Download - WFOM 05 - Journalism and Criticism

Writing for Online Media

Professor Nicholas Leshi

Readings

“Eyewitness Tweets” by Eric SteuerWired

“How Journalism Has Changed…” by Rachel CarlsonJournalistics

“Witnesses Are Not Journalists” by Pete BosakThe Charlotte PR Blog

Definition of Journalism

Journalism is defined as the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news, or of conducting any news organization as a business.

Journalists

“You don’t need a particular degree or license to call yourself a journalist, as you would to call yourself a doctor, (a lawyer), or a psychologist. Instead, you call yourself a journalist if you work as a journalist. Until very recently, that meant that you published your writing in a newspaper (or a magazine) or that you worked in television or radio. Today, this may also mean that you are a blogger.”

– Jill Walker Rettberg

History of Journalism

1456 – Johannes Gutenberg invents the movable type printing press that allows for mass printing and distribution of published content.


1594 – the first printed periodical, a publication that is issued at regularly recurring intervals, is distributed in what is now Germany, Mercurius Gallobelgicus, written in Latin.


1623 – The earliest example of a “news book,” published in 8-to-24 page quarto formats, The Continuation of Our Weekly News, appears regularly in London.


1665 – The first newspaper published in English, the Oxford Gazette (later named the London Gazette), appears in England.


1702 – The first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, appears in England. It later merged with the Daily Gazetteer in 1735 and lasted under various names until 1797.


1721 – The first American colonial newspaper, the New-England Courant, published by James Franklin (Benjamin Franklin’s brother), is distributed.


1729 – A year after moving to Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin takes over the Pennsylvania Gazette.


1750 – In the six largest American colonies, 14 weekly newspapers were published, the most popular and successful appearing up to three times a week.

1770s – In 35 American/colonial cities, 89 newspapers were published.

1800 – About 234 newspapers were being published in the United States of America.


Early newspapers were opinionated, blatantly partisan, and openly copied content from other publications.

1791 – First Amendment to the Constitution, protecting freedom of the press and other freedoms, is approved.


1833 – The Sun, a newspaper in New York, debuts, becoming the first to popularize the idea of “human interest stories,” presenting people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about sympathy in the reader or viewer. Human interest stories are sometimes criticized as "soft" news, or manipulative, sensationalistic programming.

The Sun survived until 1950 and was then resurrected in 2002 as The New York Sun. It ceased print publication in 2008 , but continues as an online edition at NYSun.com

History of JournalismAs American cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington grew with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, so did newspapers. Larger printing presses, the telegraph, and other technological innovations allowed newspapers to print thousands of copies, boost circulation, and increase revenue.


1835 – The New York Herald, the first publication to fit the description of a modern newspaper, was founded by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. It was the first newspaper to have city staff covering regular beats and spot news, along with regular business and Wall Street coverage.

1838 – For the New York Herald, Bennett organized the first foreign correspondent staff of six men in Europe and assigned domestic correspondents to key cities, including the first reporter to regularly cover Congress.


1841 – The New York Tribune, the first newspaper to gain national prominence, was founded, edited by Horace Greeley. Within 20 years, it was shipping thousands of copies to other large cities, leading other major newspapers to do the same.

1886 – The New York Tribune began using the linotype machine in its printing process, which rapidly increased the speed and accuracy with which type could be set.


1851 – The New York Times was founded by George Jones and Henry Raymond (originally as the New-York Daily Times).


Wire services were developed to meet the growing demand for more news stories by urban newspapers whose staff reporters could not keep up with the amount of news their readers were expecting to read. The first was a cooperative between 6 New York-based newspapers that shared coverage of Europe.

1858 – What became the Associated Press received the first transmission ever of European news through the trans-Atlantic cable.


1871 – A famous example of the emergence of investigative journalism, the New York Herald sent reporter Henry Morton Stanley on an African expedition where he found the missing Professor David Livingstone.


1887 – James Bennett Gordon, Jr., becomes the first American newspaper publisher to launch a European version, spinning off his New York Herald into the Paris Herald, which would eventually become the International Herald Tribune.


1883 – William Randolph Hearst launches the New York Journal.

1896 – Joseph Pulitzer launches the New York World.

The competition between newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer leads to the development of “yellow journalism,” which relies on eye-catching, headline-grabbing stories rather than well-researched news to attract an audience.

History of JournalismMuckraking, more investigative reporting and greater risks to advance social causes, becomes popular, especially among smaller publications competing with larger dailies.

1865 – The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly news magazine, is launched.1914 – The New Republic news magazine debuts.1923 – Time magazine is founded by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce.1933 – Newsweek is launched.1933 – United States News magazine is launched and eventually merges with World Report, which debuted in 1946, to become U.S. News and World

Report.1955 – The Village Voice is launched in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.1965 – The Phoenix is launched in Boston.


1920s – Radio begins competing with print as a mass medium delivering news.

1930s-1940s – Newsreels shown in movie theaters before or after the feature film offer a new, visual view of the news.

1950s - People begin to turn to television for the news.

1970s-1980s – Computers begin to revolutionize how news is gathered and reported.


1960s-1970s – The power of the press emerges as media impact presidential elections, the civil rights movement, international policy, and other major events.

Modern Concept of Traditional Media“The values that anchored modernity were reflected in journalism: a sense that reality could be observed and documented from an objective viewpoint, an emphasis on constant change and timeliness, and a belief in being able to represent reality accurately.”

– Melissa Wall

Birth of Modern Journalism

The profession of journalism and our idea of “news” developed as recently as the nineteenth century, becoming a commodity that could be sold and resold.

Evolution of Modern Journalism

During the twentieth century, journalism further developed in order to reach the largest number of people. One strategy was that of presenting the news as objective – a detached, neutral report that usually included a counter point of view to any controversy so as to offend the fewest people possible.

Challenges of Modern Journalism

In reducing discussions to two binary points of view, alternative perspectives would often disappear.

Traditional media became businesses motivated by profit and the need to reach the largest audiences possible, so a gatekeeping system was established to determine what “stories” would be worth printing and broadcasting, limiting the variety of choices available to the usually passive public.

“Although freedom of speech was recognized as an important human right in the twentieth century, in practice only a tiny percentage of the population in twentieth-century democracies could easily share their ideas with more than the people immediately surrounding them.” – Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

Emergence of Postmodern Journalism

New Media have altered the perception of what journalism can and should be. Classic modern characteristics of journalism are being replaced by postmodernist ideas seen in blogs and other online writing and creation of user-generated content, such as personalization, audience participation in content discussion and creation, and new story forms that are fragmented and interdependent with other stories (whether online or from traditional media).

“The Internet changed one of the greatest obstacles to true freedom of the press by eliminating or greatly reducing the cost of production and distribution.

Blogs provide a means of publishing and distributing that is cheap and simple enough for everyone in the Western world to use directly, whether from home, school, the library, or even a mobile phone.” – Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

How the Internet Changed Journalism

News is less of a commodity.


News can be accessed anywhere.


News can be accessed anytime.


It is easier to provide commentary on the news.


The general public can report the news.

“This new freedom to publish at will has caused journalists and editors to reevaluate the role of mainstream, professional media.

As blogs became a familiar genre, the mainstream media began to discuss whether blogging was a threat to journalism and to the media as we have known them throughout the twentieth century. Journalists began to ask a question that kept recurring: Is blogging journalism?” – Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

Ways in Which Blogs Intersect with Journalism

Blogs can give first-hand reports from ongoing events, whether wars, natural disasters, or crimes.


Some bloggers set out to tell stories that might just as well have been told by traditional journalists, filling in where mainstream press have failed or provided insufficient coverage. (In some cases, blogs provide independent-minded journalists with a printing press of their own, free of any editor.)


Many bloggers follow mainstream media and other blogs and filter stories according to their interests, or they carefully monitor every news item about a particular person or issue. These writers are often called filterbloggers or gatewatchers.

Gatekeeping in Traditional Media

Traditional media act as gatekeepers of information, a regime of control over what content is allowed to emerge from the production processes in the print and broadcast industries.

The controllers of these media control the “gates” through which content is released to their audiences.

Gatekeeping effectively keeps traditional journalism a closed process.

Different Stages on Gatekeeping in Traditional Media

Input Phase – where news is gathered, only by staff journalists hired by the traditional media outlet


Output Phase – where news is published, a closed editorial hierarchy that restricts the content


Response Phase – where the audience comments on the news, but there is an editorial selection of which comments to make public, and often tedious hurdles to get comments to reach the appropriate gatekeepers in traditional media

Gatekeepers vs. Gatewatchers

The closed system is collapsing in today’s world of participatory media.

Bloggers represent a turn, from the gatekeeping that the mass media has traditionally performed, to gatewatching. Mainstream media filters the type of news that professional journalists, producers, and editors deem worthy to publish or broadcast, and now blogs filter the types of traditional news that online writers deem worthy to share, discuss, criticize, and/or build upon.

Traditional Journalists vs. Cyberjournalists

Mainstream (print, TV, Radio) New Media (blogs, podcasts, Web video)


Mainstream

Professional Standards

New Media

Amateur Perception


Mainstream

Professional Training

New Media

Self-Taught


Mainstream

Career Advancements

New Media

Personal Interests


Mainstream

Professional Hierarchy

New Media

Peer Review


Mainstream

Reliability

New Media

Reputation


Mainstream

Authority

New Media

Transparency


Mainstream

Objectivity

New Media

Subjectivity


Mainstream

Expensive

New Media

Cheap or Free


Mainstream

Monetary Rewards

New Media

Monetization Challenges


Mainstream

Audience Size Dependence

New Media

Audience Size Irrelevance


Mainstream

Accessibility

New Media

Common Legitimacy


Mainstream

Established Legal Rights

New Media

Emerging Legal Rights


Mainstream

Time Sensitive and Time Dependence

New Media

Virtual Immediacy

“Recently proposed legal definitions show the shift that is occurring in our understanding of what a journalist is. Journalism is no longer exclusively defined according to the medium in which a person reports, but rather the definition is growing significantly broader, and not necessarily tied to a specific medium.”

– Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

“Blogging and other forms of online writing and user-created media are causing us to redefine the nature of journalism itself.” – Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

Traditional Practices of Professional Journalism

Directly quoting sources


Fact checking


Posting corrections


Receiving permission to use copyrighted material


Providing evidence and examples to support theories and speculation.

(Linking to original source material)

Ways to Build Trust and Credibility

Traditional media embrace objectivity and authority through institutional credibility, building trust through “professional” standards.

New media embrace subjectivity and independence through personal authenticity, building trust individually.

Traditional Media Are Turning to Online Media TacticsFrom network television and radio to local newscasts, traditional news outlets are experimenting with becoming more casual and “opinionated” to attract viewers who see blogs as more credible than the mainstream press.

Traditional Media Are Turning to Online Media TacticsNews networks are using visual techniques inspired by new media, such as ticker news displays, open forum discussions, use of viewer-submitted audio and video, etc.

Traditional Media Are Turning to Online Media TacticsJournalists are increasingly presenting themselves as participants in events rather than assuming they can stay outside.

Traditional Media Are Turning to Online Media TacticsTraditional media, from radio to newspapers and magazines to movies and television programs, have supplemented their mainstream content with material online -- Web sites, social media, blogs, and user-generated-content sharing sites.

Traditional Media Are Turning to Online Media TacticsMarketers and traditional media practitioners are recognizing the power of New Media and are actively developing and implementing plans and executing techniques to spread their message beyond traditional channels and into the blogosphere.

Symbiosis Between Traditional and New Media

Blogs and mainstream media are in many ways symbiotic.

New media still frequently depend on information and sources from large mainstream media for their content ideas and for their exposure to larger audiences.

Likewise, traditional media are more frequently turning to blogs, social networks, and user-generated content to add credibility to their stories and to spread their messages.

Midterm Assignment(Written Reviews of Classmates’ Blogs Due February 25)

Short Written Reviews of Classmates’ Blogs

Length – About One Paragraph for Each Blog

What’s great about each one?What can be improved?

What works, what doesn’t?Be specific, provide examples.

Be concise and interesting.

Due on February 25Please bring a hardcopy to class

andEmail an electronic copy to [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Some Things to Look For in Blog Reviews(Written Reviews of Classmates’ Blogs Due February 25)

Originality

Appearance

Quality of Writing

Personality/Tone

Frequency


Originality

• Blog Topic-- Unique Idea-- Unique Perspective of a Familiar Idea

• Blog Title• Execution


Appearance

• Template Selection• Layout• Images• Colors• Fonts


Quality of Writing

• Headlines• Style • Grammar• Keeping the reader’s interest


Personality/Tone

• Humor• Sincerity • Fearlessness• Authority


Frequency

• How often is the blog updated with new posts?(At least once a week? Less? More?)

• How quick is the response time to reader comments?

Criticism

Criticism is the judgment of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another. To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault.

Criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature, social movements, film, arts, and similar objects and events. The goal of this type of criticism is to understand the work or event more thoroughly.

Critics

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgment.

Professional critics of art, food, literature, movies, television, theater, music, culture, etc., are expected to have a keen eye for the qualities of what they are reviewing and a deep knowledge of the history of their specific field.

Many now famous and celebrated artists were not recognized by the art critics of their time, often because their art was in a style not yet understood or favored. Conversely, some critics have become particularly important helping to explain and promote new trends and art movements.

What Is a Review, Anyway?

A review is a critical analysis of a subject.

“Critical” in the sense that you’re using criteria to judge it.

“Analysis” in the sense that you’re breaking the experience into its pieces and examining each to consider how the pieces fit together to gain a better sense of the whole.

A review is not simply your opinion, although there is a place for personal opinions. There’s a huge difference between “I liked Killer Ants Devouring Lithuania,” and “Killer Ants Devouring Lithuania was a good movie.”

From “So You Want to Be a Critic,” Blogcritics.org:http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/so-you-want-to-be-a1/page-2/#ixzz1ZplYDDoE

http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/so-you-want-to-be-a1/page-2/#ixzz1ZplYDDoE

Types of Criticism

Consumerist – recommendations to a consumer about products and services available and the merits or demerits of each.

Types of Criticism

Structuralist – reviews of a piece of work based on the established structures of the medium

Types of Criticism

Economic – financial point of view

Types of Criticism

Marxist – from the viewpoint of class struggles, often anti-capitalist

Types of Criticism

Ethical – discussing the work’s values or perceived principles

Types of Criticism

The Auteur Theory – viewing the piece as part of the overall body of work of the project’s primary “author”

Types of Criticism

Semiotic – examining the symbolic nature of something

Types of Criticism

Sociological – analyzing a work’s cultural impact

Types of Criticism

Psychological – reviewing a work’s individual meaning, even if it may not have been intentionally intended by the creator

Types of Criticism

Scholarly – often intended for academic audiences, with documented quantitative and qualitative research.

Examples of Criticism Through History

Classical Criticism – Aristotle’s Poetics describes literary forms with many critical examples of the art of his day. (Also Plato, Horace, Longinus, Plotinus, etc.)


Medieval Criticism – Often focused on religious texts (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature). Examples include Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’ The Nature and Domain of Sacred Doctrine. (Also Dante, Boccaccio, Bharata Muni, Al-Jahiz, etc.)


Renaissance Criticism – Developed classical ideas of unity of form and function, and the idea of building on what came before. Examples include Lodovico Castelvetro, Francis Bacon, etc.


Enlightenment Criticism – Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Alexander Pope, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, William Blake, etc. The Age of Reason promoted intellectual exchange.


19th Century Criticism – Introduced the idea that something noteworthy need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect. Examples include William Wordsworth, John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, etc.


The New Criticism of the 20th Century – Focus on form and precise attention to the “text” or source material. Examples include Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, Carl Jung, Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky, etc.


Film Criticism is the analysis and evaluation of motion pictures, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and published in journals.


Film Theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large.

Qualities That Critics Should Judge

Aesthetics

Skill and Technique

Inherent Meaning

Uniqueness

Fulfilled Intent

Strategies for Writing a Review


Start with a category to give what you are reviewing some context.


Develop clear criteria of what works and doesn’t work.


Make a judgment on your experience with what you are reviewing.


Gather evidence to support your opinions.


Sum it all up.


Start with a category to give what you are reviewing some context.

Develop clear criteria of what works and doesn’t work.

Make a judgment on your experience with what you are reviewing.

Gather evidence to support your opinions.

Sum it all up.

Tips for Writing a Review


Don’t rehash the plot or spend too much time describing what you are reviewing without expressing your opinion on its worth.


Do provide examples to support your comments.


Avoid simplistic criticisms (“it was awesome,” “it sucked”)


Provide insightful analysis.


Don’t rehash the plot or spend too much time describing what you are reviewing without expressing your opinion on its worth.

Do provide examples to support your comments.

Avoid simplistic criticisms (“it was awesome,” “it sucked”)

Provide insightful analysis.

More Tips for Writing a Review


Don’t be boring.


Let your personality shine through.


Even if you’re not an expert in the topic you’re reviewing, be honest about your personal reaction and experience.


Tap into your knowledge of the subject matter you’re reviewing.


Be consistent or explain any change in your tastes.


Don’t be boring.

Let your personality shine through.

Even if you’re not an expert in the topic you’re reviewing, be honest about your personal reaction and experience.

Tap into your knowledge of the subject matter you’re reviewing.

Be consistent or explain any change in your tastes.

Examples of Online Reviews

Blogcritics.org


Amazon.com


Epinions.com


Yelp.com


TripAdvisor.com


RottenTomatoes.com


Citysearch

Assignments Due Next Class

Post at least one new entry in your blog.

Read your classmates’ blogs and comment where/when appropriate.

Read Chapter 5 of the required text, Blogging by Jill Walker Rettberg.

Start working on your mid-term assignment.