Embassy of the United States

Information & Media

Media Archive

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING AND MEDIA COVERAGE OF CORRUPTION SCANDALS.
National Bureau of Economic Research. Rafael Di Tella and Ignacio Franceschelli. October 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 41 pages]

The report measures the extent to which the 4 main newspapers in Argentina report government corruption in their front page during the period 1998-2007 and correlates them with the extent to which each newspaper is a recipient of government advertising. The correlation is negative, according to the report.

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THE JOURNALIST’S GUIDE TO FACEBOOK.
Leah Betancourt, Mashable: The Social Media Guide. August 3rd, 2009
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Discusses how journalists can find leads and sources, and reach audiences, on Facebook.

PRESS ACCURACY RATING HITS TWO DECADE LOW: PUBLIC EVALUATION OF THE NEWS MEDIA – 1985-2009.
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, September 13, 2009
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“The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.”

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Brainard, Curtis; Russell, Cristine THE NEW ENERGY BEAT (Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2009)
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Climate change and energy issue reporting behooves journalists to collaborate within the newsroom and with news outlets to deepen expertise and resources to better explain these critical, complex topics. Varied regional concerns and new technologies increase the need for a broad knowledge base that allows for delving beyond the pronouncements of politicians or industry lobbyists. Covering energy well means giving a comprehensive “big picture” that can both inform and influence the public and policy makers.

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Cunningham, Brent TAKE A STAND: HOW JOURNALISM CAN REGAIN ITS RELEVANCE (Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2009)
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Journalism in America has been damaged by its abdication of an adversarial role in public discourse. Instead, it “mostly amplifies the agendas of others—the prominent and powerful,” maintains the author. He examines the changing dynamic of the news media and questions whether it has the ability to moderate public conversation and introduce new angles and ideas on national issues. Calling press objectivity “a trap” that lessens journalism’s beneficial impact, he says the press needs to be on the side of the people and become a platform for establishing a public agenda.

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Bowden, Mark THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY (Atlantic Monthly, October 2009)
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Unbiased journalism is being replaced by the work of “political hit men,” Bowden says, citing the televised treatment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor after she was nominated by Obama for the U.S. Supreme Court. The information on Sotomayor -- specifically the “make policy” and “Latina woman” comments -- wasn’t uncovered by journalists, but simply reprocessed by television news rooms from conservative web sites. The conservative Judicial Confirmation Network had gathered an “attack dossier” on each of the prospective Supreme Court nominees and had fed them all to the networks in advance, Bowden says. He decries the demise of the disinterested newspaper reporter: “What gave newspapers their value was the mission and promise of journalism -- the hope that someone was getting paid to wade into the daily tide of manure, sort through its deliberate lies and cunning half-truths, and tell a story straight.”

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Greenwald, Bruce; Knee, Jonathan; Seave, Ava THE MOGULS’ NEW CLOTHES (Atlantic, October 2009)
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Even before the Internet upended their industry, big media companies were turning in poor performances and disappointing their shareholders. The four tenets of media industry wisdom –- growth, globalization, content and convergence -- are myths, these authors insist. Growth has actually resulted in lower stock performance, and globalization doesn’t necessarily lead to higher profits. Creating superior content makes more money for the artists than for the media companies hosting their work. And finally, increased competition from multiple media sources and the Internet undercut the advantage traditional big media companies had of economies of scale and captive customers. The only real avenue to salvation that the traditional media industry has open is unglamorous: improving the efficiency of their operations.

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Rieder, Rem DAYDREAM BELIEVERS (American Journalism Review, August/September 2009)
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“America has become a country filled with people who stubbornly continue to believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts,” says Rieder, using as examples the persistence of people who refuse to believe Obama was born in the United States and those who believe that there are in fact provisions for “death panels” in health-care reform proposals. This situation makes it all the more critical for journalists to go beyond the “he-said, she-said” reporting of the past and not hesitate to reach firmly expressed conclusions –- with fairness, of course. Mainstream journalism has long been uncomfortable about making and expressing conclusions, but according to Rieder, “as long as that conclusion is based on carefully reported evidence, not ideology, there's no good reason not to do it.”

PUBLIC EVALUATIONS OF THE NEWS MEDIA: 1985-2009: PRESS ACCURACY RATING HITS DECADES LOW.
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. September 13, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 26 pages]

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

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Oplinger, Doug JOURNALISM AS A CIVIC PRACTICE (Connections: The Kettering Foundation’s annual newsletter, 2009, pp. 14-15)
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Even financially imperiled news organization can continue to be “chronicler and conscience” of their communities, says Oplinger. He uses the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal as an example. Without compromising its journalistic integrity, he writes, the newspaper collaborated with its media competitors and the city’s special interests on a civic journalism project that explored, starting in 2006, the hopes and fears of America’s “disappearing middle class.” The project blossomed into a long series of stories and several public events. “Collaborations such as the Beacon Journal’s middle-class project may begin to rewrite the rules of engagement for civic journalism,” Oplinger writes. The project worked because it not only reported on the problem, but helped drive the discussion, he says.

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Podger, Pamela THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (American Journalism Review, June/July 2009)
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For journalists today, social networking sites are increasingly blurring the line between the personal and professional. This creates a host of ethics and etiquette questions for news organizations, which are crafting guidelines for the growing number of staffers using social networks. Generally speaking, the advice to journalists is to identify themselves as journalists, tell recipients they are using social networks in a professional capacity, and remain mindful that people will regard them as representatives of their news organizations. Amy Webb, principal consultant at Webbmedia Group in Baltimore, says news organizations should be pondering the privacy and safety issues of a new crop of tools, including location-aware services. "When a New York Times reporter logs on to Facebook from his mobile phone, he's sharing a lot more information than his status updates. He's sharing the content he wrote and his location," Webb says. "There are safety and privacy issues around this."

Shapiro, Michael OPEN FOR BUSINESS (Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2009, pp. 29-35)
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Columbia University professor Michael Shapiro argues the case for a free/paid hybrid: people are willing to pay for news – not opinion – they deem essential. Journalism’s crisis offers “an opportunity to transform the everyday work of journalism from a reactive and money-losing proposition into a more selective enterprise of reporting things that no-one else knows.” Interestingly, this article is currently available for free on the Web.

THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN IRAN.
Council on Foreign Relations. Greg Bruno. July 22, 2009.
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Iranian authorities have reinforced controls on major domestic media following the upheaval over contested presidential election results in June 2009, says the report. One month after the disputed vote, nearly forty journalists remained in Iranian prisons. Yet Iran's media landscape, like many aspects of the theocratic regime, is riddled with contradictions. The flow of information into and within Iran has genuinely improved over the last decade; since 2000, Iran's leaders have oscillated between tightening and loosening restrictions on the country's domestic news media.

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SAVING THE NEWS: TOWARD A NATIONAL JOURNALISM STRATEGY.
Free Press. Victor Pickard et al. May 12, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 48 pages]

The study reports on how the government should respond to the current crisis in journalism. It provides an in-depth analysis of ideas and proposals being debated around the future of the news business and advocates for a range of short- and long-term strategies. The report analyzes the collapse of the traditional business model for news and describes the alternatives emerging in its place. It also argues that new policies are needed to sustain vital professional journalism while embracing digital technology and the power of the Internet.

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Moaveni, Azadeh ROXANA SABERI AND HOW JOURNALISM WORKS IN IRAN (Time, June 1, 2009)
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Western media sees Iran in black and white, but there are many nuances in understanding how Iran really works, the author says. A case in point is the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was arrested in Iran on charges of espionage, but then freed. Moaveni, who has reported in Iran since 1999, acknowledges that she has had to deal with an Iranian government “minder” who monitors all her activities -- but she has come to accept that her minder represents “a troubled government composed of both pragmatic and hard-line factions.” The hardliners, she says, view all journalists as essentially spies; but the fact that the government still allows so many foreign journalists to visit and operate out of Iran is a sign of pragmatism. Moaveni warns that having valid press credentials issued by the Iranian government is essential -– something Saberi ignored. “Reporting on the powerful, whether in the world of finance, the White House, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, is always a fraught enterprise,” Moaveni says. Even in Washington, D.C., she says, there is “a complex power game involved in cultivating close access to the knowledgeable and influential. Of course a journalist who flouts the rules in Washington will risk access rather than imprisonment, but that’s just one more benefit of living in a society with the luxury of nuance.”

THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET.
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. May 6, 2009.
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The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation announces the following Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet hearing: The Future of Journalism. See also Frank Rich’s New York Times column, “The American Press on Suicide Watch”.

TESTIMONY OF BEN SCOTT, POLICY DIRECTOR, FREE PRESS: A HEARING ON “A NEW AGE FOR NEWSPAPERS: DIVERSITY OF VOICES, COMPETITION AND THE INTERNET”
Free Press. April 21, 2009.
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Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott calls for a national journalism strategy to address the problems in the newspaper industry and promote a vibrant news marketplace at a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy.

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Kumar, Priya JOURNALIST OF THE FUTURE (American Journalism Review, April/May 2009)
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NBC’s Mara Schiavocampo is being hailed as the first “digital correspondent.” After spending a year as a freelance reporter “not bound by geography,” the network was so impressed it created a new position for her to showcase her cinema-verité style of storytelling. Schiavocampo comes up with story ideas, shoots video and still photography, edits, blogs and produces packages for the Web and television. She travels where she pleases and covers subjects ranging from how Detroit citizens are coping with the struggling auto industry to the popularity of cupcakes to how Hindu temples in India sell hair from devotees for Americans’ hair extensions. Her stories, NBC Senior Vice President Alexandra Wallace, “convey an intimacy and honesty sometimes lost in traditional stories.”

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Sennot, Charles M. ROLL THE DICE: HOW ONE JOURNALIST GAMBLED ON THE FUTURE OF NEWS (Columbia Journalism Review, March-April 2009)
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Sennot, a former Boston Globe correspondent, writes of his transition from being a traditional print journalist to co-founding GlobalPost.com, an online “collaborative” foreign news agency that has attracted major journalists who write on a freelance basis for a modest stipends and shares in the company. Despite the trepidation of entering a new realm, and a shortfall in funding, GlobalPost.com was launched and is among a group that includes ProPublica and Politico moving the news delivery model forward. It also offers an entrepreneurial landing spot for journalists exiting traditional print careers. “It is an exciting time, a historic shift in how the world will be informed,” Sennot writes. He is currently GlobalPost.com’s executive editor.

Hodierne, Robert IS THERE LIFE AFTER NEWSPAPERS? (American Journalism Review, Feb/Mar 2009, pp. 21-27)
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The answer to this question, going by the stories of former journalists interviewed for this article by Hodierne (assoc. professor of journalism at U. Richmond), in many cases, is a sometimes hesitant, sometimes resounding, Yes. As thousands of newspaper journalists in the U.S. lose their jobs each year, there can be very little doubt that job security in the press is a thing of the past. As a former newspaperman comments, “The ‘80s were a blast, the ‘90s were a bit more stressful, but the last few years – who’d want to be there?”

THE NEWSPAPER REVITALIZATION ACT: A BILL.
Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, U.S. House of Representatives. March 24, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 3 pages]

The act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible. The measure is targeted to preserve local newspapers serving communities and not large newspaper conglomerates.

MANY WOULD SHRUG IF THEIR LOCAL NEWSPAPER CLOSED.
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Andrew Kohut and Michael Remez. March 12, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 12 pages]

As many newspapers struggle to stay economically viable, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available. Not unexpectedly, those who get local news regularly from newspapers are much more likely than those who read less often to see the potential shutdown of a local paper as a significant loss.

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STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA.
Pew Project for excellence in Journalism. March 2009.
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The study provides both aggregated and original research on the eight major sectors of media-newspapers, online, network; cable, local and network TV; magazines; radio and ethnic. It also includes special reports on the Year in the News, lessons from the 2008 election, an analysis of citizen media sites and more.

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Palser, Barbara SHINING THROUGH THE GLOOM (American Journalism Review, February-March 2009)
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It’s not all gloom and doom for traditional news organizations, says Palser, director of digital media for McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Company. Acting as a judge at a recent media competition, she found that forward-looking news organizations are using digital journalism which allows the user to manipulate data to create his or her own story. But tomorrow’s journalists and news organizations must combine time-honored investigative skills with a mastery of Flash design, usability and all the many elements available for multimedia storytelling.

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Rozen, Laura HUNG OUT TO DRY (Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2009)
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In November 2005, the Washington Post and the New York Times ran Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative stories on national security that revealed possibly illegal actions by the Bush administration in its “war on terror” and the secret CIA-run prison network. But the Bush administration’s recalcitrance against both the press and Congressional requests for documentation, and the lack of response from public institutions have demoralized reporters, who find themselves subpoenaed by grand juries to testify about their confidential sources. In the author’s view, this inhibits hard-hitting reporting on controversial subjects.

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Hamilton, Martha WHAT WE LEARNED IN THE MELTDOWN (Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2009)
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The author, a former Washington Post financial writer, assesses why journalists failed to see the global economic crisis coming. She finds that some reporters warned of problems in the housing market and the risks of unregulated over-the-counter derivatives markets as early as 1998, but were largely ignored. Over-tasked journalists had limited understanding of new, complex financial instruments, and didn’t ask often enough for explanations. “We were all a little too willing to assume Alan Greenspan knew what he was talking about,” New York Times reporter Floyd Norris says. Hamilton believes that the remedy is for journalists to be skeptical of information supplied by self-interested experts, pay more attention to new financial developments, regulation and deregulation, and make use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

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Starr, Paul GOODBYE TO THE AGE OF NEWSPAPERS (HELLO TO A NEW ERA OF CORRUPTION) (New Republic, March 4, 2009)
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Corruption in government, business and journalism may rise with the demise of newspapers, says Starr, a Stuart professor of communications and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. “Despite all the development of other media, the fact is that newspapers in recent years have continued to field the majority of reporters and to produce most of the original news stories in cities across the country,” he writes. “Online there is certainly a great profusion of opinion, but there is little reporting, and still less of it subject to any rigorous fact-checking or editorial scrutiny.” With the reduction of solid investigative reporting and the weakening of the “watchdog” role of the press, corruption in government and in business will rise, Starr says. With fewer professional journalists and more “citizen journalists” -– some, no doubt, paid by special interests -- there is the danger of corruption taking hold in journalism itself. All of this, he says, bodes badly for the future of democracy. Starr predicts the emerging electronic news media seem likely to become more fragmented by interest and partisanship. Those with the skills to take advantage of the new world of news will be pleased with the broader range of publications; those without will learn less about the world.

MOST FEEL A PERSONAL STAKE IN TRACKING ECONOMIC NEWS.
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Michael Remez. February 19, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 11 pages]

Americans continue to follow news about the economic crisis closely because they feel it is directly relevant to their lives. More than eight-in-ten say even when the economic news is bad they feel better knowing what’s going on, while 77% say they need to stay on top of economic news because it matters in the financial decisions they make. At the same time, close to half (46%) of the public says they often feel they don’t have enough background information to follow economic news stories, according to the study.

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THE NEW WASHINGTON PRESS CORPS: AS MAINSTREAM MEDIA DECLINE, NICHE AND FOREIGN OUTLETS GROW.
Project for Excellence in Journalism. Web posted February 11, 2009.
Full Text [PDF format, 28 pages]

The corps of journalists covering Washington D.C. at the dawn of the Obama Administration is not so much smaller as it is dramatically transformed, says the report. As the mainstream media have shrunk, a new sector of niche media has grown in its place, offering more specialized and detailed information than the general media to smaller, elite audiences, often built around narrowly targeted financial, lobbying and political interests. In addition, the contingent of foreign reporters in Washington has grown to nearly ten times the size it was a generation ago.

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REALITY BITES: ECONOMY FOULS MOOD.
Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. February 4, 2009.
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In a sign of how quickly the media narrative has shifted from pomp and circumstance to layoffs and bankruptcy, the grim U.S. economy was the overwhelmingly dominant story one week after Barack Obama’s festive inauguration. The financial crisis filled 45% of the coverage studied from Jan 26-Feb. 1, as measured by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. A week earlier, it was Obama’s move into the White House that consumed most of the media’s attention, also accounting for 45% of the newshole, or the time on TV and radio and space in print and online.

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Gurwitt, Rob POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE (Governing, January, 2009)
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Gurwitt discusses the decline of statehouse journalism. As media outlets struggle to stay afloat in a weak economy, coverage of state legislatures faces severe cuts. For example, Gurwitt notes that the Hartford Courant (Connecticut) used to have a dozen reporters covering state agencies, but today they have only one; with such limited staff, coverage of important legislative and budget issues has disappeared. The author talks with current and former statehouse reporters who discuss the current state of statehouse journalism.

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Poole, Gary Andrew BACK TO THE FUTURE (Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 47, no. 5, January/February 2009, pp. 19-21)
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Sports, both professional and amateur, have a prominent place in American life. The author, a free-lance sportswriter, writes that the craft of sports writing has declined, but believes that it can recapture its relevance. In the 1920s, the New Yorker published a piece that declared sports a "trivial enterprise" involving "second-rate people and their second-rate dreams and emotions." The magazine went on to concede, however, that the quality of writing in the sports pages was superior to that in the news columns. Since the mid-1990s, two forces have diminished classic sports writing. First, television coverage has expanded, making hype and the sensational aspects of sports dominant. ESPN became a cultural and media juggernaut, rendering game recaps and box scores in the next day's newspapers obsolete. The web, meanwhile, did to sports writing what it has done to journalism more broadly: carved up the audience and exacerbated the “more-faster-better” mindset that cable TV began.

OBAMA’S INAUGURAL WEEK: HEAVY MEDIA FOCUS TURNS FROM SYMBOLS TO SUBSTANCE.
Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Mark Jurkowtiz. January 28, 2009.
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Due to nearly non-stop coverage of a historic inauguration held amid major foreign and domestic crises, the new Obama administration dominated the news agenda last week, overwhelming every other story. Coverage of Obama’s transformation from president-elect to president filled 45% of the time on TV and radio and space in print and online the week of Jan. 19-25. In the weeks following the election, the media’s attention had been fairly evenly divided among a number of top stories, including the Obama transition, the financial crisis, the Rod Blagojevich scandal and the fighting in Gaza.

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Doctor, Ken “FRIGHTSIZING” NEWSPAPERS: WHAT DERAILED THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY? (Global Journalist, Vol. 14, no. 3, Fall 2008, pp. 22-27)
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The decline of the U.S. newspaper industry has been so dramatic that rather than using terms like “downsizing” or “”rightsizing,” Doctor coins the term “frightsizing.” The news remains glum for those inside the industry, with shrinking advertising revenue and share prices and increased job losses. The transition online has been difficult and newspapers are finding that despite their declining audience, it takes an average of 20 online readers to generate the ad revenue of one print reader. Yet, online news sources are easily stepping in to take their place and newsreaders today spend the same amount of time taking in news as they did a decade ago from print sources. In the current confusing phase of transition, questions of journalistic trustworthiness and credibility have arisen, but so has a newfound energy. “We can’t see this new world in great clarity,” Doctor concludes, “but we can see its contours.”

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Quart, Alissa MUSIC LESSONS (Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 47, no. 4, November/December 2008, pp. 18-20)
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Quart, CJR contributing editor, notes that the most successful journalists have learned a few lessons from rock music stars; for example, prominent journalists and musicians must both devote a great deal of time and effort maintaining a “cross-media relationship with their fan base.”  Musicians build fan bases by using on-line and CD giveaways; journalists have taken to blogs, which give away information. These activities create an online community spawned by the “personal authenticity” of the musician or journalist who makes himself accessible to his fans/readers. The goal is to build a personal brand by giving away just enough of the product to motivate audiences to buy the product.

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Dorroh, Jennifer ENDANGERED SPECIES (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 6, December 2008-January 2009, pp. 20-27)
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Under pressure to cut costs, more newspapers are cutting their Washington bureaus.  And while the reporters experienced at covering the nation’s capital go on to find jobs with niche markets, they are not informing the general public any longer.  The sad outcome endangers American democracy, experts say, because only those in power are informed about what is happening and how to control it.  Others say that those most interested in politics can get all the information they need from issue-oriented organizations, Internet sources and the contributions of online “citizen journalists.”

MEDIA RE:PUBLIC: NEWS AND INFORMATION AS DIGITAL MEDIA COME OF AGE.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Web posted December 18, 2008.
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Overview Paper. [PDF format, 52 pages]

This is a series of papers exploring the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment.

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FOR SIXTH STRAIGHT YEAR, IRAQ DEADLIEST NATION FOR NATION FOR PRESS.
Committee to Protect Journalists. December 19, 2008.
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For the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for the press, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ end-of-year analysis. The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history. Worldwide, CPJ found that 41 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work in 2008, down from 65 last year. It is investigating another 22 deaths to determine whether they were work-related. The decline in the worldwide death toll was largely attributable to Iraq, where deaths dropped from a record 32 in both 2007 and 2006. The decline in media deaths is consistent with an overall improvement in security conditions in Iraq, journalists told CPJ.

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PANEL DISCUSSES EMERGING MEDIAL MODEL FOR INTERNATIONAL NEWS COVERAGE.
[Broadcasting Board of Governors]. December 10, 2008.
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As mainstream media retrenches from international news coverage, a new breed of citizen journalist is stepping in to fill parts of the void. Armed with cell phones, text messages, small digital cameras and blogs, citizen journalists can broadcast information from places the mainstream media simply isn’t any more. These new voices present a variety of challenges and opportunities to the free flow of information.

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Lee, Hsin-Yin CULTURE CONUNDRUM: NEWS OUTLETS STRUGGLE TO FIND A PLACE FOR INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL STORIES (Global Journalist, Vol. 14, no. 3, Fall 2008, pp. 42-45)
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Reporting on cultural events is a tough sell for overseas media outlets unless the topic directly relates to a bilateral relationship or a “hard news” interest, such as Japanese reporters in Washington covering the annual Cherry Blossom festival or American reporters writing about Middle Eastern culture due to some connection with the war on terror. But cultural reporting is important as a means of understanding “how people in other countries work, think, dream and worry,” and language barriers and other obstacles should be overcome in order to improve this aspect of two-way communication offered by journalism. In doing so, universal themes and truths can be discovered and encouraged which would increase mutual understanding.

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Mihm, Stephen SO, YOU WANT TO SAVE THE ECONOMY? INSIDE THE INFLUENTIAL NEW WORLD OF ECONOBLOGGERS (Boston Globe, December 7, 2008)
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As the financial disaster unfolded on Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pressed Congress to pass the bailout plan but provided sparse justification for how he would spend the money. The author notes that a disparate range of experts in economics and finance, including some well-known individuals, starting picking apart Paulson’s plan live, on the Internet, in public blogs. Many bloggers provided historical context and offered counterproposals; their readers began badgering their Congressional representatives to oppose the plan. Whether the blogs influenced Washington’s response to the crisis, notes Mihm, it’s clear that policymakers “are no longer operating alone.” The blogs are essentially a crash course in economics and finance, a “conversation that's simultaneously esoteric and irreverent, combining technical discussions of liquidity traps and yield curves with profane putdowns and heckling headlines.” Many journalists used the blogs to fill in gaps in their knowledge of esoteric aspects of mortgage finance.

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Ricchiardi, Sherry OFFSCREEN (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 5, October-November 2008, pp. 16-23)
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Although the intensity of the war in Afghanistan has surpassed that of Iraq, media coverage is failing to give it its due, says Ricchiardi, senior AJR contributing writer. The number of Western journalists covering the war in Afghanistan is “barely in double digits.” Lack of an interested audience is part of the problem, as is the high cost of putting reporters into a country with challenging topography and lack of infrastructure. Ricchiardi notes that journalists face the threat of kidnapping, robbery and murder whenever they move outside safe zones, and there is a growing risk of suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. Even so, given the importance of events in Afghanistan, the lack of information is a serious detriment to an informed citizenry.

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Stickney, Dane CHARTICLE FEVER (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 5, October-November 2008, pp. 36-39)
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A fast-growing trend in newspapers is the charticle -- a bite-size combination of words, images and graphics. Some newsrooms call them blurbs. No matter what the name, these easy-to-digest forms for relaying information are becoming all the rage among newspapers eager to attract young readers away from the Internet and appeal to busy readers short on time. Detractors say charticles contain too much personal opinion and lack detail. Supporters say charticles are readable ways to present mundane information.

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Nordenson, Bree OVERLOAD! JOURNALISM’S BATTLE FOR RELEVANCE IN AN AGE OF TOO MUCH INFORMATION (Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 47, no. 4, November/December 2008)
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The vast amount of information available on the Internet, and the limited ability of human beings to consume it, is affecting news production, distribution and design. It may also have a long-term negative effect on readers subjected to the overload, studies find. Some news organizations, such as the Associated Press, have taken heed and altered their formats; nonetheless, interruptive clutter abounds. Seemingly limitless freedom of choice becomes a burden which may change the roles of news agencies and journalists from being gatekeepers to guides through the information glut.

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Cooper, Ann THE BIGGER TENT (Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 47, no. 3, September/October 2008, pp. 45-47)
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The question of “who is a journalist” is a thing of the past, with bloggers, amateur videographers, and others now widely recognized as falling within the “big tent” of mainstream journalism. The author says barriers will continue to erode, and while more traditional journalists are adopting the less formal blogs along with news aggregates, the bloggers are also doing some original reporting, along with disseminating news and opinion. The better question now is “what is journalism”; the author says the best of both worlds can be combined for the good of the public. “Old media will have to let go of some attitudes and assumptions that are no longer relevant, and new media will need to recognize standards that can infuse credibility and trust into this new journalism,” she says. The goal of the fourth estate to hold power accountable, inform the citizenry and strengthen democracy still remains intact in this new age of journalism, she argues.

A REPORT ON THE MEDIA AND THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE: DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF NEW MEDIA.
Brookings Institute. Web posted September 29, 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 97 pages]

The study argues that the U.S. media have hindered effective policy making on immigration for decades, and their impact has been increasing in recent years as a result of an ongoing evolution in the media industry. Deeply ingrained practices in American journalism have produced a narrative that conditions the public to associate immigration with illegality, crisis, controversy, and government failure. The objective is to understand how the media conditioned public opinion and the policy landscape, and the results show that the media, both traditional journalism and new forms of expression, need to be considered among the factors that contribute to polarization and distrust.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

OIL DRILLING IN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE AREAS: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA.
Center for Economic and Policy Research. Mark Weisbrot and Nichole Szembrot. September 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 4 pages]

The media has played a significant role in convincing Americans that offshore drilling for oil in the United States could significantly lower the price of gasoline, according to the analysis. Even though the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency has stated that the benefits from such drilling would be too small to have any significant effect on oil prices, the media has overwhelmingly conveyed the impression that it could. Media coverage of the issue may have influenced public opinion, with a majority now favoring expanded drilling, as proposed by presidential candidate John McCain.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08309
Russell, Cristine CLIMATE CHANGE: NOW WHAT? (Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 47, no. 2, July/August 2008, pp. 45-49)
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Mounting scientific evidence demonstrates the reality of global warming and attendant climate change, so media coverage must move from simply covering the science to broader areas, including what governments, NGOs, businesses and ordinary citizens are doing about it. “Climate change will require thoughtful leadership and coordination at news organizations,” the author writes, while discussing coverage and its pitfalls. The science story is ongoing, but journalists unfamiliar with the subject must beware of oversimplifying or missing important scientific subtleties. Russell cautions that we need to be alert for “techno-optimism” -– renewable-energy proponents promoting the benefits without examining the potential downside. Climate change issues now touch politics, international relations, and commerce -- “virtually all aspects of contemporary life;” the author suggests coverage in science, technology, land use and transportation, economics and international cooperation. Monitoring what is done to slow deforestation in the tropics, estimated to account for one-fifth of man-made global carbon emissions, is one of “countless questions” about “a story that is only going to get bigger” over decades. “The job of a professional journalist is to give the audience information that is good for them to know,” said ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore, adding “The unprecedented nature of this story is quite grave.”

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Starkman, Dean BOILER ROOM: THE BUSINESS PRESS IS MISSING THE CROOKED HEART OF THE CREDIT CRISIS (Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2008, pp. 48-53)
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The author, head of the business and finance desk at CJR, writes that while there have been many good articles about the subprime mortgage fiasco that has resulted in the widespread crisis in the credit markets, most have treated it as a “kind of natural disaster or nasty turn in the business cycle.” There is acknowledgement that abusive practices did occur, but Starkman writes that few have reported about how extensive they were. He says that the most comprehensive and insightful reporting on the system that produced the credit crisis was a story aired in May 2008 on (U.S.) National Public Radio, called “The Giant Pool of Money”. This narrative describes the global pool of savings, which had doubled to USD 70 trillion, was searching for higher returns, and the U.S. financial system, from the investment banks at the top, down to the mortgage brokers and salesmen across the country, was under tremendous pressure to create financial “products” for this money to invest in. Traditional underwriting procedures were abandoned in favor of aggressively selling loans to marginal borrowers. Some former loan company agents reported that the movie BOILER ROOM, about unethical stockbrokers, was used as a “training tape”. Starkman notes that systemic corruption and fraud has been revealed at lenders across the board. “Yet to be explored fully”, he writes, “is the extent of Wall Street’s role, and the size of the transfer of wealth from millions of civilians” to the financial professional class.

AA08293
Farhi, Paul CABLE’S CLOUT (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 4, August-September 2008)
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Repetition and prominence, not the ability to break news, give cable news television an enormous amount of clout, says Washington Post reporter Farhi. Using the example of the story of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama’s responses to stories about his controversial minister, Farhi argues that “few campaign stories have much impact or become an important part of the campaign narrative until they get heavy play on cable.” The ability to function as “an engine of reaction and response” is cable television’s greatest means for influence. “Cable's intense and often immediate coverage of the day's big controversy forces candidates to fire back, which then compels the rest of the media to cover the response,” Farhi says. Whether they like to admit it or not, print media reporters are forced to consider addressing stories of whatever degree of merit if, thanks to cable television, enough people are talking about it.

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA TODAY: A REFORM PLAN FOR A NEW ADMINISTRATION.
Common Cause Education Fund. Web posted August 29, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 32 pages]

The report lays out a plan of action for the next President and Congress to take to ensure the media performs its appropriate role in our democracy. Congress is currently considering a “Resolution of Disapproval” of the Federal Communication Commission’s new media ownership rules. The report calls for the passage of House Joint Resolution 79, which would overturn the FCC’s new rules and halt further media consolidation.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

JOURNALISTS’ PRIVILEGE: OVERVIEW OF THE LAW AND LEGISLATION IN THE 109TH AND 110TH CONGRESSES.
Congressional Research Service, RL34193, Library of Congress. Henry Cohen and Kathleen Ann Ruane. Web posted August 20, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 15 pages]

The Supreme Court holds that the First Amendment did not provide even a qualified privilege for journalists to refuse “to appear and testify before state or federal grand juries.” However, 49 states have adopted a journalists’ privilege in various types of proceedings. Journalists have no privilege in federal proceedings. On July 6, 2005, a federal district court in Washington, DC, found Judith Miller of the New York Times in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate in a grand jury investigation relating to the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA agent. The court ordered Ms. Miller to serve time in jail. Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail. She secured her release only after her informant gave her permission to reveal his identity. Congress has considered creating a journalists’ privilege for federal proceedings, and bills to adopt a journalists’ privilege have been introduced in the 109th and 110th Congresses, in both the House and the Senate.

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THE CHANGING NEWSROOM (Journalism.org, posted July 21, 2008)
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In all aspects, ranging from staffing to content, American newspapers are changing at a dizzying rate. In a survey of more than 250 local and national papers, the Project for Excellence in Journalism details developments such as the decline of independent foreign and national news coverage and the rise of mobile journalists deployed to send in video footage for the paper’s Web site. The analysis of its survey results gives a comprehensive look at the state of U.S. newspapers today and a glimpse into their uncertain future.

MEDIA METRICS: THE TRUE STATE OF THE MODERN MEDIA MARKETPLACE.
Progress & Freedom Foundation. Adam Thierer and Grant Eskelsen. Web posted July 17, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 99 pages]

Debates about the state of the media marketplace continue to garner interest in Washington. Many policymakers, regulators, and consumer groups bemoan the supposed lack of “localism,” ownership concentration and an absence of quality programming as a rationale to further regulate in the media sector. The report shows that, contrary to what some media critics believe, there are more media choice, competition, and diversity than ever before. The report offers a comprehensive look at a variety of media sectors such as audio, video and print, providing policymakers with a snapshot of the media sector.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

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Dickerson, John DON’T FEAR TWITTER (Nieman Reports, Summer 2008)
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Are the 140-word entries on the Web site “Twitter” trivializing journalism?  No, says Dickerson, the chief political correspondent for Slate. Twitter, he says, is “informal and approachable and great for conveying a little moment from an event.  If written the right way, Twitter entries build a community of readers who find their way to longer articles because they are lured by these moment-by-moment observations.” Himself a Twitter reader, Dickerson says Twitter has exposed him to a wider variety of news and “keen political observers and sharp writers who have never practiced journalism.”

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Garber, Megan CROSSING LINES (Columbia Journalism Review, July-August 2008)
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Michael Happy, a Detroit News sports reporter, is blurring the lines between “objective” reporting and advocacy – and he doesn’t care. A former resident of Fletcher Field, a five-acre neighborhood near Detroit’s City Airport, Happy launched last year a blog on the newspaper’s Web site called “Going Home: A Journal on Detroit’s Neighborhoods.”  Working with community leaders, the blog has served as a voice to the “invisible” poor and a tool for coalition building and advocacy.  Current residents, many of whom do not have access to computers, funnel their personal stories to community leaders, who then communicate them to Happy. Fletcher Field is still poor, rundown and extremely dangerous, but changes have been impressive.  Thanks to the blog, the neighborhood has gotten attention and help from former residents and city officials who have mobilized to improve the park and overall living conditions. Happy acknowledges that some observers feel the blog “teeters on the line between ethical and unethical journalism,” but he adds: “I got into this business to try to help people -- I think the park project, its aftermath and this blog are doing just that.”

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Mathews, Joe LOOKING FOR THE COUNTRY’S SMARTEST NEWSCASTS? SWITCH TO ESPANOL (Washington Post, May 11, 2008, pp. B1, B4)
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The author, fellow at the New America Foundation, writes that Spanish-language broadcast media are becoming increasingly sophisticated and newsworthy, at the same time as English-language television broadcast networks and radio stations are airing more trivial material to try to boost ratings. In a recent survey of Los Angeles-area TV stations, the Spanish-language stations had many more longer and deeply reported pieces, such as an explanation of the ongoing mortgage crisis, local politics and key policy issues in the presidential campaign. While some critics complain that Spanish TV is more advocacy than journalism, the author notes that the “upside of the advocacy approach is serious reporting and newscasts with broader perspectives; viewers are engaged more as citizens than consumers.”

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Ricchiardi, Sherry WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IRAQ? (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 3, June/July 2008, pp. 20-27)
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Americans and the American press have lost interest in the Iraq war, says Ricchiardi; coverage has dropped dramatically, both on television and in print. Iraq has been shoved out of the headlines in part because of the U.S. economic downturn and the contentious presidential primaries. In addition “war fatigue” has set in: the accounts of suicide bombings and brutal sectarian violence are repetitive and hard to translate to U.S audiences. In addition, keeping correspondents on the ground in Baghdad is getting to be too expensive for many news agencies. But all this may change after the U.S. presidential elections, when a new administration will have to grapple with a controversial conflict that is costing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $12.5 billion per month.

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Farhi, Paul OFF TARGET (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 2, April/May 2008, pp. 28-33)
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Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, notes that media coverage of the presidential election in today’s accelerated news cycle, with round-the-clock cable television coverage and newspaper journalists having to write for the Web as well as work on print stories, has resulted in a barrage of superficial reporting, analysis and forecasting, much of which has turned out to be inaccurate. As established news media are offering buyouts to expensive, seasoned reporters, younger reporters with less experience are covering the campaign without the context of having covered several campaigns and without the long view. Farhi writes that reporters should look beyond the “groupthink” of the political insiders and pose hard questions to the candidates.

Klein, Ezra THE FUTURE OF READING (Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 47, No. 1, May/June 2008, pp. 35-40)
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Despite its amazing screen, using E Ink technology, Klein finds Amazon.com’s ebook reader somewhat limiting. To explain this, he compares two books, Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (humorous fiction), and David Frum’s Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, a serious work of non-fiction. Both are books, but are very different texts. One would probably want to read World War Z in a comfortable armchair or in the bath, while Frum’s work is better tackled at the desk, with pencil and notepaper at hand – or even better, on one’s computer screen, enabling one to search the text, cut and paste key passages for future reference, etc. And that is the promise of the new media (which Kindle currently doesn’t deliver): content that “works better than the book, that goes where the book cannot, that’s interactive and cooperative and open in ways that printed text will never be.”

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 2008: DRAFT COUNTRY REPORTS.
Freedom House. Web posted May 1, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 239 pages]

According to the study, global press freedom underwent a decline in 2007, with journalists struggling to work in increasingly hostile environments in almost every region in the world. The decline continues a six-year negative trend. However, there was some improvement in the regions with the least amount of press freedom: the Middle East and North Africa. The study attributes the improvement to a growing number of journalists who were willing to challenge government restraints.

[Note: contains copyrighted material.]

AA08132
Rector, Kevin FOREIGN AFFAIRS (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 2, April/May 2008, p. 16)
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As established new organizations cut back on international reporting, a new Web Site, Global News Enterprises, aims to cover the world. Set to be launched in early 2009, it will be the first U.S.-based Web site dedicated entirely to foreign news. Global News will rely on dozens of reporters in almost 70 countries to provide in-depth enterprise stories on issues affecting a globalizing world. Global news is the brainchild of Philip Balboni, founder and former president of New England Cable News, the U.S.’s largest regional television news network.

MEDIA OWNERSHIP: ECONOMIC FACTORS INFLUENCE THE NUMBER OF MEDIA OUTLETS IN LOCAL MARKETS.
Government Accountability Office; GAO-08-383. Web posted April 11, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 69 pages]

The media industry plays an important role in educating and entertaining the public. While it provides the public with many national choices, media outlets located in a local market are more likely to provide local programs that meet the needs of residents in the market compared to national outlets. This report reviews (1) the number and ownership of various media outlets; (2) the level of minority- and women-owned broadcast outlets; (3) the influence of economic, legal and regulatory, and technological factors on the number and ownership of media outlets; and (4) stakeholders’ opinions on modifying certain media ownership laws and regulations.

[Note: contains copyrighted material].

Alterman, Eric OUT OF PRINT: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER (New Yorker, Vol. 84, No. 7, March 31, 2008, pp. 48-59).
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Much has been written about the impact blogs and the Web in general have had on traditional print media. Alterman, who teaches journalism at Brooklyn College, doesn't have much doubt that newspapers are dying; what is less clear, he argues, is what this portends for the future. His prognosis is rather gloomy: "And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism." His concluding remarks are even darker: "Just how an Internet-based news culture can spread the kind of “light” that is necessary to prevent terrible things, without the armies of reporters and photographers that newspapers have traditionally employed, is a question that even the most ardent democrat in John Dewey’s tradition may not wish to see answered."

THE STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA, 2008: AN ANNUAL REPORT ON AMERICAN JOURNALISM.
Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism. March 17, 2008.
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The state of the American news media is troubled and the problems seem different than those many experts have predicted. Some have tended to see technology “democratizing” the media and pushing traditional journalism into decline. But more and more it appears that the biggest problem is the decoupling of news and advertising as the latter has not fully migrated with the consumer to the online sites.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material].

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Guensburg, Carol NONPROFIT NEWS (American Journalism Review, vol. 30, no. 1, February/March 2008, pp. 26-33)
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With traditional news organizations continuing to trim their budgets and reduce their staffs, long-term, labor-intensive investigative and enterprise journalism are more frequently made possible by funding from foundations and nonprofits, writes Guensburg, herself a former newspaper reporter who now writes for a nonprofit organization. The foundations are interested in compensating for what they see as diminished coverage of civic issues. And as paid advertising abandons print journalism for the Internet, news organizations are eager for new revenue. In 2005, U.S. foundations granted $158 million for media and communications. Journalism’s funders include Carnegie, Ford and Pew Charitable Trusts. Knight, the leading journalism funder overall, announced more than $21 million in journalism grants in 2006 and more than $50 million in 2007. “Done right, the journalism-funder relationship benefits both the parties as well as the public they aim to serve,” Guensburg writes. But done wrong, it raises concerns about editorial objectivity. Some editors will accept grant money for training, but decline grant support for newsroom projects, fearing the merest hint of outside influence. Others see little difference between advertiser influence and donor influence on editorial sanctity.

MEDIA AND CONFLICT: AFGHANISTAN AS A RELATIVE SUCCESS STORY.
Yll Bajraktari and Christina Parajon. Special Report, U.S. Institute of Peace. January 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 8 pages]

The development of post-Taliban media in Afghanistan has been relatively successful. There have been three main processes that enabled media success: (1) the proliferation of local media; (2) the government’s capacity to communicate; and (3) the international media. However, because the media still face many challenges, the international community must continue to be a major player.

This report is based on panel presentations by media experts.

JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ: A SURVEY OF REPORTERS ON THE FRONT LINES.
Project for Excellence in Journalism. Web posted November 28, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 44 pages]

According to a new survey of journalists covering Iraq, the coverage of the American military and the insurgency has been “generally positive.” But, most of the journalists, who are veteran war correspondents, describe conditions in Iraq as perilous, “and this above everything else is influencing the reporting.” However, in spite of the danger, most of the journalists have a positive view of the military’s embedding program for reporters.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

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Strupp, Joe WEB BEATS PRINT: NO LONGER ON THE FRINGE, POLITICAL BLOGGERS NOW DRIVE COVERAGE (Editor & Publisher, vol. 140, no. 12, December 2007, pp. 22-27)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Mainstream news outlets have embraced the Web log, making political blogs key features of campaign coverage. The author interviews political bloggers from the Los Angeles Times, Reno Gazette-Journal, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. They say blogs provide more information sooner, but it’s demanding work and the results are unpredictable. “It is an online newsreel,” says Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune’s “The Swamp,” adding that anything goes: serious reporting comes alongside gossip, trivia and campaign ad videos. Blogs allow greater freedom and can give a local flavor. “It is like a conversation, and it does not take as much context as a story because it is for people who know the context,” says the Reno Gazette Journal’s Anjeanette Damon. But writing at a fever pitch opens the doors to more editorial slips and errors. Cross-referencing competitors is new. It is part of Internet culture to feature a “blogroll,” links to other similar blogs. Blogs also invite readers to post comments. The author maintains that, thanks to blogs, candidates now receive unprecedented exposure.

JOURNALISTS’ PRIVILEGE: OVERVIEW OF THE LAW AND LEGISLATION IN THE 109TH AND 110TH CONGRESSES.
Henry Cohen and Kathleen Ann Ruane. Congressional Research Service (CRS), Library of Congress. Updated October 18, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 15 pages]

In 1972, the Supreme Court wrote that journalists claim “that to gather news it is often necessary to agree either not to identify the source of information published or to publish only part of the facts revealed, or both. . .” The Court further held that the First Amendment does not provide a privilege to journalists to refuse “to appear and testify before state or federal grand juries.” Congress has introduced bills in the past two Congresses to create a journalist privilege for federal proceedings. These bills are more narrowly defined than those provided by state laws.

DEVELOPING MEDIA IN STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OPERATIONS.
Yll Bajraktari and Emily Hsu. Stabilization and Reconstruction Series, U.S. Institute of Peace. Web posted October 15, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 20 pages]

An independent, pluralistic, and sustainable media is vital to long-term peace and stability. An effective media can elevate moderate voices and dampen extremist ones, while an ineffective media can reinforce divisions between warring parties. This report offers recommendations for developing a strong media strategy in reconstruction operations.

AA08003
Dorroh, Jennifer ARMIES OF ONE (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 6, December 2007/January 2008, pp 12-13)
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The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is launching the network’s largest overseas expansion in over 20 years with new one-person foreign bureaus. Technology makes the expansion affordable. According to David Westin, ABC News president, “We can do several of these (one-person bureaus) for the price of one traditional bureau.” A stand-alone multimedia reporter’s equipment costs a mere $10,000. The costs of running a traditional full-size bureau can run $500,000 per year. The journalists who take on the new posts must be “Jacks-of-all-trades” who can handle digital video cameras, satellite dishes and laptops. They will be expected to record, edit and transmit their own audio and video reports from places like Nairobi, Jakarta, Mumbai, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul and Dubai as well as neighboring countries. Although most of their reporting will be for ABC’s Internet outlets, the reporters will be expected to be first on the scene when a story breaks in their regions. “The correspondents aren’t completely alone,” Dorroh writes. “Each reports either to the London bureau or to the network’s foreign desk in New York. Colleagues at ABC’s various platforms edit their work, and they get logistical and technical support locally from stringers and from ABC News partners like the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).”

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Layton, Charles THE VIDEO EXPLOSION (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 6, December 2007/January 2008, pp. 24-31)
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The stampede is on among newspapers to put video on their Web sites; many see it at the key to their survival. Video consumers are younger than the general population, have higher incomes and more education -– exactly the demographic newspapers as well as advertisers covet, writes Layton. But not all stories lend themselves well to video treatment, however, and the quality of current video varies dramatically. Training personnel is all-important. And while an Internet audience might tolerate less than stellar visuals, they demand top-quality audio -- a new criteria for still photographers and writers who normally don’t focus on background noise. Video is labor-intensive, even for experienced still photographers. A two- to three-minute video currently requires a minimum of two to four hours of production time. The right equipment is crucial for photographers expected to bring back both still and video. High-definition camcorders make it possible to extract or “grab” individual frames from the video. But for writers working on short deadlines, producing a printable story as well as a video is nearly impossible. Some writers, however, are making a clean break from print, finding that many stories can be better told visually. Twenty-five-year-old Evelio Contreras, now a video producer at the Roanoke Times of Virginia, a daily newspaper with a 97,000 circulation, made the switch. “I saw it as a way to develop my storytelling skills,” he says.

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Ricchiardi, Sherry COVERING THE WORLD (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 6, December 2007/January 2008, pp. 32-39)
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The foreign correspondent assigned to a country for a prolonged period with expertise in the local language, culture, history and customs is now a vanishing breed, Ricchiardi writes. But as many U.S. news organizations have backed away from foreign news coverage, the Associated Press (AP) has made worldwide expansion part of its master plan for future growth. Although newspapers around the United States are focusing on local news, buying AP products if and when they see the need, AP is pinning its hopes on new markets opening beyond North America’s borders. AP has recently doubled its reporting power in China, opened an office in Pyongyang, North Korea and will soon open a bureau in Saudi Arabia. “The AP family tree branches out to 243 bureaus in 97 countries, serving news outlets with a potential to reach 1 billion people each day,” Ricchiardi writes. AP is investing millions of dollars to upgrade communications among the bureaus worldwide, with an emphasis on high-speed data links and faster portable satellite phones. More work is also being done to develop a more online-oriented international news product with emphasis on “convergence journalism” – a multiplatform approach to presenting information.

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Reang, Putsata A REPORTER RETURNS HOME (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 5, October/November 2007, pp. 68-69)
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Teaching Khmer journalists investigative reporting is hard, even if the instructor is Cambodian and understands the culture and speaks the language, Putsata Reang discovered. Reang’s family fled the Khmer Rouge 32 years earlier and was living in Corvallis, Oregon, when she decided to take an Alicia Patterson Fellowship to spend a year researching Cambodia’s land-grabbing problems in 2005. She then took a job with a non-governmental agency to instruct Cambodian journalists in Western-style journalistic ethics. A former journalist for the San Jose Mercury News, Reang thought she was a perfect fit. But she soon discovered she wasn’t prepared for the “more nuanced challenges” that working in media development in her homeland would present. First among these was forging trust and respect. Being a woman, an American citizen and drawing a relatively high salary from her NGO employer lowered her credibility among her peers. Reang also discovered that the poorly paid Cambodian journalists couldn’t turn down the money they routinely were paid to attend press conferences. In addition to lacking writing and reporting experience, Cambodian journalists operate in a country with no freedom of information law – “a place where telling the truth meant risking their lives,” she writes. Although the program she was supporting did make significant headway and Reang was asked to stay on, she returned to the United States feeling confused and guilty over her “privileged” status.

BLACK AND WHITE AND RE(A)D ALL OVER: THE CONSERVATIVE ADVANTAGE IN SYNDICATED OP-ED COLUMNS.
Media Matters for America. Web posted September 12, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 29 pages]

This project attempted to amass data on nationally syndicated columnists published in every daily newspaper in the country. The results show that conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts. The data reveal that:

• 60% of the nation’s daily newspapers print more conservative columnists than progressive columnists;
• Nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a total circulation of 125 million while conservative columnists are published in newspapers with a daily circulation of 152 million; and
• The conservative voice is greater in 38 states while only 12 states have a progressive slant.

Newspapers remain the most important of all news media serving a total readership of more than 116 million people daily and 134 million on Sunday.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

THE LATEST NEWS HEADLINES—YOUR VOTE COUNTS.
Project for Excellence in Journalism. September 12, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 16 pages]

This study considers the question of “whether citizens define the news differently than professionals. . .” The report compared news from mainstream media for one week with the news found on user-news sites for the same period. During this period, the mainstream press focused on Iraq and immigration while user-news sites (Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us) centered on stories like Apple’s new iphone and Nintendo passing Sony. The data also revealed other subtle differences in user-driven content.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

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Lisheron, Mark LYING TO GET THE TRUTH (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 5, October/November 2007, pp. 29-35)
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Should reporters use deception to get a story? Lisheron, AJR contributing writer and a reporter at the Austin American-Statesman, examines this question in a lengthy article revolving around a story written by Ken Silverstein and published in Harper’s Magazine’s July edition. To get the story -- “Their Men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.’s Lobbyists for Hire” -- Silverstein posed as a consultant for a firm needing help in enticing investments to Turkmenistan, a country with a dismal human rights record but rich in oil. The companies he targeted were APCO Associates, and Cassidy & Associates, one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington. Although Silverstein was able to extract interesting information about the sleazy lobbying culture and its impact on domestic and foreign policy, his undercover techniques aroused debate in the journalism establishment -- most especially Howard Kurtz, Washington Post media writer, who feels the companies targeted should have had at least an opportunity to Silverstein’s allegations. Is there room in the modern world for the “muckraking” tradition in journalism? Lisheron seems to think not, writing that “without at least some standard, the 230,000 subscribers to Harper’s are on their own, trusting that liars and deceivers are telling them the truth.”

AA07375
Winston, Diane H. BACK TO THE FUTURE: RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE MEDIA (American Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 3, September 2007, pp. 969-989)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author, who holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, believes that since 2000, many American journalists have had a “come to Jesus” experience. Spurred by the rise of increasingly politicized religion and religious politics, they have rediscovered the role of religion in public life. But is this current fascination only the latest two-step in a longstanding dance? When New England’s earliest colonists began circulating news of important events, they framed their stories with a religious perspective: divine providence played a decisive role in covering and interpreting everyday occurrences. Since then, religion has continued to play an important role in the both the news media and in the news narratives that helped shape Americans’ self-understanding. The author examines the religious tropes of the “beloved community” (left) and the “promised land” (right) that continue to dominate media coverage of American politics. Focusing on the twentieth century, she explores how the mainstream media’s hostility to religious conservatism has changed, and why progressive religious politics are rarely covered.

YOUNG PEOPLE AND NEWS: A REPORT.
Thomas E. Patterson. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. July 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 35 pages]

This study examined the daily news consumption of young people. The report is based on a nationwide, randomly-selected survey of 1,800 teens, young adults, and older adults. The findings show that young Americans rely more on television and the Internet for their news. This is a change from a few decades ago when there was not a significant difference between the daily news habits of younger and older Americans. Today, however, many young Americans find news here and there and do not make getting news part of their daily routine.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

AA07358
Wasserman, Steve GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (Columbia Journalism Review, September–October 2007, pp. 42—53)
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While American newspapers have reduced the resources and page space for book reviews, the decline is not altogether recent and there was no “golden age” of book reviewing in the American broadsheet. While many attribute the decline to book sections’ failure to generate sufficient advertising revenue, sports and other newspaper sections are not expected to serve as profit centers. Newspapers have in any case failed to exploit the commercial possibilities of reaching their most affluent, educated subscribers through book coverage. The real problem is “the anti-intellectual ethos in the nation’s newsrooms.”

AA07257
Robertson, Lori KIND OF CONFIDENTIAL (American Journalism Review, Vol. 29, No. 3, June/July 2007, pp. 26-33)
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U.S. federal judges have been rejecting reporters’ promises to keep silent about conversations with confidential sources, leading news organizations to warn sources that pledges of anonymity aren’t absolute. “The law as it exists today does not provide the kind of absolute protection for sources that reporters traditionally thought they had the right to offer,” says Kevin Baine of Williams & Connolly, the law firm representing the Washington Post. But media lawyers are seeing growing support for protecting journalists, including at the state level, the author says. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have shield laws, and seven additional states have introduced shield law legislation.

JOURNALISTS IN EXILE: 243 FORCED TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELANDS SINCE 2001.
Elisabeth Witchel and Karen Phillips. Special Report, Committee to Protect Journalism (CPJ). Web posted June 19, 2007.
Full Text [html format, var. pagings]

“At least three journalists a month flee their home countries to escape threats of violence, imprisonment, or harassment.” This is one of the findings from a survey completed by the Committee to Protect Journalism (CPJ). The survey was limited to journalists who fled persecution due to their work. The survey did not include journalists and media workers who left for professional or financial reasons and those who fled prior to July 2001.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

THE STRUCTURAL IMBALANCE OF POLITICAL TALK RADIO: JOINT REPORT.
John Halpin, Ben Scott, Josh Silver, and S. Derek Turner. Center for American Progress and Free Press. June 21, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 40 pages]

Traditional radio is the most widely used media in America--90 percent of Americans age 12 or older listen to radio each week. The combined news/talk format leads in total number of stations per format, but trails country music in terms of national audience.

This report maintains that conservative talk radio dominates the news/talk format. The analysis shows:

• Of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial stations, 91 percent of the total weekday talk programming is conservative;
• Each weekday, more than 2,570 hours of conservative talk are broadcast; and
• In the top 10 markets, 76 percent of the programming is conservative.

The authors assert that no matter how the data is analyzed, conservative talk programs have a greater number of hours than progressive shows.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

IRAQI INSURGENT MEDIA: THE WAR OF IMAGES AND IDEAS: HOW SUNNI INSURGENTS IN IRAQ AND THEIR SUPPORTERS WORLDWIDE ARE USING THE MEDIA.
Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo. Special Report, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). June 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 76 pages]

Sunni insurgents in Iraq, their supporters, and sympathizers are pursuing a massive and far-reaching media campaign that shapes perceptions in Iraq and the Arab world. This report surveys the products, producers, and the delivery methods. The report shows that these media outlets undermine the authority of the Iraqi government, demonize coalition forces, promote sectarian strife, glorify terrorism, and perpetrate falsehoods.

The insurgent media also has vulnerabilities. A lack of central coordination and message control and cultivating a rift between nationalists groups and global jihadists are serious challenges to their messages.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

LOCKED OUT: THE LACK OF GENDER AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY ON CABLE NEWS CONTINUES.
Media Matters for America. May 7, 2007.
Full Text [html format, various pagings]

Media Matters analyzed the race/ethnicity and gender of the hosts and guests on major prime-time cable news programs during and after the Imus controversy (Monday, April 2 through Friday, April 27). This study demonstrates that during this brief period “cable news remains an overwhelmingly white and male preserve.” When an issue involves gender and/or race/ethnicity, the three major cable networks (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC) bring a more diverse lineup of guests, but the rest of time the guest list are overwhelmingly white and male.

The conclusion reached is that “if the cable-news networks want their guests to represent the full spectrum of Americans, they have a long way to go.”

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

AA07200
Basharat, Peer STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE: DESPITE INDIA'S MEDIA BOOM, ITS JOURNALISM IS SHRINKING (Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2007, pp. 24-25)
Full Text

The author, a fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism where he is working on a memoir of the Kashmir conflict, critiques the Indian media. Basharat writes that, at a time when India is gaining global clout, there are “complicated stories that demand detailed reporting and space” that are not getting sufficient air or print space in the Indian media. With a few exceptions, there is an “unwillingness to allocate resources and time” for in-depth reporting. Consequently, he says, foreign journalists produce some of the best journalism about India, and serious Indian writers often look to foreign publications to publish their work. Although the American media was criticized domestically for not examining U.S. policies on torture earlier, he still credits the coverage, contrasting it with the Indian media where detailed newspaper reports on torture are rarely seen.

AA07203
Ricchiardi, Sherry OBSTRUCTED VIEW (American Journalism Review, vol. 29, no. 2, April/May 2007, pp. 26-33)
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From the news media’s perspective, the Iraq war is different from previous conflicts -- journalists themselves frequently are the targets of the enemy, writes Ricchiardi. For the fourth consecutive year, Iraq ranked as the world's deadliest spot for journalists in 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Since the invasion, 133 journalists and media support workers have been killed; 83 percent were locals, many with ties to Western media outlets. CPJ reports that for the first time, murder has overtaken crossfire as the leading cause of deaths. Ricchiardi writes that escalating threats to foreigners and astronomical security costs have led media companies to scale back their staffs. As a result, she says, the numbers of correspondents in Iraq has dropped and coverage of what may be the most important story in the world today has been seriously compromised. “Though journalists struggle mightily to cut through the fog and spin,” Ricchiardi writes, “Americans are left without a complete account of a prolonged, bloody war that is devouring billions of taxpayers' dollars. Correspondents are hamstrung when it comes to independently verifying information from military press briefings or rhetoric from the Pentagon.”

YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS, BROADCAST MEDIA, AND HIV/AIDS AWARENESS: RESULTS OF A NATIONAL SURVEY.
Public Opinion and Media Research Program, Program for Health and Development in South Africa, South African Broadcasting Corporation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. March 26, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 61 pages]

This survey was conducted to better understand and gauge “the attitudes of young South Africans towards the media’s role in HIV prevention and education.” It also helped broadcasters and other players develop HIV/AIDS messaging and programming that would appeal to South African youths. This paper presents the key findings of the survey.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

MEDIA MARKETS AND LOCALISM: DOES LOCAL NEWS EN ESPAÑOL BOOST HISPANIC VOTER TURNOUT?
Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Joel Waldfogel. University of Pennsylvania & National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Web posted April 22, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 22 pages]

Americans use distant sources of news and entertainment rather than local sources. Critics of this globalization of information and entertainment “claim that transnational media undermine civic engagement, transforming locally engaged citizens into viewers . . .” This paper utilizes “the rapid growth of Hispanic communities in the United States to test whether the presence of local television news affects local civic behavior. Spanish-language local television news programming was available in 25 US metro areas in 2002, up from only 14 areas in 1994. Our estimates indicate that Hispanic voter turnout increased by 5 to 10 percentage points, relative to non-Hispanic voter turnout, in markets where local Spanish-language television news became available. We conclude that the tradeoff between integrated media markets and civic engagement is real.”

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

Kuttner, Robert THE RACE (Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 45, no. 6, March/April 2007, pp. 24-32)
Full Text

Verified facts versus commentary and opinion: the former is much more expensive, but while generation Y and Z prefer the blogosphere to "old fashioned" print, a case can still be made for turning to newspapers for professional journalistic values. Wall Street might not agree however, and there seems little doubt that digital will prevail. Kuttner argues that the way forward is for newspapers to become hybrids, embracing the Web but not abandoning the current generation of readers who still want to pick up a daily paper. As an aside, Kuttner coins a new term for Web sites that mix blog-style comment with original analysis and serious research: crogs, for "Carefully-Researched Weblogs".

AA07108
Dietrich, William ARE JOURNALISTS THE 21ST CENTURY’S BUGGY WHIP MAKERS? (Nieman Reports, vol. 60, no. 4, Winter 2006 pp. 31-34)
Full Text

Many U.S. newspapers are cutting their editorial staffs and closing their international bureaus. Most major metropolitan areas are dominated by only one newspaper, where there was once a competitive market. Dietrich, with the Seattle Times and a 1988 Nieman Fellow, speculates that journalism as a profession is becoming obsolete. The journalist’s advantage in the past was the capability to gain access to information not readily available to the public, but that advantage is diminishing in an era when the Internet and simplified recording and video technologies allow any amateur to become a reporter. Dietrich notes that emerging amateur journalists today rarely purport to maintain the balance and objectivity that has always been a point of professional pride. He also wonders whether this evolution of technology has devalued the role that the journalist has played in a democracy -- to not merely disseminate information, but help the public understand its importance. Dietrich raises the possibility that newspapers may yet reinvent themselves to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace if they draw on their vast informational and archival resources. This article is in a special issue of Neiman Reports, entitled “Goodbye Gutenberg”, examining the changing media landscape.

Hull, Dana BLOGGING BETWEEN THE LINES (American Journalism Review, vol. 28, no. 6, December 2006/January 2007, pp. 62-67)
Full Text [html format]

Blogs are meant to be fun and freewheeling; opinionated, "snarky", and in your face. Newspaper reporting is meant to be balanced and well-researched. Yet American newspapers have fallen in love with blogs, running anything from bowling to fly-fishing blogs. Ideally, newspaper blogs should drive more traffic to their web sites, but will this current infatuation cause a dilution of traditional journalistic standards? "There's an inevitable clash of values between a newspaper, which has a journalistic reputation and brand name to protect, and a swiftly changing medium that has grown in power and prestige precisely because it has flouted many of journalism's traditional rules."

AA07009
Garfield, Bob YOUTUBE VS. BOOB TUBE (Wired, December 2006, pp. 222//266)
Full Text [html format]

If one thought that YouTube.com was a lot of video doodling from online extroverts who want to put themselves in front of a camcorder, then think again, writes Garfield. Rather, the online video-sharing site represents the first ripples of a media tsunami that will crush the business model that sustains television as a profit-making enterprise. The fast-growing popularity of YouTube means that the 21st century audience has lost interest in the type of programming traditionally produced by the big U.S. television networks, the article argues. Without an audience, television won’t attract the advertisers who provide the revenue stream for big media. Advertisers, known to be shy of controversy, venture with caution into an online world where the weird, wacky, vulgar and sarcastic are prevailing cultural values. Further, the freewheeling world of make-it-yourself content defies the conventional legal structures for copyright protection and creators’ rights. These uncertainties make the future of YouTube unclear, but Garfield argues its 100 million streams a day guarantee its longevity.

INTO THE ABYSS: REPORTING IRAQ 2003-2006: AN ORAL HISTORY (Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2006)
Introduction & links to MP3 files

CJR’s forty-fifth anniversary issue features the voices (saved as MP3 files) of over 45 journalists who have covered the war in Iraq. Their personal stories about the challenges of reporting from Iraq provide a rare insight into the complexities and the dangers of the war in a way that straight news reporting can’t often capture. They speak about their brushes with death; their attempts to blend into Iraqi culture and go undetected; their empathy with the civilians, the soldiers, the insurgents; and the competing political pressures to report the “good news”, and the sensitive news, such as friendly fire incidents. The journalists include correspondents and photographers from major U.S. and British newspapers, television, wire, and radio networks, freelancer writers, as well as their Iraqi translators. Of these journalists, the Editors of CJR note: “Many of these people have been in Iraq longer than some of our soldiers and diplomats. We need to hear them. They know things.”

WORLDWIDE PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2006.
Reporters Without Borders. October 24, 2006.
Download the document [sections in pdf format, various pagings]

This is the fifth annual World Press Freedom Index issued by Reporters Without Borders. The organization compiled a questionnaire with 50 criteria for assessing the state of press freedom in each country. It includes every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of issues, searches and harassment). The index also registers the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for such violations. It also takes account of the legal situation affecting the news media (such as penalties for press offenses, the existence of a state monopoly in certain areas and the existence of a regulatory body), and the behavior of the authorities towards the state-owned news media and the foreign press. It also incorporates reviews of the main obstacles to the free flow of information on the Internet.

According to the index, Northern European countries once again come out on top, with no recorded censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, which all share first place. The countries with the tightest controls over media, according to the report, are China, Burma, Cuba, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and, in last place, North Korea.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A GLOBAL SURVEY OF MEDIA INDEPENDENCE. [2006 and previous years]
Freedom House. Web-posted October 11, 2006.
Table of Contents [sections in various formats and various sizes]

This new resource provides an interactive database of information on press freedom around the world. The website includes global and regional pages highlighting the main trends for each year, as well as detailed historical data since 1980 from the Freedom House's annual Freedom of the Press survey. Other features of the new web pages include: annual overview essays summarizing the state of global press freedom; interactive maps showing the state of press freedom for each year since 2002; and reports and ratings for every country in the world. The website also contain links to press freedom resources, including Freedom House press releases, special reports, programmatic activities, and other press freedom and media support groups.

IFJ [INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS] RESEARCH FINDINGS ON REPORTING HIV/AIDS IN SIX COUNTRIES IN AFRICA AND ASIA.
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). July 2006
Download the document [pdf format, 81 pages]

The research for this report, which focused on six countries in Africa and Asia, indicates that HIV/AIDS reporting in affected regions is improving, but that there is still significant work to be done. The research, including media monitoring which examined 356 articles that mentioned HIV/AIDS over the two-week monitoring periods in Africa and Asia, uncovered sensational reportage and terminology such as "deadly disease," "HIV holocaust," "scourge," and "deepest wound in society". Images were more likely to be seen as sensational. The researchers also noted that the complicated issue of confidentiality when identifying people living with HIV/AIDS, was a problem for media.

A significant proportion of journalists and NGOs surveyed said that HIV/AIDS reporting in their country could be sensational and derogatory, although coverage of HIV/AIDS orphans tended to be sympathetic, and coverage of medical breakthroughs tended to be neutral. Despite low levels of literacy among the populations most at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, the research found greater coverage of HIV/AIDS stories in print media rather than in broadcast media. Of the 356 stories sampled over the two-week monitoring periods, 281 (79%) were from the print media and 75 (21%) from the broadcast media.

The authors of the report call on media and journalist organizations to institute wide-ranging, regular and sustained training programs for journalists and editors on reporting HIV/AIDS.

Country reports included in the report are from Cambodia, India, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, and Zambia.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

BLOGGERS: A PORTRAIT OF THE INTERNET'S NEW STORYTELLERS.
Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox.
Pew Internet & American Life Project. July 19, 2006
Download the document [pdf format, 33 pages]

According to this report, eight percent of Internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of Internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs - a significant increase since the fall of 2005. Fifty-four percent of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44 percent say they have published elsewhere.

While generally youthful, these writers otherwise represent a broad demographic spectrum of people who cite a variety of topics and motives for their blogging. The American blogosphere is dominated by those who use their blogs as personal journals. The survey that serves as the basis for the report, reveals that bloggers do not think of what they do as journalism.

Most bloggers say they cover a lot of different topics, but when asked to choose one main topic, 37 percent of bloggers cite "my life and experiences" as a primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11 percent of bloggers citing those issues as their blog's main subject. Entertainment-related topics were the next most popular blog-type, with 7 percent of bloggers, followed by sports (6 percent), general news and current events (5 percent), business (5 percent), technology (4 percent), religion, spirituality or faith (2 percent), a specific hobby or a health problem or illness (each comprising 1 percent of bloggers). Other topics mentioned include opinions, volunteering, education, photography, causes and passions, and organizations.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

WHY TEMPLATES FOR MEDIA DEVELOPMENT DO NOT WORK IN CRISIS STATES: DEFINING AND UNDERSTANDING MEDIA DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN POST-WAR AND CRISIS STATES.
James Putzel and Joost van der Zwan. London School of Economics (LSE), Crisis States Research Centre; University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication; Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research. July 2006.
Download the document [pdf format, 40 pages]

In commenting on the development of media outlets in post-conflict situations, the report stresses that "in countries emerging out of war, both the character of private media in the absence of the development of civil society and a professional ethos of journalistic integrity, and the very real disintegrative pressures that may arise with an 'excess' of free speech, need to be considered when passing judgment on political authorities that are wary of giving free reign to media organisations."

The underlying tensions between the media and governments are described, as is the growing tendency of some politicians and journalists to aspire to become "media stars," with the provision of more air time and more influence. The authors provide examples of countries that are now undergoing some of the struggles described in the report.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

WOMEN IN MEDIA 2006: FINDING THE LEADER IN YOU.
Mary Arnold and Mary Nesbitt.
Northwestern University, Media Management Center; McCormick Tribune Foundation. July 2006.
Download the document [pdf format, 56 pages]

Since 2003 the media world has seen the share of executive positions held by women increase only slightly, by two percentage points, to 29 percent. And the number of women publishers has remained the same, at 18 percent in the 137 newspapers surveyed. Women have some qualities that fit well with a constructive culture, say the authors of this report. Overall, women's leadership style tends to be inclusive and collaborative, rather than hierarchical, and they are often more attuned to the changing needs of the marketplace.

What women in the news field need to focus on now, according to Arnold and Nesbitt, is developing the leadership skills that they will need to develop a business. The report stresses that leaders must be willing to constantly step outside their comfort zone, take risks and tolerate some failures. As leaders, they also need to encourage others to do the same.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

Callahan, Robert J. A VIEW FROM THE EMBASSY (American Journalism Review, April/May 2006, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 32-37)
View article on publisher's website

Callahan, who served as press attaché at the US Embassy in Baghdad from June 2004 until May 2005, argues that criticism of media coverage of Iraq has come mainly from outside observers, not "from those of us who have been there and have seen these journalists at work". He discusses the factors which make accurate and comprehensive reporting difficult, if not impossible. These include danger (in particular, the fear of being kidnapped and beheaded), lack of Arabic language skills, and the lack of reliable statistical data such as unemployment and economic growth.

On June 28, 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority was dissolved and sovereignty returned to an interim Iraqi government. The American Embassy decided that it would no longer speak daily on the record but rather encourage Iraqis to speak for themselves. The problem, however, was that, despite training, Iraqi spokesmen "couldn't manage the most basic public affairs work", including writing press releases. Callahan then goes on to describe how journalists increasingly turned to the US Embassy, which had far greater resources than the press corps. A key factor was the mutual trust that quickly developed between the diplomats and the media.

AA06130
Iskandar, Adel EGYPT'S MEDIA DEFICIT (Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2006, pp. 17-23)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

The author, an expert on Middle East media and co-author of AL-JAZEERA: THE STORY OF THE NETWORK THAT IS RATTLING GOVERNMENTS AND REDEFINING MODERN JOURNALISM, sees cautious optimism in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, because of recent electoral reforms. He observes, however, "Although changes to Egypt's press appear substantial in recent years, a vibrant media system that encourages civil society, civic participation, and political empowerment remains a distant mirage." He describes many of the changes as symbolic, pointing out that most national television coverage is strictly controlled by the government and that the publicized use of the Internet in the recent campaign was "ineffectual at best, and mere publicity stunts for foreign observers at worst." Although there has been incremental progress in the development of a free press, as shown by the reporting of historically ignored issues, such as electoral irregularities, rising unemployment, and widespread economic corruption, what is needed is "an unhindered, unadulterated free press enshrined in the constitution and supported by an independent judiciary." This is one of the Forum series of articles entitled MOBILIZING MEDIA.

Shapiro, Michael LOOKING FOR LIGHT: THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER AND THE FATE OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS (Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2006, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 24-37)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

Shapiro documents the rise and subsequent decline of what was once one of America's great papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer, which in its heyday won seventeen Pulitzer Prizes in eighteen years. The current editor, Amanda Bennett, realized that the secret to restoring her paper's former glory lay not in further staff cuts, but restoring the qualities that once made it brilliant, including a willingness to "zig where others zagged".

AA06096
Salhani, Claude MEDIA IN CONFLICT: INCITING VIOLENCE IN KOSOVO (Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2006, pp. 33-39)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

The author, editor of the United Press International Intelligence Desk, points out the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the media and politicians and stresses the influence of the media in humanitarian crises. He contrasts the success in reporting on the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 with the so-called "March Incident" also in Kosovo in 2004. Salhani notes that the media played a major role in shaping American perceptions of the 1999 Kosovo campaign as a "just war," unlike the U.S. intervention in Iraq. But in 2004, following an incident in which some ethnic Albanian boys drowned while crossing a river after playing in a predominately Serbian area, the Albanian-language media, "instead of reporting the story as the sad accident that it was, blew it out of proportion." This led to riots in which nineteen people were killed, about 600 wounded, thousands were evicted from their homes, and 35 Serbian Orthodox churches burned. After a review of the role of the media in the situation, the author was brought to the region to conduct a 10-day crash course on journalistic ethics.

AA06086
Guardiano, John INFORMATION WARFARE (American Enterprise, Vol. 17, No. 2, March 2006, pp. 36-37)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

The author, who served in Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve, asserts that many armed-forces personnel who have served in Iraq believe that we are winning the war, and are confident that the mission will result in self-rule by the Iraqis. What they are not so confident of, he tells, is the resolve and commitment of America's media and political establishments. Guardiano believes that the media portrayal of our military's efforts in Iraq has been "relentlessly negative and very misleading," and the "gloominess and pessimism is pronounced among the media elites of Washington and New York." He asserts that "imbalances are everywhere," citing various examples of the media's focus on the negatives; notes that the latest "scandal," the U.S. military's alleged insertion of favorable articles in the Iraqi press as nothing more than a choice it made to "work within Iraq's nascent and fledgling civil society to try to ensure that Iraqis hear truthful and balanced accounts of what is happening." Guardiano believes that Iraq is "a war of information and ideas ... we can win in Iraq, but not if we surrender in the media war."

AA06077
Mitchell, Greg WHEN BLOGGERS HIT TOO CLOSE TO HOME (Editor & Publisher, vol. 139, no. 1, January 2006, pp. 20-21)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

Bloggers are constantly questioning, proofreading and second-guessing the mainstream media (MSM) in America, and Americans can't seem to get enough of it. Blogging has become such a staple attached to MSM, that it can be easily assumed to be fact-based reporting, rather that what is truly is, opinion-based ranting. The author sees fault in many of the large online news wires, such as The Washington Post and the New York Times, directly linking stories to blogs, pulling readers away from the stories, before they can even finish reading them, and analyze the information reported. He writes, "does the MSM really want to hasten its demise by making criticism of it -- often based on inaccurate information or purely partisan beliefs -- quite so accessible?" The instant analysis, counter-argument, and often-poor judgments that come with MSM support of blogging only undermines reporters and editors and their ethics and dedication to journalism.

Fisher, Marc BLOGGING ON THE HUSTINGS (American Journalism Review, vol. 28, no. 1, February/March 2006, pp. 42-9)
View article on publisher's website

During the gubernatorial elections in Virginia last year, "blogs became important enough that some campaign managers neglected their daily duties to obsess over the latest blogospheric gossip, state regulators began watching the blogs for compliance with campaign finance laws, lawmakers started grumbling about how to regulate speech on the blogs, and bloggers themselves began talking about setting standards and figuring out just how much coordination makes sense in a fraternity of extreme individualists". Asked whether bloggers are journalists, Bob Gibson, political reporter at the Daily Progress in Charlottesville, commented, "I view them the way I do TV news — it's a headline service, a tip sheet. They're lively, fun, timely."

THE STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA 2005.
Project for Excellence in Journalism. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Web-posted January 2006.
Full Report [html format]

Executive Summary [pdf format, 34 pages]

Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, this report provides a comprehensive look at the state of American journalism, and the pressing issues facing the news media in 2005. The authors' goal is to put in one place as much original and aggregated data as possible about each of the major journalism sectors -- newspapers, magazines, network television, cable television, local television, the Internet, radio, ethnic and alternative media. For each of the media sectors, they examine six different areas - content, audience trends, economics, ownership, newsroom investment, and public attitudes.

Their methodology of looking at a set of questions across various media, differs from the conventional way in which American journalism is analyzed -- one medium at a time. This enabled the authors to make comparisons and identify cross-media trends.

From their research, the authors' drew five main conclusions about the nature of the media landscape:

1. There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper.
2. The rise in partisanship of news consumption and the notion that people have retreated to their ideological corners for news has been widely exaggerated.
3. To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight.
4. Despite the new demands, there is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences.
5. The three broadcast network news divisions face their most important moment of transition in decades.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

AA06027
Robertson, Lori ADDING A PRICE TAG (American Journalism Review, Vol. 27, No. 6, December 2005/January 2006, pp. 52-57)
View article on publisher's website

The New York Times last year created a controversy when it began charging a fee for readers' online access to some of its top opinion columnists as well as to the Times' article archives. The paper was bucking the widespread presumption that web information should be free. At the same time, a number of big media companies are busily acquiring popular Internet sites, some of which the companies offer at no cost. Driving the fee controversy is a not-so-simple question: can newspaper stay in business if they give their work away? In this article, media publishers, marketing managers, and advertisers weigh in on the pros and cons of fee-based content and where it's headed. Although policies on paid content are in flux, the question inevitably will assume growing importance to media owners and readers in the future.

AA05428
Kinnon, Joy Bennett CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF JOHN H. JOHNSON, 1918-2005 (Ebony, October 2005, pp. 53-71)
View article on ProQuest (password required)

Publisher John Harold Johnson built a legacy celebrating the achievements and beauty of Black Americans. According to media broadcaster Travis Smiley, Johnson took a $500 loan to launch his first magazine, and "built a media empire that 60 years later is still no. 1 and still 100 percent Black-owned." Johnson, whose business empire included Jet magazine, Ebony, Fashion Fair and Fashion Fair Cosmetics, died of heart failure in Chicago on August 8, 2005. In this tribute to Johnson, the author features the tributes paid to Johnson by such luminaries as President Clinton, who presented Johnson the Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson during his three-hour funeral service.

AA05399
Graff, Garrett 50 BEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL JOURNALISTS (Washingtonian, December 2005, pp. 50-58)
Full text available from your nearest IRC

In a year in which journalists have taken as many hits as plugs, the author notes, the journalism field in Washington is as cutthroat as ever. An increase in the number of news outlets means an increase in journalists, and quantity does not necessarily translate into quality. This article outlines, in the opinion of journalists, who the fifty best and most influential reporters and writers are; the author notes that journalists who may be popular are not necessarily the most influential in Washington. Some names have been on the list since 1973, including Robert Novak (Chicago-Sun Times) and Bob Woodward (Washington Post). Many are newcomers, including Steve Coll (New Yorker), who recently won the Pulitzer for his book on terrorism, and Judy Miller (New York Times), for her commitment to ethical reporting and influence on the media. A companion section looks at the "up-and-comers", who are reporting through the Internet, blogs, and other non-traditional media, and ruffling lots of government feathers in the process.

AA05348
Giago, Tim FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN INDIAN COUNTRY Nieman Reports (Vol. 59, No. 3, Fall 2005, pp. 13//19)
View article on publisher's website

With only 295 self-identified Native-American journalists working at U.S. daily newspapers, American Indian viewpoints in the mainstream media have been limited. The sovereignty and diversity of 560 Indian tribal groups add to the difficulty--and potential rewards--of covering the stories of Indians off and on the reservation. Giago, who started the Lakota Times, the first independently owned Indian weekly publication in America, more than 20 years ago, writes about how he confronted challenges to freedom of the press from the local tribal council, as well as struggles to stay financially independent. Today, the newspaper can be found in all 50 states and 17 foreign countries. In a companion article, THE HEALING POWER OF WELL-REPORTED WORDS, Star Tribune reporter Larry Oakes describes how a community tragedy brought him back to the Cass Lake Indian reservation where he was raised. His subsequent reporting of the event provoked powerful and complex reactions from Indians and non-Indians alike. These articles are part of a special section, COVERING INDIAN COUNTRY, in the current issue of Nieman Reports, to commemorate American Indian Heritage Month in November.

AA05314
Thevenot, Brian APOCALYPSE IN NEW ORLEANS (American Journalism Review, vol. 27, no. 5, October/November 2005, pp. 1-12)
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Reporters not only covered the story, but became the story in this first-hand account by reporter Brian Thevenot, of Hurricane Katrina, one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history. The author describes the struggles and horrors of a team of New Orleans Times-Picayune writers and photographers, who lived through the carnage and suffering in the days following the hurricane, in the heart of their hometown. The team was determined to continue reporting from anywhere and by any means necessary. Living in abandoned houses and cars, scrounging for food and communications to get the story to Baton Rouge for print, these reporters influenced and demanded action by all levels of government. Thevenot writes that "in a repeat of the experience all of us had across the city, Russell [a reporter] never felt threatened. By contrast, people cheered the sight of him -- the hometown Picayune reporter -- and grilled him about where they might get a paper." In a time of unprecedented crisis, these reporters became the voice of the people.

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Strupp, Joe LOSING CONFIDENCE (Editor & Publisher Magazine, vol. 38, no. 7, July 2005, pp. 32-39)
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The case of Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter who was jailed for refusing to reveal a confidential source, has put the issues of confidentiality and the use of anonymous sources in the limelight. But how can this happen in a country where the First Amendment to the Constitution is designed to prevent government interference with a free press? The author delves into the use of confidential sources. Strupp notes that some newsrooms now have policies against the use of confidential sources, and believes that these policies could limit a newspaper's ability to investigate instances of wrongdoing. In other newsrooms, these policies could open up opportunities for better and more in-depth reporting; the author cites Eric Nalder, an investigative reporter for Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who believes that "there is a difference between using anonymous sources as the meat of the story, and tracking down the meat of the story." The Judith Miller case has yet to be resolved, but Judith Miller argues that "if journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press."

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Auletta, Ken THE DAWN PATROL (New Yorker, August 8, 2005, pp. 68-77)
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Morning news shows have long been a tradition in American news broadcasting companies. What began as a more relaxed version of traditional evening news programs is now the most profitable program for two of the three major networks. While they do provide some coverage of hard news, the morning shows focus on celebrity and family programming, knowing that almost three quarters of their viewers are women in their 30s to their 50s. This article describes the changes that have taken place on the "Today" show on NBC and "Good Morning America" on ABC over the years, and chronicles the careers of anchorwomen Katie Couric of "Today" and Diane Sawyer of "Good Morning America".

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Payne, Kenneth THE MEDIA AS AN INSTRUMENT OF WAR (Parameters, vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 81-93)
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Payne, a BBC news producer, examines the effect of the media on international conflicts. In the Iraq War, a method employed by the U.S. military to influence the media included embedding reporters in specific military units, in order to give them a small-scale view of the battlefield and encourage camaraderie between the military and journalists. Central Command briefings were also offered to give reporters a big picture of the battle, as presented by senior military personnel.

ARAB MEDIA: TOOLS OF THE GOVERNMENTS; TOOLS FOR THE PEOPLE?
United States Institute of Peace. June 2005. Web posted August 2005.
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Written for the Institute's Virtual Diplomacy Series and designed to complement U.S. public diplomacy efforts, this report examines how the Arab media is informing and shaping the hearts and minds of the Arab public. Following its opening discussion of the United States' increasingly dangerous image problem in the Arab world, the report describes the Arab media milieu - its journalists, markets, content, impact, and reform. While the authors credit the region's new satellite channels as technical improvements, they fault their lack of objectivity and professionalism. They conclude that despite their shortcomings, the new satellite stations should be encouraged, but also criticized if they broadcast lies and applauded when they merit credit.

INDEPENDENT MEDIA DEVELOPMENT ABROAD: CHALLENGES EXIST IN IMPLEMENTING U.S. EFFORTS AND MEASURING RESULTS. [GAO-05-803]
United States Government Accountability Office (GAO). July 29, 2005.
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Independent media development led by the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) supports the national security goal of developing sustainable democracies around the world. Independent media institutions play a role in supporting commerce, improving public health efforts, reducing corruption, and providing civic education. GAO was asked to examine:

1. U.S. government funding for independent media development overseas;
2. The extent to which U.S. agencies measure performance toward achieving results; and
3. The challenges the United States faces in achieving results.

The GAO found that the State Department and USAID obligated at least $40 million in fiscal year 2004 for the development of independent media, including activities such as journalism and business management training, and support for legal and regulatory frameworks. The GAO determined that State and USAID face challenges in designing performance indicators and accurately measuring and reporting results directly tied to the performance of U.S. independent media efforts. The performance indicators most frequently used by State and USAID are useful for determining the status of the media in selected countries, but are of limited utility in measuring the specific contributions of U.S.-sponsored programs and activities toward developing independent media in countries, when used alone.

GAO identified several country-specific and programmatic challenges that can impede the implementation of media development efforts, including:

• A changing political condition, or a lack of adequate civic and legal institutions;
• The sustainability of local media outlets, and;
• The unstructured or informal coordination of activities between donors and providers.

JOURNALISTS' PRIVILEGE: OVERVIEW OF THE LAW AND 109TH CONGRESS LEGISLATION [RS22205]
Henry Cohen. Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. Updated July 22, 2005
Full text available from your nearest IRC

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not give journalists privilege concerning the confidentiality of their sources, 49 states have adopted this privilege, and bills to adopt it have been introduced in the 109th Congress in both the House and the Senate (S. 1419 and H.R. 3323).

Farhi, Paul A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR NEWSPAPERS (American Journalism Review, vol. 27, no. 3, June/July 2005, pp. 54-9)
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While acknowledging that declining circulation figures, tight budgets and stiff competition from other sources are major challenges for traditional newspapers, Washington Post reporter Farhi argues that it is a little premature to declare their demise. Newspapers may be dinosaurs, he concludes, "[b]ut then again, dinosaurs walked the earth for millions of years."

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Johnson, Linda TO CATCH A KILLER (Quill, April 2005, pp. 12-17)
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Johnson, a reporter for the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky, was given the assignment to check out the list of Kentucky's "Most Wanted". She came across the story of Ralph Annis, convicted of first-degree murder in 1978 for the strangulation of his then girlfriend's infant daughter. He served 10 years in a Kentucky Federal Prison, but then escaped in 1990 while on furlough. Linda set out to dig up the story on Annis, and why he has eluded police for fifteen years. Using basic Internet search engines, as well as reference databases such as Lexis-Nexus, Linda Johnston found Annis, living under an assumed name in Corpus Christi, Texas. She worked with police, not wanting to jeopardize their case, but still wanting to keep the exclusive story. Linda's probing and questions to ex-family members in Texas led a relative of Annis' to turn him in. The police, however, released a statement taking most of the credit for the recapture of Annis. The author wants all journalists to know that reference database knowledge and Internet searches can result in ground-breaking stories.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 2005: A GLOBAL SURVEY OF MEDIA INDEPENDENCE.
Freedom House. April 27, 2005.
[Draft] Country Reports [pdf format, 173 pages]

Table of Global Press Freedom Rankings [pdf format, 6 pages]

Table of Press Freedom Rankings by Region [pdf format, 9 pages]

Table of Comparative (2004-2005) Press Freedom Rankings [pdf format, 6 pages]

This annual survey, first published in 1980, assesses the degree of print, broadcast, and Internet freedom in countries around the world. It assigns each country a numerical score from 0 to 100 that renders a category rating of "Free", "Partly Free", or "Not Free". Ratings are determined by examining three broad categories: the legal environment in which media operate, political influences on reporting and access to information, and economic pressures on content and the dissemination of news. The survey analyzes events during the 2004 calendar year. Out of the 194 countries and territories examined, 75 (39 percent) were rated Free, while 50 (26 percent) were rated Partly Free and 69 (35 percent) were rated Not Free.

According to the survey, five countries improved in category while two declined. In addition to Ukraine and Lebanon, Guatemala and Guinea-Bissau moved from Not Free to Partly Free, while Namibia moved from Partly Free to Free. Only two countries -- Pakistan and Kenya -- registered a negative category shift in 2004, moving from Partly Free to Not Free. The five worst rated countries in 2004 were Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, and Turkmenistan. In these states, independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the role of the press is reduced to serving as a mouthpiece for the ruling regime, and citizens' access to unbiased information is severely limited. Press freedom conditions also remained dire in Belarus, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe, where authoritarian governments used legal pressure, imprisonment, and other forms of harassment to severely curtail the ability of independent media to report freely.

In terms of population, according to the report, 17 percent of the world's inhabitants live in countries that enjoy a Free press, while 38 percent have a Partly Free press and 45 percent have a Not Free press. This situation represents a decline over the past year, as the percentage of people who live in countries with a Not Free media environment has increased by 2 percent.

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Ricchiardi, Sherry OUT OF THE PAST (American Journalism Review, vol. 27, no. 2, April/May 2005, pp. 46-53)
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Over the years Jerry Mitchell, a prize-winning investigative journalist for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, has helped bring many civil-rights crimes from 40-50 years ago to light, and his investigations has helped put many murderers behind bars. Mitchell's most famous case was the work he did to track down the killer of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers. Mitchell's persistence and determination brought Ku Klux Klan member Byron de la Beckwith to trial in 1989, where he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Mitchell has dug through thousands of files, and brought many more unsolved civil rights murders to justice.