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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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
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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:
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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.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Hillbilly armor
A question from my personal gadfly, Rachael:
"is Pitts completely unethical or a brilliant journalist? What say you?"
My thought is that the answer, as you might have guessed, lies somewhere between the two poles you offer, Rachael, though I do lean toward "brilliant journalist." In fact, I think I might clear him entirely if he had disclosed in his article that he had planted the question. Of course, the waters are muddied again because the soldier told some newsweekly--Time, maybe--that he thought the question up himself. That would, of course, absolve Pitts of ethical wrongdoing, but would also strip him of any credit for getting the quote.
In general though, I think the principle you need to follow is that if you can't get access yourself, there's nothing at all wrong with using proxies--so long as the proxies get their credit, and you practice full disclosure.
"is Pitts completely unethical or a brilliant journalist? What say you?"
My thought is that the answer, as you might have guessed, lies somewhere between the two poles you offer, Rachael, though I do lean toward "brilliant journalist." In fact, I think I might clear him entirely if he had disclosed in his article that he had planted the question. Of course, the waters are muddied again because the soldier told some newsweekly--Time, maybe--that he thought the question up himself. That would, of course, absolve Pitts of ethical wrongdoing, but would also strip him of any credit for getting the quote.
In general though, I think the principle you need to follow is that if you can't get access yourself, there's nothing at all wrong with using proxies--so long as the proxies get their credit, and you practice full disclosure.
Friday, November 26, 2004
Game Theory
All hail the video game critic!
Now I don't play video games much myself. I leave that to my personal video game adviser, Jason, who, frankly, does play video games much. And yet, even though I have no real need for a video game reviewer, I find myself, almost weekly, turning to the "Game Theory" column of the New York Times's Circuits section. Charles Herold is the reviewer there, and he has forged what, for me, is the perfect voice for a critic. He is personable and first-person. He acknowledges conflicting points of view, but stands by his own experience. And he accepts that he has a really fun job.
While I'm at it, I want to give similar kudos to the New York Observer for its movie reviewing (even though I've let my subscription drop). The Observer, the pleasantly pink weekly, also gives its two reviewers real columns where they can develop trustworthy (or otherwise) personae. Of the two, I find the venerable and aged auteurist Andrew Sarris to be a cinematic soul mate, at least when it comes to enjoying movies or not. I rarely ever agree with his counterpart Rex Reed. What's fun is that the Observer lets them overlap from time to time, unlike more staid papers that take an official position.
In short, I like a bit of personality in my criticism. I think it's charmingly old-fashioned--and more accurate.
Now I don't play video games much myself. I leave that to my personal video game adviser, Jason, who, frankly, does play video games much. And yet, even though I have no real need for a video game reviewer, I find myself, almost weekly, turning to the "Game Theory" column of the New York Times's Circuits section. Charles Herold is the reviewer there, and he has forged what, for me, is the perfect voice for a critic. He is personable and first-person. He acknowledges conflicting points of view, but stands by his own experience. And he accepts that he has a really fun job.
While I'm at it, I want to give similar kudos to the New York Observer for its movie reviewing (even though I've let my subscription drop). The Observer, the pleasantly pink weekly, also gives its two reviewers real columns where they can develop trustworthy (or otherwise) personae. Of the two, I find the venerable and aged auteurist Andrew Sarris to be a cinematic soul mate, at least when it comes to enjoying movies or not. I rarely ever agree with his counterpart Rex Reed. What's fun is that the Observer lets them overlap from time to time, unlike more staid papers that take an official position.
In short, I like a bit of personality in my criticism. I think it's charmingly old-fashioned--and more accurate.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Saul Survivor
This week's New Yorker has a story by Roger Angell about the Red Sox winning the World Series. The accompanying illustration is a colored-pencil drawing of a fanciful, physics-defying ballpark. As the work of Saul Steinberg goes, I actually like this piece. And the fact that Steinberg has been dead for five years doesn't change how I feel about the drawing--at least that fact on its own doesn't.
But the late Saul Steinberg may very well be the most frequent contributor to the New Yorker. A couple of weeks ago, he even had a drawing on the cover. Some of these primitivist drawings work for me; some don't. But I'm sick of seeing them.
Steinberg is probably most famous for a cover drawing he did, with Manhattan in the foreground, and everything east of the Hudson river reduced to insignificant specks. While that may accurately reflect my worldview, I don't think it's grounds for continuing to run the man's works approximately every two weeks. And I don't think I'm exaggerating. I find more of the drawings downright bad than good enough to be running in the country's best magazine.
So to the art department of the New Yorker: let's give some living artists a try. I know there are some good ones out there.
But the late Saul Steinberg may very well be the most frequent contributor to the New Yorker. A couple of weeks ago, he even had a drawing on the cover. Some of these primitivist drawings work for me; some don't. But I'm sick of seeing them.
Steinberg is probably most famous for a cover drawing he did, with Manhattan in the foreground, and everything east of the Hudson river reduced to insignificant specks. While that may accurately reflect my worldview, I don't think it's grounds for continuing to run the man's works approximately every two weeks. And I don't think I'm exaggerating. I find more of the drawings downright bad than good enough to be running in the country's best magazine.
So to the art department of the New Yorker: let's give some living artists a try. I know there are some good ones out there.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Howl, howl, oh Howell!
My class and I have been discussing Howell Raines, Jayson Blair, and that whole fiasco this week. And since it's verging on a month since I've posted anything to this blog, I thought it appropriate to share this parody I wrote of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."
Howell
By Kevin Lerner, with appropriate apologies
I.
I saw the best writers of a new generation destroy with plagiarism, borrowing
hysterical faking
dragging the gray lady through the negro—not that it mattered that he was negro—streets
at dawn
who passed through the University of Maryland without degree,
who cowered in apartment in Brooklyn, cell phone expense report
West Virginia claimed
who described tobacco fields and interviews never had, cell phone to photographer
lied I’m coming
who racked up corrections, setting A2 records, earning weeks off for mental health,
warnings from Landman
who despite said warnings earns promotion to National, sniper coverage,
Maryland officials exclusive source ghosts
who read avidly the San Antonio Express-News
who told the Observer idiot editors couldn’t catch fabrications and borrowings,
anonymous sources from whole cloth
who refused to fade silently, feeding Pappu Romanesko chatrooms
pundits for weeks
who fueled Jay’s jokes, laugh lines from Letterman, a town hall meeting of those who
strive to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose
who brought down the Raines from heaven and Boyd who stand before you speechless
and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul.
II.
What Sphinx of talent and burnout and too many second chances bashed open our skulls
and brought ignominy to the mighty Ochs and Sulzberger trust, and yet could still
Bragg about his wiles?
Jayson! Jayson whose mind is pure machinery! Whose fingers are ten armies destroying
the Power and the Glory!
Jayson! Jayson! Jayson of Brooklyn, whose mind is running book deals!
Jayson! The low point of 152 years of history!
Howell
By Kevin Lerner, with appropriate apologies
I.
I saw the best writers of a new generation destroy with plagiarism, borrowing
hysterical faking
dragging the gray lady through the negro—not that it mattered that he was negro—streets
at dawn
who passed through the University of Maryland without degree,
who cowered in apartment in Brooklyn, cell phone expense report
West Virginia claimed
who described tobacco fields and interviews never had, cell phone to photographer
lied I’m coming
who racked up corrections, setting A2 records, earning weeks off for mental health,
warnings from Landman
who despite said warnings earns promotion to National, sniper coverage,
Maryland officials exclusive source ghosts
who read avidly the San Antonio Express-News
who told the Observer idiot editors couldn’t catch fabrications and borrowings,
anonymous sources from whole cloth
who refused to fade silently, feeding Pappu Romanesko chatrooms
pundits for weeks
who fueled Jay’s jokes, laugh lines from Letterman, a town hall meeting of those who
strive to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose
who brought down the Raines from heaven and Boyd who stand before you speechless
and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul.
II.
What Sphinx of talent and burnout and too many second chances bashed open our skulls
and brought ignominy to the mighty Ochs and Sulzberger trust, and yet could still
Bragg about his wiles?
Jayson! Jayson whose mind is pure machinery! Whose fingers are ten armies destroying
the Power and the Glory!
Jayson! Jayson! Jayson of Brooklyn, whose mind is running book deals!
Jayson! The low point of 152 years of history!
Thursday, October 21, 2004
The Curse of the Bamb-me-no
Red Sox fans are supposed to be the ones blaming themselves for 86 years of misery, not me. But I'm growing more and more convinced that I'm to blame for the lack of a championship in the Bronx since 2000.
In the Spring of 2000, just before the start of the season, I was interviewed for a job as an editor of Yankees Magazine, the souvenir program. After the first person offered the job had failed a background check, I was given the offer. I thought it over for an evening, and then called back to turn it down. The pay and the working conditions were going to be terrible, though had the Yanks won, I would have gotten a cut of the World Series check and my very own ring.
That summer, I wrote and published an article about that interview experience. It ran in New York Magazine in July. That Fall, the Yankees lost to the Diamondbacks in the Series. They haven't won since, and a few minutes ago, they collapsed monumentally against the Sox. Am I to blame? Probably not. It would be a delusion of grandeur to put myself on a historical plane with the Babe. But when you're a miserable fan--and when all of the world is rooting for you to lose--it's hard not to kick yourself.
In the Spring of 2000, just before the start of the season, I was interviewed for a job as an editor of Yankees Magazine, the souvenir program. After the first person offered the job had failed a background check, I was given the offer. I thought it over for an evening, and then called back to turn it down. The pay and the working conditions were going to be terrible, though had the Yanks won, I would have gotten a cut of the World Series check and my very own ring.
That summer, I wrote and published an article about that interview experience. It ran in New York Magazine in July. That Fall, the Yankees lost to the Diamondbacks in the Series. They haven't won since, and a few minutes ago, they collapsed monumentally against the Sox. Am I to blame? Probably not. It would be a delusion of grandeur to put myself on a historical plane with the Babe. But when you're a miserable fan--and when all of the world is rooting for you to lose--it's hard not to kick yourself.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Poll-itzer Prizes
A day after I commented on the Washington Post's Daily Tracking Poll, the New York Times ran its own poll (in conjunction with CBS). But I'm more interested in the sidebar article that tries to explain the methodology behind all of the various news organizations' polls.
I'm thoroughly ambivalent about the idea of polls as journalism, but I do like the fact that this article admits to their being an inexact science. I only wish that the poll itself had been a sidebar to this.
I'm thoroughly ambivalent about the idea of polls as journalism, but I do like the fact that this article admits to their being an inexact science. I only wish that the poll itself had been a sidebar to this.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Survey says
I'm addicted to the Washington Post's Daily Tracking Poll, and I would get the DTs if they took it away.
But I'm convinced it's bad for journalism. Other pundits have talked about how stories covering campaign tactics to the detriment of policy take away from the seriousness of political coverage. I agree, and I think that polls turn politics into a sport. I say this while I'm watching the Yankees. Reason tells me that I should hate the Yankees. They're overpaid, even by Major League Baseball standards. They win more often than any other team. They're inherently unlikeable. And yet I live and die by Yankees games. Several of my New York City colleagues today commented on how they went to bed at 1:30 a.m. today, after watching the Red Sox steal a game from the Yanks. We have an undeniable emotional connection, though, and no amount of reason (including calculations of hours of sleep) can convince us to cheer for another team.
And the same, I believe, is becoming true of politics. I believe that the unwavering certainty that Ron Suskind ascribes to George W. Bush in yesterday's New York Times Magazine is also infecting the electorate--and on both sides of the aisle. And all we care about is win or lose. I'm as much of a victim of this attitude as anyone.
Republicans are sure W will win. Democrats are sure W will win. Bostonians are sure the Sox will lose (and they're right). But despite the positive blip Kerry got in the polls after the debates (which I liken to the Red Sox 12th-inning win last night) served only to give Democrats their requisite moment of faith before sliding back into their resignation.
I watch the Washington Post daily tracking poll like I read the sports scores. I read other papers' polls--and automatically dismiss the ones with which I disagree. Americans, for the most part, know for whom they will vote in two weeks. The rest is box scores.
But I'm convinced it's bad for journalism. Other pundits have talked about how stories covering campaign tactics to the detriment of policy take away from the seriousness of political coverage. I agree, and I think that polls turn politics into a sport. I say this while I'm watching the Yankees. Reason tells me that I should hate the Yankees. They're overpaid, even by Major League Baseball standards. They win more often than any other team. They're inherently unlikeable. And yet I live and die by Yankees games. Several of my New York City colleagues today commented on how they went to bed at 1:30 a.m. today, after watching the Red Sox steal a game from the Yanks. We have an undeniable emotional connection, though, and no amount of reason (including calculations of hours of sleep) can convince us to cheer for another team.
And the same, I believe, is becoming true of politics. I believe that the unwavering certainty that Ron Suskind ascribes to George W. Bush in yesterday's New York Times Magazine is also infecting the electorate--and on both sides of the aisle. And all we care about is win or lose. I'm as much of a victim of this attitude as anyone.
Republicans are sure W will win. Democrats are sure W will win. Bostonians are sure the Sox will lose (and they're right). But despite the positive blip Kerry got in the polls after the debates (which I liken to the Red Sox 12th-inning win last night) served only to give Democrats their requisite moment of faith before sliding back into their resignation.
I watch the Washington Post daily tracking poll like I read the sports scores. I read other papers' polls--and automatically dismiss the ones with which I disagree. Americans, for the most part, know for whom they will vote in two weeks. The rest is box scores.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Catching up
I've been buried under reading for my classes, and grading student papers, but I have been keeping at least one eye on the media. One night last week, I had to triple-task between the debates, the Yankees, and a stack of papers.
Last week, Daniel Okrent, the Times Public Editor, addressed the question of whether or not the Times is biased toward one campaign or another. I generally tend to agree with his assessment, that no, it's not particularly biased. But then, I also have to admit my liberal tendencies--an admission which may undermine my following argument, but then I don't know what to do about that, except to ask for the reader's trust.
This week, Okrent invited two guest columnists to fill his column. Of course, neither of these columnists agreed with Okrent, which was both predictable, and Okrent's point. Todd Gitlin, a sociologist and journalism professor at Columbia, took the liberal approach, using the argument that being overly "balanced" tipped things in Bush's direction.
Bob Kohn wrote from the Right. He wrote that while the Times may make a good effort to accurately portray Bush's approach to policy, the paper undercuts that evenness by running articles about political issues that fall solidly on the side Bush is not on.
My response to both arguments is the same, and one I have expressed in this space before. One side of an issue can actually be the wrong side of the issue, and mere stenography--which is what Gitlin is accusing the Times of committing--does a disservice to the public. I agree with this, but I direct Gitlin toward Kohn's point. The Times may be committing stenography when it covers what Bush says, but in its surrounding coverage, that error is mitigated. The man, after all, is technically President of the United States, and what he says deserves to be heard, whether or not it is agreed with.
--
In two other notes, the Times Magazine this week ran what I had thought until today was the most important non-covered story of the Presidential election, which is the full story, so much as anyone can access it, of Bush's faith and its effect on government policy. Frank Rich writes about the Bush administration's closed-door press policy, and does so much better than I could, so I leave the story to him.
Last week, Daniel Okrent, the Times Public Editor, addressed the question of whether or not the Times is biased toward one campaign or another. I generally tend to agree with his assessment, that no, it's not particularly biased. But then, I also have to admit my liberal tendencies--an admission which may undermine my following argument, but then I don't know what to do about that, except to ask for the reader's trust.
This week, Okrent invited two guest columnists to fill his column. Of course, neither of these columnists agreed with Okrent, which was both predictable, and Okrent's point. Todd Gitlin, a sociologist and journalism professor at Columbia, took the liberal approach, using the argument that being overly "balanced" tipped things in Bush's direction.
Bob Kohn wrote from the Right. He wrote that while the Times may make a good effort to accurately portray Bush's approach to policy, the paper undercuts that evenness by running articles about political issues that fall solidly on the side Bush is not on.
My response to both arguments is the same, and one I have expressed in this space before. One side of an issue can actually be the wrong side of the issue, and mere stenography--which is what Gitlin is accusing the Times of committing--does a disservice to the public. I agree with this, but I direct Gitlin toward Kohn's point. The Times may be committing stenography when it covers what Bush says, but in its surrounding coverage, that error is mitigated. The man, after all, is technically President of the United States, and what he says deserves to be heard, whether or not it is agreed with.
--
In two other notes, the Times Magazine this week ran what I had thought until today was the most important non-covered story of the Presidential election, which is the full story, so much as anyone can access it, of Bush's faith and its effect on government policy. Frank Rich writes about the Bush administration's closed-door press policy, and does so much better than I could, so I leave the story to him.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
An opinion can't be wrong, but...
The New York Times editorial in tomorrow's paper about tonight's VP debate seems to be the result of wishful thinking on the editorialists' part. The editorial seems to think that Edwards was the clear winner of the debate, and while I would wish that were so, I have to disagree.
But this blog is not about my politics. It is about the media. And as American libel law history has made clear, everyone has the right to his opinion, but no one is allowed his own facts. The Times here, seems to be guilty of a little spin of its own in its interpretation of a much fuzzier debate than this editorial describes.
But this blog is not about my politics. It is about the media. And as American libel law history has made clear, everyone has the right to his opinion, but no one is allowed his own facts. The Times here, seems to be guilty of a little spin of its own in its interpretation of a much fuzzier debate than this editorial describes.
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