The Rockefeller rhetoric: Writing speeches for the 1970 campaign

The author of this article is Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's chief speech writer. The article deals with professional speechwriting both generally, and specifically, with regard to the 1970 New York State gubernatorial campaign. It describes the qualities sought in speech writers, how the speech writing effort proceeds, some rhetorical effects sought, and provides somewhat more detail about the typical procedure in preparing one speech.     

Preparation of manuscripts for the journal of broadcasting

This study develops and tests hypotheses concerning the relationship of different media to psychological outcomes. Specifically, it is postulated that print media are related to analytic cognition (reason) and electronic media to syncretic cognition (emotion). Two hundred and forty magazine and television advertisements are analyzed both in terms of their attributes and the reactions they evoke. Media differences are found for both emotional and rational responses and the main effects of media, product category and advertising strategy variables are seen to account substantially for the variance in analytic and syncretic cognition. Of special relevance to advertisers is the finding that the choice of media is the best predictor of emotional response among all the variables in the study.     

Economic influences on long‐form network news stories

This study considers the effects of changes in competition at the national television level on the content of national television newscasts. The authors find that from 1975 to 1989, network news use of long‐form stories, a primary means of product differentiation in news, could not adequately be predicted by economic theory or the socialization theory of news.     

Military Wives' Stressful Disclosures to Their Deployed Husbands: The Role of Protective Buffering

This study combines the fever model with communication privacy management to examine the conditions under which military wives are likely to disclose their family stressors or engage in protective buffering with their deployed husbands. Military wives (N =105) whose husbands were deployed and who had at least one child completed a web-based survey about the communication of family stressors during deployment. Protective buffering was associated with negative health symptoms, and disclosure was related to marital satisfaction. Wives' perceptions that their husbands were in dangerous situations as well as their perceptions that husbands were supportive of their disclosures were both related to protective buffering and disclosure.     

Maternal stress in nonverbal learning disorder: a comparison with reading disorder

Maternal stress was assessed in mothers of children ages 8 to 11 years with learning disorders (LD). Age-, gender-, and IQ-matched children with reading disorders (RD; n = 31), children with nonverbal learning disorders (NVLD; n = 21), and typically developing control participants (n = 23) participated. Mothers of children with LD reported higher levels of stress, although the specific nature of the stress appeared to vary by disorder subtype: Mothers of children with RD reported higher levels of general distress, whereas mothers of children with NVLD reported higher levels of dysfunctional interactions with their child. The severity of the LD was strongly associated with maternal stress in the sample of children with NVLD but not in the sample of children with RD. In the sample of children with NVLD, the best predictors of maternal stress were 2 variables associated with the child: The lower the child's Performance IQ, the higher the level of maternal stress. Furthermore, the level of the child's internalizing symptoms was also a strong predictor of maternal stress in the sample of children with NVLD. In our sample of children with RD, the 3 best predictors were all variables associated with the mother, including her age, her level of reported psychiatric symptoms, and her overall level of social support.     

Examining the intergenerational transmission of violence in a New Zealand birth cohort

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines whether exposure to interparental violence in childhood predicts subsequent involvement in interpartner violence and violent crime after controlling for potentially confounding factors. METHOD: The investigation analyses data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a prospective, longitudinal study of a birth cohort of over 1000 New Zealand young adults studied at multiple assessment points from birth to the age of 25. RESULTS: After controlling for potentially confounding risk factors, observed associations between exposure to interparental violence in childhood and increased risks of both (a) psychological interpartner violence perpetration and victimization and (b) violent crime, were reduced to statistical non-significance. No statistically significant associations were observed between exposure to interparental violence in childhood and increased risk of physical interpartner violence perpetration or victimization. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that the effects of childhood exposure to interparental violence on subsequent interpartner violence are weak and largely explained by the psychosocial context within which childhood exposure to interparental violence occurs.     

Turning around failing organizations: Insights for educational leaders

Purpose In this article, we review the literature from the organizational sciences to develop a grounded narrative of turnaround in education. Approach The approach is a review of literature. We employ an integrated process to unpack and make sense of the turnaround literature from the organizational sciences. We rely on strategies appropriate for document analysis, and borrow analytic strategies (e.g., memoing, coding) employed with interview data. Findings We examine seven defining themes that flow from our review of empirical and theoretical work on organizational recovery in firms, non-educational public agencies, and not-for-profit organizations: (1) not all failing schools are worth saving; (2) focus on leadership; (3) act quickly; (4) diagnose first; (5) emphasize efficiency moves; (6) create a sense of hope; and (7) backward map from the customer and focus on core activities linked to valued outcomes. Implications We posit that the literature on turning around failing organizations in sectors outside of education provides blueprints for recovery activity in failing schools. The implications for turnaround leadership are particularly strong. Originality This is the first systematic effort to mine research in the corporate, not-for-profit, and public sectors to develop insights for turning around failing schools.