Thursday, July 31, 2008
The academy may not be the answer
Doug Fisher says journalism schools "are unlikely to lead the 'revolution'" in teaching new journalists how to succeed in the digital world. Short summary: J-schools are generally very, very bad at looking forward.
Case in point: The J-school here recently denied tenure to a leading blog scholar. We have several folks who can teach digital skills, but it remains to be seen how well prepared our grads are going to be for a world of online media. I'm still in the early stages of learning about it all myself, so I don't have much to say about it yet.
"Dog-whistle" frames
Following up on my previous post: Newsday's John Riley presents a good example of how a frame can be implicitly invoked without being stated directly, but rather by how the communicator includes certain things and excludes others.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been running an ad attacking his Democratic opponent Barack Obama as the "biggest celebrity in the world" and associating him with former scandal tarts Britney Spears and Paris Hilton (both of whom, I've read, are in fact Republicans). McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, explained: "What we decided to do was find the top three international celebrities in the world. And from our estimations, Britney and Paris came in second and third. From our perspective, we have in this ad the three biggest celebrities in the world."
Riley has his doubts:
The coded message: Obama is a black man who wants to have lots of sex with white women. Among certain groups of white folks in this country, that's a threatening image.
Note that it wasn't stated outright. An association was implied, and the further associations in the target audience were assumed. A lot of folks without the scary-sexual-black-man "schema" already in their heads missed the message completely. Some politicos call this sort of message "dog-whistle politics", because only certain people can hear it, just as we can't hear an actual dog whistle but a dog can.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Terry Nelson is part of Sen. McCain's campaign team. He produced a notorious ad in a Senate campaign in Tennessee two years ago against charismatic black Democrat Harold Ford that showed an attractive blonde woman saying she met Ford at a "Playboy party" and telling him to "Call me!" It came to be known as the "bimbo" ad. The black-guy-after-your-women message, or "subtext", was remarked upon in the political press at the time, but most of the voters it was aimed at don't read the political press. (Us pointy-head types like to think that the American populace looks to us for guidance and hangs on our every word. 'tain't so.)
Digby has more on dog-whistle politics.
So what's the relevance for journalists? A couple of things. First, journalists have to be alert for dog-whistle messages. The religious language I discussed in the post below might be an example if it were inserted deliberately (which, again, I am sure was not the case). Journalists have to understand this sort of thing in order to report on it -- and they should be reporting on it.
Second, at the very least, journalists should take care not to simply pass along the message that the source or newsmaker wants to put out -- in other words, take care not to adopt the politician's own frame. Occasionally a politician will make a straightforward declaration of facts, and there's no need to re-frame it, but more often a candidate (especially for president) is trying to frame and spin and whistle and do all sorts of things. A constant criticism of the political press is that it adopts its sources' frames rather than taking a more critical approach. It's hard work to do it the other way (Scott Adams: "Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same"), and reporters these days are more pressed for time than ever. But it has to be done.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been running an ad attacking his Democratic opponent Barack Obama as the "biggest celebrity in the world" and associating him with former scandal tarts Britney Spears and Paris Hilton (both of whom, I've read, are in fact Republicans). McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, explained: "What we decided to do was find the top three international celebrities in the world. And from our estimations, Britney and Paris came in second and third. From our perspective, we have in this ad the three biggest celebrities in the world."
Riley has his doubts:
The problem: Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday's news. Here's a link to Forbes' Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don't even make the list any more.Commenters at Kevin Drum's blog point out that they also didn't pick liberal playboy celeb George Clooney or attractive blonde celeb (and Obama supporter) Scarlett Johanssen, both of whom are more widely recognizable.
Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.
So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.
What they picked was two sexually available white women.
The coded message: Obama is a black man who wants to have lots of sex with white women. Among certain groups of white folks in this country, that's a threatening image.
Note that it wasn't stated outright. An association was implied, and the further associations in the target audience were assumed. A lot of folks without the scary-sexual-black-man "schema" already in their heads missed the message completely. Some politicos call this sort of message "dog-whistle politics", because only certain people can hear it, just as we can't hear an actual dog whistle but a dog can.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Terry Nelson is part of Sen. McCain's campaign team. He produced a notorious ad in a Senate campaign in Tennessee two years ago against charismatic black Democrat Harold Ford that showed an attractive blonde woman saying she met Ford at a "Playboy party" and telling him to "Call me!" It came to be known as the "bimbo" ad. The black-guy-after-your-women message, or "subtext", was remarked upon in the political press at the time, but most of the voters it was aimed at don't read the political press. (Us pointy-head types like to think that the American populace looks to us for guidance and hangs on our every word. 'tain't so.)
Digby has more on dog-whistle politics.
So what's the relevance for journalists? A couple of things. First, journalists have to be alert for dog-whistle messages. The religious language I discussed in the post below might be an example if it were inserted deliberately (which, again, I am sure was not the case). Journalists have to understand this sort of thing in order to report on it -- and they should be reporting on it.
Second, at the very least, journalists should take care not to simply pass along the message that the source or newsmaker wants to put out -- in other words, take care not to adopt the politician's own frame. Occasionally a politician will make a straightforward declaration of facts, and there's no need to re-frame it, but more often a candidate (especially for president) is trying to frame and spin and whistle and do all sorts of things. A constant criticism of the political press is that it adopts its sources' frames rather than taking a more critical approach. It's hard work to do it the other way (Scott Adams: "Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same"), and reporters these days are more pressed for time than ever. But it has to be done.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
What I'm doing here
I have to come up with a presentation for my paper at the conference next week (I'll be presenting at 10am Saturday, Aug. 9), so to kick off the process I'll write here about what got me started down the road of graduate studies.
A couple of years ago when I was a copy editor at a large-ish newspaper in Texas, a story came across my desk with a turn of phrase that struck me as out of place. As I recall, it was a profile of a young woman who had gained recognition for her work in church groups. The phrase that jumped out at me was something like "when she was 14 she accepted Jesus as her personal savior".
Now, that's a perfectly normal things to say if you're a born-again or evangelical Christian, or if you're writing for a publication aimed at such folks. This newspaper, however, was at least nominally secular. The matter-of-fact adoption of sectarian language in a city full of not only born-agains but also Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Episcopalians, Muslims, Jews, and agnostics and atheists seemed to be taking a side, if you will, in the religious discussion that happens every day in the public sphere.
I wanted to discuss it with the city desk and maybe the reporter, but I realized I didn't even know how to start the discussion. Most working journalists can talk with ease about representing points of view and "balance" and so forth, but that sort of subtle framing isn't usually discussed in the newsroom. We lacked a common vocabulary for the questions the story raised.
So I decided to go back to school to learn more. I'm focusing my study on frames; a frame is the guiding idea or concept or structure behind most of the stories in the news, both in print and on TV as well as online. One example is "horse race" coverage of politics: How does (say) Obama's big speech help his chances to get elected? That's a different question from, What does his speech evoke in his listeners, what does it promise in policy terms, what does it suggest about how he would govern if elected? Those are all different ways to frame a political story.
A lot of framing happens unconsciously; working journalists tend to apply "default" frames that they carry around with them. A reporter who's on the cops or the City Hall beat for years may start unwittingly identifying with the people he or she covers, and frame stories from their point of view. A middle-aged white reporter will make different assumptions than a young black one will. Over time, the journalistic product will tend toward a certain sort of uniformity, as certain values of the news organization assert themselves.
This all requires not only journalistic but also sociological study to comprehend and bring together. I'm still in the early stages.
My conference paper is an early stab at collating and classifying the frames in common use, from the cultural and mythological (the "hero", the "good mother", etc.) to the specific. It is a beginning, not an end. I expect I'll be at this endeavor for some time yet.
Comments welcome, as always.
A couple of years ago when I was a copy editor at a large-ish newspaper in Texas, a story came across my desk with a turn of phrase that struck me as out of place. As I recall, it was a profile of a young woman who had gained recognition for her work in church groups. The phrase that jumped out at me was something like "when she was 14 she accepted Jesus as her personal savior".
Now, that's a perfectly normal things to say if you're a born-again or evangelical Christian, or if you're writing for a publication aimed at such folks. This newspaper, however, was at least nominally secular. The matter-of-fact adoption of sectarian language in a city full of not only born-agains but also Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Episcopalians, Muslims, Jews, and agnostics and atheists seemed to be taking a side, if you will, in the religious discussion that happens every day in the public sphere.
I wanted to discuss it with the city desk and maybe the reporter, but I realized I didn't even know how to start the discussion. Most working journalists can talk with ease about representing points of view and "balance" and so forth, but that sort of subtle framing isn't usually discussed in the newsroom. We lacked a common vocabulary for the questions the story raised.
So I decided to go back to school to learn more. I'm focusing my study on frames; a frame is the guiding idea or concept or structure behind most of the stories in the news, both in print and on TV as well as online. One example is "horse race" coverage of politics: How does (say) Obama's big speech help his chances to get elected? That's a different question from, What does his speech evoke in his listeners, what does it promise in policy terms, what does it suggest about how he would govern if elected? Those are all different ways to frame a political story.
A lot of framing happens unconsciously; working journalists tend to apply "default" frames that they carry around with them. A reporter who's on the cops or the City Hall beat for years may start unwittingly identifying with the people he or she covers, and frame stories from their point of view. A middle-aged white reporter will make different assumptions than a young black one will. Over time, the journalistic product will tend toward a certain sort of uniformity, as certain values of the news organization assert themselves.
This all requires not only journalistic but also sociological study to comprehend and bring together. I'm still in the early stages.
My conference paper is an early stab at collating and classifying the frames in common use, from the cultural and mythological (the "hero", the "good mother", etc.) to the specific. It is a beginning, not an end. I expect I'll be at this endeavor for some time yet.
Comments welcome, as always.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Catching up
I apologize for the nonexistent pace of posts lately. I'll try to get caught up this week.
This past weekend my good friend and former co-worker Nora from Fort Worth came to visit. We took a dip in the 68-degree waters of Barton Springs Pool, rented a kayak and paddled around Lady Bird Lake, saw a movie, and just hung out and caught up on things. I have sore shoulders from the kayaking expedition, but it was well worth it.
In a week I leave for the AEJMC convention in Chicago. I'll spend this week working on the presentation of my paper.
This past weekend my good friend and former co-worker Nora from Fort Worth came to visit. We took a dip in the 68-degree waters of Barton Springs Pool, rented a kayak and paddled around Lady Bird Lake, saw a movie, and just hung out and caught up on things. I have sore shoulders from the kayaking expedition, but it was well worth it.
In a week I leave for the AEJMC convention in Chicago. I'll spend this week working on the presentation of my paper.
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