Contributes to scholarship on journalism and history by exploring the ways journalists use and reconstitute the past. Uses mediated collective memory of the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles to identify a typology of ways journalists use public past: commemorations, historical analogies, and historical contexts. Speculates about how narratives of…

Examines letters to the editor of two Chicago newspapers between 1912 and 1917, to explore the strategies that readers used to make sense of what they read. Discusses cuing and linking, the new journalistic methodology of objectivity, and the mobilization of bias. Argues that reader response was often not idiosyncratic, but rather guided by…

Offers a case study of the central defining moment of the 1988 vice presidential debate, in which Lloyd Bentsen asserted that Dan Quayle was "no Jack Kennedy." Discusses the degree to which this excerpt dominated news coverage of the debate, why it received so much attention, and how it has survived and evolved in the media over time.…

Examines two Milwaukee, Wisconsin newspapers' coverage of homicides. Finds that the newsworthiness of a homicide is enhanced when whites are suspects or victims, males are suspects, and victims are females, children, or senior citizens. Concludes that status deviance and cultural deviance are important components of newsworthiness and that…

Examines the tensions surrounding the introduction of wirephoto into United States newspapers in the 1930s. Demonstrates that American journalists resisted the new pictorial technology by denouncing, disembodying, and deflating the technology. Suggests that journalism missed the challenge of adapting to photography by not fully considering its…

Compares and contrasts the principles of press freedom and academic freedom in both origin and practice to explore the potential of the model of academic freedom for enhancing the autonomy of journalists. (SR)

Presents a case study to illustrate how journalists, trained in a paradigm-based field, participate in the production or "repair" of routine news. Calls for scholarly attention to this news reconstruction process that may provoke reform within journalism schools. (PD)

Examines the presentation of racially comparative risk by 49 leading daily newspapers, revealing a tendency to frame stories of difference in terms of black loss. Suggests that the greater the presence of blacks in the market, the more likely the newspapers were to use a lead emphasizing the high probability of black failure. (SR)

Reviews diversity as an epistemological claim and how that claim has been trivialized in programs of journalism and mass communication. Discusses the contradictions between professionalism and diversity. Suggests how students can be equipped to combat the indifference to difference that is the inevitable by-product of a professional education. (SR)

Contributes to scholarship on the sociology of news making. Concludes that the relationship between journalists and news sources was shaped by the preferred meanings of a community's interpretive groups, including journalists and their news organizations. Uses examples from interviews with journalists and news sources to illustrate and…

A Soviet analysis claims that the MacBride Report represents a serious contribution to the cause of placing information in the service of peace and progress. (PD)

Analyzes the canons and codes of four media and concludes that the code of a medium may become less restrictive as that medium declines from audience acceptance. (MH)

Describes changing attitudes toward the role of mass media ethics, as reflected in the literature. Available from: Journal of Communication, The Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, $15.00 yr; $4.00 sc. (KS)

Defines frame analysis as the study of the principles of organization which govern events and suggests that such analysis may aid in understanding the selection and definition of news events. (MH)

Examines a particular rhetorical and narrative strategy--irony--used in a particular genre of contemporary journalism--investigative reporting--to tell stories about suffering and injustice. Argues that irony "in" journalism presents several ironies "of" journalism. (RS)