggling with its limitations, and hoping for a validation of other methods, which I find here.
Said’s essay itself exemplifies both the interdisciplinary and interpretive approaches that I hope to incorporate into my own work, in that Said’s historical, cultural, and literary knowledge all combine to make a powerful argument about society’s intellectual constructs. It is interdisciplinary, echoing Rayward’s description of Information Science. It is also interpretive, rather than trying to demonstrate some sort of general law. It is an argument firmly rooted in time, place, and Said’s own political views, but it is no less strong for that. In fact, had Said not attended the academic conference that launched his line of thinking, his essay might not exist at all.
Rayward, W. B. (1996). The history and historiography of information science: Some reflections. Information Processing & Management, 32(1), 3–17.
Said, E. (1993). The politics of knowledge. In C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (Eds.), Race, identity and representation in education (pp. 306–314). New York: Routledge.
D’Andrade (1986) presents the covering law model of science, which states that science consists of the search for laws, generalized across a series of events, that explain and predict the chain of events. (pp. 19–20) He argues that this model applies well to physical sciences, less well to natural sciences, and more problematically to “semiotic” sciences. He writes that these are three separate worldviews and that the social sciences, which fit into the category of semiotic sciences, need not feel constrained by the covering law model. The semiotic sciences explore the creation of an imposed order rather than explaining a natural order. They require a creative, interpretive path to discovery of this order. (p. 23) Critics point out the intersubjectivity of social science—the degree to which one even can have different meanings for different people—and some directly reject any science that deals with interpretation of meanings. (p. 31) D’Andrade contends that narrowing the range of possible interpretations through data collection can strengthen research. (p. 33)
Rayward (1996) writes that Information Science’s diffuse and undefined nature poses problems for its historians, and that the field’s interdisciplinarity is a dominant theme. (pp. 3–5) He spends much of his essay explaining the divide between Library and Information Science and Computer and Information Science, but eventually concludes that since so much current (in 1996) research in the former led to the latter, the differences no longer matter, if they ever did. Therefore historians of Information Science can appropriate any discipline they feel is necessary to tell the stories of the field. Information Science, as it is currently understood, appeared with the advent of new information processing machines after World War II. Because of this brief history, most academic treatment of Information Science fits into Braudel’s idea of the durée courte, or short-term history. (pp. 12–13) Rayward suggests two approaches to studying this history: synchronic, which focuses on the various academic endeavors of a single period; and diachronic, which studies a single issue, method, or approach over more than one time period, as defined by the individual researcher. (pp. 13–14)
In Said’s essay (1993), he argues that a politics based strictly upon racial or nationalist identity is insufficient for a post-imperialist, postcolonial world. The original movements of cultural and minority identity activism were meant to include works by previously ignored or undervalued writers and thinkers in the canon, rather than elevating them to a place of honor above the canon. For aiding his thinking, Said credits Frantz Fanon, who warned against “the hijacking of common sense by bureaucrats, technical experts and jargon-wielding obfuscators” (p. 309). This directly echoes (or rather, foreshadows, in real time) last week’s essay by McMurtry. Said specificially describes an incident in which he was excoriated for not including non-European thinkers in a chapter about European intellectual history. Said writes that some circumstances certainly warrant the inclusion of such writers but that simply including a list of their names would undervalue their contributions. I encountered a similar situation when writing a proposal for a new course. The one black member of the department’s curriculum committee demanded that I add “some black names” to the list of required readings, even though the field’s introductory classics have been dominated by white writers.
Despite having no previous academic interest in library and information science, I find myself very much drawn to the interdisciplinarity of it, since my field, media studies, is similarly poorly defined. Rayward’s definition of Information Science as an “interdiscipline” would work well in helping me to define my own field. Since I am interested in the history of the media—and of attempts to understand it—I could directly appropriate Rayward’s discussion of the synchronic and the diachronic for my own work. Even aside from history however, I am heartened by the concept of an “interdiscipline” since my own interests in media studies encompass the fields of sociology, education, history, literature and cultural studies—which has often made it difficult to define myself.
I am also encouraged by D’Andrade’s three-world-view model, since the first two weeks of my readings in the Ph.D. program have focused heavily on the social science experimentation mode of research, which is not how I envisioned the bulk of my own work before matriculating. I have already taken in much of the value of this evidentiary approach, but have been struggling with its limitations, and hoping for a validation of other methods, which I find here.
Said’s essay itself exemplifies both the interdisciplinary and interpretive approaches that I hope to incorporate into my own work, in that Said’s historical, cultural, and literary knowledge all combine to make a powerful argument about society’s intellectual constructs. It is interdisciplinary, echoing Rayward’s description of Information Science. It is also interpretive, rather than trying to demonstrate some sort of general law. It is an argument firmly rooted in time, place, and Said’s own political views, but it is no less strong for that. In fact, had Said not attended the academic conference that launched his line of thinking, his essay might not exist at all.
Weekly reading summary #1
I would imagine that the following will be of limited interest, but I want to post my weekly reading summaries from my introductory class. If you feel like reading such things then please do, by all means. Mostly I'm putting them up to give myself easy reference to them in the future. Like all else on this blog, the copyright on the following commentaries belongs to me. Plagiarists should die.
Buckland, M. (1991). Chapters 1, 4, 5 & 6. In Information and information systems. New York: Praeger.
McMurtry, J. (2002). Preface. In Value wars: The global market versus the life economy. (pp. xii–xxv). Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
Sapir, E. (1949). Communication. In D.G. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, (pp. 104–109). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Buckland (1991) essays a definition of “information” as both a practical exercise (for the construction of information storage and retrieval systems) and as an epistemological exploration. He defines “information-as-process” as “the act of becoming informed”; “information-as-knowledge” as “that which is imparted when one becomes informed, and “information-as-thing” as physical representations of information that—while they are not themselves knowledge—impart information, however imperfectly. (p. 43) Knowledge, Buckland argues, is dependent on belief. (p. 40)
McMurtry (2002) asserts that an “unseen moral syntax” (p. xiv) controls what information will be perceived as true. Using the failure of investigative organizations (including media, which he writes are “dominantly owned by military-industrial and infotainment corporations” (p. xii)) to report the international power structure’s complicity in the attacks of September 11, 2001, McMurtry shows how a deeply ingrained value structure contributes to the “inertial acquiescence of the occupied mass mind” (p. xiv).
Sapir (1949), in delineating the various types of communication from interpersonal communication to mass media, and from language to gesture to “social suggestion” (p. 106) argues that these types of communication are linked to the construction of society, which is not a fixed construct, but one that is constantly in flux. In particular he concludes (in a prescient essay originally written in 1931) that evolving communication technologies would force an increasingly smaller global society to overcome its biggest communication obstacle: language translation. He predicts “that the civilized world will adopt one language of intercommunication, say English or Esperanto, which can be set aside for denotive purposes pure and simple. (p. 109)
For my own interests in journalism and media studies, I connect parts of all three of these studies to form a sort of nascent theory of the ultimate goals of the journalistic process. From Buckland (1991) I take the idea that knowledge is dependent on belief, which relates to studies showing that readers’ trust in newsgathering organizations has fallen precipitously low. Regardless of the accuracy of a given news report (Buckland dismisses accuracy as a qualification for information), the public will be disinclined to accept information from that news report if they do not first believe in that information. Of course, Buckland also raises some problems inherent in any physical representation of information: it is liable to be misinterpreted by its consumer, and will be filtered through both human interpretation and the limitations of language by its author. (p. 53) The optimist in me would hope that a news consumer would accept these limitations and therefore, at least provisionally, accept a news report from a reliable source (and I don’t have a method yet for determining what is “reliable”—perhaps that is left up to the relationship between the individual news consumer and the news organization).
The cynic in me however, is liable to turn to McMurtry (2002) for a reason—as a news consumer myself—to distrust these organizations. McMurtry’s argument that an ingrained value structure dictates the ability of certain facts to penetrate the mass mind clearly links to Buckland’s assertion that knowledge depends on belief. If this moral framework is as pervasive and insidious as McMurtry makes it out to be, then that belief system will not allow the mass audience to become informed in Buckland’s definition, since becoming informed relies on “a change in our beliefs” (p. 40)
This pervasiveness, of course, is largely possible because of the globalization of communication that Sapir (1963) predicts. The propaganda that McMurtry reviles has swamped the global communication network that Sapir predicts, overwhelming the construction of a global society, as Sapir defines society. Luckily for adherents to McMurtry’s argument (and though I’m swayed, I’m not yet convinced), Sapir does write that society is a process, and McMurtry’s proposed solution remains achievable: “Once the human project is released from their invisible prison of presupposition, the constitutional resources to steer out of the accumulating breakdown of life conditions become decisively evident” (p. xxv).
As for the ultimate goal of journalism, it could be seen as to inform, in Buckland’s definition, in order to avoid the sort of mass misinformation evident in McMurtry’s essay in order to build Sapir’s conception of society.
Buckland, M. (1991). Chapters 1, 4, 5 & 6. In Information and information systems. New York: Praeger.
McMurtry, J. (2002). Preface. In Value wars: The global market versus the life economy. (pp. xii–xxv). Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
Sapir, E. (1949). Communication. In D.G. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, (pp. 104–109). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Buckland (1991) essays a definition of “information” as both a practical exercise (for the construction of information storage and retrieval systems) and as an epistemological exploration. He defines “information-as-process” as “the act of becoming informed”; “information-as-knowledge” as “that which is imparted when one becomes informed, and “information-as-thing” as physical representations of information that—while they are not themselves knowledge—impart information, however imperfectly. (p. 43) Knowledge, Buckland argues, is dependent on belief. (p. 40)
McMurtry (2002) asserts that an “unseen moral syntax” (p. xiv) controls what information will be perceived as true. Using the failure of investigative organizations (including media, which he writes are “dominantly owned by military-industrial and infotainment corporations” (p. xii)) to report the international power structure’s complicity in the attacks of September 11, 2001, McMurtry shows how a deeply ingrained value structure contributes to the “inertial acquiescence of the occupied mass mind” (p. xiv).
Sapir (1949), in delineating the various types of communication from interpersonal communication to mass media, and from language to gesture to “social suggestion” (p. 106) argues that these types of communication are linked to the construction of society, which is not a fixed construct, but one that is constantly in flux. In particular he concludes (in a prescient essay originally written in 1931) that evolving communication technologies would force an increasingly smaller global society to overcome its biggest communication obstacle: language translation. He predicts “that the civilized world will adopt one language of intercommunication, say English or Esperanto, which can be set aside for denotive purposes pure and simple. (p. 109)
For my own interests in journalism and media studies, I connect parts of all three of these studies to form a sort of nascent theory of the ultimate goals of the journalistic process. From Buckland (1991) I take the idea that knowledge is dependent on belief, which relates to studies showing that readers’ trust in newsgathering organizations has fallen precipitously low. Regardless of the accuracy of a given news report (Buckland dismisses accuracy as a qualification for information), the public will be disinclined to accept information from that news report if they do not first believe in that information. Of course, Buckland also raises some problems inherent in any physical representation of information: it is liable to be misinterpreted by its consumer, and will be filtered through both human interpretation and the limitations of language by its author. (p. 53) The optimist in me would hope that a news consumer would accept these limitations and therefore, at least provisionally, accept a news report from a reliable source (and I don’t have a method yet for determining what is “reliable”—perhaps that is left up to the relationship between the individual news consumer and the news organization).
The cynic in me however, is liable to turn to McMurtry (2002) for a reason—as a news consumer myself—to distrust these organizations. McMurtry’s argument that an ingrained value structure dictates the ability of certain facts to penetrate the mass mind clearly links to Buckland’s assertion that knowledge depends on belief. If this moral framework is as pervasive and insidious as McMurtry makes it out to be, then that belief system will not allow the mass audience to become informed in Buckland’s definition, since becoming informed relies on “a change in our beliefs” (p. 40)
This pervasiveness, of course, is largely possible because of the globalization of communication that Sapir (1963) predicts. The propaganda that McMurtry reviles has swamped the global communication network that Sapir predicts, overwhelming the construction of a global society, as Sapir defines society. Luckily for adherents to McMurtry’s argument (and though I’m swayed, I’m not yet convinced), Sapir does write that society is a process, and McMurtry’s proposed solution remains achievable: “Once the human project is released from their invisible prison of presupposition, the constitutional resources to steer out of the accumulating breakdown of life conditions become decisively evident” (p. xxv).
As for the ultimate goal of journalism, it could be seen as to inform, in Buckland’s definition, in order to avoid the sort of mass misinformation evident in McMurtry’s essay in order to build Sapir’s conception of society.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
The Slightly Less Gray Lady
I make my students read the New York Times, and many of them think it's boring. My knee-jerk reaction, as a journalism professor, is to defend it. And while I still do think the Times is probably the best newspaper in the country, I've also come to agree with my students. The Times is boring.
But it got slightly less boring last Sunday with the publication in the Times Magazine of a brilliantly conceived yet poorly executed new section that the editors have dubbed "The Funny Pages." The Funny Pages are divided into three promising sections:
I. The Strip. The first edition of The Strip is an architectural comic of some sort by Chris Ware. I admire Chris Ware quite a bit, and have assigned his graphic novel, 'Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth' to my students. His drawings are spectacular and his stories are touching. They're not particularly funny though. The first episode involves the interior monologue of a townhouse. Don't know where this is going, but I'm intrigued enough to keep reading even though it's neither a strip nor funny.
II. True-Life Tales. The editors say that these will be comic short essays in the mold of James Thurber or David Sedaris, both of whose feet I'm not good enough to kiss. Comic short essays are an underappreciated form, and a regular outlet for them would be great. This first one, by Elizabeth Gilbert and about yoga in the South is OK. I didn't laugh out loud, but these are hit-or-miss. I'll forgive. Especially since I see these as an antidote to the maudlin "Lives" column that is always on the last page of the Times Magazine. I describe the "Lives" personal essays to my students as "The Day I Found Out I had Cancer was the Day my Cat Died."
III. Sunday Serial. The third part of The Funny Pages is the second that's not even intended to be funny (then why the name?). It's a serialized short novel by Elmore Leonard, who writes comic crime novels. This one is some sort of World War II-era mystery story that so far has a German soldier killing himself in a POW camp in Oklahoma. Where it goes from there I don't know. I'm not hooked yet, but I got my friend Jason to hold a newspaper for three minutes and read it (though I've had success in handing him the crossword, too). And that's enough of an accomplishment for me.
I'll keep watching this to see where it goes. I just wish it had a bolder graphic identity. There's an article on Slate right now about the bold graphics of the old New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's paper. Take the talents behind the Funny Papers and let them loose on a broadsheet, and maybe we'll have something interesting. For now though, this is a not-so-terrible start.
But it got slightly less boring last Sunday with the publication in the Times Magazine of a brilliantly conceived yet poorly executed new section that the editors have dubbed "The Funny Pages." The Funny Pages are divided into three promising sections:
I. The Strip. The first edition of The Strip is an architectural comic of some sort by Chris Ware. I admire Chris Ware quite a bit, and have assigned his graphic novel, 'Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth' to my students. His drawings are spectacular and his stories are touching. They're not particularly funny though. The first episode involves the interior monologue of a townhouse. Don't know where this is going, but I'm intrigued enough to keep reading even though it's neither a strip nor funny.
II. True-Life Tales. The editors say that these will be comic short essays in the mold of James Thurber or David Sedaris, both of whose feet I'm not good enough to kiss. Comic short essays are an underappreciated form, and a regular outlet for them would be great. This first one, by Elizabeth Gilbert and about yoga in the South is OK. I didn't laugh out loud, but these are hit-or-miss. I'll forgive. Especially since I see these as an antidote to the maudlin "Lives" column that is always on the last page of the Times Magazine. I describe the "Lives" personal essays to my students as "The Day I Found Out I had Cancer was the Day my Cat Died."
III. Sunday Serial. The third part of The Funny Pages is the second that's not even intended to be funny (then why the name?). It's a serialized short novel by Elmore Leonard, who writes comic crime novels. This one is some sort of World War II-era mystery story that so far has a German soldier killing himself in a POW camp in Oklahoma. Where it goes from there I don't know. I'm not hooked yet, but I got my friend Jason to hold a newspaper for three minutes and read it (though I've had success in handing him the crossword, too). And that's enough of an accomplishment for me.
I'll keep watching this to see where it goes. I just wish it had a bolder graphic identity. There's an article on Slate right now about the bold graphics of the old New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's paper. Take the talents behind the Funny Papers and let them loose on a broadsheet, and maybe we'll have something interesting. For now though, this is a not-so-terrible start.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
I've Got Class
One of the many hats I wear is a professor of journalism at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, New York. I have created a blog that will link to my students' blogs. You can find it by going to JournalScope.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Reporters are as lazy as anyone else
First, an epigraph:
"As long as we're knocking down myths, let's take a swing at the myth of the reporter who, if his mother says she loves him, checks it out by 1) getting an affidavit from the old lady attesting to the fact; 2) finding an independent source to verify the alleged love bond; and 3) unearthing material evidence of her devotion for her offspring. The reality is that too many reporters just want to go home and will phone anybody who will give them a good quotation to tie up all those loose ends."
--Jack Schafer, in a Slate article that's mostly about bad crystal meth reporting
------------------
And now, as response and comment, I quote myself, from my unfinished memoir of journalism school, which I was calling "J." I want to distance myself from it a bit. It's been a long time since I wrote this, and I'm not sure that I agree with everything I say in it. So from here on out, it's all quote:
------------------
I was talking with a friend of mine one night at the wonderfully named Nussbaum & Wu bakery. We were killing an hour or so between our magazine workshop and a required lecture series for magazine concentrators. It was getting within a month or so of our graduation from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s master’s program, and we were talking jobs. Jobs being an important subject to people about to make the sudden and drastic social change from “student” to “unemployed.”
I was talking, as I had been quite often around that time, about how I was perfectly willing to sell out. To find a job that would make me equally as miserable as journalism, and yet would pay me. Anything. I had, in fact, received an email not an hour before this talk with this friend, in which I had been offered an interview at a magazine. The job paid $20,000. This is what a master’s degree at the best journalism school in the country was worth? My education had cost more than twice that much, and that only lasted for nine months or so.
Honestly, I could make more at McDonald’s.
So this friend and I were talking about these jobs, and I mentioned that I had been so disillusioned by journalism that I never wanted to make another reporting phone call again as long as I lived. I wanted to be a critic, an essayist. I wanted to write. Journalism school didn’t kill my love for the written word and for arguing out ideas. For the music of language and every sort of form of expression.
Journalism is not an art.
And in a way, that’s what my friend was saying. When I told him that I didn’t want to call people anymore, he told me something that I had actually heard around the journalism school quite a bit. He didn’t either.
Now, sometimes it’s hard to tell just how much truth there is in anything he says, but what my friend said to me is this:
“It seems like I’m writing stories, and I’ll get to the point where I just have an empty space, and I know what I want to fill it. So I just call people until I can get someone to say what it is that I need them to say.”
I don’t want this to be a condemnation of him, since among the people I’ve met at the J-school, as it’s called, he’s certainly among the most respectable. Maybe I say that only because what he said — whether an honest reflection of his feelings or not — summed up so much of what I feel after eight whole months of indoctrination into the world of “journalism.” Whatever that is. And I’m still not sure, but I have a few ideas. And I think I know — like any self-assured and somewhat pompous critic of anything should — what it should be. Daily journalism is a trade, and a fine one. Some nonfiction is art. Journalism at its finest is a profession. Some journalism, however, aspires to the status of art, and that’s where there’s a problem.
That’s where what I want to do for a living and what Columbia wants me to do for a living don’t ever quite match up. They want us to churn out formula stories — not boring formula stories, mind you — but emotional, balanced, well-reported formula stories just the same. There’s a certain skill to it, and I admire it and read it without qualms. Hell, the Monday before the day I had been talking to this friend (that was a Thursday), I had even sold a story to the New York Times. It was my finest piece of hackwork. It’s a moving story and I’m proud of it.
But boy, journalism’s not for everyone. It’s not even for most. I’m pretty sure it’s not for me.
(End quote)
"As long as we're knocking down myths, let's take a swing at the myth of the reporter who, if his mother says she loves him, checks it out by 1) getting an affidavit from the old lady attesting to the fact; 2) finding an independent source to verify the alleged love bond; and 3) unearthing material evidence of her devotion for her offspring. The reality is that too many reporters just want to go home and will phone anybody who will give them a good quotation to tie up all those loose ends."
--Jack Schafer, in a Slate article that's mostly about bad crystal meth reporting
------------------
And now, as response and comment, I quote myself, from my unfinished memoir of journalism school, which I was calling "J." I want to distance myself from it a bit. It's been a long time since I wrote this, and I'm not sure that I agree with everything I say in it. So from here on out, it's all quote:
------------------
I was talking with a friend of mine one night at the wonderfully named Nussbaum & Wu bakery. We were killing an hour or so between our magazine workshop and a required lecture series for magazine concentrators. It was getting within a month or so of our graduation from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s master’s program, and we were talking jobs. Jobs being an important subject to people about to make the sudden and drastic social change from “student” to “unemployed.”
I was talking, as I had been quite often around that time, about how I was perfectly willing to sell out. To find a job that would make me equally as miserable as journalism, and yet would pay me. Anything. I had, in fact, received an email not an hour before this talk with this friend, in which I had been offered an interview at a magazine. The job paid $20,000. This is what a master’s degree at the best journalism school in the country was worth? My education had cost more than twice that much, and that only lasted for nine months or so.
Honestly, I could make more at McDonald’s.
So this friend and I were talking about these jobs, and I mentioned that I had been so disillusioned by journalism that I never wanted to make another reporting phone call again as long as I lived. I wanted to be a critic, an essayist. I wanted to write. Journalism school didn’t kill my love for the written word and for arguing out ideas. For the music of language and every sort of form of expression.
Journalism is not an art.
And in a way, that’s what my friend was saying. When I told him that I didn’t want to call people anymore, he told me something that I had actually heard around the journalism school quite a bit. He didn’t either.
Now, sometimes it’s hard to tell just how much truth there is in anything he says, but what my friend said to me is this:
“It seems like I’m writing stories, and I’ll get to the point where I just have an empty space, and I know what I want to fill it. So I just call people until I can get someone to say what it is that I need them to say.”
I don’t want this to be a condemnation of him, since among the people I’ve met at the J-school, as it’s called, he’s certainly among the most respectable. Maybe I say that only because what he said — whether an honest reflection of his feelings or not — summed up so much of what I feel after eight whole months of indoctrination into the world of “journalism.” Whatever that is. And I’m still not sure, but I have a few ideas. And I think I know — like any self-assured and somewhat pompous critic of anything should — what it should be. Daily journalism is a trade, and a fine one. Some nonfiction is art. Journalism at its finest is a profession. Some journalism, however, aspires to the status of art, and that’s where there’s a problem.
That’s where what I want to do for a living and what Columbia wants me to do for a living don’t ever quite match up. They want us to churn out formula stories — not boring formula stories, mind you — but emotional, balanced, well-reported formula stories just the same. There’s a certain skill to it, and I admire it and read it without qualms. Hell, the Monday before the day I had been talking to this friend (that was a Thursday), I had even sold a story to the New York Times. It was my finest piece of hackwork. It’s a moving story and I’m proud of it.
But boy, journalism’s not for everyone. It’s not even for most. I’m pretty sure it’s not for me.
(End quote)
Monday, July 11, 2005
Flackspeak
I feel like maybe I was too soft on Pearlstein. Or that I came off too soft on him anyway. I don't mean to say that he made the right stand, on principle, since he does seem to have ruined Time's ability to use anonymous sources. I just meant that I understand his motivation to try to find a third way.
But as I suspected, things are getting more complicated as they get closer to the--so to speak--source. The current lead story on NYTimes.com explains things pretty well. But what it doesn't do is run the entire transcript of the press conference between the White House press pool and Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary. For that, we turn to Editor & Publisher. And again, I thank my friend Kelly for giving me the lead (She didn't request anonymity, so I assume she's on the record):
For those who enjoy making fun of press flacks, reading this transcript of McClellan's dance of avoidance and denial is almost as much fun as reading the transcript of Abbot & Costello's "Who's on First" routine. My favorite moments are the repetitions of "I appreciate your question."
OK, back to the Home Run Derby.
But as I suspected, things are getting more complicated as they get closer to the--so to speak--source. The current lead story on NYTimes.com explains things pretty well. But what it doesn't do is run the entire transcript of the press conference between the White House press pool and Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary. For that, we turn to Editor & Publisher. And again, I thank my friend Kelly for giving me the lead (She didn't request anonymity, so I assume she's on the record):
For those who enjoy making fun of press flacks, reading this transcript of McClellan's dance of avoidance and denial is almost as much fun as reading the transcript of Abbot & Costello's "Who's on First" routine. My favorite moments are the repetitions of "I appreciate your question."
OK, back to the Home Run Derby.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Miller? I don't even know her!
I don't think that I could go to jail for a principle, but that's because I'm a weakling. At the same time, I'd like to think that there are principles that are important enough to me that I would defend them by going to jail. So I reconcile these two somewhat conflicting thoughts by not putting myself in a position where I might have to choose between not betraying a source and ordering from that good Vietnamese place on Amsterdam whenever I want to.
So this morning, Judith Miller, she of the shoddy WMD reporting, went to jail for (ostensibly) a principle: namely that a reporter who has promised anonymity to a source should not give up that source's name to anyone, be they dressed in black robes or no. A friend and journalism school colleague argued vehemently to me last week that Norman Pearlstein, the editor of Time, Inc., should never have undermined HIS reporter, Matthew Cooper, by having the magazine turn over documents rather than having the reporter himself do it. Cooper, who was being held in contempt in the same case, sleeps at home tonight. This friend argued--and I agree--that while Pearlstein got Cooper out of an ethical jam, he ensured that no sensitive source would ever again speak off the record to Time. If editors and reporters cave, much of the journalism establishment would have it, there will be no more leaks of important information.
So this is where I take a deep breath and try to be a pundit, but it's where I come to one of the many reasons I'm not invited onto those shows. I'm a deliberative sort by nature, but I didn't have quite the gut reaction I expected in this case either. Something is weird here. And we don't know enough to know exactly what is going on. Even the Times's story confused me a little bit. There's Valerie Plame, who was the CIA agent whose name was leaked. This was supposedly in retaliation for an anti-WMD op-ed piece written by her husband. Of course, Judy Miller wrote the dodgy WMD stories for the Times. And of course, even though these confidential sources have now been revealed to the judge, we, the people, don't know who they are (Karl Rove). At least not officially. And it was the leak that was illegal in the first place. But if the judge now knows the sources, why put Miller in jail? Granted, she doesn't seem particularly likable, but that's not a punishable offense.
All of this just leaves me scratching my head as to the motives of Miller (though the LA Times hypothesizes that she's trying for a book deal--which my friend also mentioned, though she did so as a way of saying that a couple months in prison wouldn't be so bad. I continue scratching that same spot on my head about the judge's motives. Miller didn't even write a story about this leak--and Robert Novak did, though he's presumably cooperating. Honestly, even though I think he was wrong, it's Pearlstein's position I most understand. Criticize him for bowing to Time Warner shareholders, but the man also allowed his reporter to stand his ground AND hug his kid tonight.
I meant to say something about how happy I am to see Sarah Vowell subbing for Maureen Dowd, but that can wait a day. It's lights-out and the warden wants us in our bunks.
So this morning, Judith Miller, she of the shoddy WMD reporting, went to jail for (ostensibly) a principle: namely that a reporter who has promised anonymity to a source should not give up that source's name to anyone, be they dressed in black robes or no. A friend and journalism school colleague argued vehemently to me last week that Norman Pearlstein, the editor of Time, Inc., should never have undermined HIS reporter, Matthew Cooper, by having the magazine turn over documents rather than having the reporter himself do it. Cooper, who was being held in contempt in the same case, sleeps at home tonight. This friend argued--and I agree--that while Pearlstein got Cooper out of an ethical jam, he ensured that no sensitive source would ever again speak off the record to Time. If editors and reporters cave, much of the journalism establishment would have it, there will be no more leaks of important information.
So this is where I take a deep breath and try to be a pundit, but it's where I come to one of the many reasons I'm not invited onto those shows. I'm a deliberative sort by nature, but I didn't have quite the gut reaction I expected in this case either. Something is weird here. And we don't know enough to know exactly what is going on. Even the Times's story confused me a little bit. There's Valerie Plame, who was the CIA agent whose name was leaked. This was supposedly in retaliation for an anti-WMD op-ed piece written by her husband. Of course, Judy Miller wrote the dodgy WMD stories for the Times. And of course, even though these confidential sources have now been revealed to the judge, we, the people, don't know who they are (Karl Rove). At least not officially. And it was the leak that was illegal in the first place. But if the judge now knows the sources, why put Miller in jail? Granted, she doesn't seem particularly likable, but that's not a punishable offense.
All of this just leaves me scratching my head as to the motives of Miller (though the LA Times hypothesizes that she's trying for a book deal--which my friend also mentioned, though she did so as a way of saying that a couple months in prison wouldn't be so bad. I continue scratching that same spot on my head about the judge's motives. Miller didn't even write a story about this leak--and Robert Novak did, though he's presumably cooperating. Honestly, even though I think he was wrong, it's Pearlstein's position I most understand. Criticize him for bowing to Time Warner shareholders, but the man also allowed his reporter to stand his ground AND hug his kid tonight.
I meant to say something about how happy I am to see Sarah Vowell subbing for Maureen Dowd, but that can wait a day. It's lights-out and the warden wants us in our bunks.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
The Myth of Audience
Until this moment, I haven't updated this blog since before Groundhog Day. This, of course, means that if I ever had an audience--Rachael, my sister, some high school kid from Prairie du Chien--it is now gone.
But I am going to do something that I tell my students to do when they write: imagine an audience. It's the only way that I can convince myself to make another post. Of course, I never quite knew who to imagine as a blog audience. Someday, maybe I'll elevate myself to a comfortably obscure position of prominence enjoyed by some of my favorite bloggers--Jim Romenesko and Jay Rosen. In certain circles, of course, they are widely read and widely known (Romenesko, especially). But if I were to ask normal people, like, say, my sisters, they wouldn't even recognize the name. That would be a perfectly fine level of recognition.
I tell my students that my ideal reader is my dad. This is not in any way meant as disrespect for my mother, but in some ways my mother, who holds a PhD and works in University administration, is too specialized. My father is an attorney, which to me represents a certain level of education and sophistication, but not necessarily specialization. And he also reads books. For fun. Which is something I personally think should be a requirement for active intelligent citizenship. All of my friends read books (save one, and I'm working on that). My reader, I should hope, has a general awareness of and interest in the world. That's who I'm thinking of when I write--media criticism, architectural reporting, blog entries. Not exactly my dad, but the archetype that my dad represents.
So, imagining that I have an audience that cares about me at all, I will say this, as a follow-up to my last couple of posts in the winter: I have been accepted into the PhD program in Media Studies at Rutgers University. I'm particularly excited to work with David Greenberg, whose book, Nixon's Shadow, I'm currently reading. Greenberg also writes the History Lesson column on Slate. Instead of linking to that though, I thought it would be more appropriate to link to another essay he wrote for Slate, in which he discusses the question of academics' audiences.
But I am going to do something that I tell my students to do when they write: imagine an audience. It's the only way that I can convince myself to make another post. Of course, I never quite knew who to imagine as a blog audience. Someday, maybe I'll elevate myself to a comfortably obscure position of prominence enjoyed by some of my favorite bloggers--Jim Romenesko and Jay Rosen. In certain circles, of course, they are widely read and widely known (Romenesko, especially). But if I were to ask normal people, like, say, my sisters, they wouldn't even recognize the name. That would be a perfectly fine level of recognition.
I tell my students that my ideal reader is my dad. This is not in any way meant as disrespect for my mother, but in some ways my mother, who holds a PhD and works in University administration, is too specialized. My father is an attorney, which to me represents a certain level of education and sophistication, but not necessarily specialization. And he also reads books. For fun. Which is something I personally think should be a requirement for active intelligent citizenship. All of my friends read books (save one, and I'm working on that). My reader, I should hope, has a general awareness of and interest in the world. That's who I'm thinking of when I write--media criticism, architectural reporting, blog entries. Not exactly my dad, but the archetype that my dad represents.
So, imagining that I have an audience that cares about me at all, I will say this, as a follow-up to my last couple of posts in the winter: I have been accepted into the PhD program in Media Studies at Rutgers University. I'm particularly excited to work with David Greenberg, whose book, Nixon's Shadow, I'm currently reading. Greenberg also writes the History Lesson column on Slate. Instead of linking to that though, I thought it would be more appropriate to link to another essay he wrote for Slate, in which he discusses the question of academics' audiences.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Where I'm going (with luck)
This is the promised follow-up to yesterday's application essay. This is Essay B, in which I was to explain why I want a doctorate in communications, what I wan to study, and what I want to do afterward. Here, in (slightly more than than) the mandated 500 words, is my answer:
Essay B
As a confirmed media junkie, and a subscriber to email newsletters such as Romenesko’s media news weblog and Slate’s daily summary of major papers, a great deal of my interest in pursuing communications as a discipline is self-serving. I do believe, however, that passion for a subject should be a requirement for seeking a doctorate, since I have seen even the most devoted student (in this case, my mother) struggle through a dissertation. I couldn’t imagine doing it without that passion.
I also feel that communications is, in at least one way, the most important of the academic disciplines because of two bridges that it creates. The first is the bridge among the various other disciplines with which it intersects—sociology, history, literature, economics, education, business, law, philosophy, and so on. The second is that it is a discipline that directly affects the public. I believe that one of the journalist’s most important functions is acting as a translator of specific knowledge for a general audience. I think that there is a parallel role for the scholar of communications, especially in his function as media and social critic, as a link between the academy and the culture at large. Some of the best and most influential “public intellectuals” were communications and media scholars even before there were such things.
One of my main areas of interest follows along those lines. As I outline in essay A, I was interested in the act of writing as a career before that interest solidified into a discipline, so I want to look at writers who wrote both fiction and journalism, and at the current bias against nonfiction forms of communication as art. I sense that a convincing link between fiction and nonfiction expression could be made through the application of narratology, and I would like to look into that, and the establishment of a nonfiction canon.
As a nascent educator who has been deeply involved in a large effort to create a “writing and literature” curriculum for my college, I am also excited about studying issues of writing and journalism education. As a Columbia master’s graduate, I’ve closely watched the debate that followed President Bollinger’s committee on the journalism school, and Dean Lemann’s additions and modifications to the curriculum. I’m interested in the professionalization of the craft, and the effort to get past the reputation that Columbia grad A. J. Liebling expressed in saying his journalism education had “all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A&P.”
I am also very interested in media history, law, and ethics, and hope to study those topics as well.
I currently hold a tenure-track position at LaGuardia Community College, where I am very happy, and could return after earning the Ph.D., though I am interested in looking at other academic positions. I love teaching, and hope to continue it; and I think that with both a professional and an academic degree, and experience as both a journalist and an educator, I could offer a lot to colleges that teach both communications and journalism. Wherever I do end up teaching, I want to keep writing, both for an academic audience, and for the public, as a journalist and as a scholar.
Essay B
As a confirmed media junkie, and a subscriber to email newsletters such as Romenesko’s media news weblog and Slate’s daily summary of major papers, a great deal of my interest in pursuing communications as a discipline is self-serving. I do believe, however, that passion for a subject should be a requirement for seeking a doctorate, since I have seen even the most devoted student (in this case, my mother) struggle through a dissertation. I couldn’t imagine doing it without that passion.
I also feel that communications is, in at least one way, the most important of the academic disciplines because of two bridges that it creates. The first is the bridge among the various other disciplines with which it intersects—sociology, history, literature, economics, education, business, law, philosophy, and so on. The second is that it is a discipline that directly affects the public. I believe that one of the journalist’s most important functions is acting as a translator of specific knowledge for a general audience. I think that there is a parallel role for the scholar of communications, especially in his function as media and social critic, as a link between the academy and the culture at large. Some of the best and most influential “public intellectuals” were communications and media scholars even before there were such things.
One of my main areas of interest follows along those lines. As I outline in essay A, I was interested in the act of writing as a career before that interest solidified into a discipline, so I want to look at writers who wrote both fiction and journalism, and at the current bias against nonfiction forms of communication as art. I sense that a convincing link between fiction and nonfiction expression could be made through the application of narratology, and I would like to look into that, and the establishment of a nonfiction canon.
As a nascent educator who has been deeply involved in a large effort to create a “writing and literature” curriculum for my college, I am also excited about studying issues of writing and journalism education. As a Columbia master’s graduate, I’ve closely watched the debate that followed President Bollinger’s committee on the journalism school, and Dean Lemann’s additions and modifications to the curriculum. I’m interested in the professionalization of the craft, and the effort to get past the reputation that Columbia grad A. J. Liebling expressed in saying his journalism education had “all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A&P.”
I am also very interested in media history, law, and ethics, and hope to study those topics as well.
I currently hold a tenure-track position at LaGuardia Community College, where I am very happy, and could return after earning the Ph.D., though I am interested in looking at other academic positions. I love teaching, and hope to continue it; and I think that with both a professional and an academic degree, and experience as both a journalist and an educator, I could offer a lot to colleges that teach both communications and journalism. Wherever I do end up teaching, I want to keep writing, both for an academic audience, and for the public, as a journalist and as a scholar.
Where I'm coming from
I just finished applying to the Columbia University Ph.D. program in communications, so as a special treat to my loyal reader (singular intended), I'm posting my application essays. Why the heck not?
This first installment, of two, is mostly biographical, but if there's anyone out there who isn't Rachael, I suppose this could give you an idea of how I came to be the (slow to blog) media hound that I am. Next up: why I want to study communications, and what I hope to do with the degree.
Essay A:
When I graduated from high school, I knew only that I wanted to be a writer, but I hadn’t narrowed it down any further than that. I had written maybe six short stories and one 80-some page “spy novel” with more than a small debt to Ian Fleming. But I was already a voracious reader, and language came easily to me, so I called myself a writer when I came to the University of Pennsylvania. I wasn’t then planning on becoming a journalism and communications professor and a media critic, but my academic and professional careers since then have led me clearly in that direction.
At Penn, I majored in English, practically declaring my major before I got to campus. By my junior year, I had almost taken enough literature courses to double major in English and English, and I was so sick of writing academic literary criticism that even though I had taken an interest in teaching, I ruled out a career as an English professor.
In the Fall of 1997, I studied in London, where I read and wrote about more literature, but more importantly had my first encounter with studying criticism, which would become a passion, taking a course in the current London theatre with Michael Billington, the critic for The Guardian. On my return, I took a course with Paul Hendrickson, who was then writing for the Style section of the Washington Post. This class, advanced non-fiction writing, was my first real exposure to journalism, and I liked it enough to change my concentration to creative non-fiction.
I also became involved with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s independent student newspaper. The same semester that I took Hendrickson’s course, I became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper’s weekly magazine, 34th Street. The magazine had always incorporated humor and snarky we-know-better-than-the-mainstream music and movie reviews—both of which I loved writing—but I made a real effort to commission magazine-style journalism for the cover stories. This allowed the magazine to hew closer to the traditions of journalistic excellence of its parent publication, where I also sat on the executive board.
That brought me to graduation with a slightly more concrete idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Academe appealed to me in principle, but I had eliminated English as a discipline, and I had thought of journalism more as a profession than as an academic discipline. So I did what every other graduating English major does: I applied to law school.
I also threw in one other application, and that was to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Despite my innate repulsion at the idea of bugging strangers, I had taken to the idea of journalism because it was a profession that would keep me writing regularly. I hadn’t written a single short story since high school, but loved writing the reviews, essays, and journalism of 34th Street.
While the daily demands of the Fall reporting and writing class forced me to fight my shyness, I turned in work that I was proud of, and the final piece I wrote for the class, about Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel, appeared in the New York Times two weeks after my graduation. At Columbia, I particularly loved two courses. One was the magazine workshop, led by Victor Navasky, where I profiled The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, and wrote about Mad and Esquire. I also loved The Critic as Journalist and Essayist, taught by Michael Janeway. In this course, filled by students from both the journalism school and the school of the arts, I developed critical and essayistic skills that I hope to use in my career, writing media criticism.
While working at Architectural Record, as the magazine’s first web editor, most of my job consisted of reformatting stories from the magazine for publication on the web, which I found unfulfilling. I did, however, participate in the magazine’s award-winning coverage of the World Trade Center attacks and their architectural aftermath, writing a history of the buildings, and interviewing Kenneth Jackson, whose New York City history course I hope to be able to take. My biggest contribution to the magazine was my supervision of a new department devoted to covering young architects. I wrote a monthly profile of a promising emerging designer or firm, and the magazine gave me leeway to choose subjects and to write with style.
Hoping to find more work that I would find as intellectually stimulating as the young architects section, I had sent resumes to several local colleges. In September of 2002, the LaGuardia Community College English Department invited me to teach a journalism course. That academic year, I taught one or two courses per semester, while working half time at Record. Impressed by my student and peer evaluations, and despite my never having taught before, LaGuardia hired me as a full-time, tenure-track lecturer after only two semesters.
As the Department’s only journalist, I was given almost full control of the curriculum. I now regularly teach both the introductory reporting and writing class and a course that serves as an introduction to media studies. This Spring, I will be offering a magazine writing workshop. Outside of class, I developed a major in writing and literature for the College, created a course in creative non-fiction writing, and wrote a proposal to overhaul the Department’s journalism offerings.
I unequivocally love what I do now, teaching college students (despite often staying up until 2:00 a.m. to grade papers), and continuing to write as a freelancer. This mix of the theoretical and the practical has led me back to Columbia’s journalism school, this time to pursue the ideas behind what I do. As I read widely to prepare to teach my courses, I have become engrossed in the literature of media and communications, and I’m ready to study it formally. I’ve finally discovered the type of professor and writer that I want to be, and the Columbia program in Communications is where I want to finish becoming that person.
This first installment, of two, is mostly biographical, but if there's anyone out there who isn't Rachael, I suppose this could give you an idea of how I came to be the (slow to blog) media hound that I am. Next up: why I want to study communications, and what I hope to do with the degree.
Essay A:
When I graduated from high school, I knew only that I wanted to be a writer, but I hadn’t narrowed it down any further than that. I had written maybe six short stories and one 80-some page “spy novel” with more than a small debt to Ian Fleming. But I was already a voracious reader, and language came easily to me, so I called myself a writer when I came to the University of Pennsylvania. I wasn’t then planning on becoming a journalism and communications professor and a media critic, but my academic and professional careers since then have led me clearly in that direction.
At Penn, I majored in English, practically declaring my major before I got to campus. By my junior year, I had almost taken enough literature courses to double major in English and English, and I was so sick of writing academic literary criticism that even though I had taken an interest in teaching, I ruled out a career as an English professor.
In the Fall of 1997, I studied in London, where I read and wrote about more literature, but more importantly had my first encounter with studying criticism, which would become a passion, taking a course in the current London theatre with Michael Billington, the critic for The Guardian. On my return, I took a course with Paul Hendrickson, who was then writing for the Style section of the Washington Post. This class, advanced non-fiction writing, was my first real exposure to journalism, and I liked it enough to change my concentration to creative non-fiction.
I also became involved with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s independent student newspaper. The same semester that I took Hendrickson’s course, I became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper’s weekly magazine, 34th Street. The magazine had always incorporated humor and snarky we-know-better-than-the-mainstream music and movie reviews—both of which I loved writing—but I made a real effort to commission magazine-style journalism for the cover stories. This allowed the magazine to hew closer to the traditions of journalistic excellence of its parent publication, where I also sat on the executive board.
That brought me to graduation with a slightly more concrete idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Academe appealed to me in principle, but I had eliminated English as a discipline, and I had thought of journalism more as a profession than as an academic discipline. So I did what every other graduating English major does: I applied to law school.
I also threw in one other application, and that was to the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Despite my innate repulsion at the idea of bugging strangers, I had taken to the idea of journalism because it was a profession that would keep me writing regularly. I hadn’t written a single short story since high school, but loved writing the reviews, essays, and journalism of 34th Street.
While the daily demands of the Fall reporting and writing class forced me to fight my shyness, I turned in work that I was proud of, and the final piece I wrote for the class, about Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel, appeared in the New York Times two weeks after my graduation. At Columbia, I particularly loved two courses. One was the magazine workshop, led by Victor Navasky, where I profiled The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, and wrote about Mad and Esquire. I also loved The Critic as Journalist and Essayist, taught by Michael Janeway. In this course, filled by students from both the journalism school and the school of the arts, I developed critical and essayistic skills that I hope to use in my career, writing media criticism.
While working at Architectural Record, as the magazine’s first web editor, most of my job consisted of reformatting stories from the magazine for publication on the web, which I found unfulfilling. I did, however, participate in the magazine’s award-winning coverage of the World Trade Center attacks and their architectural aftermath, writing a history of the buildings, and interviewing Kenneth Jackson, whose New York City history course I hope to be able to take. My biggest contribution to the magazine was my supervision of a new department devoted to covering young architects. I wrote a monthly profile of a promising emerging designer or firm, and the magazine gave me leeway to choose subjects and to write with style.
Hoping to find more work that I would find as intellectually stimulating as the young architects section, I had sent resumes to several local colleges. In September of 2002, the LaGuardia Community College English Department invited me to teach a journalism course. That academic year, I taught one or two courses per semester, while working half time at Record. Impressed by my student and peer evaluations, and despite my never having taught before, LaGuardia hired me as a full-time, tenure-track lecturer after only two semesters.
As the Department’s only journalist, I was given almost full control of the curriculum. I now regularly teach both the introductory reporting and writing class and a course that serves as an introduction to media studies. This Spring, I will be offering a magazine writing workshop. Outside of class, I developed a major in writing and literature for the College, created a course in creative non-fiction writing, and wrote a proposal to overhaul the Department’s journalism offerings.
I unequivocally love what I do now, teaching college students (despite often staying up until 2:00 a.m. to grade papers), and continuing to write as a freelancer. This mix of the theoretical and the practical has led me back to Columbia’s journalism school, this time to pursue the ideas behind what I do. As I read widely to prepare to teach my courses, I have become engrossed in the literature of media and communications, and I’m ready to study it formally. I’ve finally discovered the type of professor and writer that I want to be, and the Columbia program in Communications is where I want to finish becoming that person.
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