THE POLITICS OF JOURNALISTIC CREATIVITY

This article begins with the assertion that creativity in journalism has moved from being a matter of guile and ingenuity to being about expressiveness, and that this reflects a broader cultural shift from professional expertise to the authenticity of personal expression as dominant modes of valorization. It then seeks to unpack the normative baggage that underpins the case for creativity in the cultural industries. First, there is a prioritization of agency, which does not stand up against the phenomenological argument that we do not own our own practices. Second, creative expression is not necessarily more free, simply alternately structured. As with Judith Butler's performativity model, contemporary discourses of creativity assume it to have a unique quality by which it eludes determination (relying on tropes of fluidity), whereas it can be countered that it is in spontaneous, intuitive practice that we are at our least agentive. Third, the article argues against the idea that by authorizing journalists (and audiences) to express themselves, creativity is democratizing, since the always-already nature of recognition means that subjects can only voice their position within an established terrain rather than engage active positioning.     

ON THE PERFORMATIVITY OF JOURNALISTIC IDENTITY

The concept of “ritual” has played an important role in research within mass media and journalism studies in the last decades. Both ethnographic and anthropological research in media studies has devoted attention to an elaboration of its theoretical scope. However, as this paper argues, reading the concept in the perspective of Butler's theory of performativity can considerably deepen our understanding of the relation between rituals and journalistic identity. As such, the paper wishes to re-evaluate important work in the field of newsroom ethnography and aims to show to what extent rituals at the same time constitute the occupational values of journalists and may offer them a way of subverting the dominant journalistic paradigm.     

THE PERFECT CUT

This study examines how politicians act as sources on Dutch television news. It argues that due to the mediatization of politics and a shift towards more interpretive forms of journalism, journalists use politicians' quotes and sound bites first and foremost to support their interpretation of news events. Previous research has shown that because of the growing importance of media logic, journalists are more autonomous and powerful in their relations with sources. This case study shows, however, how the format of news items, especially the use of interviews and quotes, supports the interpretive nature of television news. While there is less on-screen interaction between journalists and politicians on television news, interviews are cut into short sound bites of politicians without the context of the actual interview. Detached reporting of what politicians say because of its newsworthiness has become less important than fitting suitable quotes into predetermined news frames. The analysis is based on a case study of the 2010 local council election coverage by the two major Dutch television news programs, NOS Eight O'Clock News (NOS Achtuurjournaal) and RTL News (RTL Nieuws).     

THE JOURNALISTIC GUT FEELING

What goes on in editorial conferences and how do news journalists decide what is newsworthy? The journalistic “gut feeling” is an important part of the professional self-understanding of journalists and editors expressing how news judgements seem self-evident and self-explaining to the practitioners. This article presents an analysis of everyday news work drawing on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu and using ethnographic material from observations of editorial practices in a Danish television newsroom as a case study. The analytical concepts “journalistic doxa”, “news habitus” and “editorial capital” are put to empirical work on close-up observations of journalistic practices in editorial conferences and two types of news values are identified as part of the journalistic “gut feeling”: the explicit orthodox/heterodox news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic judgement, and the implicit, silent doxic news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic doxa. An important task for future studies of journalistic practice is to investigate the seemingly self-evident orthodox news values as well as making visible the doxic news values imbedded in journalistic practice.     

THE LAST DAYS OF CIVIC JOURNALISM

Almost 15 years after it started, civic journalism is waning. Some say that its practices have been integrated into the routines of news making without the label attached. Others say that it is simply dying. This study seeks to define the legacy of civic journalism by investigating the news practices in Savannah Morning News, a newspaper in Georgia, USA. Ethnographic observation and interviews found that the ideas of civic journalism were instituted in the newspaper through its presentation and the routines of discovering community news. However, it was less obvious in the discovery and gathering of news about larger events and issues. The role of the news organization in convening the public for problem solving has continued, but the role of championing particular solutions was not observed.     

THE JOURNALISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF VOTERS IN THE SPANISH GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008

This article examines the mediated construction of citizens during an electoral campaign, a political period in which citizens are normatively expected to play a fundamental role. From a social constructionist, discursive approach, this article qualitatively explores the representation of citizens in the press in the coverage of the main Spanish newspapers (El País, El Mundo, and Abc) during the campaign for the Spanish General Election of 2008. It is understood that the media's portrayal of citizens contributes to spreading and legitimising certain discourses about citizens, about citizens' political behaviour, and also about the reasons behind citizens' political attitudes and motivations. On occasions, these discourses are based on pre-electoral polls or previous research, although many rest only on inferences about the public. The newspapers put forward a reductionistic set of ambivalent discourses naturalising uninformed voting and legitimising the vote for major parties, while sympathising, at the same time, with disenchanted voters, justifying citizens' distrust in politicians.     

Tracing the Sources

This article explores health journalists’ sourcing patterns in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium across a range of different media including newspapers, magazines, radio, television and online health news websites. A cross-sectional quantitative content analysis of health news items collected in February 2015 (N?=?981) was established to examine the number and origin (e.g. industry, citizens, experts) of sources (N?=?1998) mentioned in health news stories with particular attention paid to differences across various media types. Despite recent claims of media convergence, cross-media comparisons are scarce and, for a specialized beat such as health, nonexistent. The key findings of this study indicate that ordinary citizens and academic experts constitute the two largest source categories. The small share of industry-related sources confirms journalists’ skeptical attitude towards content provided by the industry. But on closer inspection, large differences can be observed across various media types. On the one hand, ordinary citizens occur with relatively high frequency on television but hardly make an appearance in online news items. Academic sources, on the other hand, are dominant online but nearly absent in television news items. In sum, this analysis demonstrates that health journalists’ source uses differ across various media platforms.     

THE NEWS-GENERATING MACHINE

This paper examines the reporter–source interview in television news production. The starting point is that the interview as part of news production is largely ignored as a subject of research, especially considering its central importance in journalism. The interview is usually looked at as a method to gain information from interviewees. This study looks at the interview in a more constructivist way. The central claim is that the interview functions as a “news-generating machine” that compels replies from interviewees that can be used as raw material for news stories. The article brings forth the importance of the “pre-interview”, it examines and exemplifies standard question strategies, such as negative questions, and how the interviewee replies are edited and represented as news. In doing so, the article also shows how certain questions’ strategies are linked with the making of such common news frames as “the problem frame”, “the attraction” and “psychological news narratives”.     

THE PROMISE OF COMPUTATIONAL JOURNALISM

Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is related in particular to three factors: larger government datasets becoming more widely available; the increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous nature of software; and the developing digital economy. Drawing upon international examples, this paper argues that computational journalism techniques may provide new foundations for original investigative journalism and increase the scope for new forms of interaction with readers. Computational journalism provides a major opportunity to enhance the production of original investigative journalism, and to attract and retain readers online.     

Color,Caste and the Public Sphere

Broadcast network newsrooms are powerful gatekeepers, setting cultural standards and attitudes for America at large via the stories they tell and the images they project. In 1968, the federal Kerner Commission chastised American news media for ignoring race, and seeing through the “white man’s eyes” and speaking from “the white perspective.” Grounded in critical and cultural studies and organizational theory, this study analyzes the experiences of 23 post-Civil Rights generation black journalists working in broadcast newsrooms who continue to struggle against anti-black cultural norms and attitudes at great physical, psychological and financial cost.     

From Ivory Tower to Cross-Media Personas

This article introduces a theoretical typology of four rival yet converging ideal types of cultural critics in contemporary media culture and in cultural journalism, more specifically, encapsulated by the term the heterogeneous cultural critic and characterized by different kinds of authority and expertise: (1) the intellectual cultural critic, who is closely connected to an aesthetic tradition, bohemia and/or academia, or institutionalized cultural capital; (2) the professional cultural journalist, who is first and foremost embedded in a media professional logic; (3) the media-made arbiter of taste, whose authority is closely linked to practical experience with cultural production and repeated charismatic media performances; and (4) the everyday amateur expert, who offers subjective opinions and represents experience-based cultural taste. The aim is to provide an analytical minimum model for future empirical studies by outlining the contours of the multiple, objective and subjective, professional and non-professional cultural “authorities” of contemporary media culture.     

Cultural Journalism and Cultural Critique in a changing Media Landscape

This special issue addresses a topic of journalism studies that has previously been somewhat neglected but which has gained increasing scholarly attention since the mid-2000s: the coverage and evaluation of art and culture, or what we term “cultural journalism and cultural critique.” In this introduction, we highlight three issues that serve to frame the study of cultural journalism and cultural critique more generally and the eight articles of this special issue more specifically: (1) the constant challenge of demarcating cultural journalism and cultural critique, including the interrelations of “journalism” and “critique”; (2) the dialectic of globalisation’s cultural homogenisation, on the one hand, and the specificity of local/national cultures, on the other; and (3) the digital media landscape seen in terms of the need to rethink, perhaps even redefine cultural journalism and cultural critique.     

亲历（上海）“少年文化村”

一、留住这段历史记忆 60年来．不管我身在什么地方，眼前总会常常浮现出一群活泼可爱的孩子们的身影和他们的音容笑貌。他们就是当年我曾经任教过的曾被人们誉为“少年艺术家摇篮”的（上海）“少年文化村”的同学们。     

LOSING THEIR “MOJO”?

Mobile journalism, whereby a single reporter must write, shoot, and edit their own news stories, is a rapidly growing trend among local television news organizations in the United States and around the world. Using qualitative case study methodology, specifically in-depth interviews and observation, this study compares “mobile journalists” with journalists working within a traditional television news crew, in which a reporter concentrates on the writing and interviewing aspects of newsgathering and a videographer concentrates on the audio/video production. The research looked at four aspects of “professionalization” found in the sociology of professions literature; expert knowledge, professional autonomy, routinization, and encroachment from outside organizations. Findings suggest that the mobile journalists in this study have less specialized expert knowledge. Also, though the mobile journalists felt that working outside a crew gave them greater autonomy, their increased use of work routines suggests they have given up some control to organizational needs. Additionally, there is evidence that these mobile journalists have allowed some encroachment by other professionals, specifically public relations professionals, in order to accomplish their work tasks within specified deadlines with limited time and resources.     

从FRBR到FRAR——兼述中文文献资源的规范控制工作

分析规范控制对FRBR目录实现的重要影响和FRBR、FRAR思想对规范工作提出的新要求,重点从规范控制的角度探讨了国内实现FRBR化目录的难点和障碍。并对中文文献资源的规范控制工作的发展提出了一些看法和建议。     

Where Do Facts Matter?

Print magazines are unique among nonfiction media in their dedication of staff and resources to in-depth, word-by-word verification of stories. Over time, this practice has established magazines’ reputation for reliability, helped them retain loyal readers amid a glut of information sources, and protected them from litigation. But during the past decade, websites, mobile platforms, and social media have expanded the types of stories and other content that magazines provide for readers. Doing so has shortened the time between the creation and dissemination of content, challenging and in some cases squeezing out fact-checkers’ participation. This study examines the procedures applied to stories in magazines and their non-print platforms, seeking to discern what decisions were made in response to the speed of digital publication, what effects these decisions have had, what lessons have been learned and what changes have been made over time. The results suggest that fact-checking practices for print content remain solidly in place at most magazines, if executed with diminished resources; however, magazine media are also exploring new processes to ensure accuracy and protect their reputations in an accelerated media environment.     

THE MATERIAL FORM OF THE TELEVISION SET

This article offers a unique study of the material form of the television receiver between the 1930s and 1960s. Very little has been written to date on the history of the television set as an artefact. Yet its design and appearance played a major role in the acceptance of television in the home. The meanings of television sets are explored, from the design of wooden cabinets as family furniture to the shaping of portable sets as symbols of progress. A case study of British events is conducted, with reference made to American and other nations’ developments in so far as they relate to Britain's television receiver history. The article confirms that the material form of the television receiver contributed to a narrative of domesticity and progress by reconfiguring the relationship between home and communication technology. The fusion of craft and futurist ideas in design reflected tensions about the receiver as an expression of traditional domestic values, of progress and modernity, and as an icon.