Models of Journalism: The functions and influencing factors [1 ed.] 1138239569, 9781138239562

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Models of Journalism

Models of Journalism investigates the most fundamental questions of how journalists can best serve the public and what factors enable or obstruct them in doing so. The book evaluates previous scholarly attempts at modeling the function and influencing factors of journalism, and proceeds to develop a range of important new models that take contemporary challenges faced by journalists and journalism into account. Among these new models is the “chronology-of-journalism,” which introduces a new set of influencing factors that can affect journalists in the 21st century. These include internal factors (journalistic principles, precedents and practices) and external factors (journalistic production, publication and perception). Another new model, the “journalistic compass,” delineates differences and similarities between some of the most important journalistic roles in the media landscape. For each new model, Peter Bro takes the actions and attitudes of individual journalists as its starting point. Models of Journalism combines practice and theory to outline and assess existing theoretical models alongside original ones. The book will be a useful tool for researchers, lecturers and practitioners who are engaged with the ever-evolving notions of what journalism is and who journalists are. Peter Bro is Professor, PhD and Director of the Centre for Journalism at the University of Southern Denmark. He is a board member of several journals and media companies and writes widely within the fields of journalism, media and communication studies.

Models of Journalism The Function and Influencing Factors Peter Bro

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Peter Bro The right of Peter Bro to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bro, Peter, author. Title: Models of journalism : the function and influencing factors / Peter  Bro. Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017052829 | ISBN 9781138239562 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315295572 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Journalism—Philosophy. | Journalism—Technological innovations. | Journalism—History—21st century. | Online journalism. | Reporters and reporting. Classification: LCC PN4731 .B75 2018 | DDC 070.4/01—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017052829 ISBN: 978-1-138-23956-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-29557-2 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figuresvi List of tablevii Foreword: writing (in) a bookviii Acknowledgmentsx 1 Introduction: influencing factors of journalism

1

PART 1

Internal factors17 2 First influencing factor: journalistic principles

19

3 Second influencing factor: journalistic precedents

36

4 Third influencing factor: journalistic practices

56

PART 2

External factors77 5 Fourth influencing factor: journalistic production

79

6 Fifth influencing factor: journalistic publication

100

7 Sixth influencing factor: journalistic perception

118

8 Conclusion: the function of journalism

136

List of references152 Index161

Figures

1.1 Internal and external influences on journalism 10 1.2 The chronology-of-journalism: factors that can affect journalistic action 15 2.1 The journalistic compass: normative dichotomies in news reporting 31 3.1 The journalistic compass: model for historical analysis and activation 47 4.1 The relationship between the roles of journalists and the roles of news sources 69 5.1 The relationship between the roles of news sources and journalists 94 6.1 Influencing factors from within and without news organizations114 7.1 The roles of the public related to the roles of journalists 132 8.1 Influential factors between intentions and realizations 142

Table

4.1 Sourcing practices: markers, translators and actors in the news media

72

Foreword: writing (in) a book

The sales assistant in the bookstore could sense my disappointment. I had started a semester at the PhD program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and I had trouble finding one of the books on the reading list. As it turned out, there were no more new copies of the book, so the sales assistant suggested I go down to the basement of the bookstore where they stored all the used copies. Responding to my disappointment, she noted that used books also had advantages. Earmarked pages, underlined sentences and notes in the margins could not only help me find the most important parts of the book but also give the book an even greater value, since the readers might have invested their own thoughts – literately – on top of those of the author. Her point gave me an epiphany, and I still remember the result today. I started skimming through all the used copies in search of the book that was marked in the most inspirational way for me. For the sales assistant was right. Even though all of the books had the same cover and the same preprinted text, the old copies varied greatly when it came to the thoughts readers had included in them. Since then, I have bought many books – both old and new – and even if the sales assistant might only have offered me a well-known sales pitch in the book industry, I have come to believe that the process of overwriting typifies scholarly work when it is best. Doing research might not be a question of standing on the shoulders of colleagues with great stature, as Isaac Newton put it. It might be more correct to note that research is a question of writing on top of each other. With that in mind, I see my bookshelves as offering visible proof of those past and present colleagues that have come to offer me the greatest inspiration, and some of my most overwritten books are works by the late James Carey, who, incidentally, was kind enough to invite me to spend a semester at Columbia University, and who originally sent me off to the university bookstore. Since I was the first PhD student in journalism in Denmark, there were no relevant courses to follow at home and only a few colleagues to engage with, so Carey invited me to spend a semester in New York, where I could follow his classes and that of other prominent professors at the campus grounds on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That semester left its mark on me – and my bookshelves – and even today, more than a decade later, I can detect the inspiration on the pages of some of the new and old books I bought at the time. The book most worn out from earmarks

Foreword: writing (in) a book ix (both at the top of the pages and at times at the bottom of the pages) and with the most notes, underlines and other marks of important points contains an essay where Carey reminds us of the need to continually repair or even recast our maps, models and other types of symbolic representations of the world. “[T]he purpose of the representation is to express not the possible complexity of things but their simplicity,” starts a passage I have underlined twice. In the following pages of the book, Carey describes how some representations are surely more meaningful than others, and he suggests that researchers continuously strive to develop new representations that configure the most important features of an ever-changing world. This was scholarly work that he took upon himself in his more than hundred publications, but since his passing, he has left this important work for other, later generations of researchers to continue. This book is an attempt to follow his call for scholarly action, and even if there are no handwritten scribblings in the following chapters, the references on every page and in the reference list in the back of the book are testimony to the fact that this book is written on top of the work of many others. Most of these inspirational texts contain attempts to model the function and influencing factors of journalism, and many of these writers have come to inspire the ways in which researchers around the world think about journalism and journalists. This book attempts to do the same, but is also written with others in mind: both contemporary journalists in today’s newsrooms and future journalists who still reside in classrooms. For over the years, as a researcher, lecturer, director of a journalism school and a board member of media companies, I have come to find that we need new models that can not only help our understanding of the function and influencing factors of journalism in the 21st century but also help journalists understand how they – and we – might act in light of those factors that can both hinder and help journalism service the public. In case the models presented in this book do inspire such an understanding, please feel free to mark them clearly. Make earmarks on the pages, write notes in the margins and underline relevant passages. It will make it easier to find the most inspirational sections again – and your notes might even be helpful for other readers in the future, so we can continue the process of writing on top of each other. Peter Bro

Acknowledgments

“You walk into a room, and everyone sits down, and there’s no chair. Where can I sit?” James Carey asked rhetorically when he recalled the start of his career as a researcher (cf. Munson and Warren 1997, xiv). His story appeared in the introduction to the book James Carey: A Critical Reader, and his recollections had to do with his first years at University of Illinois. But James Carey has not been alone in that feeling. Finding the right place from where to sit and observe the world, when one embarks on a research career, is something that I suspect many of us have felt bewildered over. But he was kind enough to reserve a seat for me in his classes at Columbia University, since I had written to him and told him that there was little inspiration to find in Denmark, where I had just started as the first PhD student in journalism. This seat offered me many different vantage points and an adjacent vocabulary of journalism that I am still grateful to him and Andie Tucher, the director of the PhD program at Columbia University, for sharing with me. Now, I am fortunate to have my own students, both at bachelor, graduate and PhD programs, and most of them have also been open-minded in terms of welcoming me and the models presented in this book. These hundreds of students that by now have graduated from the various journalism programs at the Centre for Journalism at the University of Southern Denmark have in many instances been the first to encounter the models of – and for – journalism that form the backbone of this book. The students and my inspiring and intellectually stimulating colleagues have made many suggestions on how to model journalism – and how to ensure that these models could also become an inspiration for journalists themselves. These models would, however, never have been developed if a large number of journalists, editors and others working in news organizations across Denmark had not participated in a series of research projects throughout the first decade of the 21st century. In these projects, researchers and practitioners worked together to experiment with new ways of approaching the public by way of journalism, and while some projects were successful and others certainly were not, they all contributed to the uncovering of factors that can influence the actions of journalism. Some of these collaborators have since been introduced to the models, while many other practicing journalists and editors, who have learned how to use the models, knew little or nothing of their origin. But the ways in which these journalists – both

Acknowledgments xi the future and the very present ones – have worked with the journalistic compass, the influencing factors of journalism and other models have gradually made their potentials, and problems, clearer and more applicable. I would like to think that this work has been beneficial for both the research and practice of journalism, and it could not have been done without an openness in both classrooms and newsrooms – and over time, even in those boardrooms, where I have later gained insights into how the economic aspects of journalism can affect the ideological, practical and technical sides of journalism.

1 Introduction Influencing factors of journalism

“I wish to begin a movement that will raise journalism to the rank of a learned profession,” wrote the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in an essay titled The School of Journalism in Columbia University (1904, 19). Pulitzer’s proclamation was a response to criticism of the Hungarian-born publisher’s plans to fund a College of Journalism at Columbia University, and in an essay of no less than 48 pages, the benefactor of one of the world’s first journalism schools defended the wisdom of his endowment. “[N]ewspapers focus and culminate public opinion. Is it not time that this institution, of such vast power in the life of the nation, should be developed on the higher plane of enlarged and enlightened study?” he asked (1904). The question has not gone unanswered. Throughout the past century, hundreds of journalism schools have been started, not only in America but also around the world, and Pulitzer’s prediction that “before the century closes,” schools of journalism “will be generally accepted as a feature of specialized higher education, like schools of law or of medicine” (1904, 2) has come true at many universities. However, it is less clear if the last century has brought journalism any closer to what Pulitzer considered the most important part of his movement. In Pulitzer’s mind, the establishment of journalism schools should be seen as a literal building block for a new, more public-spirited press. Journalism schools were means to an end rather than an end itself. “It will be the object of the college to make better journalists, who will make better newspapers, which will better serve the public,” Pulitzer wrote in the concluding section of the essay that bore the telling title “Public Service the Supreme End” (1904, 46). The factors that could help or hinder journalists in providing such a service to the public were the main point of focus in what Pulitzer professed had become a “paper, which has exceeded all reasonable bounds” (1904, 45), and Pulitzer thought that many of these helping and hindering factors could best be properly addressed if future journalists were taught the right curriculum. In the central part of his essay, he therefore described a number of subjects that should be taught at a journalism school, including law, history, sociology, economics, statistics, ethics, the study of newspapers, and the principles of journalism. Welcoming the first students, however, took its time, and it was not until 1912 that the first journalism class at Columbia University was matriculated.

2  Introduction What has since become one of the world’s most renowned journalism schools, therefore, started more than 10 years after the establishment of Ecole Supérieure de Journalism de Paris, in 1899, and four years after the school of journalism at the University of Missouri admitted its first batch of students in 1908. Both were schools that also, from the very outset, stressed the need for journalists to work in favor of the public. Walter Williams, who founded the school in Missouri, stipulated that in his famous “The Journalist’s Creed” from 1914. Here, Williams wrote with words that resemble those of Joseph Pulitzer’s a decade earlier: I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust. Since the creed was introduced, it has been translated into numerous languages and it appears in multiple settings, from plaques on the walls in national press clubs to repeated references in the research literature about journalism. The creed first appeared in 1914, where it was included in the yearly edition of the style manual at the school in Missouri, and it was later included in a textbook written by Walter Williams and a colleague (Williams and Martin 1922), where the authors write about factors that can help and hinder journalists in servicing the public.

The function and influencing factors of journalism The question of how journalists can best function as service providers for the public, and what factors can help or hinder journalists in doing so, has not lost its relevance. Despite decades of discussions about what the function of journalism should be, little agreement has manifested itself within journalism. In time, the question has also increasingly been debated outside the newsrooms, and for good reasons. While the news media in many respects have become more independent over the past hundred years, many others in society have become more dependent on what the news media does. This has made the function and influencing factors of journalism an issue for many – both potential news sources and news consumers. To make matters even more complicated, the challenges and opportunities that Joseph Pulitzer aired in his lengthy defense for his endowment, and that Williams and his colleague mentioned in one of the very first textbooks about journalism, have also in time been joined by many other problems and potentials that few had anticipated in the beginning of last century. This becomes apparent when one reads Pulitzer’s eloquent essay today. “The March of Progress” was the title of one of the sections (1904, 23), where he describes the historical developments at the turn of last century that in his mind called for better journalism and better journalists. Were Pulitzer still alive today, he would surely need to write an even longer essay if he were to describe the problems and potentials that journalists face when

Introduction 3 working for the public in this century. The concerns that Pulitzer aired over changing technological, economic and ideological conditions have certainly not lessened. But since Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and other prominent figures at the turn of the 20th century are not around anymore to spark debates about the function and influencing factors of journalism – and also support the most ambitious attempts to remedy what they thought was wrong with journalism – other people have taken that responsibility upon them. Among the heirs have been three former deans from some of the most respected journalism schools in America that came to life during the 20th century. In the opening line of Educating Journalists they write, “Journalism is in one of its recurring periods of being dramatically remade” (Folkerts, Maxwell and Lemann 2013, 1), and they and many others – both before and after – describe a number of influencing factors that have resulted in what observers have termed everything from “tectonic” (Anderson, Bell and Shirky 2012) to “seismic” shifts in journalism. Some observers have almost given up on journalists and journalism altogether, as it comes across in the titles of some books, articles and other types of publications: Post-industrial Journalism (Anderson, Bell and Shirky 2012), Can Journalism Survive? (Ryfe 2012), Farewell to Journalism? (McChesney 2012), Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights (McChesney and Picard 2011) and News without Journalists (Neveu 2010). The problems and potentials facing journalism today have even led some to start new movements aimed at finding new ways of servicing the public, like the public journalism movement that took its name from Joseph Pulitzer’s call for a more “public journalism” and spread around the world at the end of the 20th century (Rosen 1999b; Haas 2007) or the movement among journalists and editors for a “constructive journalism” (Haagerup 2014; Gyldensted 2015). Being “constructive” was, by the way, also something Walter Williams mentioned in his creed (1914) and tried to encourage in his school. Several such movements aimed at finding new ways of servicing the public have spread in newsrooms – and classrooms – as a result of the new ways in which journalists are affected by both internal and external forces. Even if these movements have not been armed with the monetary means that Joseph Pulitzer could dispose of at the turn of last century, they are reminders of the continual need and desire to address the function and influencing factors of journalism. However, the developments over the past century have shown that we are in short supply of models that can sufficiently describe the function and the influencing factors of journalism in a time with many new challenges and opportunities. “Our studies need to be ventilated . . . by fresh perspectives and new interpretations,” as James Carey called for several decades ago (1997/1974, 88), and what is needed are new vantage points and an adjacent vocabulary for the study of journalism that can inform and perhaps even instruct us on how journalism in the 21st century can best service the public, and what factors could help or hinder journalists in doing so. Reading Pulitzer’s response from 1904 to these hows and whats of journalism is surely inspirational even today, but as the following review of some of the varied responses from the past shows, most of the attempts have primarily concerned themselves with a limited number of functions and factors, and they have in

4  Introduction many cases been directed at informing research more than inspiring those that account for the actual reporting.

Individual factors of influence “Education begins in the cradle, at home, with a mother’s teaching, and is continued by other influences through life. A college is one of those useful influences,” wrote Joseph Pulitzer in the defense for his generous endowment (1904, 3). But Pulitzer has not been alone when it comes to the concerns of the “influences” that journalists can encounter, and some of those people who have found employment at the growing number of journalism schools on both sides of the Atlantic – and within connected fields such as media studies and communication studies – have focused on that very question. Many researchers within these broadly defined fields have concerned themselves more with the effects of journalism than with what affects journalism itself. But this gradually began to change as journalism became a study in and of itself, both for students who wished to become journalists and for the faculty that were hired to teach and do research at the growing number of journalism schools around the world. One of the first of such studies of the function and influencing factors of journalism was David Manning White’s gatekeeper study. White had originally worked as a journalist, but was hired to teach and do research at the journalism school that was established at the University of Iowa in 1924, and here, White found research in journalism to be wanting. “Even as the body of theoretical concepts of the nature of mass communication was evolving, an important notion was being overlooked,” White (1964, 160) explained some 15 years after his seminal article about gatekeeping had been published. In order to determine the influencing factors of journalism, White followed the work of a wire editor over a week, where he had the wire editor note the reasons for his “choices” and “discards” of the incoming telegrams (1950, 383), and later White interviewed the editor about the decisions. The study led White to conclude that the wire editor functioned as a gatekeeper who decided what news items should be included in or excluded from the paper the next morning, and that the study had also shown “how highly subjective, how based on the ‘gate keeper’s’ own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (1950, 390). White’s conclusion about the function and influencing factors of content in the news media has since been referred to and discussed in hundreds of publications. The study has been termed a “classic” (Reese and Ballinger 2001, 641) and one of the “milestones in mass communication research” (Lowery and De Fleur 1995/1983), and gatekeeping continues to inspire researchers, even if the technology on which the study was based – telegraphy – is no longer in existence in newsrooms (see e.g. Shoemaker and Vos 2009; Vos and Heinderyckx 2015). The same continued popularity of a study based on telegraphy goes for another famous study from the middle of the 20th century. Here, the two Norwegians Johan Galtung and Marie Ruge studied what international news stories from the wire services found their way into newspapers. Their findings led them to

Introduction 5 conclude that events “become news to the extent that they satisfy” particular conditions (1965, 70), and they found that 12 news values could explain what made headlines in the newspapers: “Frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to persons and reference to something negative” (1965, 70–71). Their study likewise came to inspire many other researchers, and in time, the idea of news values has become a concept that can rival gatekeeping in terms of its popularity among both researchers and news reporters, even if later researchers have been right in pointing out that these news values are notoriously difficult to determine, since they “can change over time, from place to place, and between different sectors of the news media” (O’Neill and Harcup 2009, 171). This new line of research was also interesting because it suggested that it might not only be personal prejudices – or “standards of taste,” as White described it (1950, 389) – that could explain the selection process in the media. There were also more generally shared values at stake. Throughout the 20th century, researchers increasingly became interested in those values that could affect journalists. Some studies primarily focused on the personal backgrounds of journalists, including their political stance, as they come across in individual, organizational, national or international settings (see e.g. Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956; Hallin and Mancini 2004). Others – often taking their inspirational cue from Bernard Cohen’s original notion – have looked into journalists’ professional values in the form of different “role conceptions.” “A reporter of public affairs lives a bifurcated professional existence,” Cohen famously stated in The Press and Foreign Policy (1963, 19), before he went on to describe two basic sets of role conceptions: “the neutral reporter” (1963, 22) and “the reporter as participant” (1963, 31), each of which relates to a number of subordinate roles. Cohen has been heralded as “one of the first scholars to devise a typology of journalists’ roles” (Donsbach and Patterson 2004, 264), his study has been labeled “groundbreaking” (Zelizer 2004, 155) and his work has become a main reference point for many later studies about role conceptions (see e.g. Johnstone, Slawski and Bowman 1976; Weaver and Wilhoit 1986; Weaver and Wilhoit 1996; Weaver and Willnat 2012; Donsbach and Patterson 2004). Research has shown how these role conceptions are often operationalized as sets of routines in the daily practice of journalism. This was a point made already in the beginning of the 20th century, when one of the most skillful and influential observers of journalism, Walter Lippmann, wrote that “without standardization, without stereotypes, without routine judgments, without a fairly ruthless disregard of subtlety, the editor would soon die of excitement” (1997/1922, 123). The importance of routinization has later become another important line of research when it comes to determining the influencing factors of journalism. In her seminal study Making News by Doing Work, Gaye Tuchman (1973) conducted observational studies at a newspaper and a television station, studying how media organizations could “routinize the processing of unexpected events.” While the editor, who was observed and interviewed by White, could rely on a steady input of potential news stories supplied by the wire agencies, the news organizations

6  Introduction Tuchman studied had to come up with other routinized methods for producing news from a number of different sources. All of which led Tuchman to introduce and conceptualize a number of newsgathering practices and principles. Among these were the “news net” (1978b) and a differentiation between, for example, “prescheduled” and “unscheduled” events (1973). Historically some researchers have oriented themselves to the importance of the personal factors, while others have been more interested in organizational influences. While White studied the personal level, another contemporary researcher, Warren Breed, began a line of research about the subtle – and at times more steadfast – social control that could occur in news organizations. The title of Breed’s Social Control in the News Room (1955) is telling. Breed, who had also worked as a journalist before taking up a career at the university, immersed himself in the daily production process and described a process of “newsroom socialization” that constrains reporters and makes them orient themselves toward the inside workings of the newsroom. While mr. Gates talked about his prejudices and preferences, Breed found, in the words of Barbie Zelizer, that “the publisher sets policy and the reporters followed it” (2004, 53). Herbert Gans (1979) followed a similar methodological design in Deciding What’s News, and found that even if a certain “delegation of power also takes place because the news organizations consist of professionals who insist on individual autonomy” (1979, 101), news work is ultimately determined by organizational issues, like management’s division of labor and deadline constraints (1979, 109). This conclusion was reaffirmed in another important study by Philip Schlesinger (1978, 48–49), who followed the work at the BBC and noticed what he has since termed a “stop-watch culture,” where production is “controlled day-to-day and minute-to-minute.”

Collective factors of influence Many of the concepts that flowed from the first studies of the function and influencing factors of journalism – like “gatekeeping” and “news values” – have transcended the boundaries of university campuses and have migrated from journalism research to become household names among news reporters and news audiences. Even if the means of production have changed, many of these seminal studies still offer valuable insights and continue to inspire researchers to do new studies. “Classic studies,” as Stephen Reese and Lee Ballinger have observed, “capture the imagination,” but as Reese and Ballinger have also rightly added, many of these seminal studies were not “the most advanced in either theory or method” (2001, 642). Barbie Zelizer makes a point along the same lines: “Early journalism research focused on discrete journalistic practices, limiting analysis to a locus that could easily be examined” (2004, 52). This is an important point when looking at the studies of function and influencing factors. Many of the first of such studies focused on only a single factor or a couple of factors. But as the study of journalism evolved, later generations of researchers have begun to factor in more and more aspects to account for the complexities of the production of news. Increasingly, researchers have begun to determine what the sociologist

Introduction 7 Michael Schudson, who also came to work at the journalism school that was established at Columbia University on Pulitzer’s initiative, has called “the components of news-making” (2003, 115). This has proven to be no easy task. The challenge with determining the function and influencing factors is that such an approach needs to take “into account that the work of journalists is affected by multiple sources of influence, and most of the time even simultaneously,” as Thomas Hanitzsch along with several colleagues has written (2010, 8). This approach is therefore, as Stephen Reese, one of the most successful modelers of the influencing factors of journalism, has acknowledged, “an ambitious task, given the multitude of factors that exert influence on the media” (2007, 30). Nonetheless, Reese himself and Pamela Shoemaker have come up with a model that in many ways and in many parts of the world has become the prime way of modeling the influencing factors of journalism: the hierarchy-of-influences model. The first version of the model was presented in Shoemaker’s Building a Theory of News (Shoemaker and Mayfield 1987), but the model first found a graphical and more explicated form in Reese and Shoemaker’s book, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content. The first edition of that book appeared in 1991, the second in 1996 and the third, and more thoroughly reworked edition, appeared in 2014. By then, the title had also been changed to Mediating the Message in the 21st Century. The overall modeling of the influencing factors of the media has, however, not changed much over the past quarter of a century and neither has the disposition of their book. Building on the work of other researchers, such as Herbert Gans’s study (1979), Shoemaker and Reese group the influencing factors into a “handful of categories.” These are individuals, routine practices, media organizations, social institutions and social systems (1996, 6). The factors range from a micro level to a macro level, and the individual and collective factors are depicted in a model that implies both visually and textually that the later factors are a stronger source of influence. “We certainly should not equate a typographic mistake caused by a newspaper reporter with influences on content from governmental regulations,” they write in the second edition of the book (1996, 60), even if they, in one of the more recent editions from 2014, do stipulate that they “don’t mean to single out any one level as more powerful that another” (2014, 8). Instead, the hierarchy-of-influences model “takes into account the multiple forces that impinge on media simultaneously and suggest how influence at one level may interact with that at another” (Shoemaker and Reese 1996, 30), and throughout later versions of the books, anthologies and articles, they have continued to readdress their original model to continually incorporate recent developments within journalism and also take some misgivings of the first editions into consideration. Shoemaker and Reese might not have been the first researchers to attempt to model the multiple factors that can influence journalism – and they have not been the last. Among some of the other, more well-known attempts are Brian McNair’s five “social determinants of journalism” (2001/1998, 13). According to McNair, these determinants are “professional culture and the organization, political environment, economic environment, technological environment and

8  Introduction the sociology of sources.” Michael Schudson writes about the basic “components” of journalism, and lists “news sources,” “audiences,” “political culture,” “the marketplace” and “the narratives of news” as forces that can affect what becomes news and how it will be presented (2003). In a similar vein, Wolfgang Donsbach has written that “most communication scholars would agree that research so far has led to four main factors . . . news factors, institutional objectives, the manipulative power of news sources and the subjective beliefs of journalists” (2004, 134), where the latter relates to White’s gatekeeper study. More recently, Thomas Hanitzsch, working together with a group of international researchers in order to include empirical data to this line of study, has introduced an approach that by the author’s own admission is similar to that of Shoemaker and Reese – in terms of having levels range from micro to macro – while this new model also allows for influences on other levels: a superlevel, macrolevel, mesolevel and microlevel (Hanitzsch et al. 2011). Other, similar attempts at modeling the influencing factors – also within particular subfields of journalism, like politics and culture – could be mentioned (see e.g. Albæk 2017; de Vreese, Esser and Hopmann 2016).

New vantage points and the adjacent vocabulary Even if Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese have not been alone in charting the influencing factors of journalism, they have in many respects been the most successful in terms of the reach of their work. Mediating the Message has rightly been hailed as one of the “most significant books of the 20th century” by one of the field’s longtime journals, references to the hierarchy-of-influences model appear frequently in the works of other colleagues, and excerpts – or the book in its entirety – have found their way into the reading lists at many journalism schools around the world. Their model has even inspired other researchers and lecturers to the extent that the five factors have become a guiding principle for the disposition of books and courses (e.g. Berkowitz 1997). The model surely also continues to offer valuable insights into the influencing factors of journalism, and it is not only inspired itself by important studies from the past. In time, it has also come to inspire later generations of lecturers, researchers and journalism students. But as the two authors have professed in their third edition, a single “model cannot capture all of the complex interrelations involved in the media. Models, by definition, are meant to simplify, highlight, suggest, and organize,” they write (2014, 31), and they have encouraged other researchers to help develop new models of the influencing factors that take some of the many changes within journalism into account. This is a call for new ways of modeling journalism that has been amplified by others. Scholars like James Carey have reminded us that we should continuously rethink the potential usefulness of the models on which we base our understanding of the world around us, in particular, since these models can function as both “symbols of” and “symbols for” where they affect the ways in which we orient us and navigate in the world (Carey 1992/1975, 28) Carey’s point is that models

Introduction 9 “are, then, not merely representations of communication but representations for communication: templates that guide, unavailing or not, concrete processes of human interaction” (Carey 1992/1975, 32). The inherent duality of models is particularly important for those working within the framework of the legacy of Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and the many other pioneers within the field of journalism, who over time have sought to strengthen journalism among both its current and its future practitioners. In this respect, some models have more merit than others when it comes to inspiring researchers and reporters alike, and while all the different models that have been developed over the years have sensitized their users to one, two, three or many more factors that can affect journalists, most, if not all, of the models share commonalities that account for both their strengths and weaknesses. For one thing, most of these models are developed on the basis of reviews of research from the past rather than from new studies on their own of the changing practices of journalism. To name but one example, the title of the monograph in which the first version of Shoemaker and Reese’s model was presented reads Building a Theory of News Content: A Synthesis of Current Approaches (Shoemaker and Mayfield 1987). Building on the work of others is naturally not a problem in itself, but as Barbie Zelizer, another former journalist who has turned researcher, has suggested, “the existing body of scholarly material shrinks in relevance” (2004, 6) whenever there is an increase in varied forms of news production. According to some contemporary observers, this is such a period where journalism is being “dramatically remade,” as the three former deans from journalism schools at University of North Carolina, Louisiana State University and Columbia University have written (Folkerts, Maxwell and Lemann 2013, 1). Secondly, many of these models from the past have been aimed at giving their users a better opportunity for reflection about the practices of journalism rather than stimulating future actions by lecturers, researchers and journalists themselves. This lack of models that can better become “symbols for” both future and contemporary journalists is a point made by many of those persons who have been associated with the movements to improve journalism over the recent decades. “It is not clear that our theorizing contributes enough to the resolution or even the common understanding” of the function and influencing factors of journalism, as one of the founders of the public journalism movement of the late 20th century put it (Rosen 1994, 363). This criticism led the founders of the movement to point to the need for not only a more “public journalism” but also a more “public scholarship” (Rosen 1995, 34). For all the merits of models developed in the past, current changes now challenge researchers to come up with models that can not only ensure a new understanding of the function and influencing factors of journalism in the 21st century but also help journalists understand how they – and all of us engaged in studying, teaching and researching – can act in the face of factors that can hinder and help journalism. The new, overarching model presented in this book is an attempt to take these challenges – the current changes in journalism and the practitioners of journalism themselves – more into consideration. The first version of this model was developed as part of studies in

10  Introduction the early 21st century of the problems and potentials that confront journalists and editors who attempt to provide public service in new ways (e.g. Bro 2008; Bro 2004). The study was based on action research projects in different newsrooms, including regional and national media, where the different factors that could help or hinder journalists in servicing the public could be studied closely, continuously and cooperatively with journalists, editors and others who were involved in the news production process. The studies then – and the reflections that have followed – made it increasingly clear that there are six factors that can affect the action of journalists (see Figure 1.1). Three of these influencing factors – principles, precedents and practices – are internal in the sense that journalists themselves can control them. The remaining three factors – production, publication and perception – are external factors, where forces outside the control of journalists can help, halt or even hinder the work of journalists. What is particular about this model is that it puts the actions of journalists, rather than the reactions to their work, at the center, whether it is in the form of content or in the form of effects. For many years, the effects of the media were the prevailing research focus among researchers, and Shoemaker and Reese have themselves noted how they originally were “trained in the media effects tradition” (1996, xiii). They, however, changed their focus in Mediating the Message so their object of study became the “media content” that preceded these possible effects (1996, 11), and in time other researchers have also studied what can help in “explaining news content” (Albæk 2017). But there is something that precedes even the published content in the news media, and those actions of journalists – including the very important decisions not to publish a news story – are the focus of the overarching model in this book.

Practice Production

Publication

Internal factors

Action

Principle

Precedent Perception

Figure 1.1  Internal and external influences on journalism

External factors

Introduction 11 The new model of the influencing factors also differs in other important ways from the widely used model by Shoemaker and Reese. The new model is less ambitious than the hierarchy-of-influence model that is an attempt to model the “forces that shape mediated communication of all kinds: social media, mass communication, offline and online, news and entertainment” (Shoemaker and Reese 2014, 239). While the model presented in this book is more modest in scope, it is more focused on journalism in general and in particular on the factors that can affect journalistic action. One thing, however, is common for both models. Neither one assumes to capture “all of the complex interrelationships involved in the media. Models, by definition are meant to simplify, highlight, suggest, and organize,” as Shoemaker and Reese wrote about their model (2014, 2), and the same is true of the model in this book. From the very outset, the new model has been developed in an attempt to supplement rather than substitute past models, since these old and new models, each in their own way, sensitize their users to different aspects of journalism. It is as James Carey has written about the applicability of models in general, and in particular about geographical maps that cartographers use to model the world around them: “different maps bring the same environment alive in different ways” (Carey 1992/1975, 28). For Carey, this point about mapping or in other ways modeling the world around us underscores why our “studies need to be ventilated . . . by fresh perspectives and new interpretations,” as he wrote later in life (1997, 88). But as it has turned out, the new model that is presented in this book – and that originally was based on studies of contemporary journalism and attempts to prompt new approaches to how journalists could provide a public service – also corresponds conceptually with the key terms that were promoted and prompted a century earlier by some of the seminal figures that initiated some of the world’s first journalism schools. This might not be surprising, after all, since the journalism schools that Pulitzer, Williams and others helped start and the journalism model that is presented in this book are an attempt to do the very same thing: prompt a better understanding of the factors that can both hinder and help journalists, and ultimately help journalists make use of their new understanding to provide a better service to the public that in the words of Pulitzer was “the supreme end” of journalism (1904, 46). The conceptual correspondence is perhaps a testament to the timeliness of this new model, but the correspondence between then and now also helps with the first brief introduction to the model, which is developed in greater detail in the coming chapters.

Internal and external factors of influence Central to Joseph Pulitzer’s motivation for endowing Columbia University with a journalism school was a move from “the incidental training” in newsrooms to “the intentional” teaching in classrooms (1904, 8), and in his essay, he repeatedly mentions three important things that he thought influenced the actions of journalists and therefore should be part of the curriculum of a future journalism school: principles, precedents and practice. A journalism student, Pulitzer

12  Introduction writes, “must learn not merely the principles but the practice and precedents of his profession” (1904, 29). These three categories can help conceptualize the internal factors of journalism, since they point to a set of influencing factors where the individual journalist is in command. External factors, on the other hand, are factors where the individual journalist depends on other influences that appear as part of the production, publication and the final perception among readers, listeners and viewers (see Figure 1.2). Pulitzer’s career as a journalist, editor and newspaper owner meant that he was well aware of the importance of what is conceptualized as external factors in this context, but in his essay, Pulitzer primarily concerned himself with the internal factors that could be taught in the future classrooms at Columbia University. “Principles” was the factor that Pulitzer wrote most about in his essay. Training in “principles . . . must pervade all the courses,” he wrote (1904, 32), and he specified that “[i]deals, character, professional standards . . . will be the motif of the whole institution, never forgotten even in its most practical work’’ (1904, 32). Other founders of journalism schools also highlighted the importance of getting the students to relate to the principles of journalism, and Walter Williams, who initiated the school in Missouri, even developed a course with that very title: “The History and Principles of Journalism.” The importance of the course was marked by the fact that it was the first course to be taught at the school, that every student was required to complete it, and that Walter Williams himself taught it (Farrar 1998, 141). The title of the course at Missouri also points to another factor that was considered important when it came to the formation of some of the world’s first journalism schools: the history of journalism, or perhaps more to the point, what Pulitzer termed the teaching of “precedents.” For both men, this influencing factor had less to do with teaching students about the distant past, in its own right, and more to do with preparing the future journalists for the present, where decisions from the past can serve as precedents for future decisions about what to do and what not to do in newsrooms. Pulitzer therefore suggested that managing editors should function as lecturers from time to time in order to give the future journalists a sense of what had worked in “the newspapers of the current day” (1904, 42). In this sense, precedents can inform today’s journalists about the ways in which they can best relate to the third internal factor, namely, the practice of journalism. This was also an eminent part of the first-year courses from Missouri’s journalism school, as it was presented in the very first edition of “Announcement of Courses in Journalism.” One of the courses was named “News-Gathering,” and the course introduced students to “the methods of getting the news.” Another course was “Newspaper Making,” which taught students the “practice upon the daily newspaper.” Pulitzer was likewise concerned with the importance of practice, and he scolded other fields of study for neglecting this. “The lawyer learns nothing at college except the theory of the law, its principles and some precedents. When he receives his diploma he is quite unprepared to practice,” he stated (1904, 9). Pulitzer was less precise than Williams when it came to titles for future courses, but Pulitzer stipulated the importance of offering students “a course of instruction systematically

Introduction 13 explaining what journalism requires, with illustrations of good and bad work” (1904, 29). While Pulitzer did not focus much on external factors in his defense for his endowment, the wealthy newspaper owner was certainly aware of the importance of forces outside journalism. Writing about journalists’ need to obtain knowledge as a part of the daily production of news stories, he noted, There is always some best source for every kind of information – some original source from which the facts trickle through all sorts of media and finally reach the public at second, third or fourth hand. To know these sources of exact knowledge, to be able to put one’s hand on them instantly, and so to be able to state facts with absolute confidence in their accuracy – could there be any more useful equipment for a journalist? (1904, 34) But he did more than simply note the importance of journalistic production where journalists can be affected by factors that can help or hinder them getting in contact with news sources. In order to inspire not only future journalists but also the very present ones about the ways in which one can produce news, he also entrusted Columbia University with the sum of $250,000, which was to be used to sponsor a set of annual prizes. The Pulitzer Prizes have since grown to become one of the world’s most prestigious awards, but from the very beginning, he conceptualized the prizes as an important part of his movement. For Pulitzer, the annual prizes were a way to inspire journalists to become better at producing within different genres, and not least the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service is a testament to what was important to him. Walter Williams’s list of courses to be offered by the journalism school in Missouri also took the production side into account. The first generation of journalism studies in Missouri was therefore introduced to a number of technical, personal and other factors – including “the handling of the telegraph” – that could affect journalists once they started the production of a news story. Williams, however, also acknowledged that there were other factors beyond the control of individual journalists that could affect journalism, and the coursework therefore also included subjects that dealt with the business side of the news media. “Newspaper Administration,” for instance, prepared his students for the “conduct of newspapers from the viewpoint of editorial direction and control,” and, here, Pulitzer himself might have been an interesting case. The leadership of Pulitzer has been the subject of books, and Pulitzer was – among other things – known for hanging up posters in his newsrooms that highlighted the news values he considered important as editor and owner. The importance of the publication process, in which journalists can become affected by their own news organization in terms of management, different platforms for publication, business imperatives and potential legal concerns, also figures prominently in the first course catalogue from Missouri. Here, other courses dealt with equipment of the news office that might interfere with the actual

14  Introduction publication of a news story, such as the presses and types, and both Williams and Pulitzer acknowledged that law should be taught, since legal issues might be able to block the publication process, just as the knowledge of jurisprudence might enable journalists to publish news stories that others sought to suppress. However, the two men differed when it came to the need to teach the business side of journalism. For Pulitzer, it was “the idea of work for the community, not commerce, . . . that needs to be taught,” and the successful businessman even proclaimed that the journalism school ought to be “not only not commercial, but anti-commercial” (1904, 18). Whether commercialism or idealism – or a mix of the two – was considered the most important part, the considerations of the two men relate to the third and final external factor that can affect journalism: the perception of journalism. For both Williams and Pulitzer, servicing the public was the “supreme end,” as Pulitzer wrote, and the ways in which journalists affected the attitudes and actions of people should therefore be a factor in the training of future journalism, they both thought.

Modeling a chronology of influences Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and other seminal figures who worked to strengthen journalism more than a century ago lived, worked and wrote under very different conditions than contemporary practitioners, lecturers and researchers. But the movement that was initiated at the turn of last century brought with it concepts that transcend time and space, and these seemingly timeless influencing factors of journalism will be explicated and exemplified more thoroughly in the following chapters of this book. For now, it is important to note that when the six factors are connected, they do not so much form a hierarchy as they describe a chronological process. The six factors also describe six phases in the news process, where each of them can hinder or help journalists – even if journalists are not always aware of the existence and importance of each of the factors and their collective importance (see Figure 1.2). In some instances, the process will last for only a few seconds and at other times journalists might use hours, days or even weeks and months to work through the process before their work is done. Regardless of the length of time, the compilation of factors and phases suggests that this new model can be fittingly described as a chronology-of-influences model, as opposed to Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy-of-influences model. In time, Shoemaker and Reese have underscored that the importance of each of their five factors can change, and the same is true of the chronology-ofinfluences model. The extent to which journalistic actions can be affected by the six different factors can change continuously. From story to story, day to day, country to country and decade to decade, each of the factors – or the collective set of factors – can change in terms of its influence on the individual journalist doing news work, and at times one or more of the factors might not even seem present for journalists in their daily work, since the importance of each of the factors can be hidden in those routines that are inherent in a profession characterized by the need for producing under great speed (see e.g. Donsbach 2004). This

Introduction 15 The chronology-of-journalism

Principle - Precedent - Practice

Internal factors

– Production - Publication - Perception

External factors

Figure 1.2  The chronology-of-journalism: factors that can affect journalistic action

and many other points relating to the new model will all become clearer in the coming chapters, where each chapter is related to one influencing factor. This is an approach that is inspired, in part, by McNair (2001/1998), Michael Schudson (2003) and Shoemaker and Reese (1996), who have all presented the descriptions and discussions of their different factors of influences in separate chapters in their books. Accordingly, each chapter will describe and discuss one of the six influencing factors in light of existing research and actual journalistic reporting. In each of the chapters, some of the most important models from the past will be presented in order to give readers an overview of previous attempts at modeling the principles, precedents, practices, production, publication and perception of journalism. Many of these micromodels have the same problems as the macromodels in the sense that they do not sufficiently take current changes in journalism and the practitioners of journalism themselves into account, and a new model for each of the six factors is therefore developed in each chapter. In that connection, many more past studies that relate to each or several of the six influencing factors could deserve mentioning – or those mentioned could have deserved more space – but since the purpose in this book is also to develop new models, it is recommended that readers look to more thorough descriptions of such past studies in the field’s prime encyclopedias, books about key concepts, handbooks and other sources of reviews and reference. Both the presentation of the older models mentioned and the development of the new model is done with an eye for the groups that, according to Barbie Zelizer, form perhaps the most important populations for the study of journalism: scholars, educators and journalists themselves, whether they are already educated or en route to being so (2009, 31). In the concluding chapter of the book, the overarching model of the influencing factors of journalism is readdressed, since this macromodel can be used as more than just a guiding principle for the disposition of chapters in this book. First and foremost, the model offers journalists – both current and future ones – a framework for relating actively to factors that can help and hinder their work, and each of the six factors entails both problems and potentials, as it becomes clear in the coming chapters. Second, the model offers journalism researchers a framework for understanding influencing factors of journalism in itself, including

16  Introduction a framework for reviewing past research in light of each of these factors. The chronology-of-influences model, for instance, makes it clear that past research has dealt more with some of these factors than with others, and as such the model can become a guiding framework not only for the future actions of journalism but also for actions of journalism researchers themselves. Third, the model can function as a framework for those who teach journalism, since journalism educators can plan courses and curriculums after these factors, individually and collectively. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this model of the influencing factors not only reminds researchers, educators and the daily practitioners of journalism of the forces that restrict and enable journalists but also instructs us as to what journalism is, and who journalists are. These are questions that have been debated for centuries, but the issue has become more present now than ever as new technologies have made it easier for people outside the newsroom to produce, publish and distribute news of and on their own, all of which have challenged journalistic authority, including what journalism is and who journalists are (see e.g. Carlsson 2017, Anderson and Boczkowski 2017). But this issue has little news value. Joseph Pulitzer, who wished to “begin a movement that will raise journalism to the rank of a learned profession” (1904, 19), made it abundantly clear that he hoped that journalism schools in the future would “create a class distinction between the fit and the unfit. We need a class feeling among journalists – one based not upon money but upon moral education and character,” as he wrote (1904, 11) more than a century ago in the essay that was originally printed in The North American Review, but later reprinted in its own right by Columbia University. Walter Williams held similar hopes for the journalists he taught, and so did the new journalism school in Paris. One of the first professors to teach at the school in France was the sociologist Emile Durkheim, who wrote extensively about what constituted a profession. These issues seem as relevant today, and the models that are presented in this book offer a framework for a renewed discussion – and perhaps even a new possible definition – of what journalism is and who journalists are supposed to be in the 21st century.

Part 1

Internal factors

2 First influencing factor Journalistic principles

“Principles of journalism,” reads the last section in Joseph Pulitzer’s lengthy description of the subjects that should be taught at what he envisioned would be the first journalism school in the world at the university level (1904, 43). As history would have it, Pulitzer’s pondering over how he could best support the formation of a journalism school and administrative difficulties at Columbia University meant that the University of Missouri started a journalism school four years before the first generation of students were welcomed at the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But Walter Williams, who founded the school at Missouri, was no less concerned about the principles of journalism, for Williams ensured that the curriculum at the newly founded school included a course with that very title, and the importance of the course was further marked by the fact that it was the starting class for every enrolled student and that he taught it himself for many years. A few years later, Williams also stipulated the importance of the principles of journalism for the world outside the school in the form of his famous work, “The Journalist’s Creed” (1914), which was later to become known all over the world. In the creed, he writes, I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust, that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust. This was a statement that resembled what Pulitzer had written. “Public Service the Supreme End,” the successful publisher wrote as the headline in the final part of his essay (1904, 46). Walter Williams and Joseph Pulitzer’s concern for the principles of journalism, and in particular how the principles adhere to the relationship between journalism and the public, has been shared by many others over the following decades, including some of the people who came to profit professionally from the formation of journalism schools. One of them was James W. Carey, who became part of the faculty of Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism at the end of the 20th century. In several essays – all of a somewhat shorter length than Pulitzer’s – Carey depicts a development where journalists gradually have moved

20  Part I Internal factors from serving political, commercial and other special interests to serving that of the public. The result has been, in the words of Carey, that the press in our time “exists to inform the public, to serve as the extended eyes and ears of the public; the press protects the public’s interests and justifies itself in its name” (1995, 381). The relationship between journalism and the public has also been acknowledged among people and professions who have no direct connection with journalism. In many countries, journalists have specially bestowed privileges when it comes to gaining access to protests, crime scenes and other places of potential interest for working journalists, while the news organizations, for which journalists work, in some countries are favored economically with different types of direct or indirect support. The judicial, economic and other types of support are legitimized by the fact that persons and organizations associated with the practice of journalism work for the public, and one of the only professions to do so, according to Pulitzer: “Physicians work for their patients and architects for their patrons. The press alone makes the public interests its own,” he stated (1904, 47) in his essay. In all fairness, it should be noted that other groups could also rightfully lay claim to working in the public interest, but even though people and professions both inside and outside of journalism acknowledge the principal importance of working for the public interest, the last century has brought with it little agreement about how journalists in a practical way can best service the public. Michael Schudson, another scholar who has benefitted professionally from Joseph Pulitzer’s financial endorsement of a school of journalism at Columbia University and who joined the faculty in New York City in the first part of the 21st century, has written that we need to reconsider “just what a ‘public’ means” to journalism, since the concept of the public mostly functions as a “rhetorical gesture” (1995b, 32). James Carey made a similar point in one of his essays that was written a few years after he, in 1988, became professor at Columbia University. For him, the “public,” despite all its rhetorical and practical importance, as he put it, had become an “abstraction” (1995, 381). Carey, in a earlier essay had also noted, The real problem of journalism is that the term which grounds it ‘the public’ has been dissolved, dissolved in part by journalism. Journalism only makes sense in relation to the public and public life. Therefore, the fundamental problem in journalism is to re-constitute the public, to bring it back into existence. How are we going to do that? (1987, 4) The question about the ways in which journalism can best service the public is still unresolved, and it might seem unlikely that one clear-cut answer will ever appear – and receive unified support among journalists throughout the entire world, one might add. But since the beginning of the 20th century, scholars, researchers and other writers have attempted to model the principles that can

First influencing factor 21 affect journalistic actions in different ways. This chapter describes how these different principles – pertaining to how the public can best be served by journalism – have evolved over time. It then discusses the potentials and problems of the models, and in the final part of the chapter, a new model is proposed that attempts to take some of the shortcomings of previous models into account. For even though all the past models have merits on their own, they are subject to theoretical and practical limitations that restrict their reach and relevance for the practice of journalism here in the 21st century. Therefore, a new model that is better accustomed to the contemporary needs of both scholars and practitioners has been in demand, and the new model presented here has over the past years been used both in classrooms and newsrooms – among researchers, lecturers and practitioners.

Servicing the public ‘Principle’ originates etymologically from the Latin ‘principium,’ which means ‘beginning,’ and in Pulitzer’s written defense for his generous endowment and in Walter Williams’s course list and later creed, both men stipulate that journalism insofar that it has a preference only has the interest of the public to attend to. It is in this relation to the public that the journalistic principles emanate. Both men were, however, vague about what a service to the public entails and what it should amount to in terms of journalistic action. In the section of his essay titled “Principles of Journalism,” Pulitzer writes that the object of the proposed courses is “to teach the student that what makes a newspaper is not type, nor presses, nor advertising, but brains, conscience, character working out in the public service” (1904, 45). The passage is telling of the sweeping and, in general, rather lofty statements that Pulitzer makes throughout his essay, and his competitor in terms of starting the first journalism school found little more time for precision about how journalism should service the public. Williams’s famous creed also had highminded views on the importance to the public, and in the perhaps most famous line of his creed, he expresses that “acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is a betrayal” of the trust placed in journalists and journalism (1914). But there were other writers at the turn of last century that were more reflective and decisive in assigning how journalism could best service the public. Nowhere does this appear more prominent than in the works of what has later been called “the founding book of American journalism” (Carey 1987, 6) with reference to the book’s impact on later generations of news reporters. The author of the book, Walter Lippmann, has even been called the “patron saint of modern journalism” by the author and coincidentally Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist and historian David Halberstam. Halberstam noted that Walter Lippmann “shaped a generation. By his presence, he made the profession infinitely more respectable, infinitely more honorable, and that much more, in fact, a true profession” (Halberstam 1979, 372). Michael Schudson has later noted that it might be more fair to write that the greatest impact of Public Opinion has been on

22  Part I Internal factors researchers themselves (2008, 1033), and Walter Lippmann’s book from 1922 has certainly had its impact on more than one generation of researchers. Although Public Opinion will soon be in printed existence for an entire century, the book continues to appear in reference lists in many books, chapters, journal articles and other scholarly publications, and understandably so. For in Public Opinion and other books by Lippmann, with telling titles like Drift and Mastery (1914) and The Phantom Public (1925), Lippmann offers his readers a more in-depth analysis of the ways in which journalists can best service the public than much of what had been written before – and in the minds of some, also after. In this and other, later works, Walter Lippmann notes that society has become too complex for ordinary citizens to comprehend, let alone direct and control. Instead, Lippmann, who later in life worked as an editorial editor and columnist for Joseph Pulitzer’s World, envisioned a society where it was left to what he called “men of action” (1997/1922) – that is, politicians and other authoritative decision makers – to describe, discuss and decide the proper course of a nation. To keep check of these representatives for the public, Lippmann suggested that journalists should keep these people and professions under watch. To publish their actions and attitudes helps to civilize them, Lippmann believed, and he advocated for the role of citizens as voters, who were left with decisions about who should represent them. “The common interest in life largely eludes public opinion entirely,” Lippmann wrote (1997/1922, 195) in his attack on what he perceived to be widespread notions about what an “omni-competent” citizenry could accomplish. He had little hope that journalists could alter things. In one of the most cited passages of Public Opinion, he described how the press works “like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents and eruptions” (1997/1922, 229). What Lippmann in essence called for was for journalists to give up any pretense about what the general public could accomplish when it came to directing a country. Instead, journalists should focus on those public representatives that were left with the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of the citizenry. Not everyone at the time of the publication of Public Opinion agreed with the diagnosis of what society at the turn of last century was suffering from and what journalists accordingly could do to remedy the problems. In a review of the book, American philosopher John Dewey wrote that “[t]he manner of presentation is so objective and projective that one finishes the book almost without realizing that it is perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy . . . ever penned.” The review was published in the New Republic, which Walter Lippmann had helped to establish in an attempt to better furnish readers with an understanding of society, and that was an ambition Lippmann took with him when he found a greater number of readers at Joseph Pulitzer’s World. Lippmann was in this sense not antidemocratic, as some later scholars seem to have thought, but he was certainly a skeptic about what the public could accomplish

First influencing factor 23 on its own, and, in general, he had more trust in what politicians and experts could accomplish and how the press could hold them accountable by describing, analyzing and publishing their attitudes and actions. These were, however, not the proper principles for the ways in which journalists could – and should – service the public, John Dewey thought, and in the following years he addressed the issue in books of his own. Here John Dewey instead called for social institutions, including the press, to help people deliberate about the most important affairs in society. In a later book, The Public and Its Problems, Dewey stressed that the vitality of the public “depends essentially upon freeing and perfecting the processes of inquiry and of dissemination” (1927, 208). Rather than supplying new information, society should work for the “the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion,” Dewey wrote (1927, 208). The essence of John Dewey’s thoughts on how to help bring a public alive by way of the press has later in the 20th century found another similar noteworthy expression in the works by the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas. In his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989/1962), which originally was published in 1962 and for decades had a big impact on social sciences and the humanities in continental Europe before it was finally translated into English in 1989, Habermas describes how the press in the past had played a pivotal role in the rise and fall of what he perceived to be a public sphere in the 18th and 19th centuries. Here, ordinary citizens could come together physically in coffee houses, taverns and other locations, and indirectly by way of magazines, newspapers and other papers, where they could deliberate on important issues and decide on appropriate actions. In the final part of the book, Habermas discussed how the press and politicians in time have become subject to other interests – including an increasing interest in each other – and how a genuine public and the adjacent public sphere have been dissolved in the process. The historical study in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere has been criticized for being based more on an ideal than on real occurrences, but what both Dewey and Habermas in essence have been calling for is a more deliberative focus, where private citizens are also included in the press alongside those more authoritative decision makers who represent the public in democracies. The opposing views on how journalists can best service the public have since been referred to as “the Dewey-Lippmann debate,” and even if Michael Schudson has shown that it is not clear that Walter Lippmann “ever considered himself to be in dialogue with Dewey” (2008, 1031), the two men and others who followed have worked to become still more precise on the principles of journalism relating to the public. This is an interest that is evident from the many titles that referred to the public – Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion and The Phantom Public, John Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems and Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – and this scholarly work has since been followed by other, in many instances more graphic, attempts at modeling the most important principles of journalism.

24  Part I Internal factors

Previous models of journalistic principles One of the most acclaimed attempts, in the second part of the 20th century, at modeling the principles that affect the relationship between journalism and the public was presented under the title Four Theories of the Press (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956). This typology was developed by three of the most prominent members of one of the first generations of media and journalism researchers, who gradually began to supplement, and in some cases substitute, the first generations of lecturers at the journalism schools. One of them, Wilbur Schramm, has even been considered one of the founders of the field of communication studies. At the time of publication, all three authors, Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wilbur Schramm, worked at the University of Iowa’s school of journalism. This was a school that Wilbur Schramm initiated and directed for many years, and where Siebert, at the time of the book’s publication, had taken over as director, while Peterson worked as an instructor while finishing graduate school. Their work was situated in the aftermath of World War II, and they sought to model the news media in accordance with political governance in different countries. The subtitle of the book makes the fourfold typology conceptually clear. The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do, the subtitle reads (1956), and throughout four chapters each of the concepts are explicated and correlated to different countries throughout the world. Common for all four so-called theories is that they rest upon assumptions about relations between the state, the press and the public, and the book has been heralded by many colleagues. “A significant moment in the developing of theorizing about the media,” Denis McQuail has written about what he rightly termed “a small textbook” with reference to both length and intended audience at the burgeoning university’s courses within journalism, communication and media studies (2000/1983, 153). Barbie Zelizer has noted that the book “constituted a landmark study” (2004, 168), and in a retrospective view in the beginning of this century, John C. Merrill wrote, “It seems that this formidable little book will never die. It shows no signs of even fading away” (2002, 133). Reading Four Theories of the Press today, it is not difficult to understand its decades-long popularity among lecturers and students, because it conveniently makes it possible to categorize and classify nothing short of every country in the entire world into one of the four types. The Soviet Union might have collapsed, but one can still find countries that adhere to a communist ideology, as well as to the more overall concept of authoritarianism, where political, religious, royal or other rulers in effect dictate the guiding principles of journalism. Similarly, the two other concepts – where social responsibility theory is considered a subset of the more broadly defined libertarian theory – in general work on principles and practices decided by themselves. Despite the criticism of the book, which by the accounts of its own authors came into being “by accident” by a watercooler, few other attempts at modeling the principles of journalism have replaced it in course lists. One of the few

First influencing factor 25 exceptions has been Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini’s Media Systems (2004) that was published close to half a century later. At first glance, Media Systems has a more modest scope, since the book only focuses on three media systems and covers only 18 countries in the western world. But Hallin and Mancini’s selfproclaimed interest in the “distinct models of journalism” (2004, xiii) was based on a more refined theoretical and historical backdrop than their predecessors’ attempt to determine the relationship between media and politics in different countries. Hallin and Mancini take the Four Theories of the Press as the starting point for their work, and the very first sentence in the book’s introductory chapter pays tribute to the work of Siebert, Peterson and Schramm and professes they have a common interest in the question of “why is the press as it is” (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 1). But Media Systems follows a different scholarly path, since Hallin and Mancini are less interested in the “philosophies” and “ideologies” of the press and more focused on empirical analysis of the relationship between media systems and social systems. This approach follows John Nerone’s criticism of Four Theories of the Press for being more “ideological” and less “scientific” (Nerone 2002, 135–136), and the studies by Hallin and Mancini leads them to “introduce three media system models” (2004, 10) based on parameters such as the degree of political parallelism, professionalization, the role of the state in media systems, political history, governmental type and the role of the state and rational legal authority (2004, 67–68). “The liberal model” encompasses countries such as the United States, Britain and Canada; the “polarized pluralist model” includes countries like France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal that all border the Mediterranean; and, finally, the “democratic corporatist model” covers countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. This model – which the authors actually refer to as Three Models of Media and Politics in their subtitle – might in time rival Four Theories of the Press in terms of scholarly references and appearance in readers and other scholarly settings, and so might some of the later attempts at modeling various principles of journalism in a worldwide setting. Noteworthy among some of the more recent attempts is the international collaboration of journalism researchers led by Thomas Hanitschz, which has gone even further in collecting data about the working principles of journalists throughout the world. This research project has mapped the different “worlds of journalism,” and offers comparative studies – often based on surveys among journalists – from reporters throughout most of the world. Over the years, other researchers have also proposed their own models (see e.g. Blumler and Gurevitch 1995; Curran and Park 2000), but common for both better and lesser known models within this strand of research is that they are characterized by geographical reach rather than practical relevance for those news reporters whose works the researchers set out to describe. Criticism has been raised accordingly. John Nerone notes how – with a note to Four Theories of the Press – that this research “tends to rely on an outdated canon of political philosophy . . . and to create superficially coherent systems of thought that are historically chimerical” (Nerone 2002, 135).

26  Part I Internal factors James Carey has made a similar point while acknowledging the important work done within this tradition: “this work has never gone far enough, either historically or comparatively, and suffers from an overly intellectualistic cast” (Carey 1997/1974, 93). Carey’s point is that this work has not been related to the practical editorial work as it comes across in actual journalistic work. While grouping thousands of journalists into broadly defined categories may be necessary for the sake of comparative studies of journalistic principles with a global perspective, these studies do offer less relevance for news reporters and researchers who focus on practical aspects that affect everyday decisions in the newsroom. Another strand of research over the years has therefore attempted to develop more practice-oriented models relating to principles. This strand of research developed parallel to – and at times intertwined with – the tradition of internationally encompassing models and became part of journalism studies at roughly the same time as Four Theories of The Press was first published. In the early 1960s Bernard C. Cohen published The Press and Foreign Policy (1963). For some researchers within journalism studies the book is probably best known as the starting point for discussions about the news media’s propensity for agenda setting. “It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about,” Bernard Cohen famously wrote in The Press and Foreign Policy (1963, 13). The sentence became the inspiration for Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw when they looked into the relationship between what was in the heads of a hundred respondents from Chapel Hill and the headlines from local media, and the line was later included and cited at length when they wrote about “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media” (1972). In hundreds of later studies, Cohen has therefore been recognized as one of the original sources of inspiration for the agenda-setting research that this book will get back to in later chapters. But the news media’s potential for setting the public agenda was not the only line of thought from Bernard Cohen’s book, which came to inspire other researchers and research publications. In one of the preceding chapters of The Press and Foreign Policy, Cohen also introduced the notion of role conceptions among news reporters. “A reporter of public affairs lives a bifurcated professional existence,” Cohen stated, and he went on to describe two sets of role conceptions: “the neutral reporter” (1963, 22) and “the reporter as participant” (1963, 31), each of which relates to a number of subordinate roles. For Cohen, the neutral reporter encompasses subordinate roles where the press functions as “an informer,” an “interpreter” and as an “instrument of government,” while the press as a “critic of government,” “advocate of policy” and as “policy maker” is related to the “reporter as participant.” Cohen has later been heralded as “one of the first scholars to devise a typology of journalist’s roles” (Donsbach and Patterson 2004), his study has been labeled “groundbreaking” (Zelizer 2004, 155) and his work has also become a main reference point for many later studies about role conceptions. Today it is therefore difficult to determine if Cohen had the greatest importance – and the largest numbers of citations – when it comes to studies about the effects of journalism as

First influencing factor 27 it comes across in the agenda-setting tradition or the functions of journalism as it relates to journalistic roles. Bernard Cohen was a political scientist by training, and his interest in the press soon dampened compared to his interest in foreign affairs, something that is clear from the titles on his publication list. But Cohen’s visions for the working of the press prompted a number of later studies, and in time, hundreds of publications within the field of journalistic roles have followed. Today, the concept of journalistic roles figures prominently in everything from encyclopedias to anthologies of the most import works within journalism studies (see e.g. Mellado, Hellmueller and Donsbach 2017). Among the first to model different types of role conceptions were John Johnstone, Edward Slawski and William Bowman (1976), who applied Cohen’s original “bifurcated” typology in a survey of role conceptions among American journalists. Later researchers, who in many instances have developed their own typologies of role conceptions among news reporters, have developed this type of study further. Among them are David Weaver, Cleveland Wilhoit, Lars Wilnat and a number of closely associated colleagues who have developed and popularized four roles described as “interpretive,” “disseminator,” “adversarial” and “populist mobilizer.” These roles have been tested repeatedly over the years (see e.g. Weaver and Wilhoit 1986; Weaver and Wilhoit 1996; Weaver and Wilnat 2012). These repeated studies of the same typology have demonstrated the importance of doing comparative studies not only in space but also over time. Others, like Wolfgang Donsbach and Thomas Patterson, have not been content with introducing dichotomies – like “neutral” and “participant” – but have even introduced continuums. Such is the case with their scales ranging from “passive” to “active” and from “neutral” to “advocate” (see e.g. 2004). In time, some of these researchers have even attempted to bridge the divide between reach and relevance. Donsbach and Patterson have, for instance, tested their own typology in different countries – Italy, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. But for all the conceptualizations that have followed, no typologies – whether based on continuums, dichotomies or other types of dimensions – have become authoritative outside the domain of academia. The notion of journalistic roles might have offered researchers “a valuable way to think about the journalist’s position in the broader political environment,” as Barbie Zelizer has rightly written (2004, 155), but they are seldom used to instruct future journalists in classrooms, let alone inform contemporary journalists in present newsrooms, as to how the different underlying principles in journalism could or should affect their actions as journalists around the world. Despite the many important studies that have sprung out of the journalism schools – and in other associated departments – throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, only a few of the attempted models, if any at all, have harnessed the potential duality of models where they function as both “models of” and “models for” that can guide journalistic actions. This prompts the need for a new model that can encompass the most important assumptions about the ways in which journalism can best service the public and be usable.

28  Part I Internal factors

Toward a new model of journalistic principles Reviewing statements and studies of journalistic principles makes it clear that there are two main dimensions to take into account when modeling the principles of journalism. The first dimension has to do with the purpose of journalism when it comes to servicing a public, and the second dimension has to do with the perspective of journalism when it comes to providing a public service. The first dimension builds on a conceptual dichotomy between passive and active journalism. This is a dichotomy that has previously been used by, for example, Wolfgang Donsbach and Thomas Patterson in their cross-country study, but the concepts of ‘passive’ and ‘active’ have a different meaning here. In the words of Thomas Patterson, the passive journalist is one who acts as the instrument of actors outside the news system, such as government officials, party leaders, and interest group advocates . . . In contrast, the active journalist is one who is more fully a participant in his or her own right, actively shaping, interpreting, or investigating political subjects. (1998, 28) In the context of this book, however, the concepts relate to the purpose of journalists rather than the autonomy of journalists, which was the main interest of Donsbach and Patterson. In the context of the new model in this book, a passive news reporter is primarily focused on simply disseminating news stories, which incidentally was one of the roles Weaver and Wilhoit used in their studies in the 1980s and 1990s. The active reporter, on the other hand, is concerned with the effects of news production, and an active news reporter will attempt to prompt people to take action rather than simply content himself or herself with letting readers, listeners and viewers learn about a new problem. This marks an important difference, since Donsbach and Patterson – and many others who have used the passive-active dichotomy in the past – have not included another important facet of journalism practice, namely, that journalists might not simply be considered active when they – in the words of David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit – take on an “adversarial role.” To be active can also entail that journalists attempt to prompt action among the public whenever they find something problematic. Walter Williams stated in his creed that journalists should strive to be “constructive,” and this is a term that later has been used as a label for a particular type of journalism (see e.g. Haagerup 2014; Gyldensted 2015). Pulitzer also stated in his essay that journalists should be “disinterested” in the sense that they work for the public rather than political parties, companies or other special interests, but through his ownership of newspapers, such as the World, which had the highest circulation in the world at the turn of last century, he simultaneously encouraged and even enforced what was then known as “action journalism.” One of the most often mentioned examples of action journalism was when The World campaigned for

First influencing factor 29 funds to help transport and erect the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to New York – and succeeded. But active journalism has in time been used to solve many different types of societal problems in time, and for Pulitzer and others this was of prime importance. Joseph Pulitzer and later proponents of active journalism have often stipulated that prompting action can be done without violating the basic principle of working for public interests. To be passive, on the other hand, in this context does not entail that such journalists be characterized by an uncritical approach. The difference between being passive and active simply has to do with whether or not journalists attempt to prompt action by way of their journalism. This purpose of journalism has not adequately been included in past dichotomies of the passive-active dimension. Weaver and Wilhoit have conceptualized a role of “the populist mobilizing,” but – as it will become apparent in the next chapter about journalistic precedents – active journalists in the 20th and 21st centuries have attempted to prompt actions among many different societal actors. Accordingly, the difference between active and passive journalism in this context is perhaps best described theoretically through a distinction made by Max Weber, the German sociologist, between value-based actions and expedient actions. For while a news reporter who acts expediently “takes ends, means and consequences into account before acting” (Weber 1994, 15), value-based action is when an individual “acts with no heed for the foreseeable consequence in a manner true to his or her own convictions” (Weber 1994, 45). The value-based actions that lead a journalist to produce a news story are often conceptualized as “news values” on which journalists base decisions about what to produce a single or a series of coherent news stories about. While the passive journalist here will focus on what preceded the news stories, the active journalist, who works to prompt action, will also focus on what comes after publication. This brings the second main dimension into light, which has to do with the focus of journalism, since this dimension describes where journalists orient themselves. This dimension is based on a dichotomy between whether the news reporters have ‘representative’ or ‘deliberative’ perspectives, and this dimension has also been somewhat overlooked in past studies within this area. Most of the attempts at modeling the principles of journalists have taken for granted that journalists mainly focus on societies’ authoritative decision makers in parliaments, companies and other powerful institutions and organizations. This neglect goes back to the middle of the 20th century where the two strands of research developed. In Four Theories of the Press and many of the works that followed, the focus was on the relationship between a political system and the press, and many of the different role typologies that followed the seminal work of Bernard Cohen also oriented themselves toward relations with political persons, organizations or institutions. Cohen differed overall between neutral and participatory journalists, but in each instance, he related the roles and their subroles to relations to government, policy making and so forth. Wolfgang Donsbach and Thomas Patterson’s important typology also includes a number of important points about different

30  Part I Internal factors journalistic principles, but they solely focus on the degree of political autonomy and political advocacy. Later studies, such as David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit’s typology and Thomas Hanitzsch’s internationally oriented studies, have a more finely tuned theoretical backdrop in terms of including a more public focus, but past attempts at modeling the principles of journalism have in general not focused on the part of the public. This is somewhat surprising in light of the fact that some of the first generations of journalists, editors and newspaper owners that discussed the main principles of journalism were very interested in the relationships between representatives of the public and the public itself. These were people like Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and, not least, Walter Lippmann, who wrote several books that revolved around the role journalism could and should have in relation to the public. Many previous attempts at modeling the principles of journalism have, however, not included this dimension, even if these principles in time have found concrete expression in the practice of journalism. Reporters with a representative focus search for stories and news sources among people and professions who represent the public – or parts of the public – in their capacity as politicians, directors of organizations and others, while news reporters with a deliberative focus, on the other hand, attempt to include private citizens and their concerns in the news media rather than primarily focusing on authoritative decision makers in parliament, political parties, companies and organizations. In this sense, the purpose and perspective of journalism are two dimensions that capture important aspects of journalistic practice as well as some of the key issues for researchers over the last century. When these two sets of dichotomies are connected, they form what can been described as the journalistic compass. The compass takes its name from the fact that it illustrates the four corners of the world of journalists; and that it can be used by researchers, as well as current and future journalists, when they need to navigate in the media landscape. In this case, east, west, north and south are replaced by the dichotomies inherent in what, in this book, is considered the two main dimensions when it comes to journalistic principles, namely, the purpose and perspective of journalism in relation to the public.

Normative navigation in the media landscape The journalistic compass was originally constructed in an attempt to “repair,” “recast” and “rebuild” our existing models of journalism, as James Carey and others have called for (see e.g. Carey 1992/1975). The hope was – and continues to be – that new ways of imposing order on the world of journalism can offer new insights and inspiration for researchers, lecturers and journalists alike. The compass points to not only four important directions in journalism but also to four important roles in journalism. For when the two dimensions and the four corners of the world of journalism are connected, they come to form a typology with four distinct, but interconnected, journalistic roles. These roles are ideal types in the sense that they accentuate particular aspects of journalistic roles,

First influencing factor 31 while leaving out what in other instances might be important points and perspectives. This is an important attribute of all attempts at making models, since “the purpose of the representation is to express not the possible complexity of things but their simplicity,” as James Carey has stated (1992 28). In this case, each of the four roles that appear when journalistic purpose and perspective are connected can be related to a metaphorical tradition within studies of journalistic roles. Over time, researchers have attempted to describe various aspects of journalistic roles by relating them to man’s best friend. “Watchdogs,” “lapdogs,” “guard dogs” and “bloodhounds” are some of the terms that researchers have used in the past (see e.g. Köcher 1986; Donsbach 1995; Donsbach and Patterson 2004), and the same metaphor is used here. In the compass (see Figure 2.1), the watchdog is characterized by a passive-representative stance where it is important to focus on the actions and attitudes of various representatives of the public. The watchdog is related to the traditional notion of a “fourth estate” – often credited to Edmund Burke: “There were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporters’ gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important than they all” (cf. Harcup 2015, 7). The watchdog role shares similarities with two other roles. First and foremost, it is connected with its more active companion on the right side of the compass, the hunting dog, in terms of their shared focus on representatives of the public. But the two differ when it comes to the purpose of their focus, since the journalistic roles on right side of the compass are concerned with prompting action whenever news reporters come across problems. The watchdog, on the other hand, is only concerned with presenting problems or solutions while leaving it to others to decide whether or not something should be done about them, similar to the sheepdog, which is also passive. But the sheepdog differs from the watchdog in the sense that it has a deliberative rather than a representative focus. For the sheepdog, deliberation – where private citizens, as well as authoritative decision makers, are included in public conversation – is an end in itself; however, for the fourth and last role, conceptualized by way of the dimensions in the compass, deliberation is the means to an end. The rescue dog is concerned with how news reporters can solve problems in society. For the hunting dog, who is also active, this is done by prompting action among authoritative decision makers, but for the rescue Deliberative Sheepdog

Rescue dog

Passive

Active Watchdog

Hunting dog

Representative

Figure 2.1  The journalistic compass: normative dichotomies in news reporting

32  Part I Internal factors dog, it makes more sense to prompt action among private citizens. In general, the compass thus covers four corners of the world of journalism, and when the dichotomies that constitute these corners are related, they effectively illustrate four roles in journalism. These four roles can naturally not account for all journalistic principles, but they cover important ideal types when it comes to the purpose and perspective of journalists, including the news stories and news sources they select – and reject – in their daily work. The journalistic compass does not imply that journalists – individually or collectively – only adhere to one role. Over the course of a career, a collective of news stories dealing with the same issue or even during a single day’s different productions, journalists can perform several roles. This is a point that Weaver and Wilhoit noted decades ago in their first study of the American Journalist: while there are slight tendencies for the role conceptions to be stronger among certain types of journalists, the more significant fact is that these basic roles are almost universal perceptions among journalists. They are, in a sense, the primary colors of the profession: their pigment and hue may be grayer or darker than some, but they are present in virtually all journalists of all media, large and small, eastern and western, young and old. (1986, 144) The two authors even suggest that this not only might be relevant between various subgroups of journalists but also holds true for individual reporters throughout a day, and to offer a fitting perspective, Weaver and Wilhoit later cite a former politician about how the role of individual journalists can change throughout a day: “At 9 o’clock it’s adversary, at 10 o’clock it’s symbiotic. At 11 o’clock it’s independent and at 12 o’clock the politicians are manipulating the press. It goes back and forth, it’s all over the place” (cf. 1996, 171). This point echoes that of Bernard Cohen, who believed – based on an extensive number of interviews with reporters, politicians and public officials – that a journalist lives what he termed a “bifurcated professional existence”: “he is a reporter of the passing scene, yet he is also a part of that scene” – even if the individual reporter may not always understand or accept this “duality” (1963, 19). Cohen used the concepts of “neutral reporter” and “participant reporter” to describe this duality, and later researchers have often come to see them as separate and have used them as starting points for their own studies into role conceptions. But in Cohen’s mind, they were both separate and connected, since the reporters in reality had both functions in society – whether they recognized it or not. The role conceptions that have been presented in this article build on the same basic understanding that the news reporters and the news media have several functions in ways that resemble Michael Schudson’s notion of journalism characterized by schizophrenia: I propose that the news media should be self-consciously schizophrenic in their efforts to perform a democratic political function. They should both

First influencing factor 33 champion the kind of democracy that the political scientists say we have little chance of achieving and, at the same time, they should imaginatively respond to the realities of contemporary politics. (Schudson 1995a, 211–212) Schudson’s point is that journalism should act “as if classical democracy were within reach and simultaneously to work as if a large, informed, and involved electorate were not possible” (1995a, 223), and that there are virtues to such an approach. “Journalists would do well to be of two minds because the world they report is of two (or more) possibilities. And in this fact, I think, lies not only complication but also opportunity,” Schudson writes (1995a, 223), and the journalistic compass might offer just such an opportunity in the future.

The compass as a model of – and for – journalism Even if journalism for centuries has legitimized itself by references to the public – “[t]he public’s right to know” is the worn and unintelligible slogan of modern journalism, as James Carey (1995, 381) has written – there has been little agreement both inside and outside newsrooms as to how journalists principally should and could relate to the very term that grounds it. This problem is not new. Even if Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and others from some of the first generations of professionally working journalists repeatedly stipulated that journalists should provide a public service, their aspirations were not met in any sufficient way. Of the two, Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Williams, the latter was undoubtedly the one who worked the hardest to make future practitioners more aware of their responsibility to the public, if for no other reason than Pulitzer passed away in 1911 before the funding for the school of journalism at Columbia University was in place. Walter Williams, on the other hand, came to spend decades at the new school of journalism he helped to establish by means of other people’s money and a responsive leadership at the University of Missouri. Walter Williams was himself trained as a printer, reporter, editor and later also came to own a majority of one of the regional newspapers, but as opposed to Joseph Pulitzer, he gave all that up to become dean at the country’s first journalism school, where he decided to teach the mandatory course, “The History and Principles of Journalism,” himself. He also took it upon himself to publish a book that sought to relate different principles of journalism around the world, and the title, The World’s Journalism (1915), is almost indistinguishable from a later research project (Hanitzsch et al. 2011). Williams even took it upon himself to craft a creed for his profession that has outlasted any of his other writings and that even today is highlighted on buildings, in books and in many other lasting places about the most important principles of journalism. But despite attempts from journalism educators, scholars, founders and others associated with different movements to strengthen journalism, the principle that relates to the profession’s responsibility to the public often becomes rather abstract in terms of what both “journalism” and “the public” actually entail.

34  Part I Internal factors This is why Walter Lippmann, only a few decades after the start of the very first journalism schools, could refer to “the phantom public,” and why many later scholars, who came to work at the journalism schools that were established throughout the 20th century, have held similar concerns. The journalistic compass cannot solve all of the century-old questions of the principal relationship between the public and journalism, but the model can be a new starting point. In that regard, the compass is not intended to diminish the importance of past attempts at modeling the principles of journalism. Rather than functioning as a substitute for other models, the compass is meant to supplement them. But while a universally applicable model of journalistic principles that has reach and relevance might never be developed, the existing models all have problems bridging the divide between academia and practice. All of the models have merits of their own and inform their users about important aspects. It is as Carey has written: “different maps bring the same environment alive in different ways; they produce quite different realities” (1992, 28). What is particular about the journalistic compass is that it encompasses sentiments about the principles of journalism as they relate to the public. These are sentiments that have flourished long before the advent of doctoral programs, and before researchers began to populate journalism schools and publish on the subject. The journalistic compass is, however, not only interesting because it synthesizes different journalistic principles and delineates their similarities and differences. The compass is also constructed to function as both a “model of” and a “model for,” and in this case it can be used by researchers, lecturers and practitioners to practice their respective crafts. Inside newsrooms – and in classrooms among future journalists – the compass has, in the past years, been used to prompt an understanding of some of the different functions the news media can have and to help present journalists navigate in new normative directions. In such instances, the compass is used as a tool for activation, where journalists knowingly attempt to make their coverage more passive or active, representative or deliberative. But the compass can also be used as an analytical tool. Researchers, lecturers, students and others can use it as an analytical framework for understanding past, present and perhaps even future journalism. To take the last example of the use of the compass first, this model has been used as a framework for surveys where respondents are asked about what kinds of journalism they would like in the future, and what kinds of journalism they receive today. This difference between “reals” and “ideals” (see e.g. Bro 2008) can help journalists, editors and the owners of news organizations better understand the needs of their audience. But researchers and students, who have an interest in the present and even the past, can also use the compass. The compass has been used in courses that resembled some of those that Pulitzer advocated for more than hundred years ago. In his essay, The School of Journalism in Columbia University, he suggested that students should have a course titled “The Study of Newspapers,” which among other things should include a “thorough study of the newspapers of the current day” (1904, 42). Students and their lecturers can use the compass to discuss the individual news stories in newspapers – and other types of news media that developed

First influencing factor 35 in the 20th and 21st centuries – or the collective “corpus,” as James Carey put it, of news stories. Such studies can also compare journalism over space, for example between different nations and news organizations, or time, for example between different centuries and decades. In the latter case, the compass can also help researchers, lecturers, students and others with interest in the second influencing factor in journalism, namely the precedents of journalism, learn how these different principles have been operationalized over time, and this is the focus of the following chapter.

3 Second influencing factor Journalistic precedents

The history of journalism constituted a mandatory course for the first-year students that were admitted to the school of journalism at the University of Missouri, and Walter Williams, one of the founding fathers of the school, even decided to teach the course “History and Principles of Journalism” himself. Joseph Pulitzer, who had voiced the importance of setting up a journalism school a few years before the school opened at Missouri but whose efforts were halted by his own and Columbia University’s hesitancy, was equally concerned about the importance of knowing history. In Pulitzer’s defense for his endowment to form a school at Columbia University, he stated that the future journalism student “must learn not merely the principles but the practice and precedents of his profession” (1904, 29). Both men believed that insights into the past were a prerequisite for better journalism in the present, and that it could be an important influencing factor for future journalists in the sense that precedents could both help and hinder their work. At times history could teach journalists where to navigate toward. At other times, the history of journalism could instruct journalists what potential problems to stay clear of. The importance of knowing the history of journalism was, however, not shared by everyone at the time Pulitzer and Williams sought to form journalism schools, and the importance of history continued to be questioned throughout the 20th century, even at the very schools that the two seminal figures within journalism helped establish. Journalism historian Andie Tucher, who came to lecture and do research at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, has reminded us that courses about history have “waxed and waned and waxed again” (2012, 48) since the start of the school in 1912. Tucher has also relayed that it is not just a reluctant faculty that at times has found journalism history to be of less importance that other courses, not least those dealing with the practice of journalism. “It is undeniable: students who come to a school of journalism tend to be much more attuned to seconds and minutes than to centuries,” she has written (2012, 46). Ted Peterson, who was one of the authors of Four Theories of the Press and for many years a lecturer in journalism history at the University of Iowa’s school of journalism, made a similar point in 1950. He called it “the least rewarding course in the curriculum,” and stated that lecturers “drone about the dull, dead past and somnolent students cache away

Second influencing factor 37 a store of names, dates and places to see them through the cheerless examination season” (cf. Carey 1997/1974, 86). For decades, journalism historians have discussed the importance of their subject for the practice of journalism, and they have been prompted to do so from both within their own ranks and from outside by students, colleagues and employers in the news industry. But the self-criticism peaked with the inaugural issue of Journalism History in 1974. In the very first issue of the journal, in the very first article of that issue, and in the very first line of that article, James Carey, proclaimed, “The study of journalism history remains something of an embarrassment” (1997/1974, 86). Carey believed that historians for far too long had modeled journalism history as the “slow, steady expansion of freedom and knowledge from the political press,” and he explained that “the problem with this interpretation, and the endless studies and biographies executed within its frame, is simply that it is exhausted. It has done its intellectual work” (1997/1974, 89). His critique did not diminish in the following years. In a later essay, published almost a quarter of a century after he had lamented the field in the inaugural issue of Journalism History and had since shifted to Columbia University’s journalism school, Carey emphasized what he thought should be done: “Journalism and journalists need a more usable story of their own craft than the one that has been bequeathed them” (1997, 331). Michael Schudson, whose work has been widely used in history courses at the burgeoning number of journalism schools that have sprung up over most of the world throughout the 20th century – and who incidentally came to teach at Columbia University’s journalism school – has also pointed to the potential journalism history could have on the practice of the field. “Journalism history in the journalism schools has the opportunity to be not just armchair commentary but, in its own small way, a constitutive feature of journalistic practice,” he has suggested (1997, 83). Over time, there have certainly also been researchers and lecturers that have attempted to promote and even prompt such a development. One of them is Martin Conboy from the journalism school at the University of Sheffield. He has collected and edited an anthology with the telling title How Journalism Uses History (2012), and here, scholars from both sides of the Atlantic consider how journalists, lecturers and researchers can better use history in different ways than the one perhaps most commonly thought of, namely, as a source for news about olds. Writing in the foreword, one of the contributors reminds readers how all “journalists of a certain vintage remember newspaper libraries that could produce worn envelopes packed with cuttings on almost anyone and any event” (Delano 2012, xii). But worn envelopes packed with cuttings of old news stories is not the only way the history of journalism can affect the actions of contemporary journalists, and in this chapter, a new model for the way in which precedents can hinder and help the actions of journalists is presented. In this connection, precedents can be several hundred years old or they can be only a few days, hours or even minutes old. This chapter starts by reviewing some of the most important ways journalism history has been modeled up until now. This includes important studies of

38  Part I Internal factors the autonomy and objectivity of journalism, routinization and institutionalization, which over time have become constitutive for journalistic actions. These attempts at modeling journalism history are by no means wrong, even if many of them tend to highlight the positive developments more than the negative. But the review of these studies shows that we are in need of a new, supplementary model that can take current developments into account and that also is more accustomed to the needs of journalistic practice. This was an ambition Joseph Pulitzer voiced in the essay where he defended his endowment to Columbia University, and an ambition that Walter Williams attempted to carry out in his own teaching, but the model in this chapter attempts to show how this work can be taken even further to the benefit of researchers, lecturers and practitioners.

History of journalism versus history in journalism ‘Precedent’ is a term employed within many professions. Within the study of law, the term can both entail problems and potentials, since legal precedents can be past sentences that can help convict or exonerate a defendant. In the context of journalism studies, ‘precedent’ refers to a previous incident that can function as an instigator for future journalistic action. This conception of what precedents can amount to and why journalists accordingly should be taught the history of journalism was something that Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Williams were not alone in thinking. In his first book, which was basically a collection of three essays, titled Liberty and the News (1920), Walter Lippmann made the same point as part of an argument for better-educated journalists. “What are the qualifications for being a surgeon?” he asked rhetorically, and gave the answer himself, before he compared the training within the field of medicine to journalism: “A certain minimum of special training. What are the qualifications for operating daily on the brain and heart of a nation? None” (Lippmann 2008/1920, 45–46). One of the things that Lippmann suggested be taught at future journalism schools was a broader historical understanding, so that journalists would both “report the ripples of a passing steamer, and forget the tides and the currents and the ground-swell” (2008/1920, 51). In a similar vein, Wilbur Schramm, who along with Ted Peterson and Fred Siebert was one of the authors of Four Theories of the Press, stated the importance of understanding of the past when he drafted a plan for a school of journalism at the University of Iowa. That was, coincidently, the school, where James Carey started his career within journalism studies. In his Blueprint for a School of Journalism (1942), Schramm denoted the potentials that a historical approach could offer a future journalism student. Schramm wrote in his blueprint, A university can open windows for him on the past, the present, and the future. It can offer him a wealth of knowledge about things and men and ideas which will help him to write with the understanding and penetration of the world he lives in.

Second influencing factor 39 He also suggested that Walter Lippmann and other prominent people from the news industry should be part of the school’s advisory board. It is, however, important to note that these concerns for the importance of history fall into two categories. The first is exemplified by Walter Williams, whose course “History and Principles of Journalism” dealt specifically with the history of journalism. In the course catalogue from 1908 from the University of Missouri, it was described as being “designed to present the main facts of the history of newspaper making, of journalism in various periods and conditions, the meaning and aims of journalism and its fundamental principles” (cf. Farrar 1998, 141). Joseph Pulitzer’s approach to the importance of history exemplifies the second category. In the section of Pulitzer’s essay where he promotes a course in history, he mentions different subjects he considers to be of relevance. These include “the history of politics,” “the growth and development of free institutions and the causes of their decay,” “revolutions, reforms and changes of government,” “the influence of public opinion upon all progress,” “legislation,” “taxation,” “moral movements,” “slavery and war” and the list continues until Pulitzer at the very end lists “he history of journalism” (1904, 34–35). In this second category, history is a resource that offers journalists background and knowledge about the issues they cover. This was also the kind of history Lippmann considered important in Liberty and the News, and a kind of history that practicing journalists back then were reminded of when they received what Anthony Delano in How Journalism Uses History described as worn envelopes from the newspaper libraries with cuttings about past coverage of an event, issue or individual (2012). These types of precedents are certainly an important influencing factor for journalistic actions, but they resemble other types of sources for news stories – press releases, reports and so forth – that can affect the actions of journalism. These types of sources will be covered in the second part of the book that deals with those external factors that can affect the actions of journalists. What is of interest in this part of the book, which deals with the internal factors of journalism, is the first category, that is, the ways in which the history of journalism offers current practitioners precedents that instruct them – knowingly or not – about the problems and potentials that are associated with different approaches to journalism. A single chapter cannot possibly capture all the precedents in the history of journalism that have come to affect the ways in which journalists work in the present, so this chapter will focus on the fundamentals that have come to affect journalists on both sides of Atlantic and the way these developments have been modeled in the past. In this perspective, the experiences of Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams, Walter Lippmann and others who were prominent figures around the turn of last century personify important moments in what Jean Chalaby has called “the invention of journalism” (1998). Even though the term ‘journalism’ etymologically derives from the French terms ‘journal’ and ‘jour,’ meaning ‘day’ – which in turn build on the Latin terms ‘diurnus,’ meaning ‘of the day,’ and from ‘dies,’ meaning ‘day’ – Jean Chalaby assesses that journalism was essentially an Anglo-American invention (1996). Though France could

40  Part I Internal factors lay claim to the term and it first found its way into English in the 1830s, some of the practices that we today consider the most common, such as reporting and interviewing, were “invented and developed by American journalists” (Chalaby 1996, 303). These and other journalistic practices gradually found their way into newspapers in the late 19th century, and historian W. Joseph Campbell has even ventured to describe the year 1897 – in his book by that very title (2006) – as the most pivotal moment in the development of American journalism. In these starting years of journalism, there were, however, few common features among the people who became journalists. There were certainly no regular schools of journalism, and in the late 19th century only a few universities offered courses. Most of the practitioners entered the field by way of other experiences. Walter Williams is a good example of that. In a portrait of Walter Williams in the American Magazine in 1931, readers learned that “Walter Williams never had a Ph.D. degree. Nor had he a bachelor’s degree. He did not have even a high school diploma” (Mullett 1931). Instead, Williams entered the field by working as a printer’s devil in the printing room – a nickname for apprentices who were often covered in ink, oil and other black matter – where he set type, got the rollers ready for printing and did other kinds of practical work. In time, he was allowed to write short news pieces, and gradually he moved from the printing room to the newsroom, and later he was appointed editor of a newspaper in Missouri and, eventually, also became part owner and copublisher and president of the newly established Missouri Press Association (Farrar 1998). Joseph Pulitzer’s career was no less impressive, nor did Pulitzer have a formal education in journalism. Pulitzer was an immigrant from Hungary who gradually found his way into the newsroom in St. Louis, where he rose to become editor and later owner after which he took over newspapers in other parts of the nation, most famously, of course, the World, which by the turn of last century had the highest circulation of any newspaper in the country. This development meant that Williams was in a unique position when he taught his students how history had brought with it different subprofessions in the newspapers. “Printing is necessary to the publishing of a journal, but printing is not journalism. Printing merely affords medium for journalistic expression,” the former printer’s apprentice informed students (1922/1911, 15), and he offered his own definition of what journalism was: “Journalism is the conducting, directing, managing, writing, for a journal, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication. Persons thus engaged are journalists” (1922/1911, 15). Pulitzer was equally aware of a historical shift from the time when one person could be in charge of the entire process, from collecting and printing, to distributing and selling newspapers, as it comes across in his lengthy essay, and both men personify – and portray in their writing – a development where the work at newspapers is increasingly specialized and professionalized. This was a development that both men attempted to prompt, and Joseph Pulitzer was very clear about his attentions: “I wish to begin a movement that will raise journalism to the rank of a learned profession,” he wrote is his defense for his endowment to Columbia University. Walter Williams, writing just a few

Second influencing factor 41 years later, went a step further. He took for granted that such a profession already existed by then. In the opening lines of his journalistic creed, he noted, I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust. (1914) That might overstate the case. As Michael Schudson has written, journalism even today is still an “uninsulated profession,” since news work does not require the completion of an authorized education or the approval and licensing of a committee as some of the other professions that Joseph Pulitzer compared journalists to in his essay, such as law and medicine, do. Some journalism schools might have introduced an oath similar to the Hippocratic oath, which students of medicine are required to adhere to before they can practice medicine, but as Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini have reminded us in Comparing Media Systems, journalistic degrees are not common in all western countries (2004, 34), and in general journalists have poorly defined border zones, as Michael Schudson and Chris Anderson have noted (2009, 98).

Models of autonomy and objectivity, routinization and institutionalization Differences between who journalists are – and what journalism is – continue to exist, but the differences between journalism in different countries were perhaps even greater at the turn of last century. This was something that Walter Williams tried to exemplify a few years after the start of the journalism school. The World’s Journalism was written by Williams, when he had a well-deserved leave from the journalism school, and what Walter Williams might have missed in scholarly rigor and in a systematic, methodological approach he made up for in terms of covering much ground – literally. “This bulletin summarizes in brief some notes of observations made in visiting nearly 2,000 newspaper offices in a world-tour, June 1913, to May, 1914 in the capitals and many of the smaller cities and towns,” Williams started his report (1915, 2). The report was originally thought of as a book, but in the end, it was published as a bulletin in the series that the newly founded journalism school started. Williams based his observations on visits to an impressive number of countries – on several continents – but in his bulletin, he particularly focused on four countries. “The types of journalism most conspicuous and most easily differentiated as national products are the British, the French, the German, the American,” he writes (1915, 4). He summarized some of his key findings: The British type has long been and is today in many parts of the world the most potent in making and molding newspapers – they are literary

42  Part I Internal factors productions. The German newspapers are weak in news and newsgathering facilitates, but strong in political articles, in art, music and literary criticism, in informational discussions. The American newspaper is more audacious that any of its foreign contemporaries, more smartly written, more attractively printed. In news facilitates, in persuasive appeal to all classes, as a general medium for exchange of thought, it is unsurpassed. (1915, 11) The French newspapers, from where the concept of ‘journalism’ and ‘journalist’ originated, were also part of Williams’s study, and he noted that the French publications are “not merely newspapers, they are literary productions,” and that journalism in France accordingly is considered “an honored profession that is generously bestowed” (1915, 10). Journalism researchers continue to debate the extent to which journalism could – and should – be considered a profession. But even though journalists in general have fewer of the educational, legal and other types of traits considered to constitute a traditional profession, such as law and medicine, a gradual process of professionalization has taken place insofar as the practice of journalism has become increasingly based on some common ground rules. This development can be summarized in concepts like autonomy and objectivity, routinization and institutionalization. As for autonomy and objectivity, one of the findings that Williams made as part of his ambitions study of The World’s Journalism (1915) was the gradual autonomy and objectivity that had come to characterize journalists in most other countries compared with where the concept had originated. As historians such as Jean Chalaby and Stephen Mitchell have noted, it was in this period that the content in American newspapers began to be structured “around facts” and not “around ideas and ideologies,” as was often the case in France and some other European countries (Stephens 1988). The historians were not alone in this belief. Joseph Pulitzer experienced the same. When he was asked “to outline the main difference between the French and American Press, he criticized the French for letting their correspondents express their opinions in their telegraphic cables.” He then continued, “In America, we want facts. Who cares about the philosophical speculations of our correspondents?” (cf. Chalaby 1996, 311) In the course of the 19th century, many of the politicians, professors and people from other professions who specialized in views about politics, commerce or culture were gradually replaced in the newsrooms by people who focused on news. The expression of views did not disappear from the newspapers, but they were gradually contained on special pages in the form of editorials and letters to the editor, and whenever they appeared in the regular news, they gradually were given the form of interviews, where reporters encapsulated the views expressed by a news source by the use of quotations, italics, indented sections and other visible illustrations of this particular type of content. This development was called for by several of the seminal figures that came to affect journalism themselves. Walter Williams wrote in his creed that “that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is betrayal” (1914). Walter Lippmann repeatedly called for an

Second influencing factor 43 “independent press” in his books, essays and articles, and Joseph Pulitzer promoted a “disinterested, public-spirited press” (Pulitzer 1904, 48), where journalists should work for the public rather than political, commercial or other special interests. This development brought with it what researchers later have described as “the rise of objectivity,” as it appears in the subtitle of Richard Lee Kaplan’s book from 2001. There have been several attempts to define what exactly objectivity was and has come to mean for journalism, and particular two overriding components, facticity and impartiality, are present (see e.g. Westerstahl 1983). In the first instance, ‘objectivity’ refers to journalistic attempts to describe the world outside newsrooms in the most precise manner, and this was a view of what journalists should do that Walter Lippmann attempted to advance. Writing in 1920, Lippmann, who himself had been educated at Harvard University, asked, “[H]ow far can we go in turning newspaper enterprise from a haphazard trade into a disciplined profession?” Immediately thereafter he answered, as Lippmann often did, his own question. He stated, “Quite far, I imagine, for it is altogether unthinkable that a society like ours should remain forever dependent upon untrained witnesses” (2008/1920, 46). Lippmann believed that journalists, with the help of more trained observers – like the professors and other university lecturers that he himself had been trained by – could become better at describing the world around them, so that people could gain a better understanding of it. This notion of objectivity that highlights the importance of facticity has in time been supplemented and even substituted by a notion of objectivity that stresses the importance of impartiality. While it can be difficult, if not downright impossible, to describe the world in precise terms, it is easier for journalists to leave it to others to describe and then present the opposing sides of any given situation. In the words of Gaye Tuchman, the term has become a “strategic ritual” that journalists use to safeguard themselves against external and internal pressures on the newsroom. Her studies show that journalists use objectivity to fend off complaints from both news sources and “superiors’ reprimands” (1972, 662), who would like for the journalists to work differently. While there is general agreement among researchers that objectivity in time has become an important characteristic of modern journalism, other researchers have been more concerned with the factors that, in the first place, led objectivity to become a prime function for many journalists and what its effect has become. Among these are scholars who have noted that the popularity of objectivity has been prompted by economic incentives, since it offered publishers like Joseph Pulitzer the opportunity to sell his products to even more readers. Other scholars have found technology to be of importance to this particular journalistic ideology. In his essay “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph,” James Carey (1992/1983) argues that technical constraints associated with telegraphy prompted journalists toward a shorter, more fact-driven journalism. Not only could the lines break down, which made it necessary to send the most important aspect of a report first, but the costs of sending cables also enticed news organizations – in particular the press associations – to adapt to a more neutral approach, since these telegrams had a greater market. This part-technological,

44  Part I Internal factors part-economical explanation has not been shared by all scholars, and Michael Schudson has argued that the rise of objectivity had more to do with the emergence of new cultural norms and ideals among journalists. These include a search for solidarity among the practitioners, who back then had many different backgrounds, and also the need to control subordinates and socialize the many later generations of reporters (2001). Operationalizing objectivity into the practice of journalism was helped by some of the practices that developed in the 20th century. These means, methods and techniques will be described later in the book, since they in themselves constitute another influencing factor of journalism. But these practices – including the practice of interviewing, which in the words of Michael Schudson has become “the most fundamental act of contemporary journalism” (1995/1994, 72) – have resulted in a set of standard operating procedures within journalism that Walter Lippmann addressed in Public Opinion. In a central passage of the book, he writes that without “standardization, without stereotypes, without routine judgments . . . the editor would soon die of excitement” (1997/1922, 123). The importance of routinization has been made clear by many other scholars throughout the years, even if they have employed a different vocabulary. In her seminal work, Making News by Doing Work (1973), where Gaye Tuchman also addresses the notions of objectivity, she writes about the “routinized methods” for producing news from a number of different sources. Her studies of what occurs in different newsrooms show that successful methods for obtaining new news are reused continuously, and that these routine processes – or “professional processes” as Wilson Lowrey has also called them (2006, 166) – help explain why journalists can go from news organization to news organization and even from print to radio, television and other types of media that developed in the 20th and 21st centuries without much difficulty. Routines can even become institutionalized to the extent that journalists do not think about the precedent that originally inspired a new journalistic practice. Timothy E. Cook, one of the researchers who most energetically advanced the notion of a process of institutionalization within journalism, has written, There is, to be sure, a range of diversity between television, radio, newspapers, and newsmagazine news, between tabloid papers and papers of record, between dailies and weeklies, between small-town and big-city outlets. But what is striking is that . . . this range is constricted. The news media, despite different technologies, deadlines, and audiences, are structured similarly in their internal organizations, the way they interact with sources, the formats they use, and in the content they provide. (Cook 1998, 64) One such example is the practice of interviewing, as Michael Schudson has reminded us (1995/1994, 73), while another is the presentation of news. In this context, the first generations of journalists who were subject to what Pulitzer described as the “incidental training” in newsrooms often presented news in a

Second influencing factor 45 chronological form. Back then, a debate in parliament would often be presented verbatim by reporters who were skilled stenographers and who in some instances even developed their own techniques for shorthand. Later generations, however, learned by accretion in newsrooms or by lectures in classrooms that the inverted pyramid structure with the most important part mentioned first and the least important mentioned last made for a better journalism. Many of these practices that evolved over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries made journalists still more autonomous, both from state regulators, who controlled what was included in some of the first newspapers in colonial America and on the European continent, and in time from the owners of newspapers and even their editors. This gradual independence is symbolically present in the advent of bylines. In the 19th century, many journalists were not credited for their work. Later journalists could be given pseudonyms – often with reference to Greek gods who were known to carry news or important messages – but today the names of journalists can sometimes be found both before and after the publication of a news story. This is a symbolic expression of the importance editors, owners and others associated with the news media have bestowed upon journalists. For Timothy E. Cook, these journalistic institutions that have come to characterize journalism today – and are not to be confused with individual persons and organizations – can be defined as “taken-for-granted social patterns of behavior valued in and of themselves [that] encompass procedures, routines, and assumptions, which extend over space and endure over time, in order to preside over a societal sector” (1998, 84). Many later studies have reaffirmed just that. For even though important national differences continue to exist, as Walter Williams also pointed out more than a hundred years ago in his fast-paced tour around The World’s Journalism (1915, researchers such as David Ryfe have found “extraordinarily homogenous” patterns of journalism across organizational, geographic and other differences (2006, 135). The extent to which institutions are formed can naturally vary, but what is important in the context of this book is that the development of institutions is by accretion. “Particular isolated decisions can serve as precedents for later choices,” as Cook put it (1998, 67), which underscores the importance of precedents as one of the influencing factors of journalistic actions.

Modeling principles as historical precedents The history of journalism is one of the oldest and most traditional fields within journalism studies. Some of the earliest journalism degree courses – which predated regular schools of journalism – were taught in history departments. The department of history at the University of Missouri is one such example, and the University was also among the nation’s first to do so, when it hosted a course in news writing in 1878, some 30 years before the University’s regular journalism school was launched by Walter Williams. Many of the courses at the first journalism schools were also taught by professors of history, and while Williams lectured on the subject himself, Joseph Pulitzer named prominent historians at that time – personified simply as “McMaster, Wilson and Rhodes” (1904, 15) – that

46  Part I Internal factors he thought should teach future students. Some of the first researchers who were hired at journalism schools around the world also had a background in history and naturally came to publish on the subject. Many of these earlier and later historical studies have uncovered important aspects of journalism and deserve to be mentioned alongside the ones already included. Fortunately, these works about particular periods, persons, organizations and so on in the history of journalism are referenced in some of journalism studies’ many encyclopedias, handbooks and review articles. This chapter therefore restricts itself to focusing on some of the most important ways the history of journalism has been modeled in the past and to discussing what is missing in these models when it comes to what affects the actions of journalists. In this regard, criticism of historical research has followed two paths. On the one hand, scholars have been concerned about the ‘approach,’ and on the other hand, criticism has been voiced over the intended ‘audience’ for the research. As for the first path, Martin Conboy has written about a widespread “celebratory approach” (2004, 2), and Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone have used a similar wording when they write about the “mostly celebratory accounts of the rise of the press” (2009, 19). Likewise, Peter Golding and Phillip Elliott have referred to how historians have often portrayed journalism history as the “the heroic and passionate struggle for a free press” (1979, 20). Michael Schudson, who has written some of the most widely used books within the field, such as Discovering the News (1978), has nuanced the criticism by suggesting that the implementation of history at journalism schools has been a “mixed blessing.” It “has kept the subject alive, given it a market, provided it a moral purpose, and allowed it to choose its intellectual bedfellows at will. But its practitioners have too often been isolated from the history profession at large,” Schudson has written (1997, 82–83). In a similar vein, John Nerone has complained that historians within journalism studies have attempted to “tell the past in its own terms” and neglected to tie it to historical studies more generally (1993). Another recurring critique has been the lack of research that is relevant for the practitioners themselves. In the inaugural issue of Journalism History, James Carey writes, with a nod to the celebratory approach, that the “problem with this interpretation, and the endless studies and biographies executed within its frame, is simply that it is exhausted; it has done its intellectual work. One more history . . . would not be wrong – just redundant” (1997/1974, 88). Instead, he expressed hope that historical studies in the future would be “ventilated, then, by fresh perspectives and new interpretations more than by additional data” (1997/1974, 88). These fresh perspectives and news interpretations should, according to Carey, be directed more toward the actual practice of journalists and the thoughts behind their coverage. Barbie Zelizer has likewise noted, “[H]istorians came to write primarily for each other rather than contemplating more about ‘whose journalism history is it’ ” (2004, 83). In time, there have certainly been scholars who have been inspired by the critique and have looked more at “the history of reporting,” as James Carey has suggested that the historical studies focused on more. There are certainly also scholars who have attempted to offer a “comprehensive and

Second influencing factor 47 insightful analysis of the journalistic practices” in a historical perspective, as Barbie Zelizer has sought (2004, 100). But we are still in need of models that can strengthen our understanding of how history can be of use to journalists, or to put it slightly differently, in line with the concepts of this book, of how precedents in the history of journalism can serve as potentials and problems when it comes to affecting actions of contemporary journalists. Here, the journalistic compass can offer such a new “vantage point” that James Carey and other scholars have called for. The compass is a model that incorporates two dimensions in journalism, where the purpose can be either passive or active, and where the journalistic perspective can be either representative or deliberative (see Figure 3.1). When these dimensions are connected, the two dichotomies form four different but intertwined journalistic roles. The compass is, however, not only a “model of” journalism that can help clarify journalistic principles. The compass is also a “model for” journalism that can offer researchers, lecturers and practitioners a framework for studying journalism history in new ways. The compass can, namely, accommodate those critics who have complained that journalism history is more than one long, continual, liberating “march of journalism” – to paraphrase the title of one of the many books that have been criticized for such an overly positive approach (Herd 1952). For when used as a framework for historical studies, the compass can assist in taking the contingent aspects of journalism into account. “Like all practices, those of journalists are contingent; that is, they are variable over time, place and circumstance,” James Carey (1997, 331) has written, and his point is that “[n]othing disables journalists more than thinking that current practice is somehow in the nature of things, that the practices nature and history determined were of the essence of journalism” (1997, 331). Conboy makes a similar point when he writes that the development of journalism is “as much characterized by rupture as by continuity, by impediments to freedom of public expression as by liberation” (2004, 2). Others, such as the British historians Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, have fittingly described this historical development as a “zig zag” movement (2002, 74). The compass makes such a contingent approach possible, and when the compass is used as a framework for historical analysis, it can help delineate similarities and dissimilarities between, for example, different periods, practices, persons, organizations and even nations, like the comparative study Walter Williams did Deliberative Sheepdog

Passive Watchdog

?

Rescue dog

Active Hunting dog

Representative

Figure 3.1  The journalistic compass: model for historical analysis and activation

48  Part I Internal factors (1915). An example might be helpful when explaining the use of the compass, and the aspirations and achievements of Joseph Pulitzer is a pertinent place to start, since Pulitzer and many other contemporary journalists, editors and owners worked in a pivotal moment of journalism history, where what was then known as the “new journalism” was born. This was a period when journalists started taking over the newsrooms from the politicians, professors and other professions who had manned the desks before, and when some of the important new tools – like reporting and interviewing – became standard practices. Working in this pivotal moment, the compass can be used to describe the principles of journalism that Pulitzer was trying to promote, how these principles compared to other journalistic approaches at the time, and what eventually happened to these principles. In this regard, Pulitzer was known for experimenting constantly with new approaches to journalism, but he especially attempted to implement principles in newsrooms that related to the upper right-hand corner of the compass: the deliberative and active journalism. Pulitzer supported an active journalism, and his newspapers often attempted to include members of the public in solving various societal problems. William Randolph Hearst, who competed fiercely with Joseph Pulitzer over the news market in New York City and promoted the same principles, called it “journalism of action” or “journalism that acts,” while others later simply referred to it as “action journalism.” One of the most spectacular examples of this journalism happened when the World asked readers to help pay for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. “We must raise the money! The World is the people’s paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money,” an article in the New York World on March 16, 1885, stated. The article went on to explain that the $250,000 that the making of the Statue cost was paid in by the masses of the French people – by the working men, the tradesmen, the shop girls, the artisans – by all, irrespective of class or condition. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money. (1885) The initiative has been known as one of the most successful campaigns for public donations in history, and the World managed to raise more than $100,000 by August that year. It has been estimated that more than 125,000 people contributed – most donated only pennies for the pedestal – but Pulitzer decided to publish the names of them all in the World afterward. Action journalism was also directed at greater societal problems, and Hearst, Pulitzer and other prominent newspaper owners and individual journalists – such as Jacob A. Riis who was later heralded by Theodore Roosevelt as “the most useful citizen in New York” (Ware 1938, 78) – took on problems with everything from crimes, hunger and sickness to poverty and pollution by supplementing the municipal agencies and charities (Campbell 2001, 180). These newspapers even established soup kitchens, distributed food and in general helped with collection, coordination and distribution of material, manpower

Second influencing factor 49 and economic means. These are all examples of an active journalism, where private citizens were called on to act, and action journalism, which is situated in the upper right-hand corner of the compass in the form of sheepdog journalism, where journalists attempt to motivate private citizens to take a part in problem solving, also spread across the continent and beyond the ocean. On the other side of the Atlantic, another prominent editor, William T. Stead, advocated activism in journalism in England, and in the Nordic countries several newspapers around the turn of last century considered the action journalism the most important of all journalistic approaches (Cavling 1909). William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper, the Journal, even went so far as to claim that “the journalism of action” represented “the final stage in the evolution of the modern journalism” (Campbell 2001, 180).

Model for scholarly analysis and journalistic action But as some scholars have suggested, the history of journalism is full of twists and turns, and this becomes clear when the compass is used as an analytical framework for historical studies. For later in the 20th century, after Joseph Pulitzer’s death in 1911, it was a journalism with a focus on representatives of the public and a more passive journalism that gradually became popular in most newsrooms on both sides of the Atlantic. Joseph Campbell writes that the “antithesis of the ‘journalism of actions’ was the conservative, counter-activist paradigm represented by the New York Times” (2006, 6), and while newspapers with this perspective and purpose were struggling in the first part of the 20th century, they became the popular way of working in the succeeding decades. This is a type of journalism that is located in the bottom left-hand corner of the compass. The reason for these historical changes will become clear later in this book – in short, they have to do with changing internal and external factors – but the result of this conflict over principles was that journalism “inherited and institutionalized” the principles promoted by Walter Lippmann (Carey 1987, 5). This is a type of journalism where journalists in general focus on the actions and attitudes of representatives of the public rather than the public itself, and where journalists also refrain from taking on the solution of societal problems themselves. At most, journalists attempt to prompt action by the representatives of the public by asking what they will do to solve the problems the journalists have uncovered. In such instances, the journalists move from being passive observers to active instigators. While James Carey and other scholars might have been right in assessing that journalism over the 20th century evolved into something that is based on principles that relate to the bottom part of the compass, he has reminded us that like “all practices, those of journalists are contingent; that is, they are variable over time, place and circumstance” (1997, 331). At the end of the 20th century, a new movement – which in many ways resembles that of Joseph Pulitzer’s movement to better “serve the public” (1904, 46) – found its way into many newsrooms and classrooms for that matter. The movement was fueled by dissatisfaction with politicians and journalists, who, at one and the same time, seemed to approach one

50  Part I Internal factors another while pulling away from the interests of that public that both of them claim to represent. One of the American advocates for journalistic change wrote, We have to reposition ourselves in the political process. We have to distance ourselves from the people we write about and move ourselves closer to the people we write for. It is time for us in the world’s freest press to become activists, not on behalf of a particular party or politician, but on behalf of the process of self-government. We have to help reconnect politics and government. (Broder 1990) The call was heard, both by researchers and practitioners, and soon the movement grew to become what Michael Schudson has termed “the best organized social movement in the history of the American Press” (1999, 118). It even spread to many other countries at the turn of the century, as one of the movement’s chroniclers has detailed (Haas 2007). Once again, the compass can be used as a framework to delineate, describe and discuss the similarities and dissimilarities between journalism – and journalists – in different periods, and the ‘public journalism’ movement marked a return to the upper part of the compass. While this return to a more deliberative perspective was common for the supporters of public journalism, there was less agreement about the purpose of this perspective. Whether journalism should be passive or active, to use the framework of the compass, became an important question, and the founding fathers of the movement were reluctant to be more precise. One of the founding fathers, the editor W. Davis “Buzz” Merritt, explained that he saw it as an “arrogant exercise, a limiting one to codify a set of public journalism rules” (1995, 124), while the scholar Jay Rosen for a long time maintained that “[t]he most important thing anyone can say about public journalism, I will say right now: We’re still inventing it. And because we’re inventing it, we don’t really know what ‘it’ is” (1994, 388). The result was that ‘precision’ in the definition was left to others (Glasser 1999, 5), and that the operationalization of how one could produce public journalism was left to the practitioners in different news organizations and nations where the movement found its way. This might have helped the popularity of the movement in its first years, but it also resulted in problems later on. For some proponents, the inclusion of the public in journalism was an end in itself. The main ambition here was that private citizens should be a part of public deliberations. These advocates of ‘public journalism’ described it as a way “to activate and elevate public deliberation on community issues” (Lambeth 1998, 29), while another description in scholarly circles referred to the American philosopher John Dewey, who had debated with Walter Lippmann about the most important principles of journalism. Rosen went so far as to write that “the world’s shortest definition of what public journalism is only consists of three words: what Dewey meant” (1999, 24). This is an approach that corresponds with the upper left-hand corner of the compass, where journalists have a passive-deliberative

Second influencing factor 51 approach. For others who supported the movement, public deliberations were only a means to another end, since they worked to include citizens in the actual problem-solving process, like Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and other proponents of an active journalism had done. This is an approach that can be located in the upper right-hand corner of the compass. Proponents of this more active type of public journalism stress the need for what they termed ‘‘proactive neutrality’’ as a guiding principle for journalism. This news reporting is neutral because it “prescribes no chosen solution and favors no particular party of interest,” but it is also “proactive in its belief that journalism can in certain cases intervene in the service of broad public values without compromising its integrity,” as Jay Rosen has put it (1996, 13). In a similar vein, Merritt has suggested that journalists should be “fair-minded participants” who are “neutral on specifics” but move “far enough beyond detachment to care about whether resolution occurs” (1995, 116). The most short and steadfast expression of the active approach within the public journalism movement might very well have been formulated by an editor, Cole Campbell, who simply wrote that “journalism is in the problem-solving business” (1999, xiv). But this editor also had an advantage compared to many other practitioners who were searching for the proper definition, since he was working for the first newspaper Joseph Pulitzer came to own, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This had given the St. Louis editor precedents he could refer to. Today, few people in newsrooms and classrooms talk about public journalism – or the other concepts, like civic journalism and community journalism, which were used around the turn of the century. But new movements continue to develop within journalism, and in recent years, a movement known as ‘constructive journalism’ has spread across the world. When studied through the framework of the compass, this new movement shares similarities with some of the past movements, while also differing in other aspects. One of the proponents of this new movement has written that constructive journalism “is neither an alternative to critical watchdog journalism nor is it an argument for harmless positive news. It argues that good reporting can inspire the solutions to the problems facing society” (Haagerup 2014, 4–5). Another early proponent has stated, “Constructive journalism investigates opportunities, looks at dilemmas from all sides, and indicates remedies. It does not ignore the problems and it does not trivialize them; instead it focuses on how these problems can be solved” (Gyldensted 2015, 7). In both instances, it is the active approach to journalism that is promoted, where journalists are in the “problem-solving business,” to paraphrase Joseph Pulitzer’s journalistic heir in St. Louis. But as it is made clear in the compass, journalists can prompt action among both the public itself (sheepdog journalism) and among representatives of the public (hunting-dog journalism), and just as the advocates for public journalism were never very clear about whether a deliberative focus should be paired with a passive or an active approach, supporters of constructive journalism are not clear on whether their active approach should be paired with a deliberative or representative perspective. In all of these instances, the journalistic compass can help with uncovering similarities and dissimilarities

52  Part I Internal factors between different types of journalism – over time and place – and this is important for several reasons. For one thing, it sensitizes researchers, lecturers and practitioners to the fact that journalism, in the words of journalism historian Martin Conboy, “ha[s] a range of competing and overlapping functions” (2004, 224) and that journalism has always been “dynamically formed and reformed” (2004, 226). Here the compass covers a potentially new vantage point for describing the development. A second important thing is that the compass can help uncover historical “wormholes” where a present problem is made more “intelligible as it is aligned with a past moment with which it has a secret affinity,” as John Durham Peters (1999, 3) has phrased it in another context. Judging from journalism history, ranging all the way back to Joseph Pulitzer’s self-proclaimed movement to make a learned profession out of journalism, such movements will continue to develop, and no matter whether one adheres to passive or active, representative or deliberative principles, the compass can help point to precedents that can inform present practitioners about the potentials and problems that past proponents of the same approach have encountered. “A large part of the explanation of the present lies in the past,” Michael Schudson has written (2003, 64), and it is noteworthy that many movements in the past seem to have failed, died out or in other ways been forgotten because the supporters had difficulties describing the main principles and failed to connect these principles with past precedents. The journalism of Pulitzer, Hearst and others in the first part of the 20th century suffered from a “definitional elusiveness,” according to one of the chroniclers of this important period, W. Joseph Campbell. The movement for a more public journalism lacked “precision” in the definition, as one otherwise sympathetic researcher of the movement noted (Glasser 1999, 5), and one of the founding fathers, W. Davis “Buzz” Merritt, admitted that a decisive problem for the movement was that the journalists who attempted to prompt a more public journalism simply lacked “comforting precedents” (1995, 119). Writing at a time when the movement was finding its way into newsrooms, this editor acknowledged some of the difficulties his colleagues and competitors were facing with what Merritt conceived to be a novel form of journalism: “Moving into that uncharted ground beyond traditional practices involves additional risks: of being misunderstood by either the public or peers; of facing choices that have no comforting precedents; and of course, of error,” he wrote (1995, 119). Had Merritt applied the framework inherent in the journalistic compass to a study of journalism history, he would find that earlier generations of journalists, editors and newspaper owners had grappled with some of the very same problems, and that they in the course of their own work had developed new, adjacent practices to their principles. In this sense, the compass is not only relevant for researchers who are on the lookout for new ways of modeling journalism history where the new models take some of the shortcomings of past models into account but also relevant for the practitioners themselves, and as Carey has written in regards to movement to reform journalism, “to ensure that these experiments sustain rather than fail us, journalism and journalists need a more usable story of their own craft

Second influencing factor 53 than the one that has been bequeathed them” (Carey 1997, 331). At best, the compass can help with that, too.

The importance and preparation of precedents The importance of precedents was something that Joseph Pulitzer actively sought to promote in more ways than one. First of all, he considered it important for future journalists, and while his conception of a course of history had more to do with general history, he encouraged journalism schools to regularly bring in journalists and editors to inform students about the most recent incidents, occurrences and other things that could work as precedents: [S]uppose the managing or chief editor of a great daily, moved by a generous zeal form his profession, should give several hours to a thorough study of the newspapers of the current day. Then let us imagine him saying to a class: “Here is the best and here is the worst story of the day” – and telling why. (1904, 42) This was the same approach to precedents that Walter Williams followed in his class “The History and Principles of Journalism,” where concrete examples of what had been done in the past were presented to students. Second of all, Pulitzer also made preparations to leave an extra sum of money so Columbia University could set up annual prizes. Pulitzer’s hope was that the prizes could work as both an incentive to excellence in accordance with the principles inherent in the manifest for the prizes – including work “in public service,” as one of the most famous categories, perhaps not surprising in light of Pulitzer’s interests, is termed – and become examples in themselves for future journalistic actions. The first prizes were given out in 1917, and over the past century, the Pulitzer Prizes have for many journalists, editors and owners come to signify what is the best practice of journalism. Here it is noteworthy that even though Joseph Pulitzer himself promoted and sought to prompt the more active and deliberative type of journalism in the upper part of the compass, the prizes that are given out in his name are often awarded to news organizations and persons where the journalistic purpose and perspective is located in different corners of the compass. This is a testament to the importance each new generation has in assessing what the most important principles to prompt and the most important precedents to uphold are. These more representative types of journalism that have typically been awarded are in many instances considered some of the most famous journalistic accomplishments. In 1972, the New York Times, for instance, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service “for the publication of the Pentagon Papers.” In this case, the New York Times, later followed by other newspapers around the country, published classified papers relating to the war in Vietnam (Rudenstine 1996) that were an embarrassment to government. The following year, 1973, the Washington Post won a Pulitzer in the same category “for its investigation of the Watergate case,” and according to one researcher, the journalistic work relating

54  Part I Internal factors to the Watergate affair “had the most profound impact of any modern event on the manner and substance of the press’s conduct” (Sabato 1991, 61). In time, the prizes have also come to influence journalists even before they swap a classroom for a newsroom. One former journalism student from Columbia University has recounted how students in the school’s history course in the 1950s were asked “to produce chapter drafts . . . about former Pulitzer Prize winners,” while other important persons and organizations in the history of journalism were not included in the course (Boylan 2003, 30). In this sense, the Pulitzer Prizes – and many other types of yearly prizes or daily praises in the newsroom, for that matter – can become a framework for what precedents are considered the most important for present and future generations of journalists. It is, namely, not simply in the formal settings, such as in jury work in prize committees, that journalists, editors and media owners “evaluate, challenge, and negotiate consensual notions,” as Barbie Zelizer has put it about what action is appropriate under different circumstances (1992, 31). The influence of preferences is a continual process, and historical occurrences, which in the words of Timothy E. Cook can “serve as precedents,” might not be centuries old or even decades old in order to enter firmly into the history of journalism and from there find their way into the minds of the members of the present profession. In other instances, the past actions, incidents or occurrences that can become precedents may only be months, weeks, days or even hours old, after which they come to affect the actions of journalists. In some instances, such precedents – no matter how old – will inspire journalists as the proper way to work. In other instances, precedents are something journalists decidedly steer away from, because precedents contain lessons about things not to do. Such precedents are not found in chronicles of prize winners, but rather on the list of layoffs, and negative precedents that journalists will steer away from can be even more decisive than the positive precedents when it comes to affecting journalistic actions. For the history of journalism not only is full of stories about successful journalists who have exposed wrongdoings of others but also has its share of journalists who themselves have crossed the lines of what is considered acceptable within their individual news organizations or the overall profession they are part of. Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and other more actively oriented journalists, editors and newspaper owners themselves even became subject to criticism about the way they practiced journalism. What they termed ‘new journalism’ their competitors described in less flattering terms, and after different conceptual attempts, the critics settled on the derogative term ‘yellow journalism’ (Campbell 2001). That was a term that referred to a character in one of the comic strips that Pulitzer, Hearst and others began to include in the newspapers, and as such it was also an indirect accusation of a newspaper’s attempt at pandering to the public in any possible way. Searching for – and finding – both positive and negative precedents that can affect actions of journalists can naturally be done without the help of models of journalism. But by using models like the journalistic compass, researchers, lecturers and practitioners are offered a framework where important recurring principles can be detected and their changing expression in publications can be

Second influencing factor 55 detailed. This is important whether one is interested in what took place in the past or in what to do in the present. In this sense, the compass is not only a tool for historical analysis but also a potential tool for journalistic activation that can point to other ways of working – and the precedents that accompany each of the approaches. Here, the “parallels are not difficult to detect,” as W. Joseph Campbell (2006, xix) has written with an explicit reference to what took place at the turn of last century and the turn of this, but the way these principles become precedents can inform future actions can change. Or in other words, even though the different norms of journalism inherent in the journalistic compass are recurring, the forms of journalism are changing. The history of journalism teaches us that new means, methods and techniques continue to develop, and one of the reasons why the journalists working for Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst introduced the interview and the report was that it helped them to prompt a more deliberative and active approach. But the different practices of journalism can also in themselves help prompt other principles, and this third influencing factor of journalism is described and discussed in the following chapter.

4 Third influencing factor Journalistic practices

The course catalogue for one of the world’s first journalism schools, at the University of Missouri, listed a total of eight courses. But three of the courses stood out. “History and Principles of Journalism” was one of them. It was the starting course, compulsory to all students and taught by the school’s founder himself. The two other courses that stood out were “Newspaper Making” and “News-Gathering.” These courses were taught every semester, and while Williams himself taught students the principles and precedents of journalism, all “three full-time teachers worked together in the Newspaper Making and News-Gathering classes,” as one of Williams’s biographers has noted (Farrar 1998, 142). Both of these courses emphasized the actual practice of journalism. “This is a laboratory course setting forth, in practice upon the daily newspaper, journalistic work in all departments,” the course catalogue from 1908 stated about “Newspaper Making.” About “NewsGathering” the catalogue read, “The course considers the methods of getting the news, by individual effort, by press associations etc., and discusses the relative value of news and its treatment” (1908, 4–5). The importance of these two courses and the actual practice of journalism were further underscored in the scheduling. While the six lecture classes at the school started at 8 a.m. and ended two hours later, the remaining part of the day was reserved for the two courses about the practice of journalism. Joseph Pulitzer, another seminal figure within journalism at the turn of the 19th century, shared Williams’s interest in the practice of journalism. “Principles,” “precedents” and “practice” were some of the key terms Pulitzer used throughout the lengthy essay, where he defended his endowment to set up the journalism school of Columbia University. Pulitzer also mentioned a number of courses that he considered important for the students at Columbia University. In a section of his essay titled “What Should Be Taught – and How,” he listed courses on the law, ethics, literature, truth and accuracy, history, sociology, economics, statistics, modern languages, physical science, the study of newspapers, the power of ideas and Principles of Journalism. The rather exhaustive list ends with what Pulitzer triumphantly termed “Finale – the news” (1904, 28–46). But for the patient reader, who has read page after page while eagerly awaiting what Pulitzer considered the most important thing to teach in terms of the practice of journalism, his self-proclaimed finale is somewhat disappointing.

Third influencing factor 57 “But I must stop,” Pulitzer writes when it is time to address what a course in the practice of journalism should include. Instead, he simply suggests that the content of this, the most important course of them all in the curriculum, should be left for others to decide. “Give me a news editor who has been well grounded, who has the foundations of accuracy, love of truth and an instinct for the public service, and there will be no trouble of about his gathering of news,” Pulitzer writes (1904, 45–46). So, while Williams and Pulitzer differed when it came to the degree of detailed descriptions and their daily engagement with teaching the practice of journalism, they both emphasized journalistic practice as one of the important factors that could – and should – influence the actions of journalists. As it is known, Joseph Pulitzer even made a second endowment to Columbia University so that the school could give out Pulitzer Prizes to the best practitioners every year as an incentive for excellence, so the recipients of the prizes could stand as exemplars for those who had already left the classrooms. In time, many other journalists, editors and owners of media organizations have written about the importance of the practice of journalism, and the best of these writings have become mandatory in the curriculum at journalism schools around the world. Some of them have even been reprinted a number of times, as it happened to one of the very first textbooks within the field. For it was not enough for Williams to favor the practice of journalism in courses and daily scheduling. He thought more was needed. So a few years after the start of the school, Williams and one of his colleagues, Frank L. Martin, published a book by that very name, The Practice of Journalism (1911). The book consists of seven parts that deal with different aspects of journalistic practice, but the majority of the book is devoted to sections about “News-Gathering” and “News Writing,” basically the same two areas that were made into courses at the school, and here, the two authors stress that [i]t is necessary not merely to know what is the news and where the news might be obtained. It is also necessary to know how to get this news, and, the news having been obtained, how to present it to the reader of the newspaper. (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 23) The problems and potentials of the practice of journalism have not been left for journalists, editors and other practitioners to describe and debate. In time, researchers have also become interested in the actual practice of journalism, and over the decades, there have been many attempts to model what various researchers have deemed the most important part of journalistic practice. These attempts can be divided into the four important categories that Williams and Martin singled out in their book more than a hundred years ago. The two former journalists stressed the need to know where journalists could find their news stories, what stories should be selected, who and what should be included as news sources and how it should be presented, and this chapter starts by reviewing past attempts to model the practice of journalism according to these categories. After the review, this chapter will develop a new model that takes some of the shortcomings of

58  Part I Internal factors past models into account. This model builds on the journalistic compass that was developed in earlier chapters, and an important point is that the principles, precedents and practice of journalism are all closely connected. The chapter concludes by discussing the relation between the three internal factors and their connection with the three external factors: production, publication and perception.

Models of where and what Walter Williams and Frank Martin begin The Practice of Journalism (1911) with an anecdote. “The term journalist was once held in disrepute by many members of the profession. By preference, the term newspaper man was used for description. A journalist was said to be all pretense and a newspaper man all practice,” they write (1922/1911, 15), and the rest of the book is basically written in an attempt to give credence – and creed – to a new generation of journalists by teaching them the best practices as they have evolved in newsrooms. The book therefore describes the most important means, methods and techniques that have developed in these early years of journalism, and the two authors devote a considerable number of pages to describing where potential news stories can be found. In these sections, Williams and Martin note that much news “reaches the newspapers through press associations (extensive news-gathering organizations), syndicates, special correspondents, and staff correspondents” (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 202), and if the many pages devoted to this issue were not enough to make students understand the importance of telegraphy, students would encounter this news-gathering machinery in one of the other courses offered at the journalism school. In the course “Correspondence,” students learned “the handling of the telegraph.” But it was not only practitioners that considered telegraphy of prime importance in securing news. Telegraphy was also the foundation of one of the bestknown and often-referenced studies focusing on journalism practice, namely David Manning White’s seminal article “The ‘Gatekeeper’ ” from 1950. “Gatekeeping research was one of the first academic areas to be applied to journalism,” Barbie Zelizer (2004, 52) writes in her extensive review of different studies of journalism in the 20th century, while Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese have noted that “The ‘Gatekeeper’ ” was not only one of the “earliest” studies in journalism but also in time became one of the “most frequently cited studies” (2014, 191). Other researchers have testified to its importance by referring to it repeatedly, and over time, the term has been used in scores of articles, anthologies and monographs. The popularity is understandable, for the concept offers a short and telling description of a complex process and practice. White was himself a former journalist who was hired to lecture and research at the then newly started journalism school at the University of Iowa, and in his first footnote, White “acknowledges the suggestions of Dr. Wilbur Schramm,” who also helped set up the school (1950, 383). White studied the news process at a regional newspaper, and his research focused on what he termed the “final gatekeeper” in the complex news process,

Third influencing factor 59 namely a wire editor White named Mr. Gates. The wire editor was asked to note the reasons for his selections and rejections, and after a week, White interviewed Mr. Gates about his reasons for including and excluding the different telegraphic content. The study showed that one in five wires were published, but it was not so much the empirical results in themselves that came to inspire White’s new colleagues at journalism schools around the world. It was the concept of gatekeeping itself. Many later studies of gatekeeping soon followed in different contexts, and one researcher even sought out and found the anonymously described Mr. Gates a quarter of a century later to find out what had changed in his gatekeeping practices. Very little, it turned out (Snider 1967). The strength of the concept of gatekeeping was that it offered a “viable foundation for a broader model of journalistic practice,” as Morris Janowitz (1975, 53) later expressed, and the concept has maintained its relevance well into the 21st century, where a new generation of researchers has used the concept in a new digital setting. But even if the concept of gatekeeping in many ways is as “useful now” as when the concept was coined, as Pamela Shoemaker and Tim P. Vos have suggested (2009, 130), other researchers have seemed fit to supplement White’s model of the practice of journalism with other models. For one need only turn a few pages in Walter Williams and Frank Martin’s textbook – or follow the course in “News-Gathering” – to learn that the practice of journalism already at the turn of last century required much more that simply “selecting” and “rejecting” incoming wires. In the book they make a thorough list of the places that journalists should cover; these include city hall, municipal courts, police stations, fire headquarters, hotels, public hospitals, undertakers, county jails, justice courts, county courts, post offices, federal courts, union stations, civic organizations, steamship offices, political headquarters, schools, coroner’s offices, theaters and clubs (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 98–99). These were all places that had something in common, which Walter Lippmann cleverly summarized a few years later in Public Opinion. Writing about where journalists find news, Lippmann noted that “[t]he most obvious place is where people’s affairs touch public authority . . . It is at these places that marriages, births, deaths, contracts, failures, arrivals, departures, lawsuits, disorders, epidemics and calamities are made know” (1997/1922, 215). Focusing on these places, Lippmann wrote, had to do with the simple facts that “[a]ll the reporters in the world working all the hours of the day could not witness all the happenings in the world” (1997/1922, 214). One of the researchers who came to study these sites for news gathering in order to develop new and more precise models of the practice of journalism was sociologist Gaye Tuchman. Tuchman studied news work at several news organizations and described the news-gathering process as characterized by strategic attempts to “routinizing the unexpected,” as the subtitle of one of her seminal articles read (1973). In this and many later works, Tuchman describes how news organizations cast a “news net” out over the world in an attempt to catch news stories, and in Tuchman’s own words, this way of modeling the practice of journalism is based on “three assumptions about readers’ interests: readers are interested in occurrences

60  Part I Internal factors at specific localities; they are concerned with activities of specific organizations; they are interested in specific topics” (1978a, 25). These localities include “institutions where stories supposedly appealing to contemporary news consumers may be expected to be found” (Tuchman 1978a, 21), but may also include individual persons. A prime example here is the president, as Walter Williams and Frank Martin noted in passing in their textbook from 1911 and as Barbie Zelizer many decades later detailed the ramifications of in her book-length study about the assassination of John F. Kennedy: Covering the Body (1992). Other researchers have further developed our understanding of the processes of finding potential news stories in a time in which telegraphic equipment has long since been dismantled and removed from newsrooms all over the world. These attempts at modeling the practice of journalism have also come to focus on what follows once news stories are found. For one thing is finding potential news stories and sources; another is deciding which – if any – news stories and news sources should be included. This was also a process in the practice of journalism that the first generation of researchers and lecturers was well aware of. David Manning White therefore also interviewed the Mr. Gates about why some news wires were selected and others rejected. “I have a few prejudices, built-in or otherwise, and there is little I can do about them,” the wire editor frankly relayed in the final part of the article, where White included a question-andanswer section (White 1950, 390). White therefore concluded in the last line of his article that through studying the gatekeeper’s “reasons for rejecting news stories from the press associations we see how highly subjective, how based on the ‘gate keeper’s’ own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (1950, 390). That particular conclusion found a less receptive audience among White’s research colleagues than his captivating concept of gatekeeping. Among the critics was Warren Breed. Breed was also a former journalist, and he took up research at Columbia University. This was before a doctoral program was introduced at “Pulitzer’s School,” as one of the journalism school’s chroniclers has described it (Boylan 2003, 1). But Breed’s dissertation from the department of sociology at Columbia University nonetheless focused on the socialization of journalists, and his article “Social Control in the News Room” (1955) builds on just this work. Breed found – based on his own experiences and extensive interviews with more than a hundred journalists and editors – that journalistic action was based on a process of socialization rather than personal sentiments. Warren Breed’s study is relevant for more than one of the influencing factors of journalism, and this research will be part of later chapters in this book, but the importance of collective ideas rather than individual considerations became clear by another strand of studies that evolved in the following years. Here, researchers attempted to find the collectively shared values that could determine what news was selected and rejected for later publication. One of the first studies within this new tradition was carried out by two Norwegian peace researchers with an interest in journalism, and their study “remains even today one of the most influential pieces on news making,” as Barbie Zelizer has suggested (2004, 54).

Third influencing factor 61 “In this article the general problem of factors influencing the flow of news . . . will be discussed,” Johan Galtung and Marie Holmboe Ruge write in the first paragraph of their seminal article “The Structure of Foreign News” (1965, 64). The article first appeared in the Journal of Peace Research, and this issue of the journal also contained another study of the “Factors Influencing the Flows of News,” namely an article with that very title (Östgaard, 1965), where another colleague from the peace research community presented his own take on the forces that could affect journalism. Of the two studies, it has been Galtung and Ruge’s that has stood the test of time. Their article has been reprinted a number of times (see e.g. Tunstall 1970; Tumber 1999), has been heralded many times by colleagues and has inspired many subsequent studies, as it happened with White’s original gatekeeper study that was published 15 years earlier. The two peace researchers found that international events become news in Norwegian newspapers to the extent that they satisfy one or more of 12 news values or “factors,” as they termed them in the article. These are “[f]requency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to persons and reference to something negative” (Galtung and Ruge 1965, 70–71). Galtung and Ruge made sure to stipulate that the 12 factors and the relation between them “hypothesizes rather than demonstrates the presence of these factors” (1965, 85), and subsequent studies from other nations, organizations and platforms for publication have demonstrated the need for such an openness. In her study, Gaye Tuchman, for instance, found that the news values employed in the newsrooms she studied were “hard news,” “soft news,” “spot news,” “developing news,” “continuing news” and “what a story” news (1978a, 47–49), and she suggested an important relation between where and when these types of news could be found is in non-, un- or prescheduled circumstances. Many later studies within this tradition have concluded that news values are “far from a unified entity” (Palmer 2000, 45), and as some of the most ardent chroniclers of the development of this field within journalism studies, Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill, have described it, the original list should not be “recited as if written on a tablet of stone” (2001, 277). Harcup and O’Neill have underscored this point by modeling what they believe to be the most important news values in this century. Their typology include the following values: “the power elite,” “celebrity,” “entertainment,” “surprise,” “bad news,” “good news,” “magnitude,” “relevance,” “follow-up” and lastly “the news organization’s own agenda” (2001, 279). Some later studies have reaffirmed the consistency of the 12 news factors that Galtung and Ruge proposed, while other researchers have supplemented or substituted these news values and have come up with other typologies, taxonomies and types of models that are more fitting in light of the particular circumstances that have been studied (see e.g. Schultz 1982; Schlesinger 1978; Golding and Elliott 1979; Harcup and O’Neill 2001). The results have been that many “lists of news values have been drawn up,” since “news values can change over time, from place to place, and between different sectors of the news media,” as Deidre O’Neill and Tony Harcup have summarized the situation (2009, 171). This

62  Part I Internal factors has been underscored with some of the recent movements that have preceded Pulitzer’s attempt to strengthen journalism. In the wake of movements for a more public or constructive journalism, the proponents have called for new news values that highlight a focus on societal solutions rather than Galtung and Ruge’s “something negative” and a focus on private citizens rather than more authoritative decision makers, known in some of the previous lists of news values as “elite people” (Galtung and Ruge 1965, 71) or “the power elite” (Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 279).

Models of who and how Reading some of the seminal studies of the practice of journalism, one is often struck by the absence of reference to the works, as opposed to the daily work, of practicing – or at times pensioned – journalists. Many of the most referenced studies of the practice of journalism are by researchers such as Gaye Tuchman, Herbert Gans and Philip Schlesinger, to mention but a few of the important scholars, who have spent long periods of time in newsrooms. But they have often overlooked or not paid attention to the fact that some practitioners actually have noted some of the things that are of interest to the researchers. The study of news values is a good example of this. For contrary to what some readers might be misled into thinking, the importance of news values and attempts at modeling them in the form of typologies started decades before Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge’s work. Half a century earlier, Walter Williams and Frank Martin devoted an entire chapter to the issue, and the issue was also part of their teaching in the two practically oriented courses at Missouri that took up half of the morning and most of the afternoon. Williams and Martin’s chapter “News and Its Value” appeared in the part of their book that was titled “News-Gathering,” and they start the chapter by stating that it is important for journalists to be able to not only find potential news stories and news sources but also select the most important of them. No matter how capable the reporter becomes in procuring information and in writing, if he does not learn to classify information; if he does not learn to sift out and search for those things which are of value from the viewpoint of news, then he will lack what most editors say is a reporter’s chief qualification. (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 172) Williams and Martin proceed to single out six news values that they consider the most important: “the prominence of persons or places concerned,” “the proximity of the events to the place of publication,” “the unusualness of the event,” “the magnitude of the event,” “the human interest involved” and its “timeliness” (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 172). But they were open to other news values, and their overall point to students was that “[a] sense of news is not necessarily the result of a natural temperament or gift, although such a gift, of course, is an advantage to the reporter at the start. It can be acquired by training, observation

Third influencing factor 63 and study” (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 175). Joseph Pulitzer made a similar point when he called for the “intentional training” rather than the “incidental training” that occurs in newsrooms (1904, 8), and Pulitzer even sought to underscore his point by stating that the “only position that occurs to me which a man in our Republic can successfully fill by the simple fact of birth is that of an idiot” (1904, 2). The material for journalism schools produced by some of the first generations of lecturers, such as Walter Williams and Frank Martin – and notably also by Melvin Mencher, who joined the faculty at the journalism school at Columbia University in 1962 and whose News Reporting and Writing has been used for three decades and continues to be used, now in its second-digit edition – is based more on personal experience than the more rigorous methods of science that evolved at journalism schools over the 20th century as researchers joined the faculties and doctoral programs were opened at many journalism schools. But many of the old and new textbooks complement the studies of journalism practice because this is one of the influencing factors of journalism that journalists themselves have a firsthand knowledge of, and also socialize other, later generations of journalists into, whether this happens in the newsrooms or in classrooms, where experienced journalists work as lecturers. In this sense, textbooks and other such instructional works by journalists can offer important points about this influencing factor of journalism, and Walter Williams and Frank Martin’s The Practice of Journalism also introduced their readers to a third important aspect of journalism practice in extension of decisions about where to find news and what to select, namely, what – and who – should be included in those news stories that journalists and their editors decided to prepare for publication. “[T]he news having been obtained,” Williams and Martin wrote in the Practice of Journalism, it is important to determine “how to present it to the reader of the newspaper” (1922/1911, 23), and in this regard, they particularly cautioned their readers about the importance of what has since been termed ‘attribution,’ that is, to attribute any statements relating to opinions to news sources, so that journalists are not considered responsible for them. As former journalist turned lecturer and researcher Tony Harcup has written in one of the most widely used textbooks today, Journalism: Principle and Practice (2015), journalists use “sources to distance themselves from the issues explored” (2015, 146). In this connection, the two textbook authors writing in 1911 were less particular about making lists of persons or organizations that could be included as news sources, similar to the list they had made of places where such news could be found and the news values that could help determine which of them were most relevant. Neither was Joseph Pulitzer so concerned, although he also considered this aspect important. He settled with stating, “there is always some best source for every kind of information” (Pulitzer 1904, 34). But later researchers have sought to model this particular practice of journalism by way of a number of different concepts that they have developed themselves or have taken from their own sources: practicing

64  Part I Internal factors journalists, editors and other practitioners whose works they have followed or interviewed them about. One of these often-referenced attempts at modeling sourcing practices is the work of Herbert Gans. Gans made observational studies similar to that of Gaye Tuchman, and these studies led him to distinguish between “known” and “unknown” sources. Gans found that there are six “source considerations” used by journalists to evaluate sources of news: past suitability, productivity, trustworthiness, authoritativeness and articulateness (2004/1979, 128). These factors effectively limit the number of sources used by journalists, Gans noted, and gave the known sources a priority. Many such studies of sourcing practices also continue to reaffirm what Leon Sigal was among the first researchers to conclude on the basis of concrete empirical studies, namely, that news sources are overwhelmingly made up of public officials. Sigal distinguished between what he termed “elites” and “non-elites,” but other researchers have used other dichotomies, typologies, taxonomies and types of written or visual models. Gaye Tuchman, who herself noted that “having sources” was an important mark of prominence among the journalists she followed (1978a, 69), used a similar distinction between “legitimate” and “non-legitimate” news sources. Many other studies within this area have followed in recent decades, and in time researchers have also begun to study how journalists themselves increasingly become news sources (see e.g. Reese, Grant and Danielian 1994). As Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch have noted, the concept of a “source” is ambiguous (1995, 46), and it is used by researchers and practitioners alike to describe many different aspects of sourcing practices. This includes both persons and organizations, and also “physical sources” and “human sources,” as Melvin Mencher has reminded generations of journalism students about in the chapter in his textbook that deals with news sources (2010/1977, 306). Indeed, when Joseph Pulitzer was writing in his defense for the establishment of journalism schools that there was always some best source of information, he seemed more specifically to be referring to “the bibliography of books of reference,” and he noted that “instruction in the art of finding data with speed and precision, would make a well-defined college course” (1904, 34). Nonetheless, these various attempts at modeling sourcing practices are not only relevant in themselves because they uncover important aspects of the practice of journalism. News sources are also important because they can have an effect as “primary definers” in terms of how journalists eventually decide to present their work. As Tony Harcup reminds students and other readers of his textbook, “politicians, employers, the police and so-called experts” can affect the framing of the issues covered (2015, 59). Michael Carlsson makes a similar point in a review of past research into sourcing practices, when he notes that several studies have shown how “sourcing practices impact news framing” (2009, 533). This is the fourth and final aspect of the practice of journalism that Williams and Martin made a note of in the beginning of the Practice of Journalism. “[T]he news having been obtained,” they remarked, it is important to determine “how to present it to the reader of the newspaper” (1922/1911, 23). For these authors – and

Third influencing factor 65 many of the other practitioners who in time have written textbooks for students at journalism schools – the act of framing entails a particular way of presentation. Williams and Martin write, “[A]ll writing of news may, in a general way, be summed up under what is often termed “newspaper style. As an illustration of the difference, the climax (important, startling or unusual features) is not hidden in the body of the story or reserved for the end, and events of facts do not necessarily follow in chronological order, but in their order of importance as news features” (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 228). Williams and Martin are essentially describing the “inverted pyramid,” where the most important parts of a news story are presented first and the least important last. This form of news – and the ways facts, statements from news sources and other elements in news stories can appear within the overall framework of news – has been of interest to many. Some have studied the historical background for particular forms of presentations (Barnhurst and Nerone 2001), while others have modeled the different ways news is presented today. Jack Lule has, for instance, identified seven archetypical models of news stories: “the victim,” “the scapegoat,” “the hero,” “goodness,” “the trickster,” “the other world” and finally “the force of nature” (2001, 22–25). But there is also another type of framing that has attracted more interest among researchers. This is a type that exists within the overall framing of a news story, and Gaye Tuchman was among the first to describe and conceptualize this approach. “News is a window of the world. Through its frame, Americans learn of themselves and others, of their institutions, leaders, and life styles, and those of other nations and their peoples,” she wrote in the opening of her seminal book Making News. Her point is that such frames can differ. Tuchman devotes an entire chapter, “News as Frame” (1978a, 192), to this issue: Like any frame that delineates a world, the news frame may be considered problematic. The view through a window depends upon whether the window is large or small, has many panes or few, whether the glass is opaque or clear, whether the window faces a street or a backyard. In the last decades of the 20th century, modeling the practice of journalism in regard to framing became a popular approach. In one of the most widely referenced articles about this approach, titled “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Robert Entman offers a widely shared definition: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text,” he noted (1993, 52). Stephen Reese, in another noteworthy book about the approach, titled Framing Public Life, defines frames as “organizing principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world” (2001, 11). In time, researchers have come to distinguish between different types of frames. One researcher, Shanto Iyengar, distinguishes between ‘episodic frames’ and ‘thematic frames’ in the news media. Here, the first refers to the actions of individuals, while the latter relates to more general societal problems. Another

66  Part I Internal factors widely used distinction is between ‘issue-specific frames’ and ‘generic frames.’ Issue-specific frames relate to concrete topics, occurrences and instances – for example in relation to the coverage of an event. Generic frames, on the other hand, refer to frames that can transcend time and space, and one of the most well-known examples of the use of this time of framing analysis has been Thomas E. Patterson’s study of the journalistic coverage of presidential elections. In an important part of his book, Out of Order, Patterson studies the presidential coverage according to two frames, ‘game’ and ‘governing.’ In the first instance, journalists frame news stories “around the notion that politics is a strategic game” (1993, 57), while the second frame imply a focus on the “broad questions of governing” (1993, 59). These approaches to framing have been criticized for being vague, both theoretically and empirically (Scheufele 1999), and Seth Lewis has noted that “[f]raming has lost some of its analytical usefulness, exhausted by overuse and misuse” (2015, 221). Even so, it has become a way of modeling the practice of journalism that originally developed among journalism researchers, but in time has become a concept employed by the practitioners themselves.

A new model for journalism practice A century of textbooks, scholarly monographs, anthologies, articles and other types of written works by researchers and practitioners alike testifies to the fact that the practice of journalism potentially includes a number of decisions about how to act as a journalist. Journalists are in imminent danger of dying of excitement, as Walter Lippmann has noted, if they are to take all these considerations into account all the time (1997/1922, 123). In most instances, these decisions therefore become institutionalized to the extent that they cause little or no reflection in the newsroom. The implication of much of this work by both practitioners and researchers is that journalists are not passively relaying news. Instead, they are actively Making News, as the title in Gaye Tuchman’s book from 1978 expresses. This shared interest in the practice of journalism by, on one hand, journalism researchers, who found their way into journalism schools over the 20th century, and, on the other hand, journalism practitioners, who experience these practices as firsthand witnesses, has the potential to create a common ground between the researchers and practitioners. But despite the facts that journalism schools have now been in existence for more than a century, and that what Barbie Zelizer had termed the “three populations – journalists, journalism educators and journalism scholars” (2009, 31) have worked side by side and office by office for decades, there are still too few attempts at bridge building when one looks at what is known about the practice of journalism. From the perspective of practitioners, there is still little mention in textbooks and course curriculums in the practically oriented courses of the century’s worth of research that has been done by now. Walter Williams and Frank Martin might be forgiven for not including research in journalism in their textbooks and their courses in journalism practice at the University of Missouri. For research was practically nonexistent. But things have only changed slightly in many of the

Third influencing factor 67 later textbooks in the 20th century, like News Reporting and Writing. Melvin Mencher, who taught journalism at the University of Kansas and Humboldt State University before he joined the faculty at Columbia University, first published the book in 1977. But even in the book’s editions from the 21st century, references to the work of researchers are still scarce. There are next to no references to scholars and researchers, even those who have come to join the journalism school at Columbia University, while past and present colleagues figure prominently on the pages. These are people like Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Benjamin Bradlee, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. This seems even more surprising since some of the most respected and referenced journalism researchers, like James Carey and Michael Schudson, have even been part of the faculty at Columbia University. Things might not look better from the perspective of journalism researchers, at least according to some. “It is not clear that our theorizing contributes enough to the resolution or even the common understanding” of the issues facing journalism today, as Jay Rosen, one of the proponents of the public journalism movement, has written (1994, 363). Accordingly, Rosen has called for not only a more public journalism but also a more “public scholarship.” James Carey, who came to Columbia University in 1988 to develop the school’s first doctoral program, voiced similar concerns. Writing with specific reference to movements to develop journalism, he noted that researchers also have a responsibility “to ensure that these experiments sustain rather than fail us” (Carey 1997, 331). Other researchers have called for what Barbie Zelizer has described as a “shared community” or “interpretive community” where practitioners and researchers can come together (see e.g. Zelizer 2000), and there has been more than just calls for such bridge building. There have also been attempts on both sides to cross borders and aid with bridge building on both a personal and institutional level. One such example could be the self-professed “hackademics” – that is, a journalist turned academic – like Tony Harcup. His book Journalism: Principles and Practices can rival some of the most popular textbooks from the past in terms of its number of reprints, editions and overall popularity. The first edition of Journalism: Principles and Practices was published in 2004 and reprinted in 2005 (twice), 2006, 2007 and 2008 (twice). The second edition of the book was first published in 2009 and reprinted in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013, and new editions and reprints seems to continue to be included in curriculums in English-speaking countries and read by generations of journalism students. The idea of his book is, in the words of the author himself in the third edition, “to introduce the voices of range of practicing journalists, as well as scholars from the field of journalism” (2015). To help the bridge building, every chapter has a “practice section” and an accompanying “theory section,” and in some parts of the book the two sections appear side by side. This is important bridgework, and the popularity of the book clearly expresses openness in many faculties and also a demand for such attempts. The research community has also responded to the need for such bridge building, and besides the individual research and collective research endeavors where the practice of journalism is the object of

68  Part I Internal factors study, scholarly journals have been established with that end in mind. This focus is apparent from the titles of some of journalism studies’ highest ranked journals: Journalism Practice and Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. But more of this work is needed and not just by connecting previous attempts at modeling the practice of journalism from the perspective of researchers and practitioners. A new vantage point is needed that takes both perspectives into account from the beginning and is also aimed at connecting the different factors that can affect journalists. The importance of such attempts has been underscored by the work of Thomas E. Patterson and Wolfgang Donsbach, who have shown what different roles (Patterson and Donsbach 1998) and different conceptions of what objectivity entail (Patterson and Donsbach 1996) are operationalized into journalistic practice. This line of work has been continued by other researchers, like Claudia Mellado, Lea Hellmueller and Wolfgang Donsbach, who have studied how role conceptions transform into practical role performances (2017). To further expand on this line of work, the journalistic compass, which was developed in the previous chapters, can be helpful, since it attempts to connect the perspectives of researchers and practitioners from the outset, as well as connects the principles, precedents and concrete journalistic practices. In this connection, the compass is based on two dichotomies – between a passive or active purpose of journalism, and between a representative or deliberative perspective in journalism, and when the two dimensions are connected they essentially form four journalistic roles.

Roles of journalists and roles of news sources Each of the four roles in the journalistic compass has precedents in journalism history, but they also have implications for present journalistic practices. For these journalistic roles are related to one of those areas of journalism research that have garnered most interest over the years: sourcing practices. The implication is that different journalistic roles relate to different roles of news sources, and whatever direction journalists navigate toward in relation to the compass, they will essentially employ a typology of news sources, and this typology consists of three stereotypes. Stereotypes were originally a concept that related to the practice of printing. When Walter Williams left school to work as a printer’s apprentice, the concept of stereotype was used to describe precut and precast letters, numbers and other symbols, which could be inserted in framing devices, coated with ink and pressed against paper to produce a sentence, an article or, in time, an entire newspaper page. Working with these stereotypes was something that Walter Williams by his own accounts was particular skillful at, since his small fingers made it easier for him to collect and dismantle the stereotypes so they could be used for other printing jobs (Farrar 1998, 38). But in time, both Williams and the concept of stereotypes progressed from the printing room to the newsroom, and in Public Opinion (1911), the term is used by Walter Lippmann to describe how people in general and journalists and their audiences in particular make stereotypes of the world around them.

Third influencing factor 69 Inspired by the work of John Dewey, with whom Lippmann also debated the important principles of journalism, Lippmann notes how people “tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us” (1997/1922, 55). Or as Lippmann puts it, “For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see” (1997/1922, 54–55). Nowhere in Public Opinion does Walter Lippmann attempt to operationalize stereotypes into specific types, typologies, taxonomies or other written or visual models of typical news sources. But when looking closer at the principles, precedents and the concrete practices of journalism, three news sources stand out: markers, translators and actors. Common for the three roles of news sources is that they each can be cast as either a ‘problem’ or a ‘potential’ (see Figure 4.1), and in this context the marker is a person, who can personify a problem or potential. This was a role that Walter Williams and Frank Martin gave several examples of in their textbook, for instance, when they wrote about the ways in which future journalists could create what they termed “human interest” in news stories. In one such example from The Practice of Journalism, the authors recount a story about a construction worker who fell to the ground from a 10-story building. The worker saved his life by grabbing on to some ropes and only suffered minor injuries, and for Williams and Martin, the worker exemplifies what in this context can be described as a marker with a potential. For Walter Williams and Frank Martin, the construction worker could be used to write a news story that could apply to one of the news values they considered most important for the newspapers around the turn of last century: human interest. But today’s markers often appear side by side – or perhaps more to the point, line by line or second by second – with two other stereotypical news sources, described as translators and actors. While on the one hand the marker is used by journalists to portray the personal and individual aspect of a problem or a potential, the translator, on the other hand, is a type of news source that journalists employ to portray the more general and universal aspects of problems and potentials. Markers are people who are included in the news to express problems or potentials they have experienced themselves. Translators, on the other hand, are persons who can offer perspective to the wider problems or potentials of a

Roles of journalists

Roles of sources

Deliberative Sheepdog

Passive Watchdog

?

Marker

Rescue dog

Active

Translator

Problem Potential Problem Potential

Hunting dog

Representative

Actor

Problem Potential

Figure 4.1  The relationship between the roles of journalists and the roles of news sources

70  Part I Internal factors given news story. This was a type of news source that Walter Williams and Frank Martin wrote very little about in their book, but Walter Lippmann a century later in Public Opinion considered pivotal for the future of journalism. He believed that society had become too complex to fathom and master for the average citizen, and that journalists had little to offer in terms of bringing clarity and direction, since they were mostly concerned with what Lippmann described as the passing “episodes, incidents, and eruptions” in society (1997/1922, 229). Walter Lippmann, instead, believed in the importance of a new class of experts, and the importance of this category has been highlighted in later textbooks about the practice of journalism. Melvin Mencher devotes an entire section to “The Use of Experts” (2010/1977, 312–313), and researchers have also shown that this type of news source appears still more often in the news media (see e.g. Albæk 2011). The third stereotype in this typology of news sources is the actor. The actor is someone who has done something in the past that journalists frame as posing either a problem or a potential, or it is someone the journalists approach to give them the possibility to act. “What will you do to help solve this problem,” a news source can be asked by a journalist, and in such instances, the journalist has cast this particular news source as an actor – that is, as someone who can act or has acted in the past. News sources who are cast as actors are often what researchers in the past have described as “knowns,” “elites” or “legitimate sources,” and these people are often associated with a particular set of news values. While the construction worker that Williams and Martin used as an example in their textbook could help journalists prompt news values relating to human interest, this type of news source relates and responds to a different set of news values, such as Johan Galtung and Marie Ruge’s “elite persons,” Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill’s “power elite” or Herbert Gans’s notion of “authoritativeness.”

Markers, translators and actors in journalism “Like all practices, those of journalists are contingent; that is, they are variable over time, place and circumstance,” James Carey writes (1997, 331). This is an important reminder when one looks at the sourcing practice relating to the compass. For in journalism of the 21st century, where journalists are seldom content with simply referring to and from people from other settings – like the parliamentary floor, where reporters in the past would recount every spoken word like stenographers – the news stories resemble that of other public stages. In the news media, it is not a theatrical director who decides who should play what part, but a journalist; but in both places, some people and professions are often typecast in particular roles. In much of the daily practice of journalism, the markers who personify problems or potentials are private citizens. This also appears in the instructions future journalists receive while still in school. In one of journalism’s most successful textbooks in recent years, Journalism: Principles and Practice, the author, Tony Harcup, writes that the “victim is a familiar character in journalism” (2015, 130), and he explains that these victims can be private citizens and their relatives

Third influencing factor 71 who can supply information about the deceased, injured or in other ways afflicted by problems. The same focus on markers as members of the public, who have been the victim of someone or something, is apparent in one the most popular textbooks that was published close to a century earlier. Walter Williams and Frank Martin make an elaborate list of the places where journalists can find news. Many of these “Sources of News,” as the chapter is titled, refer to places where people’s lives “touch public authority,” as Walter Lippmann later wrote (1997/1922, 215). They include places like “police stations,” “fire headquarters” and “public hospitals” and more ominous localities like “undertakers” and “coroner’s offices,” where a journalist at times was required to make subsequent calls on family, friends and other relatives left behind in the form of so-called death knocks. But although the list has a number of places where problems can be located, the list also includes places where positive aspects of people’s life can be found. These places include “theaters,” “clubs” and “civic organizations” where people appear because of their interest in enjoying themselves or helping others to live better lives. But the history of journalism also has ample examples of members of the public appearing in the news media in other roles besides that of markers. Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and other proponents of a more active journalism also attempted to include private citizens in other ways and in other roles as news sources. When Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, the World, campaigned for donations to help finance a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, the newspaper approached its readers rather than politicians, companies, organizations and other well-known sources of economic means in the city. “We must raise the money! The World is the people’s paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money,” the World proclaimed, and went on to explain the call of cash: The $250,000 that the making of the Statue cost was paid in by the masses of the French people – by the working men, the tradesmen, the shop girls, the artisans – by all, irrespective of class or condition. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America. In other instances, the World, the Herald and other active newspapers at that time did not call so much for donations of money as for hands to help better the lives of other people, and in these coordinated efforts, citizens were cast as actors who could potentially solve small and large societal problems. These efforts to cast citizens as actors, who have the potential to help solve societal problems, have continued with some of the later movements in the century, and one of the founding fathers of public journalism was clear about the intentions. He stated that public journalism calls on journalists to “address people as citizens, potential participants in public affairs, rather than victims or spectators” (Rosen 1999a, 22). Other members and followers of this movement believed that a deliberative perspective was more important than an active purpose, and in many such instances,

72  Part I Internal factors citizens who have been part of this type of journalism have been invited to appear in the news media as what in this context is described as translators. Namely, they have been included as news sources to help offer perspectives on the problems and potentials that have been the basis of the news stories. The same transferal of roles can happen to all other news sources. Researchers, commentators and other experts with a special knowledge are often typecast as translators, but when news stories at times focus on how university professors might have misused public funding, they become markers of a problem. Likewise, researchers can also be portrayed as actors in the news media. When, for instance, the public journalism movement was covered by the news media in the late 20th century, some of the founding fathers who had daytime jobs at universities were suddenly cast as actors by the news media. That is, they were portrayed as persons whose actions and attitudes contained potentials or problems. The same can happen to authoritative decision makers, who are often cast as actors but at times might also appear as markers or translators. The important point is that although private citizens, researchers, decision makers and others may have formal functions and affiliations, which means that they are often typecast in particular roles in the news media, a journalist can attribute to them other functions (see Table 4.1). This process has become more relevant to study in a time when journalists historically have become more independent and are therefore left with a greater influence on where to find news stories, what to select and reject, who to include as news sources and how to present them in the news media. The process of giving roles to news sources is another way to approach the act of attribution, which has been of interest to so many researchers and practitioners in the past. In The Language of News Media, Allan Bell notes that “[a]ttribution serves an important function in the telling of news stories. It reminds the audience that this is an account which originated with certain personas and organizations” (1991, 190). Tony Harcup, Melvin Mencher and Walter Williams and many other textbook writers have since reminded their own intended audience, namely, journalism students, how the credentials of sources can best be presented. Walter Williams and Frank Martin have a whole section in their 1911 edition of The Practice of Journalism that deals with “Quotations” (1911, 276–278), and they have other sections that deal with proper titles, correct company names and other types of affiliations. Neither researchers nor journalists who have authored textbooks have, however, paid much attention to the attributes that news sources Table 4.1  Sourcing practices: markers, translators and actors in the news media Roles Sources Citizens Experts Politicians . . .

Marker

Translator

Actor

Problem Potential

Problem Potential

Problem Potential

Third influencing factor 73 are given as they perform different type of roles. These are attributes that have less to do with the formal affiliations of news sources – where they work, who they represent, what degree they have and so forth – and everything to do with their function, and although the functions of marker, translator and actor are not explicated in stories, this basic typology of roles can be applied to most, if not all, of the practical outcomes of journalism. The roles of news sources are not only interesting as a new model of journalism that can help researchers, lecturers and practitioners analyze the past and present forms of journalists. They can also offer a framework for future reporting. The typology can help sensitize journalists to what forms of journalism could be helpful when they attempt to prompt different norms. The roles of news sources are namely connected to the roles of news reporters. When journalists attempt to navigate normatively – by way of the compass – toward a more active and representative journalism, they will use markers to identify and personify the problem for which they attempt to prompt a solution. This might entail the use of several such markers, and likewise journalists – depending on their time for production and the space for publication – can include several translators. One translator might offer a perspective by saying that the marker is not the only one affected by a problem or a potential, but rather several hundred, thousand or even million people are affected by the very same thing as the marker. Another translator might focus more on potentials in terms of pointing to what can be done to solve problems and who the problem solvers could preferably be. In the end, journalists can approach actors in person or by way of their publications in order to prompt them to react on the problems brought forward. In such an instance, the use of news sources often flows from the upper left-hand corner in the compass, where citizens are cast as markers, to the lower right-hand corner, where decision makers are included as those who should solve the problem. The same basic lineup of news sources is often found in watchdog journalism, but the sequence of news sources will differ. Journalism with a representative perspective and a passive purpose will often start by referring to new actions or attitudes by politicians, leaders of companies and other authoritative decision makers. These new actions or attitudes can be framed as both problems and potentials, and the framing is often connected to the use of other news sources. A researcher, commentator or other type of expert might translate the potentials or problems to make them more intelligible for other people – like translating a new piece of legislation worth billions of dollars to what it means for the weekly budget in a typical household – after which one, two or several markers can testify as to what that would mean for them personally. In both instances, a representative focus leads to some of the stereotypes that are often associated with traditional journalism, that is, where citizens, in the words of public journalism proponent Jay Rosen, are addressed as victims, and spectators (Rosen 1999a, 22), while it is left for other people and professions to discuss and direct different courses of actions. These stereotypes are broken when journalists navigate normatively toward the upper part of the compass, where the perspective changes from focusing on the people who represent the public to the public itself. With

74  Part I Internal factors this more inclusive focus, citizens can also be cast as translators who deliberate and participate in public debates, and while this is an end in itself for journalists who adhere to a more passive-deliberative journalism, this is simply a means to and end for journalism in the upper right-hand corner. Here, citizens are cast as the ones who should be activated, as it happened in the active journalism prompted by Joseph Pulitzer. All of this shows the relationship between the principles, precedents and practice of journalism.

The relationship between principles, precedents and practice Joseph Pulitzer mentioned the concept of “principles,” “precedents” and “practice” several times in his essay, and he did so while writing about medicine, law and, not least, journalism, which he considered part of the same academic family. For law, medicine and journalism were all fields that were directed toward a particular profession, even though journalism, to Joseph Pulitzer’s annoyance, was considered less prestigious. Pulitzer’s plans to change that by starting a new movement within journalism, however, did not entail any deeper clarification of what these principles, precedents and practices should encompass. Nor did he specify the connection between them. Walter Williams also made repeated references to the three concepts in his writing, and he was somewhat more eager to define the concepts and give students an understanding of their relationship. In The History and Principles of Journalism, he connected principles and precedents and in some of Williams’s written work he also sought to connect all three. The textbook he cowrote with a colleague opens with “The Journalist’s Creed,” where Williams sought to encapsulate the most important principles of journalism. Thereafter, Williams and Martin proceed to explain to their readers the most important forms of practice. Only a few years later, Williams even attempts to connect aspects of the principles, precedents and practice of journalism in his ambitious The World’s Journalism study (1915, in which journalism in many countries on several continents is studied. The interest in principles, precedents and practices of journalism has continued with later generations of journalistic practitioners, lecturers and not least those researchers who in time began to populate the journalism schools around the world. While some universities have been slow in that respect – it was, for instance, not until 1988 that James Carey was hired at the journalism school at Columbia University to develop a doctoral program – many schools now have a faculty that includes people with both practical and theoretical backgrounds. Indeed, many individuals have both traits, as it is apparent from some of the early researchers mentioned previously. As this first part about the three internal factors that can influence actions of journalists has shown, scholars, researchers and other skilled observers of journalism have also, over the past decade, written extensively about each of the three factors. In the context of this book, only a small part of the scholarly attempts to model each of the factors can be presented, but each chapter has attempted to show that despite the publication of many important works over the years, a supplementary model of the principles,

Third influencing factor 75 precedents and practice of journalism is needed. The model presented in the previous chapters cannot encompass all facets of the principles, precedents and practices of journalism, but the compass offers a new vantage point and an adjacent vocabulary for researchers, lecturers and practitioners, and in the past decade, all three populations have used the compass. It is, however, important to remember that there are many other factors that can influence the actions of journalists besides principles, precedents and practices. These are factors that Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams, Walter Lippmann and many other seminal figures – both practitioners and researchers – have also paid attention to, and in the second part of this book, these external factors will be described and discussed. Here, it will also become clear that it is not only inside the newsrooms that people attempt to prompt particular journalistic principles in terms of being passive or active, representative and deliberative. People outside the newsrooms can also have an interest in ensuring particular journalistic perspectives and purposes, and while these previous chapters have shown that journalism in many parts of the world has become still more independent, many other societal actors have in the meantime become more dependent on journalism itself. Journalistic coverage of the world – or the lack thereof – can affect many people, and people outside newsrooms can therefore also have an interest in affecting the actions of journalists. But as it will soon become clear, external attempts to influence the actions of journalists take many forms and focus on many different aspects of journalism, all of which are described and discussed in the following part of this book.

Part 2

External factors

5 Fourth influencing factor Journalistic production

The first journalism school in America had been in existence for less than a month before the school started a newspaper. On the 15th of September 1908, the 64 enrolled students published the University Missourian as part of the mandatory “Newspaper Making” course. It was the “heart and soul of the curriculum,” as Ronald T. Farrar (1998, 144) has written in his biography of the school’s founder, Walter Williams, and the paper was started because Walter Williams believed that his students should not only be taught the principles, precedents and practices of journalism but also experience all the practical problems and potentials that could follow when they worked in a newsroom as opposed to a traditional classroom. This focus on factors that could affect the actions of journalists, when they were to produce actual content, was something that Williams considered so important that he supplemented lecturers with a support team to assist with increasing the circulation and advertising. The plans to establish a regular daily newspaper rather than an experimental one with little or no circulation included arrangements with printers, advertisers and not least news sources of all kinds, and the scope and the practical aspects of the project drew strong support from newspapers around the world – at first, that is. One of the local editors in Missouri praised the “real-world journalistic training” when the school opened in September 1908 (Pike 1982, 124). But less than a month later, the same editor complained that the newspaper, which almost from the beginning was published every weekday, was unfair competition since the University Missourian was supported by the state and used students as unpaid journalists. Other editors who also experienced that the new newspaper cost them both subscribers and advertisers voiced similar complaints when the effects of the real-world practice became clear to them. But Williams managed to fend of this and other challenges – including the financial one, when readership at times was low and advertisers were few – since he believed that the students’ own production should “stand the test of publication,” as he later explained in an article in the national press (cf. Mann 1925, C16). Here, Williams explained to the readers of Christian Science Monitor that [t]here is no writing for the wastebasket. Student copyreaders edit and headline the copy turned in by the reporters, as well as United Press copy and

80  Part II External factors syndicated material . . . Practically all the work of publishing the paper, except the work of the printers, is done by students. (Mann 1925, C26) To assist the students, the faculty, including Frank Martin with whom Walter Williams wrote the textbook The Practice of Journalism (1911), would advise this combined classroom and newsroom on what to do when they encountered challenges in their production process. The value of such real-world experiences was something that Joseph Pulitzer also concerned himself with in his defense for the endowment to Columbia University. Here, he stated that lecturers in such a journalism school should teach the “methods of journalism” and that they should be complemented with practicing journalists and editors. He suggested that “editors of twenty of the foremost journals in the country should deliver such lectures in turn, ‘demonstrating’ the most pertinent methods from the day’s paper as the lecturer in the medical college does from the object of his clinic” (1904, 42). But Pulitzer thought that students should do more than simply learn the basic journalistic principles, precedents and practices in order to help the transition from a school to the daily pressure associated with the production of a newspaper. Pulitzer therefore added that much could also be “gained from the actual preparation by the students of a newspaper to be printed, perhaps, once a week at first,” and he even suggested that the printing of such a newspaper could be done by way of “a press and a plant, for which I have provided, in the college building” (1904, 44). Pulitzer died before the journalism school at Columbia University was established, but the ambition to acquaint students with the problems and potentials associated with the actual production of journalism became one of the overarching principles for the school that became known both inside and outside campus grounds for its “intense concentration on professional preparation” (Boylan 2003, 213). The importance of letting journalism students understand the problems and potentials that can affect journalists has become pivotal at many later journalism schools and for good reason. The politicians, professors and others who manned the desks in newsrooms before what Jean Chalaby termed the “invention of journalism” (1998) could to some degree content themselves with expressing preexisting views no matter what happened outside the newsrooms. The new profession of journalists, on the other hand, worked to procure news, and this has made journalists dependent on outside forces of journalism. Many later founders of journalism schools have therefore proposed similar initiatives that can prepare students to take not only the internal factors of journalism into account but also the various external factors. To name another example of such an attempt to teach students about the problems and potentials associated with real-world journalism, the founder of the journalism school at the University of Iowa, Wilbur Schramm, suggested in his A Blueprint for a School of Journalism that the school should not only set up a newspaper and a radio station but also prompt various forms of internships and apprenticeships (Schramm 1942). In some later

Fourth influencing factor 81 journalism schools around the world, such internships have become requirements for students to be part of for more than a year of their study at the bachelors or masters levels, and they are even paid, as opposed to the first journalism students at the University of Missouri. The importance of such external factors in influencing the actions of journalists has also gradually been acknowledged by researchers, and over time, studies have focused on many different factors that can help or hinder journalists in their work. This chapter focuses on the first of these external factors: journalistic production. Many of the journalistic means, methods and techniques that have developed over the past couple of centuries depend, in one way or another, on relationships with persons outside the newsroom. Here, journalists can be affected by both different communication technologies and techniques, and in the mind of some researchers, these factors are so important that they have become constitutive of what journalism is altogether. This chapter starts by reviewing some of the important ways in which the production of journalism has been modeled in the past, before it proceeds to develop a new model that takes some of the shortcomings of these past models into account. The review starts by looking at the importance of different technologies that have come to affect journalistic actions, and in particular one of these technologies that – despite the fact that this technology is nowhere to be found in newsrooms around the world today – has left an enduring mark on journalists, and even to this day continues to exert its influence as a reminder of the ways in which technologies can affect journalistic actions.

The importance of communication technology I When advocating for a journalism school, Joseph Pulitzer mainly wrote about what he termed the “principles,” “precedents” and “practices” as the important things a school could prepare a student for. But leading up to the list of courses that Pulitzer believed future journalism students should be offered, he wrote close to four pages about the external factors that could help – and hinder – journalism. In this section of his essay, titled “The March of Progress” (1904, 23–27), the aging media magnate made particular note of the development within the area of communication, where new technologies had resulted in faster and more widespread connections from newsrooms to the rest of the world. Less than a century earlier, the “horse was still the usual motor for high-speed traffic and the ox or the mule the customary freight-engine,” Pulitzer wrote (1904, 24), and compared the transportation speeds of the 19th century, with the transmissions speeds of the early 20th century, news could now be “flashed from Tokyo to New York by lightning and printed” thereafter and where readers could “see on the same page dispatches of the same date from India, from Siberia, from Australia, from Korea, and from the sources of the Nile” (1904, 25). All of which was Joseph Pulitzer’s way of exemplifying what technology could do to spread what the sociologist Gaye Tuchman in the later part of the century would term the “news net” of journalism (1978b).

82  Part II External factors Walter Williams was also well aware of the importance of the technology that less than 50 years after the discovery in 1820 of the relation between electricity and magnetism had become the most important technology for getting news in many newspapers around the world. Telegraphy, where messages between people were sent by way of smoke signals and other optical signaling systems, such as semaphore that was found in many European countries (Mattelart 1996), had been known for many years and also used by some of the early newspapers. But the telegraphy most people know today was based on the discovery that if an electric current was transmitted by wires – even over thousands of miles – the current could affect a magnet at the other end of a line. This led several innovative people, including Samuel Morse, to develop signal-giving systems so that letters, numbers and other symbols could be sent off to other parts of the world. That discovery liberated “communication from the constraints of geography,” as James Carey has written (Carey 1992/1983, 204). Until then, news – and other messages – had to be transported by foot, horseback, pigeon or others means of transportation, and before then it could take up to eight months for a letter posted in Britain to reach India, and due to monsoons in the Indian Ocean, it could take two years before a reply was received (Headrick 1981, 130). The socalled news was in this sense often “olds” that had had transpired several months or even years earlier. Electromagnetic telegraphy fundamentally changed the gathering of news. From a type of communication based on transportation, news gathering increasingly came to rely on transmission. The results were visible as the technology was implemented through the 19th century, and the groundbreaking technology’s importance for the production of news was evident from the very beginning. One of the first messages Samuel Morse sent, when he, with congressional support, established a test line between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, was a question to his assistant, who was located in Baltimore: “Have you any news?” Editors were also quick to pick up on the potential of the new technology, and the day after the initial test, the newspapers could bring the news of a presidential nomination to Baltimore. Before long, continent after continent, nation after nation and city after city were connected by electromagnetic telegraphy, and a little more than half a century after the discovery of the hitherto unknown relation between the two forces of nature, electricity and magnetism, more than one million kilometers of telegraphic wire had been laid, half a million kilometers of insulated wire were laid under water, and more than 20,000 cities had been connected telegraphically (Standage 1998). In newspapers all over the world, fresh news from countries far away would now appear side by side with national, regional and local news. As a former journalist, editor and part owner of a regional newspaper, Walter Williams knew all about the importance of this technology, and accordingly, one of the eight courses that were offered to the first journalism students at the University of Missouri was titled “Correspondence.” The course catalogue from 1908–1909 wrote about the course, “This is the study of the special feature in newspaper work, war and other special correspondence and the handling of the telegraph.” But Walter Williams did not leave it to his new colleagues to teach

Fourth influencing factor 83 students what electromagnetic telegraphy could do to help journalists and journalism. Williams and his colleague Frank Martin, who was one of the lecturers in charge of courses in the practical aspects of journalism and the publication of the school’s newspaper, also included a lengthy section in their textbook, The Practice of Journalism, where students could read about potentials and problems with the use of telegraphy. In the most important part of the book – based on the pages devoted to it – Williams and his cowriter devoted several pages to the issue. “Telegraph news” the section is called, and it starts by explaining to journalism students that “[t]elegrah news comes from outside the paper’s local news field” (1922/1911, 202), and that this type of news is supplied by the newspaper’s staff correspondents or special correspondents, by syndicates or by national or international press associations. This particular technology is no longer found in any newsrooms, but electromagnetic telegraphy has had a lasting effect on the way journalism is produced. Even today, the importance of telegraphy is evident by the names used to describe newspapers and part of their content. News organizations still publish what they term “wires,” even though the original wires that were laid out over land and under water have long since been taken down and lifted up, respectively, and replaced with lines related to new technologies – even some that are wireless. Similarly, newspapers all over the world still bear witness to this technology in their names: the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in England, Telegraaaf in Holland and the Telegraph in India, to mention but a few. And finally, the name still clings to those national and international wire agencies that developed alongside the rapid implementation of telegraphy in the 19th and 20th century. In America, the Associated Press was originally a cooperation between newspapers that were established to secure news both faster and cheaper, and the association even chartered a fast-going boat to meet the incoming oceangoing boats from Europe. This cooperation based on the principle of transportation later developed to include the new transmission technology, and the cooperatives were based on what turned out to be a sound business principle. “They use each other as sources, they sell to each other, they forge alliances with one another, they sell services to client media and use client media as sources of information,” as Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Terhi Rantanen have since noted (2000, 87). It is, however, not just in the names for particular products and companies that the importance of telegraphy is still marked. It is also in the practice of journalism itself. For in the eyes of some researchers, the inverted pyramid that in time has become the preferred story structure for many journalists can be explained by telegraphy. “Journalists rushing to transmit their most newsworthy information over often unreliable telegraph lines had begun to develop the habit of compressing the most crucial fact into short, paragraph-long dispatches,” Mitchell Stephens has recounted (1988, 253). This approach had advantages in both ends. If the lines were cut off, the journalist would have sent off the most important parts of the story, and if there were a need to shorten the story in the newsroom in order to make it fit onto the page, wire editors could simply shorten the stories from the end. The inverted pyramid made it important, as Walter Williams and

84  Part II External factors Frank Martin later wrote in their textbook, that the first paragraphs of a news story “answer the questions, who? why? what? where? and when?” (1922/1911, 229), and the two authors also suggested that all journalism in general could be said to adhere to a telegraphic style. Williams and Martin wrote, All writing of news may, in a general way, be summed up under what is often termed “newspaper style.” As an illustration of the difference, the climax (important, startling or unusual features) is not hidden in the body of the story or reserved for the end, and events of facts do not necessarily follow in chronological order, but in their order of importance as news features. (1922/1911, 228)

The importance of communication technology II For other researchers and practitioners, telegraphic technology not only came to influence the structure of journalism but also the syntax and semantics. Ernest Hemingway, who cabled news stories from the European continent home to the Kansas City Star, professed to colleagues that he was getting hooked on “the lingo of the cable.” This is evident also from his later Nobel Prize–winning stories – based on fiction – where he writes in short sentences with a very limited use of adjectives. This lack of value-based comments became a general feature of telegraphic news. “Telegrams are for facts, appreciation and political comment can come by post,” one editor informed his correspondents (cf. Stephens 1988, 258), while Pulitzer bluntly stated, “In America, we want facts. Who cares about the philosophical speculation of our correspondents?” (cf. Chalaby 1996, 311). But there were more than idealistic reasons behind such statements, Williams and Martin explained to their students and readers. “The Associated Press must, of necessity, be not only impartial in its handling of news, but as a co-operative institution must be absolutely non-partisan, non-sectarian and broad. Its clientele of every shade must be satisfied” (1922/1911, 204), and in a similar vein, James Carey has stated that the telegraph, by creating the wire services, led to a fundamental change in news. It snapped the tradition of partisan journalism by forcing the wire services to generate “objective” new, news that could be used by paper of any political stripe. (1992/1983, 210) Michael Schudson has taken issue with such a technological – and economic – explanation for the emergence of objectivity. In The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism (2001), he states that such explanations skip over a necessary step in terms of “what causes the norm to be articulated” in the first place (2001, 150). Some other researchers have also shown by way of content analysis that the international and national news agencies at various times have been driven

Fourth influencing factor 85 by a “patriotic pride” (Fulton 2007, 19) and have used terms such as “daring,” “gallant” and “skillful” (Fulton 2007, 18) to describe the actions of countrymen. Without diminishing the potential importance of technology, Schudson’s own analysis of the popularity of objectivity therefore includes a number of other explanatory factors that have led objectivity to take “root” and to develop “most deeply” in the United States at the start of the 20th century (2001, 167). Even so, one of the most successful wire agencies, Reuters International, who based their business model in the 19th century on the slogan “follow the cable” (Standage 1998, 151) – while the technology spread around the world – still instill to their journalists that they are not allowed to “comment on the merit of events, since ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter’ ” (Read 1999, 2). The various attempts to model both the background and the effect of telegraphy are testaments to the fact that technology in general can affect the actions of journalists in a number of different ways and result in both problems and potentials for different generations of journalists. For while the importance of telegraphy can scarcely be underestimated, as James Carey has noted in “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph” (1983), this technology has since been supplemented and later substituted altogether by more recent innovations. The importance of these new technologies was partly foreseen by Joseph Pulitzer, when he in the section of his lengthy essay that dealt with “The March of Progress” relayed to readers how a person “in Boston could talk with his own voice to another in Omaha” (1904, 25–26) and how news could be “shot on invisible waves over a thousand miles of ocean” (1904, 26). The advent of wireless telegraphy and telephony was also evident in Walter Williams’s life and writings, and in his study of The World’s Journalism, he wrote about the importance of the latter around the world. His extensive traveling around the globe to different newsrooms lead him to remark, It is interesting and suggestive to find that the use of the telephone, which is thought to be and is more popular in the United States than in any country, is employed in journalism to a larger extent in other countries than in our own. (1915, 37) He offered several examples of how this new invention was used in other parts of the world: In Russia the telephone brings a considerable share of the news from distant points to the greater journals. Paris, London, Berlin, Milan and other cities use telephone service from distant towns with a freedom that does not exist in the United States. Australia and New Zealand employ the telephone for news transmission to a degree unequalled in America. (1905, 37)

86  Part II External factors By the time Walter Williams published the results of his study tour, he and Frank Martin had, however, already described the potentials and problems of the telephone in their textbook. “As a means of saving time and unnecessary labor, the value of the telephone in newsgathering can scarcely be estimated,” they wrote (1922/1911, 164), but they also cautioned their readers about things to be aware of while using the telephone for the production of journalism: But the reporter should employ discretion in its use. There are at least three good reasons why it cannot be depended on universally. First, when news is procured over the telephone the chances for inaccuracies through misunderstanding are greatly increased; second, the reporter can never be positive as to the identity of his informant; third, information is not given as readily over the telephone as when the reporter makes a personal visit, thus decreasing his opportunities for getting a complete story or any story at all. In short, the reporter will find that in obtaining news, it does not pay to use the telephone unless lack of time or other conditions makes it necessary. (1922/1911, 164) In The Practice of Journalism, the authors also make note of the potentials and problems of other technologies that can help or hinder the work of journalists. This includes the rising popularity of photography, where the authors suggest that the journalist “will do well to work on the theory that his story is not complete unless he obtains them” (1922/1911, 165). Over the course of the 20th and the 21st centuries, many other technologies that can affect the production of journalism have been invented and implemented in the newsroom. Telex, telefax, television and, more recently, the internet, which was foreshadowed by telegraphy, which Tom Standage has called the Victorian Internet (1998) in his book with that very title. For the important feature of later communication technologies was principally in place with telegraphy, which broke the constraints of geography and made communication lightning fast. ‘Internet’ is a term that basically describes a set of “interconnected networks” – ‘inter’ ‘net’ – and following the implementation of this Internet of the 19th century, journalists could transmit news stories from around most of the world without any or very little delay. One of the many newspapers that took its name from this new technology, the Daily Telegraph, even wrote about the lightning-fast electric flows of the telegraphy in which “[t]ime itself is telegraphed out of existence’’ (Bartky 2000). In all fairness, this might be truer of many later communication technologies that are used for the gathering and making of journalism – the two very courses, “News-Gathering” and “Newspaper Making” that the University of Missouri made mandatory for all its journalism students. But in many later studies of the factors that can affect the production of journalism, technological determinism has become an important facet when modeling what external problems and potentials journalists experience.

Fourth influencing factor 87

The importance of communication techniques I While Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Williams both emphasized communication technology as an influencing factor in journalism, they concerned themselves less with the development of another aspect of communication, namely, those communication techniques that go hand in hand with technologies when journalists proactively or reactively communicate with the world outside newsrooms. But it soon became apparent that communication techniques would become an important influencing factor for journalists. Writing less than 15 years after the admittance of the first journalism students at the University of Missouri, Walter Lippmann noted that a revolution was taking place. “[D]emocracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of power,” he wrote in Public Opinion, which has been described as one of the most influential books about journalism. But the revolution Lippmann was writing about had less to do with journalists themselves than with the ones who were trying to affect the actions of journalists. The revolution namely had to do with the rise of another profession that Lippmann termed “the publicity agent.” This was a profession that another famed observer from that era with whom Walter Lippmann normally agreed very little with, John Dewey, also described as “perhaps the most significant symbol of our present social life” (1930, 43). Both men could agree on the importance – and potential dangers – of the new profession that seemed to feed on another profession. Lippmann noted in Public Opinion that the “great corporations have them, the banks have them, the railroads have them, all the organizations of business and of social and political activity have them, and they are the media through which news comes. Even statesmen have them” (1997/1922, 217–218), and he offered a number of examples on how this new profession worked with what he throughout the book termed “the manufacture of consent.” This was a term that later inspired the title of another important book on that very subject, Manufacturing Consent (Hermann and Chomsky 1988), and in general, Public Opinion has often been used as a main reference point for the development of both journalism and what Michael Schudson has later termed “para-journalism” with respect to the way in which these publicity agents live by and feed on journalistic coverage. Lippmann also used other concepts himself. He used terms like “the propagandist,” “the publicity man” and “the press agent,” and he could also have used himself as an example of someone who had practiced this line of work, since he worked in that capacity during the World War I. This was a brief encounter with publicity work, but according to one of Walter Lippmann’s biographers, the experience “made an indelible impression on him. It was to transform his whole attitude toward the role of the press in free society,” as Ronald Steel has written (2008, xii). This prior work experience gave Lippmann a good understanding of the potentials and problems of this influencing factor of journalism.

88  Part II External factors Walter Lippmann wrote in Public Opinion, Were reporting the simple recovery of obvious facts, the press agent would be little more than a clerk. But since, in respect to most of the big topics of news, the facts are not simple, and not at all obvious, but subject to choice and opinion, it is natural that every-one should wish to make his own choice of facts from the newspapers to print. The publicity man does that. He added, And in doing it, he certainly saves the reporter much trouble, by presenting him a clear picture of a situation out of which he might otherwise make neither head nor tail. But it follows that the picture which the publicity man makes for the reporter is the one he wishes the public to see. He is censor and propagandist, responsible only to his employers, and to the whole truth responsible only as it accords with the employer’s conception of his own interests. (1997/1922, 218) This was an analysis that was shared by John Dewey, and by another contemporary, Edward Bernays, whose name in time would become as well known among para-journalists, as Lippmann was to be well known among journalists and others with an interest in journalism. Bernays was the author of books with titles that resembled those of Lippmann and Dewey in the sense that the “public” played a prime role. But behind Bernays’s books like Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928) and Public Relations (1945) was not an attempt to criticize the rising importance of para-journalism, but rather to capitalize on it. Bernays has since been labeled the “godfather,” “forefather” and “pioneer” of the new profession of public relations advisors, and he has also been given less admirable epitaphs like spokesperson for “professional poisoners of the public mind.” Bernays concurred with Lippmann that there was an increasing complexity in modern life, but while Lippmann used that analysis to advocate for a new role for journalism and for the press, Bernays used the analysis to promote the importance of what he termed “the new profession of public relations.” Bernays wrote, Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. (2005/1928, 64) Accordingly, he concerned himself with how to reach the public and make its members react in desirable ways.

Fourth influencing factor 89 Edward Bernays had himself started his career as an editor of a small magazine, and he soon came to believe that the “media provide open doors to the public mind, and through them any one of us may influence the attitudes and actions of our fellow citizens,” as he later wrote in Public Relations (2012/1945, 158). Throughout his career, Bernays came to help hundreds of clients, and he made little secret of his successes and the methods he employed in achieving them. For good reason, for Bernays was also a skillful promoter of himself, and his books were therefore also used to demonstrate his capabilities for potential employers. “Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts,” Bernays, for instance, wrote in Propaganda and professed to his readers that it “is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind and to tell how it is manipulated” (2005/1928, 44–45). This has left not only his potential clients but also researchers, practitioners of public relations and others with an interest in how forces outside the newsrooms attempt to influence actions of journalist with many important testimonies about the means, methods and techniques that para-journalists can employ, and many later studies have also affirmed these. Indeed, just as journalism researchers at times would do well occasionally to have a look at textbooks about journalism to study the essence of journalism practice, researchers of para-journalism can find much of value in the works of Edward Bernays and some of the many other practitioners of para-journalism that followed in his footsteps. In general, Bernays concerned himself – and his clients – with different ways in which he could use journalism to “create circumstances which will swing emotional currents” among the public (Bernays 2005/1928, 77), and he pioneered the creation of sources for news that could help his clients in several ways. Best known is perhaps Bernays’s work on the creation of events. In a section of Crystalizing Public Opinion called “Technique and Method,” Bernays explains that what Michael Schudson termed a para-journalist is “is not merely the purveyor of news; he is more logically the creator of news” (2011/1923, 188), and Bernays later noted that “the imaginatively planned event can successfully compete for attention with other events. Newsworthy events involving people usually do not happen by accident. They are planned deliberately to accomplish a purpose, to influence ideas and actions.” This is a type of event that later has become better known as a pseudo-event, and the term was originally coined by Daniel Boorstin (1961) to describe events that are created to receive journalistic coverage in order to prompt the interests of the original planners. Boorstin’s book was based on an analysis of the effects of public relations specialists and advertisers in the 1950s, but the term could just as easily have been developed on the basis of Bernays’s candid explanations about how public relations specialists can “isolate ideas and develop them into events so that they can be more readily understood and so that they may claim attention to news” (2011/1923, 171).

The importance of communication techniques II Edward Bernays’s background meant that he understood the different phases of the practice of journalism, and that he knew how to affect where news could

90  Part II External factors come from, what news values were important, who could be used as a news source and how they could be presented – that is, those four phases Walter Williams and Frank Martin also wrote about in The Practice of Journalism (1911). For one thing, Bernays understood how to make potential news stories visible and audible to journalists, and in order to introduce new problems or potentials to one or more journalists, he would use mediums that had what he termed a “caring capacity” (2011/1923, 189). This is a process that has later been described as “information subsidies” by Oscar Gandy (1982) and as “source media” by Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranak and Janet Chan (1989), and as all of these researchers and this practitioner have detailed, 50 years apart, such “subsidies” and “source media” can include press releases, press conferences, reports, official state material and any other type of public relations material that in the words of Matt Carlsson “easily slides into news sources with a modicum of journalistic reworking” (2009, 537). But Bernays knew that it might take more than simply offering news to journalists in order to create a circumstance on account of his clients. He also needed to imbue a story with the proper news values that corresponded with the needs and wants of the individual journalists and the news organizations they worked for. In what is considered the first research-based study of news values, the two Norwegians, Johan Galtung and Marie Ruge, detailed 12 such factors that could describe what news was selected by journalists, and in time many later studies have followed. But just as journalistic practitioners like Walter Williams and Frank Martin had long before then given students their own take on what constituted news values, Edward Bernays also knew how to give value to a story, and even how to prolong the coverage of it in ways similar to that which Galtung and Ruge later described as the news value “continuity” (1965, 70). Bernays used his understanding of this journalistic propensity to create successions of newsworthy events. He wrote, [B]y proper planning, a newsworthy event, once created, may be made the basis of a whole series of succeeding events. For example, a public figure may be induced to speak at some banquet. His remarks are reported widely. The public relations directors then send reprints to other leaders in various fields asking for comments. The comments are made the basis for further publicity. Experts on the subject may then be called together for a conference to further discuss the problem. Their findings are reported and distributed, and so on. (2012/1945, 22–23) Bernays not only specialized in those events that many journalism researchers have considered one of the most important triggers of new stories but also experimented with the manufacture of other “circumstances” that could help him influence the third phase of journalism practice, where news sources are selected and rejected.

Fourth influencing factor 91 This manufacture included reports about issues that concerned his clients, and surveys among different parts of the public that could be used to prompt action among both citizens and authoritative decision makers. Examples of the latter are described in candid detail in his Public Relations, where he notes some of the best ways to use surveys of public opinion to influence just that, the public opinion. In these instances, Bernays would seldom content himself with simply waiting for other organizations to furnish reports, surveys and other sources for news that could assist him and his clients. He would also enlist the cooperation of other organizations that had an interest in the issues he worked to promote and suggest, sponsor or in other direct ways encourage them to help produce circumstances that by way of the news media could become the basis of new attitudes or actions among the people he was hired to influence. If needed, Bernays would even establish such organizations himself, and in the public relations industry he is famed for inventing persons, organizations and others who could front interests. By some accounts, this technique was first used in 1913, when he used a “sponsoring committee” that supported the staging of a controversial Broadway production, and over the years, Bernays would use what has later been described as “front groups” or the “third-party technique” to ensure third-party endorsements – what essentially amounts to putting his and his client’s words in someone else’s mouth. Bernays called this “the most useful method in a multiple society like ours to indicate the support of an idea of the many varied elements that make up our society” (cf. Cutlip 2004/1994, 163), and he has been credited by some – and scolded by others – for establishing hundreds of such front groups over his life of more than a hundred years. He has even been touted by some as having “created more institutes, funds, institutions, and foundations than Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Filene together (cf. Rampton and Stauber 2001, 45). These include front groups like the Temperature Research Foundation, the Alliance for Better Foods, Consumer Alert, the Industrial Health Federation and the Tobacco Institute Research Council, which have each produced studies that continuously created circumstances for decision making when they have received coverage in the news media. This is a process that other researchers have attempted to describe more in depth, and in their book, which found its title in Public Opinion, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky describe how powerful sources can effectively subsidize the mass media. The two authors write in Manufacturing Consent, To consolidate their preeminent position as sources, government and business news promoters go to great pains to make things easy for news organizations. They provide the media organizations with facilities in which to gather; they give journalists advance copies of speeches and forthcoming reports; they schedule press conferences at hours well-geared to news deadlines; they write press releases in usable language; and they carefully organize their press conferences and “photo opportunity” sessions. (1994/1988, 21–22)

92  Part II External factors This relationship between journalists and their news sources has been described by researchers as everything from “dancing” to “dueling” in an attempt to metaphorically capture a relationship where two persons, professions or parties are mutually dependent on each other but where one side might be more in charge. Here, researchers and practitioners of journalism have for natural reasons often approached the journalist-source relation from the perspective of journalists. Gaye Tuchman, Herbert Gans and other researchers who have been famed for their newsroom studies have certainly highlighted the importance of this relationship, and they have described it in more and less confrontational ways. In Making News, Gaye Tuchman has noted in a section titled “Knowing Sources” how journalists are dependent on sources, and the more the better, since it “maximizes their ability to file a story every day” and furthermore “brings professional status” (1978a, 68). This way of modeling the relationship between journalists and sources builds on a “symbiotic relationship” (Hermann and Chomsky 1994/1988, 18) or “synchronized” relationship (Donsbach 2004) that in the words of Tuchman “captures the rhythm of the work week” (1978a, 42), and where both journalists and their powerful sources have something to gain from relationships. Here, the journalists and their sources are “negotiating control,” as the title of another study reads. In this important attempt at modeling the relationship between the two sides from the perspective of the sources, Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranak and Janet Chan describe news as a “product of transactions between journalists and their sources” (1989, 377). But there are also more oppositional and confrontational ways of modeling the relationships. Herbert Gans has also made newsroom observations and followed the exchange between journalist and sources, but in his mind, the relationship is based on a “tug of war” and “while sources attempt to ‘manage’ the news, putting the best light on themselves, journalists concurrently ‘manage’ the sources in order to extract the information they want” (2004/1979, 117). In an attempt to bring attention to the interest news sources can have in influencing journalists, Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester have coined the term “news promotors” (1974); distinguish between “news promotors,” “news assemblers” and “news audiences”; and deliberately employ the concept of “promotion” to show that many news sources activity attempt to affect the actions of journalists to further their own interests. This is a point that Lippmann also made very clear for the readers of Public Opinion. While acknowledging the importance of news sources in general for helping journalists service the public, he warned against those public relations specialists that he feared were forbearing a revolution. Walter Lippmann wrote, The publicity agent certainly saves the reporter much trouble, by presenting him a clear picture of a situation out of which he might otherwise make neither head nor tail. But it follows that the pictures which the publicity man makes for the reporter is the one he wishes the public to see. (1997/1922, 218)

Fourth influencing factor 93 And over time the communication techniques have become both a help and a hindrance for the actions of journalists.

A new model of journalistic production Researchers and practitioners have modeled the importance of communication technologies and communication techniques in many ways, and new models continue to be developed. On one hand, researchers constantly find new ways of modeling what has taken place in the past, and on the other hand, new communication techniques and technologies still develop, and they prompt new studies by researchers. But there are still important aspects of what can help and hinder journalists when it comes to the production of journalism that have not been modeled, even though some of these aspects relate to issues that date back to the very first years of that para-journalistic revolution that Walter Lippmann believed was taking place. Walter Lippmann, John Dewey and Edward Bernays all agreed upon the importance of the new profession that was on the rise alongside – and some might add inside – journalism at the turn of last century, even if the first two were more concerned than the latter. Edward Bernays even had the audacity to refer repeatedly to Lippmann, while leaving out the essence of his argument. Bernays wrote in his book Crystalizing Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann of the New York World in his volume Public Opinion declares that the “significant revolution of modern times is not industrial or economic or political, but the revolution which is taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed.” (2011/1923, 68) But he left out that Lippmann considered this revolution a cause for concern for democracy rather than a cause for celebration, as one could come to believe after reading Bernays. The three men also shared an interest in determining how the attitudes and actions of members of the public could be affected by journalism, and all three were particularly interested in the importance of stereotypes. Here, Dewey was first to make note of the concept, and his description of how people make stereotypes to encounter what might otherwise be “[o]ne great, blooming, buzzing confusion” inspired Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion, who in turn came to inspire Edward Bernays. Bernays quoted Lippmann for defining stereotypes as a “repertory of fixed impressions” (Bernays 2011/19213, 19), but Bernays went one step further. Rather than simply analyzing the importance of stereotypes, as John Dewey and Walter Lippmann had done in their writings, Bernays actively used stereotypes to influence public opinions by way of journalism. In Crystallizing Public Opinion, Bernays wrote that the public relations counselor was most valuable on account of his capacity to find and develop “those stereotypes, individual and community, who will bring favorable responses” (2011/1923, 171). This should have made the notion of stereotype a prime interest to researchers.

94  Part II External factors But despite Lippmann’s belief that the “subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes,” as well as Bernays’s attempt to make use of stereotypes, little has been written about what type of stereotype is used in journalism in general and specifically when it comes to how forces outside newsrooms attempt to affect the actions of journalists. This important aspect of the production of journalism can be described through the use of some of the models that have been developed in the previous chapters of this book, and the journalistic compass can be used to describe the incentives that para-journalists have to affect actions of journalists (see Figure 5.1). While the compass was originally developed in order to model the different relationships journalists can have to the public – passively or actively, deliberative or representative – the model can also help describe some of the relationships that public relations specialists, like Edward Bernays and his heirs, attempt to prompt on account of their own employers. To start with, some para-journalists who attempt to use journalism to reach their own objectives will at times have an interest in securing a passive-representative journalism. This is the role where journalists watch over representatives of the public and publish their actions and attitudes, and this particular role affords para-journalists the opportunity to have their own employers portrayed as potentials and their competitors as problems. For Bernays was right in noting that “there is hardly a single item in any daily paper, the publication of which does not, or might not, profit or injure somebody. That is the nature of news,” and even the biggest problems can benefit others when they are presented publicly. This is why para-journalists at times can have an interest in having a passiverepresentative approach, where they can present their own employers in the best way and their competitors in the worst, and similarly with the activerepresentative type of journalism located in the lower right-hand corner of the compass. Para-journalists also have an interest in prompting such active types of journalism, since such hunting-dog journalism essentially creates what Bernays has described as “circumstances for decision-making.” Para-journalists who work for an employer who has problems getting political, commercial or other decision makers to act in the proper way can attempt to enlist the help of a journalist who can apply public pressure. The publication of the actions and attitudes of people Roles of journalists

Roles of sources Marker

Translator

Problem

Deliberative

Potential Problem Potential

Sheepdog

Passive Watchdog

Actor

Problem Potential

?

Rescue dog

Active Hunting dog

Representative

Figure 5.1  The relationship between the roles of news sources and journalists

Fourth influencing factor 95 can assist in the civilization of these people, Walter Lippmann noted in Public Opinion, and half a century later, Herbert Gans made a similar observation when he studied the use of news sources. Gans wrote, “Individuals and groups whose well-being is achieved and maintained by acting for, or on behalf of, constituencies must become eager sources” (1979, 118). At other times, para-journalists will therefore have an interest in unleashing a type of journalist that puts pressure on others to act in compliance with the interest of the para-journalist’s employers. Para-journalists also have an interest in journalism with a more deliberative approach, where the public itself is the focus of journalists rather than representatives of the public. While Walter Williams and Frank Martin in general paid little attention in their textbook, Practice of Journalism, to the attempts outside newsrooms to influence journalism, later practitioners have been more concerned. In what might very well be one of the most used and best-selling textbooks, Melvin Mencher, who himself taught the practice of journalism at Columbia University, cautioned journalists to be careful of attempts to float ‘trial balloons.’ Mencher writes in News Reporting and Writing, and thus warns generations of journalism students in those English-speaking countries where the book has figured prominently in the curriculum, These stories are designed by the source to test public reaction without subjecting the source to responsibility for the material. Reporters, wager to obtain news of importance and sometimes motivated by the desire for exclusives, may become the conduits for misleading or self-serving information. (2010/1977, 40) The journalism Mencher mentions belongs to the upper left-hand side of the compass, where journalists make public deliberation an end in itself, and para-journalists can have an interest in having the news media test ideas and sentiments. The last of the four roles is at times the most interesting of them all for persons who work to accomplish objectives by way of journalism. Pulitzer was himself successful in activating the public to take part in everything from the payment of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to setting up soup kitchens, even if his biographers might disagree about the motivations for such attempts. This is the journalism that belongs to the upper right-hand side of the compass. Pulitzer might have been motivated by sheer idealism on account of the importance of including the public in society. This was something that he argued for in a number of instances, including an essay, “The Power of Public Opinion” (1904), which was reprinted by Columbia University and placed right after the essay where he defended his endowment to a school of journalism. Pulitzer might also have been motivated more by commercialism than idealism, as some of his contemporary critics and later biographers have pointed out, and the media magnate was certainly successful when it came to raising readership and revenues from advertisement. He might possibly also have been motivated by a mixture of idealism and commercialism. But for persons outside the newsroom, attempts to activate the

96  Part II External factors public – or parts of it – can be illustrated by getting votes on election day, selling products or ensuring other types of public support.

Relationships between the roles of journalists and news sources At times a para-journalist can have an interest in making journalists navigate toward a more active journalism, where they attempt to prompt action. At other times, it might be more in the interest of para-journalists to work with passive journalists. Similarly, with the deliberative and the representative perspective, para-journalists at times can have an interest in journalists who focus on the public, while at other times it can be more beneficial for a para-journalist to have journalists focus on representatives of the public. It all depends on what a para-journalist attempts to accomplish on account of his or her employers, and in order to understand how any para-journalist can influence the purpose (active or passive) and the perspective (deliberative or representative), the model describing the relationship between roles of journalists and sources is helpful. This model was originally developed to describe the news sources that journalists will be using to prompt different types of principles, but para-journalists can also offer one, two or more sources to a journalist in an attempt to influence their navigation. For para-journalists can in essence bring journalists out, of course, in ways that are similar to what happens when a traditional compass is affected by electrical wiring, iron bars or other sources that can affect the compass needle onboard ships, in the hand of boy scouts or other users of the traditional compass. In the case of the journalistic compass, the final navigation between the different principles can ultimately be decided by what news sources a journalist can come into contact with before deadline. When para-journalists who use the news media to prompt the interest of their employers are approached by a journalist, or the para-journalist approaches a journalist, the perspective and the purpose of a journalist can be decided by the markers, translators and actors the journalist may come into contact with. At the most basic level, para-journalists work to help their employers appear as potentials rather than problems, and in order to convince a journalist of this, a para-journalist might simply refer to other persons and organizations who have stood in the way of the employer’s solution to a problem. This happens when a politician, a company executive or other archetypical actor is approached by a journalist who would like to know what the actor would do with a particular problem, and the actor then points to others who are more responsible for solving the problem. But the more skillful and strategically thinking para-journalists within political, commercial or other realms of society will also attempt to enlist the help of other news sources who might work as markers or translators who can testify to why the employer is a potential rather than a problem. These attempts at affecting the actions of one or more journalists in order to secure beneficial coverage can take many forms. When his clients had problems, Bernays would enlist the support of other persons or existing organizations – or simply bring new ones into existence – so

Fourth influencing factor 97 they could play the role of what in the typology in this book has been termed translators and markers. Such translators can appear in many forms, and as some researchers have shown, university professors and other experts have come to play a still more prominent role in much media coverage. But these types of experts, whom Walter Lippmann believed should play a more prominent role in journalism, have been joined by many other types of experts. Some of these experts might be working with the same ethical considerations as university professors, who are supposed to represent public interest, but when these people are hired by public authorities, organizations, private companies, think tanks and other groups who front a particular interest, they are strategically enlisted to emphasize some problems and potentials over others. This has led some researchers to sarcastically exclaim, “Trust us, we are experts,” the title of a study where the backgrounds of some of the most used sources are studied (Rampton and Stauber 2001). These translators can direct the attention of readers, listeners and viewers toward both problems and potentials. Sometimes translators will be asked by journalists to respond to previous actions or attitudes by actors. At other times, translators can be asked by journalists to translate problems or potentials that will then be used to approach politicians, CEOs in companies and other typical actors in today’s journalism. Para-journalists that can enlist the help of translators who can help them – or who can simply invent them – can better affect journalists’ decisions on how to frame a potential or a problem and who to cast as actors with problems and potentials. But the most skillful para-journalist can do even more. They will also work with those markers that journalists have become eager to include in journalism. Michael Schudson has noted that the news media’s “capacity to publicly include is perhaps their most important feature” (1995b, 25), and as other researchers have shown, much journalism includes different types of exemplars. These are people who can make the problems or potentials brought forward by journalists more intelligible to audiences, as Walter Williams and Frank Martin also noted in their textbook about the practice of journalism. In much of journalism, this role is played by the private citizen, but most of the communication technologies from the past have made it difficult for journalists to find citizens who can represent a particular problem or potential, and they will therefore often contact or have been contacted themselves by a para-journalist that has organized and represents these people. This is helpful for journalists, since unions, associations and other similar organized interests can more easily be located by telephone, e-mail or one of the many other communication technologies that have developed, while it can be difficult to locate people who have suffered a heart attack, or who will be hit by downsizing. The potentials of the news media to affect both citizens and more authoritative decision makers mean that para-journalists have an interest in affecting journalistic actions, but in many instances, para-journalists can represent different and even opposing interests, and in such instances, the final result can be decided by which side can best comply with the needs of journalists. This is where communication technologies, which have what Bernays called a “carrying capacity,”

98  Part II External factors become important, so that different news sources can become known to a journalist, and where communication techniques are equally important in determining what side appears as a potential rather than as a problem. Such techniques also include the establishment of alliances that can make it very difficult for journalists to apprehend how and in what ways their actions are affected. This was one of the approaches that Edward Bernays excelled in, when he formed “front groups,” and these alliances direct our attention to the fact that there are several layers when it comes to the use of news sources in journalism. The first layer is the one that is readable, audible or in other ways detectable in news stories by readers, listeners, viewers or other audiences. The second layer coincides with what Gaye Tuchman termed the “news net” (1978b), and here, the news sources are known to the journalists, who then might only use some of the news sources that have been consulted in the research process. A journalist might interview a handful of news sources but decide only to use a couple of them in the final news story. But beneath the layer known to the journalists is another layer of news sources who can form alliances – and even establish new news sources – in order to influence the actions of journalists. Unbeknownst to the individual journalist, potential sources who represent different interests and have different potentials as sources might work together. Some members of such an alliance might be able to supply different types of markers who can function as a potential and a problem. Other members of such an alliance might supply translators or actors, all of which is known only to the alliance and the one who directs it like an “invisible wirepuller,” which was the term Bernays used in Propaganda of himself, his colleagues and his competitors (2005/1928, 60). No matter how strategically the heirs of Bernays work today, they effectively make use of stereotypes that journalists themselves have developed. Most of this para-journalistic work constitutes perfectly legitimate attempts to affect the actions of journalists, who in turn might affect – intentionally or unintentionally – their audiences, and the fact that the models presented in this book can be relevant as a framework for understanding both journalism and para-journalism is hardly surprising. For para-journalism builds, in essence, on the work of journalists, and many parajournalists have also been trained in journalism. Walter Lippmann is one example. Edward Bernays is another. But it is not only on the personal level that the worlds of journalism and para-journalism are connected. Many journalism schools that were established around the world in the 20th century have been coupled with other areas of communication. Take the journalism school at the University of Missouri that in 1908 was established as a separate entity. Today, the school of journalism includes programs in communication. Stephen Reese, who has been part of the school of journalism for many years at the University of Texas’s college for communication, has made this point clear, in more ways than one. Journalism, Reese writes in a review of the historical developments at American journalism schools, has joined with other communication and media fields to create independent professional schools within the university. In doing so, it has found it

Fourth influencing factor 99 easier to enter into symbiotic relationships with the professional community, and alliance that has brought new resources but also corresponding pressures to satisfy those constituencies. (1999, 72) It is, in other words, not only sources and journalists that can coexist within journalism practice in a symbiotic relationship, as Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky wrote in Manufacturing Consent (1994/1988). The symbiosis is also found on the training grounds for both journalists and people who are taught and trained to affect the actions of journalism itself. Indeed, many of the people who came to teach, do research and later publish some of the most seminal works within the field of journalism studies were originally trained within communication studies. These include people like James Carey and Wilbur Schramm, where the latter even was a former colleague of Walter Lippmann, since Schramm had also worked with public relations efforts for the administration during World War I. All of this does not necessarily constitute a problem, albeit the potential collusion of interests is highly debated in many of the unions of journalists around the world, where some national unions readily organize the interests of those members who work to affect the actions of other journalists, while such lines of work are cause to be expelled in other national unions. But this relationship makes it more apparent that models of journalism and models for journalism should not only be able to bridge different factors of journalism – such as the principles, precedents, practices and production of journalism. At best, these models can also connect journalism with other professions with which it is most closely associated when it comes to practicing, lecturing and researching. This was also what Joseph Pulitzer attempted to do when he sought to enlist the help of lecturers from other university departments around the campus grounds of Columbia University to teach at the journalism school, but it might be important to note that Pulitzer made his suggestions a couple of decades before Lippmann and others noted that there was a revolution going on in terms of the ways in which other persons and organizations attempted to affect the actions of journalists.

6 Fifth influencing factor Journalistic publication

The founding fathers of some of the world’s first journalism schools were in agreement about most of the factors that can affect the actions of journalism and that students should therefore be taught. Joseph Pulitzer, who helped fund the journalism school at Columbia University, and Walter Williams, who invested no money of his own in funding the journalism school at the University of Missouri but personally came to lead and teach at the school, both agreed on the importance of influencing factors like the principles, precedents, practice and production of journalism. But the two men disagreed staunchly about another important influencing factor. For while both of them had many years of experience as editors and owners of newspapers, and therefore knew well of the importance of all that transpires in the publication process, they disagreed about the need to include what is in the context of this book described as the fifth influencing factor: the commercial aspects of journalism. Pulitzer opposed the idea most strongly, and his wording left little doubt about his thoughts about the subject. As he wrote in the essay where he defended his endowment for a school of journalism, [N]othing was further from my mind – nothing, in fact, is more inconsistent and incompatible with my intensions or repugnant to my feelings – than to include any of the business or commercial elements of a newspaper in what is to be taught in this department of Columbia University. (1904, 18) The surprising statement coming from one of the most successful media owners in the beginning of the 20th century appeared under the heading “What Should Not Be Taught.” In this section of the essay, Pulitzer even went so far as to voice concern over the proposed course of study that had tentatively been drawn up by the administration at Columbia University. While praising the University for “admirable quickness,” Pulitzer took issue with several of the proposed courses. “Not to teach typesetting, not to explain the methods of business management, not to reproduce with trivial variations the course of a commercial college. This is not university work,” he wrote (1904, 17–18), and the successful media magnate took particular issue with the proposed idea to include a course in the business administration of a newspaper. Walter Williams, on the other hand, believed

Fifth influencing factor 101 that a journalism school should teach students all of the aspects that are associated with the publication of journalism, including the effects of editorial management, the organization of newsrooms, the typesetting and printing process and the business aspects of running a news organization. This factor was therefore an integral part of both the courses that were taught at the school in Missouri and in several of the chapters that were included in The Practice of Journalism (Williams and Martin 1922/1911). “What is a college of journalism? It is an institution to train journalists. What is a journalist? Not any business manager or publisher, or even proprietor,” Pulitzer asked – and answered – in his essay. But these were exactly the things the faculty at Missouri considered important. When the school opened in 1908, the first courses included a class in “Newspaper Administration” that introduced students to “the conduct of newspapers from the viewpoint of editorial direction and control.” Another course in “Newspaper Publishing” taught students “the business side of journalism, including discussion of advertising and circulation” (cf. Farrar 1998, 142), and in their textbook, Williams and Frank Martin stated that the publication of journalism is “a product of co-operation” (1922/1911, 22). Here, journalism students could read that the division of labor in the modern newspaper of the early 20th century was divided into four separate and distinct departments: (1) the gathering and presentation of news, (2) the editorial page and policy, (3) the business department and (4) the printing department. These departments offer a telling framework for looking at some of the most important ways in which practitioners and researchers in the past have attempted to model how the publication of journalism can affect the actions of the journalists – even though journalists are mainly employed within the department with the responsibility for “the gathering and presentation of news.” For journalists still depend on other factors before their journalism can reach the public. This chapter starts by reviewing some of the important ways in which each of these four aspects of the publication of journalism has been modeled in the past, starting with the importance of printing. This was an aspect of journalism that Williams had firsthand experience with, since Williams worked his way into journalism by way of the printing department, where he started as an apprentice. This aspect of journalism was also something that Williams took an interest in when he visited hundreds of newspapers around the globe as part of his study of The World’s Journalism (1915). In the report, Williams highlighted some of the problems and potentials associated with the use of different types and printing presses, and, among other things, Williams informed readers about Chinese newspapers where the “use of ideograms requires the Chinese compositor to make use of three thousand or more separate characters in the production of an ordinary newspaper” (1915, 36). According to Williams, the result was that the printer’s case in China is a large room containing several cases, rather than the few and more easily accessible boxes that hold the type to be hand set as in other countries. But as Walter Williams noted in The World’s Journalism, there are many other problems and potentials associated with the publication of journalism, and this chapter describes and discusses some of the most important attempts at modeling this fifth

102  Part II External factors influencing factor. The chapter concludes by presenting a new model that tries to take some of the shortcomings of previous models into account, so that researchers, lecturers and practitioners can better understand the problems and potentials associated with aspects of the publication of journalism.

Modeling influences of platforms for publication Walter Williams considered the platform for publication such an important influencing factor that he made sure his students did more than simply read about the ways in which a particular platform could affect the actions of journalism. One of the courses at the school was titled “Office Equipment,” and in the course catalogue students could read that this “course considers the mechanical equipment of newspaper office, type, presses, etc.” (cf. Farrar 1998, 142). In another of the first-year courses at Missouri, “Newspaper Making,” students had to produce and publish a newspaper every day, and Walter Williams therefore also bought a printing press so students could better understand how all the mechanical aspects could come to influence their work. Joseph Pulitzer was also well aware of the importance of this aspect of journalism, and although the successful media magnate strongly believed that a journalism school should be “anti-commercial” (1904, 18), Pulitzer understood that this particular aspect of the publication process was too important not to include in the curriculum. Pulitzer therefore offered not only to establish the journalism school at Columbia University but also to finance “a plant and printing press” for its students so that they could get realworld experience with printing (1904, 44). This offer was presented in the final part of his essay, after Pulitzer had explained to readers how new printing technologies had been of prime importance for the proliferation of journalism over the previous century. As a former printer’s apprentice, Walter Williams also had firsthand experience with how the actions of journalists could be directly influenced by the potentials and problems that were part of the printing process. There were natural limits to the lengths of journalism, both to the headlines and the body of text, and if articles were too long, it was easier to shorten them if they adhered to the inverted pyramid. The stereotypes – those carved or cast letters, numbers and symbols that were placed together to form words, sentences, articles and eventually pages – also affected the form of the texts in concrete ways. This was something that Walter Williams came to reflect more about when his tour of The World’s Journalism introduced him to the printing traditions in different countries. The mechanical and physical aspects of printing also established limits to how often newspapers could publish journalism, and the logistical aspects of the operation also meant that other aspects of printing could pose problems. Perhaps the best example of this is when a strike in 1945 among delivery drivers meant that 7.5 million New Yorkers were without newspapers for 17 days, and the journalists at the papers were without jobs for that same period. This was an example of the importance of the people who are responsible for the publication of journalism, since printers and other people who are responsible for the

Fifth influencing factor 103 publishing and delivery of journalism can halt or even hinder journalism from being distributed. The effects were studied by Bernard Berelson, who worked at Columbia University, and he published his findings under the telling title What “Missing the Newspaper” Means (1949). One of Berelson’s findings was that in the absence of news about the raging war in the South Pacific, where American troops were still fighting Japan, and other news of interest to the general public, the former readers turned into listeners. That is, they tuned in to radio stations instead. This was a new platform for the publication of news that neither Walter Williams nor Joseph Pulitzer concerned themselves with when drafting what platforms for the publication of journalism students should concern themselves with. Newspapers, magazines and other platforms for writing were all that mattered to them. But this was a new platform that would offer journalists both problems and potentials, and when Wilbur Schramm put together A Blueprint for a School of Journalism (1942), one of his 14 recommendations for a journalism school at the University of Iowa suggested that the practice-oriented courses at the school should work together with local newspapers as well as radio stations. Schramm wrote, As the world changes, journalism changes with it. In the last few years, we have seen a new journalism growing up on the heels of technological and social changes; spot news coverage by radio replacing spot news by newspapers, the radio news flash reducing the newspaper’s power to break news. He therefore suggested that “the radio news coverage be considered to be a legitimate and important part of modern journalism,” and the events in New York City in 1945 proved him right regarding the importance of the spoken word as opposed to the written. The development of this and other journalism schools reflects how platforms for the publication of journalism have been developed and, in time, have come to supplement and even substitute older platforms for the publication of journalism. Nowadays, the journalism school at the University of Missouri has a television station and a web-first daily newspaper. The important point is that all new platforms for the publication of news offer both problems and potentials for the actions of journalists, and these potentials and problems have been of interest to many researchers over the years. One of the most well-known researchers within this tradition was the Canadian media researcher Marshall McLuhan, who famously noted that “the medium is the message” (1964). His point was that a medium should be the focus of study rather than the content it carried, since the first was of greater importance than the latter. This way of modeling the influencing factors of journalism entails that different media types have different biases, as another Canadian researcher, Harold Innis, suggested in the 1950s, and as many new platforms for the publication of journalism have developed over the 20th and 21st centuries, journalism researchers have tried to follow suit and model the effects on the actions of journalists. In the late 20th century, researchers such as Gaye Tuchman, Herbert Gans and Philip Schlesinger have studied what different

104  Part II External factors platforms, such as print, radio and television, entail for the actions of journalists, and in the first part of the 21st century, a new generation of researchers and practitioners has focused on what happens with all the new platforms that are associated with the Internet (see e.g. Ryfe 2012; Anderson 2013; Usher 2014). These later studies show that while journalists in the past could concentrate on one platform for the publication of their work, news organizations today encompass a variety of platforms that some, if not most, journalists cater to. These are platforms that can have very different formats when it comes to everything from deadlines and cycles of publication to the available space for content. In some instances, new models have been developed, and in other instances, old models of the practice of journalism have been challenged. To take one example, the practice of gatekeeping, as David Manning White studied, was based on the natural limits of what the newspaper that Mr. Gates worked for could compress onto the pages. But with the internet of the 21st century there are fewer if any limitations. “Digital storage and transmission has massively expanded space and time available for media content, to a point where from the producer’s point of view bandwidth restrictions become irrelevant,” Axel Bruns (2005, 13) has noted. He has therefore suggested that the term “gatekeeping” could be replaced by “gatewatching,” which more adequately describes the process that takes place on media platforms based on digitalization, where all content providers can actively watch one another rather than passively wait for potential news to arrive at the gates of the newsrooms, such as Mr. Gates did when he waited for whatever the wire services brought him.

Modeling influences of commercial considerations “The newspapers must have a business department,” Walter Williams and Frank Martin wrote in The Practice of Journalism, where they assess how different aspects of the publication of journalism can affect the actions of journalism (1922/1911, 23). But while Walter Williams and Joseph Pulitzer differed when it came to views about how much this aspect of journalism should be incorporated into journalism schools, both men certainly agreed on the importance of the issue for those already practicing journalism. Joseph Pulitzer wrote, Commercialism has a legitimate place in a newspaper, namely, in the business office. The more successful a newspaper is commercially the better for its moral side. The more prosperous it is the more independent it can afford to be, the higher salaries it can pay to editors and reporters, the less subject it will be to temptation, the better it can stand losses for the sake of principle and conviction. (1904, 23) Walter Williams, who made sure that one of the first courses at the University of Missouri dealt with the issue – the course “Newspaper Publishing” taught students about “[t]he business side of journalism, including discussion on advertising

Fifth influencing factor 105 and circulation” (cf. Farrar 1998, 142) – also stated the importance of commercialism. A newspaper, Williams and Frank Martin wrote, “cannot service the public unless it reaches the public” (1922/1991, 23), and they explained that there were two sources of income for a newspaper: advertising and circulation. Both Pulitzer and Williams knew that a failing business department could be as important as a failing printing department, since both could halt if not downright hinder the publication of journalism. But Pulitzer also came to experience the potential of a successful business department. The Hungarian-born media magnate moved to America in 1864, at the age of 17, and after a year in the army and a number of later jobs, including one as mole hustler for the leading German newspaper in the city of St. Louis, the Westliche Post, he started as a reporter for the paper, later becoming part owner of it. Within a matter of a few years he became owner and editor-in-chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Under his direction – of both the business department and the newsroom – it became one of the Midwest’s leading newspapers, and it ultimately allowed him to buy a bankrupt New York paper, the New York World, after which he moved to New York City. One of his important business moves was to dump the price of the newspaper to two cents, and by September 1884, a little more than a year after he had bought the newspaper, the World had a circulation of more than a 100,000 (Seitz 1924). But his success did not end there. While the wars for the lucrative New York market raged, Pulitzer boasted in 1892 that the World yielded an annual profit of $1,200,000, and at the height of the success of the World – which topped in 1892 a circulation of around 374,000 newspapers a day – Pulitzer build a lavish new publishing house in New York and could hire some of the nation’s best journalists and editors. Joseph Pulitzer could therefore claim to know more than most journalists and editors about “when journalism is a business,” as Walter Williams and Frank Martin put it in The Practice of Journalism (1922/1911, 24). Even so, Pulitzer was adamant not to mix the two among both present and prospective journalists. For despite Pulitzer’s success with pairing commercialism with a publicly voiced idealism about journalism’s public service, he wrote in his essay, “commercialism, which is proper and necessary in the business office, becomes a degradation and a danger when it invades the editorial rooms” (1904, 23). Researchers have also later noted how American newspapers “early on had structured a firewall between the business and editorial departments; bridged by the publisher,” as Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese have remarked (2014, 118). Even so, the importance of what Williams and Frank termed the “Business Department” has been the basis of many studies among researchers. Some, like Herbert Gans and Leon Sigal, have come to see such economic considerations not as potentials for editorial independence but as constraints on editorial decisions (Sigal 1973; Gans 1979). The author of an important work within this research tradition, John McManus, has even written about a Market-Driven Journalism (1994) in his book with that very title. Based on studies of local television stations, McManus has found that the public-service imperatives of journalism, advanced by Joseph Pulitzer and others, in time have been replaced by the market considerations

106  Part II External factors where the journalists are forced – directly or indirectly – to produce journalism that has the widest possible audience reach. The extent to which commercial aspects can affect the actions of journalism can change from place to place, which was also something that Walter Williams noticed in The World’s Journalism study. Williams found differences among the commercial situations of the more than 400 newspapers he visited on three different continents, and he also found – what researchers have also come to study in greater detail – that the economic situation of news organizations is not only determined by circulation and advertising. There can also be other means of income. One of the things that Walter Williams discovered on his world tour was that the newspapers in some countries were subsidized by the state. “Germany has a large class of newspapers directly or in-directly subsidized by the government. This subsidy often comes in the form of official advertisements,” Williams wrote (1915, 11). Researchers have since modeled “the variety of ways in which states can intervene in newspaper economics,” as one of these researchers, Robert Picard, has put it (2007, 239). Picard and others have shown that such state support can include everything from actual cash transfers to fiscal advantages and regulatory relief, and while Walter Williams considered economic support from the state a problem, since he believed it “prevents the German press from being an organ of public opinion and restricts it, where subsidized, to echoing the views of the existing government” (1915, 11), such economic support is believed to be a potential for others or even a necessity if some news organizations are to exist. Economic subsidies and support do not just come from the state. They can also come from organizations and private persons who have their own interest in aiding the news media. With the internet, many traditional media organizations have thus come under pressure from new types of media organizations that have introduced new and more attractive ways for audiences and advertisers to interact with the media. Some of these have even become so successful in terms of the revenues they bring in that the owners have bought out the whole or parts of traditional media companies. One of the most successful newspapers from the 20th century in terms of subscribers, advertisers and the number of Pulitzer Prizes awarded, the Washington Post, experienced that when the newspaper was sold to an owner of one of the new successful media companies of the 21st century. Other news organizations have not been bought out but are depending on various types of support by foundations, organizations or private persons, and while it made sense for Walter Williams and Frank Martin to write in The Practice of Journalism (1911) that newspapers relied on only advertising and circulation, news organizations of the 21st century are based on a number of different sources of income, including support from both the state and private interests. What is most important here is the ways in which the media economy affects the actions of the individual journalist, and while there might be differences across different nations and news organizations, some researchers still find that the media economy matters little to journalists in their daily work. In a study of what proved to be one of the most successful news organizations of the 20th century,

Fifth influencing factor 107 Nikki Usher found that “on a day-today level, journalists at The Times are so far removed from economic concerns that they spend little time thinking about the state of their industry. It’s still about the story to most journalists, at least at The Times” (2014, 230).

Modeling influences of editorial decisions The possible importance of the business department was, in the minds of Walter Williams and his cowriter, Frank Martin, closely connected to another important department in news organizations, “the editorial page and policy,” as they termed it. But Williams and Martin made sure to teach their readers and students about the difference between “editorial pages” and “editorial policy,” and they included a chapter in their book about editorial direction, on one hand, and the writing of editorials, on the other hand. The distinction between the two was important, since one had to do with the presentation of views and the other with the news of the newspaper that resided in the fourth department of the newspaper: in the department for the “gathering and presentation of news” (1922/1911, 22). Williams and Martin explained that both of these departments were directed by “a managing editor, an editor-in-chief, or simply the editor,” and reading this part of their textbook makes the importance and perils of the editor-in-chief clear. For while the news and views of newspapers could often coincide in the period where news organizations were controlled by individual persons and organizations with clear political, religious or other interests, the editors who had taken over after what Jean Chalaby termed “the invention of journalism” were left with a more difficult balancing act between presenting both news and views, while not mixing the two. This was made easier, according to one of the most debated managing editors in the history of journalism, by the fact that “[n]early every great newspaper in this country to-day is independent – financially and politically,” as Joseph Pulitzer assured his own readers (1904, 52). He was, however, no stranger to expressing political views himself. “Chance took Mr. Pulitzer into active political life,” as one of his biographers has put it (Seitz 1924, 62), and two times in his life he was elected. The first time was as a state representative and the second time was as a member of Congress, but he had to give up his congressional duties since his workload as owner and managing editor was taking up too much time as his paper found a still-greater audience and manned still more people. Even if Pulitzer’s political views as a former elected politician for the Republican Party by his own accounts was kept out of the presentation of news in his papers, he did not refrain from setting a policy in terms of the way the news should be gathered and presented. For there were few things an editor, according to Pulitzer, should not meddle with, even if he was managing the news department instead of the department responsible for expressing the views. An editor is someone “who directs these writers and reporters, who tells them what to say and how to say it, who shows them how to think – who inspires them, though he may never write a line himself,” he wrote (1904, 20).

108  Part II External factors This type of editorial leadership directed at influencing the actions of journalists could take on many forms for Pulitzer and others. Michael Schudson recounts the experience of a reporter who entered the newsroom of the New York World and here “saw pasted on the walls at intervals printed cards which read: Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy! Who? What? Where? When? How?” (1978, 78). There were other signs with different messages that were meant to impact the journalists, about what was considered important, and the witnessing journalist thought that these were all excellent traits, but they were “not as easy to put into execution as comfortable publishers and managing editors might suppose” (Schudson 1978, 78). Pulitzer was not alone in attempting to affect the actions of journalists by both verbal and written instructions in the newsroom. In another book, Schudson similarly recounts how the English media magnate Lord Northcliffe also hung posters in his newsrooms. “One Englishman is a story. Ten Frenchmen is a story. One hundred Germans is a story. And nothing ever happens in Chile,” the signs read and revealed some important news values in geographical context (Schudson 1986, 47). Northcliffe did not leave it with that. He was particularly concerned with imprinting a policy for diversity for all his papers, and he specifically instructed his staff at the Times that he would like more topicality, more readability, lighter content, and fewer and shorter articles on politics (cf. Chalaby 1998, 90). He would also issue specific orders to his journalists and even cable them if they were not within eye- or earshot. One of the telegrams read, “Humbly beg for a light leading article daily until I return – Chief” (cf. Chalaby 1998, 90). Another example of willful attempts from editors to affect the gathering and presentation of journalism was exercised by Joseph Pulitzer’s competitor, William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was reportedly asked for instructions by a correspondent, Remington: “W.R. Hearst, New York Journal, N.Y.: Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return. Remington.” To this Hearst allegedly cabled, “Remington, Havana: Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war. W.R. Hearst.” The story ranks among the most famous anecdotes in the history of journalism, and even though the truth of the telegraphic exchange continues to be debated, it is often used as part of studies about the ways in which editors instill what Wolfgang Donsbach has called “institutional objectives.” These are, in Donsbach’s words, “those expectations a journalist faces as a consequence of his or her employment status” (2004, 134), and they can take on many forms, from posters in newsrooms and policy documents that detail the important principles for practice, to direct instructions cabled to correspondents hundreds of miles away from the editors, owners and others who manage the news media who have attempted to influence the actions of journalism. This important issue, when it comes to the influencing factors of journalism, became of more interest to researchers in the aftermath of David Manning White’s gatekeeper study, where White found that the wire editor he followed, although only responsible for very little of the newspaper’s actual content, seemingly was very subjective about his views. Reference to “I” appears repeatedly in the second part of the article, where White included a question-and-answer section, in which he left room for Mr.

Fifth influencing factor 109 Gates to reflect on his various reasons for selecting or rejecting incoming news wires. The answers from the anonymous editors included prejudices about “Truman’s economics, daylight saving time and warm beer,” while he had a preference for “stories well-wrapped up and tailored to suit our needs (or ones slanted to conform to our editorial policies)” (1950, 390). This led White to conclude in the article’s last paragraph, “Through studying his overt reasons for rejecting news stories from the press associations we see how highly subjective, how based on the ‘gate-keeper’s’ own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of “news” really is” (1950, 390). Not all shared this conclusion. Some contemporary researchers thought that new approaches might offer a different understanding of what took place. So, while White studied the personal level as part of his gatekeeper study, another contemporary researcher, Warren Breed, began a line of research about the subtle – and at times a more steadfast – social control that could occur in news organizations. The title of Breed’s Social Control in the News Room (1955) is telling of his finding. Warren Breed, who had also worked as a journalist before taking up research, immersed himself in the daily news production at several newspapers and described a process of “newsroom socialization” that constrains reporters and makes them orient themselves toward the inside workings of the newsroom. “Ideally, there would be no problem of either ‘control’ or ‘policy’ on the newspaper in a full democracy,” this former journalist suggested in the opening line of his work (1955, 326). From here, Breed went on to describe how things in general were best left for the journalists to decide. But contrary to what Breed himself considered desirable, he found that “[i]n practice, we find the publisher does set news policy, and this policy is usually followed by members of his staff.” Breed’s point was that individual journalists thus depend on their editors, owners and other direct or indirect influences. These influences – or the ways in which publishers make sure that “policy is usually followed” – can take on different forms. “The process of learning policy crystallizes into a process of social control, in which deviations are punished (usually gently) by reprimand, cutting one’s story, the withholding of friendly comment by an executive, etc.,” Breed wrote (1955, 332), and he also noted that there were sources of rewards for the compliant journalists. So, while mr. Gates in David Manning White’s study expressed a number of personal prejudices, but also – it should also be noted in all fairness – told White about his fondness for wires that were “slanted to conform to our editorial politics,” Warren Breed found, in the words of Barbie Zelizer, that “the publisher sets policy and the reporters followed it” (2004, 53). This brings us to the last of the four departments that Williams and Martin considered part of the publication process: the department for the gathering and presentation of news.

Modeling influences in the newsroom Some later studies have testified to the social control in news organizations and have noted that journalists feel the “invisible hand” if they challenge institutional interests (Elbot 1992), and in their works on the potential influencing

110  Part II External factors factors of journalism, Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese have similarly written about how journalists can be rewarded with special assignments and recognition if they follow the organizations’ policies (2014, 160). Other researchers have, however, noted how seemingly autonomous journalists and others in newsrooms work. A few years after the publication of White’s gatekeeper study, Walter Gieber published an article with the same focus but with a different finding. Gieber studied the workflows of 16 wire editors from different types of news organizations, and the title of his subsequent article, “News Is What Newspapermen Make It” (1956), is telling. Gieber found that the 16 news workers were mainly “preoccupied with the mechanical pressures” of their work (1964/1956, 175) and a “straitjacket of mechanical details” (Gieber 1964/1956, 432). Gieber continues his studies – among both editors and reporters – and continued to find that people in news organizations in general concerned themselves more with practicalities than principle aspects of how the news would and could affect readers. This line of work and understanding of the organizational influences have since been continued by many others. In his article “Reporting the News,” with the telling subtitle, “An Organizational Analysis” (1973), Lee Sigelman gives a vivid description of how one enters the two newspapers that formed the basis of his study. Upon entering the building, one can either turn left and enter the offices of the morning Sun, or turn right to the newsroom of the evening Star. “The choice of direction, fittingly enough, is also ideological,” he notes (Sigelman 1973, 132), but what is striking is that despite the differences on the editorial pages of the newspapers, there are few differences when one shifts focus from the views to the news of the two papers. What he found was that there was little enforcement of the policies set by editorial management. It was largely left to the journalists – including the newly recruited – to gain an understanding of the important working principles by way of everything from the observations of experienced journalists to editorial revisions when they turned in their work. About his work, Sigelman wrote that “[p] revious analyses of the organizational context of news reporting have examined the means by which news organizations impose their politics on reporters and by which reporters avoid such imposition” (1973, 146), but in general he found that journalistic work was rather autonomous. Herbert Gans (1979) followed a similar methodological design in his seminal Deciding What’s News and found that a certain “delegation of power also takes place because the news organizations consist of professionals who insist on individual autonomy” (1979, 101), but Gans also added that news work is ultimately determined by organizational matters, like management’s division of labor and deadline constraints (1979, 109). This conclusion was reaffirmed in another important study by Philip Schlesinger (1978). He followed the work at the BBC and noticed what he has since termed a “[s]top-watch culture,” where production is “controlled day-to-day and minute-to-minute.” Several later studies have shown that one reason why it can be difficult for editors and other managers to control the work of journalists is simply that they have to make so many decisions on a daily basis. Instead, the organization of our time “sets the boundaries and guidelines to direct these

Fifth influencing factor 111 decisions,” as Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese have written (2014, 159). This is a process that Gaye Tuchman has described as a “routinization of the unexpected” and that in time has brought with it what a later researcher into the importance of organizations’ contexts, David Ryfe, has described as an “extraordinarily homogenous” practice of journalism across different nations, organizations and even individual persons (2006, 135). This is marked by the fact that many journalists can switch between different newsrooms and, in the framework of Leo Sigelman’s study, can turn left instead of right, whenever they entered the building where the two news organizations he studied had their addresses. David Ryfe, who has studied how news organizations in the 21st century have problems instigating new editorial polices about how to practice journalism, has explained that, by pointing to the fact that many journalistic practices today are “taken for granted assumptions and behaviors that have become deeply embedded within the transorganizational field of journalism” (Ryfe 2006, 138), a point made also by researchers who have described the institutionalism of journalism. This might have been foreseen by the organizational processes that were beginning to fall into place when the first journalism schools developed. It is also evident from one of the first textbooks about journalism. Here, in The Practice of Journalism, Walter Williams and Frank Martin spend most parts, chapters and pages describing this fourth and final department of the newspaper. In the book’s introduction of the four departments, they write, The department of journalism which has in charge the gathering and presentation of news is the largest, most carefully conducted and most expensive. It is necessary not merely to know what is the news and where the news may be obtained. It is also necessary to know how to get this news, and, the news having been obtained, how to present it to the reader of the newspaper in attractive, interesting fashion, accurately, tersely, fairly, fully. This makes necessary well-informed and resourceful news-editors, a large staff of welltrained and experienced reporters, artist and photographers and an organization constantly at work, which is effective in every part. (1922/1911, 23) Later in the book, the two authors spend more than 40 pages detailing what they term “[o]ffice organization in news gathering,” where they also make a note of how the development “of the work of gathering news along systematic lines has resulted in a definite organization of the forces employed in the news department” (1922/1911, 182). This is a development that resembles the process of industrialization that came to characterize many other sectors of life, but perhaps is most well known from the works of Henry Ford and Frederic Taylor. What Walter Williams and Frank Martin detailed in the beginning of the 20th century later became of interest to many other researchers and other observers of journalism. Writing less than a decade later, Walter Lippmann, who himself knew about the newsroom from the inside, noted that news organizations were being characterized by a subdivision with what he termed a “vast, transmitting

112  Part II External factors and editing apparatus” (2008/1920, 24). Researchers also gradually began to pay attention to this area, including new ways of modeling what took place in newsrooms and the influences of not only editors and media owners but also the importance of colleagues and organizational mechanics in the news departments. While Gaye Tuchman wrote about “routinization,” Herbert Gans described the news organizations he studied as “assembly lines” (1979, 109). Other researchers have portrayed news organizations – and in particular their newsrooms – as large-scale industrial companies and have termed these “[n]ews factories” (Bantz, McCorkle and Baade 1980).To add to that, James Carey noted that the inverted pyramid, the 5 W’s lead, and associated techniques are as much a product of industrialization as tin cans. The methods, procedures and canons of journalism were developed not only to satisfy the demands of the profession but to meet the needs of industry to turn out a mass-produced commodity. (Carey 1974, 246) Michael Schudson has also summed up decades worth of observations, reflections and other statements about the work in news organizations by stating that journalism has become an “industrial art” (2008, 41).

A new model for the publication of journalism “The completed product, the combined efforts of reporters, editors, publishers and printers, is the modern newspaper,” Walter Williams and Frank Martin wrote (1922/1911, 24) when they summed up what they perceived to be the important factors when it came to the publication of journalism. In time, newspapers have been supplemented, and indeed – in many parts of the world – they are now increasingly being substituted by other platforms for the publication of journalism. While Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Williams could concentrate on newspapers in their writings, the circulation, number of subscribers and revenue from advertisers have started a downward spiral, but the new platforms for the publication of journalism that have come to compete with print have also proven to be increasingly accessible by the old newspapers. The result is that the world of journalism is now witnessing both a divergence when it comes to the number of different platforms and, in many parts of the world, a convergence. News organizations that used to publish journalism in print can now also have radio and TV stations, plus be accessible on scores of different digital platforms. Even so, the basic importance of technological, commercial, editorial and journalistic aspects of the publication of journalism continues to be of relevance when one looks at the factors that can influence the actions of individual journalists. Researchers have modeled the importance of these aspects in different ways, and some studies suggest that journalists are predominantly autonomous, while other studies suggest that the actions of journalists are halted or even altogether hindered by the influences relating to the publication of journalism. Reading

Fifth influencing factor 113 about these at times conflicting findings, it is important to keep in mind what James Carey has noted about the practice of journalism in general. Namely, that like “all practices, those of journalists are contingent; that is, they are variable over time, place and circumstance” (Carey 1997, 331). This was also something Walter Williams noticed in The World’s Journalism, where he found differences between the technical, commercial, editorial and journalistic situations for the “nearly 2,000 newspapers offices” he had visited from 1913 to 1914 (1915, 2). New studies of the four different facets that can help or hinder journalists when it comes to the publication of journalism will surely continue as new platforms for the publication for journalism develop and existing platforms change and go bankrupt, as it eventually happened to the World. But rather than additional studies of the importance of each of these technological, commercial, editorial and journalistic aspects of the publication of journalism, we might be in need of new models that can relate the influencing factors associated with the publication of journalism with the other influencing factors. Here, the journalistic compass might once again offer a usable framework. The compass incorporates four journalistic roles, and the roles relate to different journalistic principles, precedents, practices and forms of production. But journalists can be helped or hindered in performing each of the roles by each of the four influencing factors that Walter Williams and Frank Martin associated with the publication of journalism. First off, the particular platform for publication can have biases, as Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan and other later technological determinists have suggested. McLuhan distinguished between what he termed “hot” and “cool” media, and “his general proposition was that, as more our senses are engaged in the process of taking meaning . . . the more involving and participatory the experience is,” as Denis McQuail (2000/1983, 108) has summarized to be McLuhan’s point. While this differentiation between hot and cold platforms for the publication of content has never been proven, later researchers have modeled the various biases of old and newer types of media. While newspapers traditionally had to be printed at centrally located plants and from there distributed through different forms of transportation, the transmission technologies associated with radio, television and the later digital platforms have made journalism instantaneous, in the sense that these platforms can publish live coverage. Some of these later platforms for the publication of journalism also have a greater potential for including other people, both private citizens and decision makers, before, during or after the publication. In one of the earliest studies of the importance of the Internet of the 20th century on journalism, Mark Deuze models different types of content, and here, in an article titled “The Web and Its Journalism” (2003), Deuze notes how interactivity is one defining feature made possible by the new platforms (2003). Later studies have affirmed that particular trait, and some researchers have found interaction and participation to be new news values in news organizations that publish on digital platforms (see e.g. Usher 2014). The important point here is that the biases of technologies can come to affect the actions of journalists, directly or indirectly, by way of other actors at the news organizations, so that they navigate

114  Part II External factors according to the problems and potentials of different platforms. Just as journalists can be influenced to navigate in particular directions in the production process – for example, on account of the news sources they are able to reach before deadline – the platforms for publication can in themselves also affect the actions of journalists, and if not directly, then by way of editors, owners and other people associated with one of the four departments that Williams and Martin singled out. Similarly, the managing editors, owners and others associated with different departments can have their own understandings of what perspectives and purposes journalists should attempt to prompt, and all of these influencing factors inside the individual news organization can help, hinder or altogether alter the ways in which journalists navigate between being active or passive and having a deliberative or representative focus (see Figure 6.1). But as this chapter has also shown, the publication of journalism can also be affected from outside the news organization where the individual journalist works. This was something that Joseph Pulitzer also attempted to bring about, since he was not content with influencing the journalists that were already present in his own newsrooms in St. Louis and New York City; according to some historians, he was quite successful in doing so. “Few journalists during the last one hundred years have influenced both the American and the international press like Joseph Pulitzer,” one historian has concluded (Fischer 1987, XVII), and through his generous endowment to Columbia University, Pulitzer came to set the standard for not only his own journalists but also the ones who were employed by others, as well as the ones who had yet to finish their education. “I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training,” he wrote in his will, where provision for the journalism school and the Pulitzer Prizes was set up. While it should be noted that neither the school nor the prizes have promoted From within journalism

Deliberative Sheepdog

Passive Watchdog

?

Rescue dog

Active Hunting dog

Representative

From without journalism

Figure 6.1  Influencing factors from within and without news organizations

Fifth influencing factor 115 or prompted the active and deliberative type of journalism that Joseph Pulitzer was advocating while he was alive, he also came to set an example for what individual persons can accomplish outside the news organizations they work in – or own.

Influences from inside and outside news organizations But individual journalists, editors and owners of news organizations are not the only ones who can influence the actions of journalists who work elsewhere. Many news organizations have established different types of media accountability systems, which can include ombudsmen, in-house critics, content evaluation committees and press councils, and some of these even transcend news organizations (see e.g. Bertrand 2000). Over the course of the 20th century, unions for journalists have formed and many of them have developed their own codes of conduct. In essence, these codes of conduct resemble the creed that Walter William penned more than a century ago, insofar as they state important principles for the practice of journalism. In some countries, such codes are meant to inspire members for what to work toward, and in other countries, codes of conduct are effectively used to draw borders between those who are considered real journalists and those who are not. Many countries also have special interest groups – for instance, in investigative journalism – that have their own canons and codes for proper conduct associated with that particular group. Such creeds, canons, codes and policy documents in individual news organizations can work by collegial pressure, but it can also be pressure from competitors that influences the publication of journalism. One such example exposed Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper in New York City, the World. Around the turn of last century, the newspapers competed fiercely for news, and fears of being scooped by other newspapers meant that whenever one newspaper had a good story, other newspapers might publish it soon thereafter. This led one newspaper, the Evening Journal, to set an example, and during the Spanish American War in 1898, the Journal published a story about the heroic death of an American artillery officer, a Colonel “Reflipe W. Thenuz.” The following day, the World wrote what Joseph Campbell has since described as a “nearly verbatim account describing the valor and death of Colonel R.W. Thenuz” (Campbell 2001, 115). That was a mistake. The next day, the Journal disclosed that they had made up the story in order to test other newspapers and that “Reflipe W. Thenuz” was nothing more than an anagram for “We pilfer the news.” Another example of journalists who expose the problematic aspects of other journalists, editors and owners occurred when Upton Sinclair, who later won a Pulitzer Prize, exposed American newspapers and the Associated Press in The Brass Check (1919). The title of the book stems from the token – a brass check – that customers in a whorehouse would give as payment to the woman they selected. Upton Sinclair’s book offered several such examples of how news organizations were also for sale and supported special interests while neglecting to keep a critical watch on the representatives of the public.

116  Part II External factors These examples show that the individual journalist, and the news organizations he or she works for, can be influenced not only by colleagues and superiors from the same news organizations but also by other persons and organizations within journalism by way of everything from incentives to excellence and disciplinary mechanisms similar to those journalists normally expose others to. To publish actions and attitudes of others can help civilize persons and organizations both inside and outside news organizations. In this connection, the potentials and problems of persons and organizations that are not part of journalism should not be forgotten. In The World’s Journalism, Walter Williams found that the newspapers in some countries depended upon state support, and while acknowledging that this might be helpful, Williams also considered such intervention by authorities problematic. In his study, he also noted how the “journalism of China and Japan has been greatly hampered by restrictive laws” (1915, 17), and in general he found journalism in many parts of the world to be wanting in comparison with the conditions in America. Walter Williams could, however, also have used examples closer to home, as one of the other seminal figures in American journalism did only five years later. Writing in 1920, Walter Lippmann opens a collection of essays titled Liberty and the News (1920) with just such an example. In the very first line of the first essay in the book, Lippmann notes, “Volume I, Number I, of the first American newspaper was published in Boston on September 25, 1690. It was called Publick Occurrences. The second issue did not appear because the Governor and Council oppressed it” (2008/1920, 1). This type of oppression from authorities did not end with the later independence from England, and the most famous attempt to stop the publication of journalism might have been the case of the Pentagon Papers. Here, the administration – in part aided by the judicial system – attempted to prevent first the Washington Post and then other newspapers that came in possession of the classified material related to the Vietnam War from publishing it. Such attempts are hardly surprising, and as Rodney Benson and Matthew Powers have written in their report “Public Media around the World: International Models for Founding and Protecting Independent Journalism” (2011), “[G]overnment has always and will always influence how our media system functions, from the early newspaper postal subsidies to handling our broadcast licenses and subsidizing broadband deployment. The question is not if government should be involved, but how” (2011, 1). This chapter relating to the publication of journalism has given many examples of how forces inside and outside news organization can potentially affect the actions of individual journalists. In this research tradition, some studies seem to suggest that journalists, for better or worse, have become rather autonomous over the years for a number of reasons. This development has positive ramifications, on one hand, since it makes journalists less susceptible to pressure from inside and outside the news organization they work within. Indeed, Michael Schudson has even suggested that the notion of objectivity that was used by editors and owners of newspapers to distinguish themselves from political, commercial and other special interests that formerly controlled these publications is now used against

Fifth influencing factor 117 the editors and owners by their very own journalists. Journalists have essentially taken over the concept and the ramifications the concept carries with it in order to secure their autonomy even within a news organization. On the other hand, however, some scholars have argued that this autonomy is exactly what prevents journalism and journalists from developing at a time when the very news organizations for which they work are under more pressure than ever. They are unwilling or unable to change, as David Ryfe (2012) concluded in a study of how journalists have responded to new initiatives brought forth by editors and managers. All of this is pressure that stems from the potentials and problems associated with the final influencing factor, which will be described and discussed in the next chapter about the perception of journalism.

7 Sixth influencing factor Journalistic perception

“It will be the object of the college to make better journalists, who will make better newspapers, which will better serve the public,” Joseph Pulitzer (1904, 46) proclaimed in the concluding section of the essay, where he publicly presented – and defended – his idea for a journalism school. The section was titled “Public Service the Supreme End.” But Pulitzer not only sought to influence new generations of journalists. He also worked to influence the ones who were already in the newsrooms. In his will, Pulitzer made provisions for the establishment of prizes that were meant to be an incentive for excellence, and of the four original prizes that focused on journalism – there were originally four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and five traveling scholarships – all but one specified that journalism should provide a public service. Pulitzer’s will stipulated that one prize should recognize “the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by any American newspaper during the preceding year.” Another would be awarded to “the best editorial article written during the year, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in the right direction.” A third prize should be awarded to “the best example of a reporter’s work during the year, the test being strict accuracy, terseness, the accomplishment of some public good commanding public attention and respect.” Finally, the will included a fourth prize that did not specify the importance to the public directly but was to be awarded to the best paper on how to develop a future school of journalism. The fourth prize was never awarded due to a dearth of competitors, but when the first prizes were awarded in 1917, several journalism schools were already established. Among these was of course the journalism school at the University of Missouri, which started in 1908, and the one at Columbia University, which enrolled its first students in 1912. That was a year after Pulitzer’s death. But Walter Williams could have been a likely candidate for the fourth prize in light of his own ambitions and actual achievements, and also because he shared Pulitzer’s view that the main objective of journalism was to provide a service to the public. Williams made that clear to his students in the mandatory course he taught about “The History and Principles of Journalism,” but also to other people who resided outside the campus grounds in the city of Columbia in Missouri. Best known to

Sixth influencing factor 119 people outside journalism schools is surely Williams’s “The Journalist’s Creed,” which states in the first lines, I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust. This creed was first included in a style manual at Missouri, but was since included in later editions of the textbook The Practice of Journalism, which Williams published with Frank Martin, another colleague from Missouri, in 1911. Williams found that he and other prominent American journalists, editors and newspaper owners were not alone when it came to promoting public service. As part of his yearlong study tour around the world, he found that a “new worldspirit” in journalism was spreading. Despite many differences between the countries he visited in terms of the factors that could influence national journalists, he concluded The World’s Journalism by stating that one outstanding fact that any study, however slight, of the world’s journalism of today reveals, is that journalists in every land are more and more possessed of the conviction that their profession is a profession of public service, to be engaged in primarily for public good. This conviction is widespread and growing among journalists. (1915, 43) The importance of the relation to the public has since been the basis of much writing and many of the most seminal works about the function of journalism. Walter Lippmann used the term in the titles of his books several times – most famously in Public Opinion and The Phantom Public. So did John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, and if not directly mentioned in the titles of books, chapters, articles and other scholarly publications, researchers have ever since described and discussed the importance of the concept of the public. Likewise, journalists often use the concept as a defensive or offensive measure when they want to apply pressure to reluctant news sources or defend themselves against criticism for what they have published. “The public has a right to know,” they might say in those instances when all other arguments have been tried in vain. This is a paradox. For even though journalists and the news organizations for which they work are granted judicial, economic and other special privileges with reference to the public service they are thought to provide, there is little if any shared understanding of what the relation to the public actually entails. The concept of the public mostly functions as a “rhetorical gesture,” as Michael Schudson has written (1995b, 32), and as it is known from one of the previous chapters, one of Schudson’s predecessors at Columbia University, James Carey, even went one step further. He has suggested that journalism has been dissolved, in part by journalism itself (1987, 4). The effects of journalism on the public and the

120  Part II External factors way journalism is affected by the public have become a key interest for many researchers, and in particular the effects of journalism on members of the public have been one of the most researched areas within fields such as journalism studies, media studies and communication studies. This book is also concerned with effects, but primarily in terms of what can affect the actions of journalists, and as many journalists in time have come to experience, the public can have a decisive effect on journalism. This chapter describes the importance of the sixth influencing factor that can affect journalists, when they have published their work and it is perceived by readers, listeners or viewers. The chapter starts by describing how researchers and practitioners have modeled this factor in the past, and then proceeds to develop a model that takes some of the shortcomings of previous models into account.

Models of how journalism should influence public perception The perception of journalism relates to the moment when an audience receives, perceives and perhaps reacts to the work of journalists. This factor was particularly important for Joseph Pulitzer, when he was running his newspapers in St. Louis and New York. On one hand, his newspapers needed what one of the World’s later editors Walter Lippmann termed “the buying public” (1997/1922, 201). But Pulitzer needed more than the monetary support of readers. On the other hand, Pulitzer based much of the journalism in his newspapers on the active participation of members of the public who he attempted to enlist in an endless number of initiatives to help improve society. This was a successful process for many decades, and Pulitzer’s newspapers worked on the premise that if they could help engage people in the development of society, their interest in buying a newspaper would grow accordingly. The result was an upward-going spiral that for a long time led to more readers, which in turn also brought in more advertisers who could reach more readers in Pulitzer’s newspapers. In only a few years, the World grew to become one of the largest newspapers in the world, and the success ensured the wealth that later allowed Pulitzer to fund both a journalism school and a set of annual prizes. This recipe for success has later been one of the reasons that the public journalism movement drew support from many editors and owners of news organizations. As one former executive noted, Newspapers need to address the sluggish state of civic health in many communities, and this community connectedness is at the same time a possible meeting ground between public service traditions in the press and the business imperatives of a struggling industry. (cf. Rosen 1993, 14) But as journalists, editors and owners of news organizations have found out, the perception of journalism offers both potentials and problems, and in time, the World entered a downward spiral that lead to the closing of what was once one of the world’s most successful newspapers in terms of readership and revenues. The

Sixth influencing factor 121 same happened to the public movement that was termed one of the most successful movements in the history of journalism, but whose supporters found out that the perceptions of the public at times could amount to much response, and at other times garnered little. In time, the movement lost some of its popularity in newsrooms, even if many of the underlying norms behind the movement now continues under new names and under different forms. Both experiences – a hundred years apart – exemplify that the perception of journalism among readers, listeners and viewers poses potentials as well as problems, and the pivotal importance of this sixth influencing factor led Pulitzer to write an essay about public perceptions of journalism. The essay was titled “The Power of Public Opinion,” and while it originally had been published in another context, it was later attached to the report when Columbia University published Pulitzer’s other essay about The School of Journalism in Columbia University. While the first essay focused on how journalism could be strengthened in the future, the second essay described what journalism could – and should – do in relation to the public. Throughout this second essay, Pulitzer made little secret of his belief that journalists should actively attempt to prompt actions among their audience. “When it is to be followed and when opposed?” Pulitzer asked in the first section of this essay with regards to the public and its possible opinions, and he added to that, “What is the best method of influencing it? How shall it be directed to produce practical results?” (1904, 50). He had no doubt that newspapers should attempt to move public opinion – and not only through editorial pages but also on the regular news pages. A journalist, Pulitzer had written in his defense for a journalism school, “has the privilege of molding the opinion, touching the hearts and appealing to the reasons of hundreds of thousands every day” (1904, 12), and to this he added that the journalist holds officials to their duty. He exposes secret schemes of plunder. He promotes every hopeful plan of progress. Without him, public opinion would be shapeless and dumb. He brings all classes, all professions together, and teaches them to act in concert on the basis of their common citizenship. (1904, 47–48) This first essay in the report from Columbia University essentially advocates for the fact that journalists should actively attempt to mold public opinion. In the attached essay, Pulitzer also gives several examples of how journalist could do just that. Some of them show how journalists in the past have prompted private citizens to act, while others exemplify how newspapers at the turn of last century have moved companies, public authorities and others to change their actions or attitudes. Pulitzer, in a grace of collegiality, refers to how the New York Times brought down a corrupt political system led by William Tweed – known as “Boss” Tweed – and how the New York Herald exposed the Beef Trust, which worked to enhance the price of food to enrich the major corporations behind it. Pulitzer also mentioned how the World itself helped save the government millions of dollars. When the government was ready to sell its stock of gold for what was considered

122  Part II External factors a low price, the newspaper sent telegrams to 14,000 banks, and within 12 hours more than 7,000 had replied, and with the publication of these, the government decided to annul the proposed contract. That saved the Treasury more than $7,000,000 according to the World’s own estimates. In another instance, Pulitzer recollects in his essay how his paper also received 30,000 signatures and helped arrange the transportation of a group of people representing “workingmen and taxpayers” (1904, 60), so that they could argue their case directly before the politicians in Washington. Pulitzer’s list did not include any mention of what has later been called one of the most successful donation campaigns in history, namely, the World’s campaign to raise money for the construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. But he could just as easily have done so. For the campaign was also an apparent success, and to thank the supporters – and perhaps get them to buy a newspaper – his newspaper also published the names of all of the donors, even the ones who had only given a penny in support. Despite these examples of what Pulitzer considered a success, he concludes his essay by noting that it is not always easy to lead public opinion in achieving reforms. “To arrest the attention, convince the judgment and enlist the sympathetic support of that great inert mass which we call the Public is a delicate and difficult task,” he admits (1904, 61). In time, this delicate and difficult task of enlisting the support – both economically and in journalistic endeavors, one might add – turned out to be almost impossible for the World, and the closing of the newspaper was perhaps predated when several public institutions – not least libraries – for a time decided to boycott Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Hearst’s Herald, since they were believed to be a bad influence on the public. But in time, the public itself lost interest in supporting active journalism, and if Pulitzer had been alive when that happened for the World in 1931, he might have remembered what he had remarked in his essay from 1904. “The people know, with unerring instinct, when a newspaper is devoted to private rather than to public interests; and their refusal to buy it limits its capacity for harm” (1904, 22). The history of the World, and other newspapers that enjoyed great success on account of their active journalism in the start of the 20th century, shows that the perception of an audience can be difficult to anticipate. As Joseph Campbell and other researchers have shown, newspapers like the New York Times, which were hard-pressed economically at the time when the World and the Herald prospered, in time became the more popular papers in the eyes of the buying public. The New York Times, which incidentally also has become the newspaper to win the most Pulitzer Prizes, was in many ways perceived to be the “antithesis” of the journalism of action (Campbell 2006, 6). The newspaper even introduced a trademark in the upper left-hand corner saying, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” in order to distance itself from the more active newspapers that in some cases were accused of exaggerations, exciting public sentiments around all kinds of campaigns and in general publishing things that some considered unfit for print. David Halberstam has described this kind of journalism as “lively, often overheated journalism” (1979, 207), while others considered it downright dangerous

Sixth influencing factor 123 for “the public welfare” that Joseph Pulitzer claimed to be working for (1904, 32). Indeed, in those years, there were journalists, editors and newspaper owners on both sides of the Atlantic who championed a “government of journalism,” where journalism took over the responsibility that was normally associated with the three branches of government. Pulitzer, who also held political ambitions and even was a member of Congress for a short while, was no adversary of the political system, but he did believe in the power of what some have termed the fourth branch of government, and in the conclusion of his essay, where he advocated for a stronger journalism, he wrote, “Our Republic and its press will rise and fall together . . . The power to mold the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future journalism” (1904, 48).

Models of how journalism could influence public perception While Joseph Pulitzer believed it to be a both “delicate and difficult task” to enlist the support of the public (1904, 61), he believed it should be done. In his essay about the need for journalism schools, Pulitzer reminds readers that the “Greeks thought that no republic could be successfully governed if it were too large for all the citizens to come together in one place” (1904, 48). In light of that, Pulitzer suggested that the important function of a democratic forum in our time can only be performed by the news media, and that it is the journalist who “brings all classes, all professions together, and teaches them to act in concert on the basis of their common citizenship” (1904, 48). Other journalists, editors and owners of newspapers at the time had other conceptions about the ways journalism should service the public, and some of these principles about the purpose and perspective of journalism in relation to the public were less demanding of both citizens and journalists. Passive journalists are not concerned with whether and how people respond to their work, and journalists with a representative perspective focus on authoritative decision makers rather than the public. But as the history of journalism has demonstrated, the popularity of the different principles for how to best serve the public – by an active or passive purpose and by a deliberative or a representative perspective – has changed several times in the past centuries. The perception – and subsequent reaction on the part of the public – has therefore also given practitioners, researchers and other observers of journalism an understanding of how journalism realistically could provide a public service. One of the observers of these matters was Walter Lippmann, who became a firsthand witness to the closing of the World. Here, he wrote editorials almost daily for nine years, from 1921 to 1929, before he started working for the New York Herald Tribune and launched a new career as a columnist with the column “Today and Tomorrow,” which in time was syndicated on both sides of the Atlantic and was published twice weekly in hundreds of newspapers. It was in the years working for the World that he most furiously came to formulate his disbelief in what the public could accomplish by way of journalists and what journalists likewise could accomplish through the public. “I set no great store on what can be done by public opinion and the action of the masses,” Lippmann made clear in

124  Part II External factors The Phantom Public (1925, 189). “The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who the villain of the piece,” he also wrote, where he argued against the notion of an omnicompetent citizenry (1925, 55). As it is known, he did not spare journalism from criticism himself, and Lippmann used his famous lighthouse metaphor to describe how journalism made it impossible to work by this light of publicity. But Lippmann did believe that journalism has come to be expected by some – both inside and outside the press – to “make up for all that was not foreseen in the theory of democracy” (1997/1922, 32), and instead he adopted what Michael Schudson has since termed “a ‘realist’ model” of the relationship between journalism and the public. This model is more in line with the principles that the “counter-activist” media, as Joseph Campbell as termed them, adhered to then – and now – and it is certainly a more detached approach, where decisions on whether or not to act upon the issues brought forward by journalists are left to the audience. What Michael Schudson had termed a realistic model, others, like James Carey, have criticized for taking “the public out of politics and politics out of public life” (1987, 7). Other observers, both at the time of Walter Lippmann’s writings and in later years, have therefore attempted to prompt other models. At the time, when Lippmann lamented the problems of the public, John Dewey presented another model in which journalists and the news media should work for the “the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion” (Dewey 1927, 208), so that citizens could deliberate and coordinate appropriate actions. These thoughts were much in line with what Joseph Pulitzer had noted some decades earlier when he suggested that journalists could and should teach members of the public “to act in concert” (1904, 48). And these were thoughts that once again gained popularity at the end of the 20th century as part of what has since been described as one of the best-organized movements in the history of American journalism. One of these advocates for a more publicly inclusive journalism simply defined it as “what Dewey meant” (Rosen 1999a, 24) While Pulitzer, Hearst and others most eagerly promoted a model of journalism where journalists had an active approach and a more deliberative perspective, and while Walter Lippmann and others believed in a more passive approach and a focus on authoritative representatives of the public, both ways of modeling the relation to the public fall under what Schudson has termed a “trustee model.” In a chapter with the telling title “What Public Journalism Knows about Journalism but Doesn’t Know about ‘Public’ ” (1999), he distinguishes between three models in which the media can serve the public – and the public can respond to the media. In what he terms the “market model,” journalists “serve the public best by providing whatever the public demands” (1999, 119), and accordingly, the actions of journalists will be affected thereby. In the “advocacy model,” “journalism serves the public by being an agency for the transmission of political party perspectives” (1999, 119), and it would also be fair to note that this is a model where journalists can advocate for commercial, religious and other interests.

Sixth influencing factor 125 Finally there is the “trustee model,” where journalists “provide news according to what they themselves as a professional group believe citizens should know” (1999, 120), and this model, where journalists work as trustees for the public, is similar to other attempts at modeling journalistic principles, such as the social responsibility model that is included in the typology of Four Theories of the Press (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956). Schudson acknowledges there are several variants of the trustee model, and the model also encompasses different perspectives of and purposes for the way in which journalism relates to the public, including the ones promoted by Joseph Pulitzer and other like-minded practitioners, researchers and observers. But scholars like Michael Schudson, John Durham Peters and Ronald Steel, who have written biographies of Walter Lippmann, pride him for not suffering from a “blindness of journalism” (Schudson 1995b, 211) in terms of what the public can accomplish, and Lippmann is particular prided for his analysis of what actually happens with the perception of journalism. “The strength of Lippmann’s work lies in his path-breaking thesis about the way information is rendered and received, in his analysis of psychological roots of human perception,” Ronald Steel has noted (2008, xv), while John Durham Peters prides him for his “unflinching inspection of human nature” (1999, 111). Walter Lippmann’s interest in what he termed the “whole process of perception” (1997/1922, 59) included analysis of the human stereotypes and other types of preconceptions. But Walter Lippmann’s reflections on how people perceive the world in general and journalism in particular not only developed into a model of his own but also came to inspire later generations in terms of how they modeled the perception process. Most noteworthy was perhaps the line of research that has since been known as the agenda-setting tradition, but was predated in Walter Lippmann’s work. “Now the power to determine each day what shall seem important and what shall be neglected is a power unlike any that has been exercised,” Lippmann wrote in Public Opinion with reference to the importance of the newspapers as a shared point of reference for many people. This was a point that by his own account inspired Bernard Cohen to write in The Press and Foreign Policy (1963) that the press “is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (1963, 13). For some journalism researchers, Cohen’s book is best known as the inspirational source for studies on journalistic roles, but his and Walter Lippmann’s work also inspired researchers to study what was termed “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media” (1972) in a seminal article by Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw. Their article, based on an empirical study of 100 respondents, showed that “voters tend to share the media’s composite definition of what is important” (1972, 184), and McCombs and Shaw found a strong correlation between what was in the minds of members of the public and what had recently been in the media. These studies are part of a strong research tradition in the fields of journalism, media and communication studies, and over the years, researchers have

126  Part II External factors modeled the ways in which the media can affect readers, listeners and viewers in many different ways. In the most simplistic form, audiences are perceived to be passive receivers of content from the media. This is the type of process that Joseph Pulitzer offered his own take on when he described what he considered the effect of journalistic content. Referring to French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America, Pulitzer noted in his defense for a school of journalism, “De Tocqueville said: ‘A newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment,’ ” and Pulitzer added, “But now one newspaper can drop the same thought into a million minds on the same day” (Pulitzer 1904, 51). This effect has been modeled under terms such as the “hypodermic needle theory” and as a process where the news media affects people directly and forcefully. Many later studies have found readers, listeners and viewers to be less susceptible to content in the media and the processes to be more complex. The model of agenda setting is one such example, and this model was in time supplemented with many others. Among these is the ‘framing model,’ which describes a type of second-order agenda setting in which audiences are not so much influenced by an issue in itself but by the way it is framed. Still others have modeled the effects of the news media as a process of priming, where people’s perceptions are implicitly affected by prior coverage. And then there are researchers and scholars who – building on Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion, which opens with Plato’s cave allegory to suggest that people are trapped in the world of the media – believe that we basically live in a “post-journalism era,” where all that transpires is affected directly or indirectly by journalism (David Altheide and Robert Snow 1991).

Journalistic reactions to perceptions The many different attempts at modeling the effects of the news media may not have a direct influence on the actions of journalists, although it should be remembered that journalists are also themselves potential readers, listeners and viewers of journalism produced by colleagues and competitors. In this context, Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw found, in one of their first agendasetting studies, that journalists had just such an effect on other journalists. In a follow-up study of what the wire editor in David Manning White’s gatekeeper study had selected and rejected, they found that what “the wire services ran heavily he ran heavily” (1976, 20). The converse was also true. What received little coverage by the wire services was not to any larger extent part of the stories Mr. Gates passed on for later publication in the newspapers he worked for. But as the work of Joseph Pulitzer has shown, the perception of journalism has long been of interest not only to researchers but also to those people who produce journalism itself. And as Walter Williams and Frank Martin taught their students already in the first decade of the 20th century, many newspapers had by then developed what Gaye Tuchman later described as a “news net” (1978). This is a net that

Sixth influencing factor 127 could – and can – help journalists find stories that they believe are of interest to the public. Gaye Tuchman noted on the basis of studies of American newspapers and television stations, Originally designed to attract readers’ interest by catching appropriate stories available at centralized locations, the news net incorporates three assumptions about readers’ interests: 1) Readers are interested in occurrences at specific localities. 2) They are concerned with the activities of specific organizations. 3) They are interested in specific topics. (1978a, 25) Herbert Gans, who also spend considerable time in newsrooms at both television stations and newspapers, referred to some of the same types of assumptions about the interests of audiences. In general, he found that editors are more audience related whereas reporters are more source related (2004/1979, 89–90), and Gans found that journalists paid little “direct attention to the audience” (2004/1979, 215) in the late 1970s. This had partly to do with the fact that determining the number and characteristics of viewers and readers was a both complicated and expensive undertaking, Herbert Gans noted, and partly to do with the mental health of journalists and the audiences’ own lack of understanding of what they really needed. “For one thing, journalists cannot keep the audience in mind because of its massive size; for another, they do not believe it is capable of determining what news it needs,” Gans noted on the basis of interviews with journalists and observational analyses of their work (2004/1979, 230). The audience studies that were beginning to surface in news organizations in the 1970s, when Gaye Tuchman and Herbert Gans did their studies, were few and mainly for editors, and even though the use of audience prototypes as a way to make an audience less abstract to journalists was also applied, the methods for gauging audience perceptions and their possible reactions were not nearly as developed as today. New technologies associated with the internet of our time have made it easier not only to produce, publish and distribute journalism to audiences via digital platforms but also to determine when, where and for how long an audience perceives journalism. “Assumptions” about how audiences perceive journalism, which Tuchman and Gans wrote about, are now being replaced by what some researchers have described as “a data rush,” since collecting, mining and charting public reactions to media content has become easier than ever with the digitalization of journalism. Recent newsroom studies from this century have shown how many journalists are increasingly fed – and faced with – real-time audience reactions to their work, and that journalists are now more challenged by forces both inside and outside the newsrooms to respond to whatever reactions they are met with by readers, listeners and viewers. For decades, journalists have noted that the publishing of other people’s actions and attitudes can contribute to civilizing them. Now journalists are faced with the concrete reactions to their

128  Part II External factors work, which puts more pressure on present journalists than past ones, which in the words of Walter Williams and Frank Martin should work to determine what “arouses an appeal to the readers” (1922/1999, 180). Walter Williams and Frank Martin had five explicit pieces of advice for their readers and the future journalists in their classrooms at the start of the 20th century for how best for journalists to relate to their future audiences: 1) Recognize news (discriminate between what is of general interest and what is not). 2) Judge the importance of news (the degree of interest and the number of persons it interests). 3) Perceive the startling or essential features (emphasize the points of vital interest or of more general interest). 4) Recognize the human interest. 5) Adapt a style of writing that best suits the character of the news at hand. (1922/1911, 174) Assumptions in newsrooms – perhaps inspired from time spent in classrooms – are now increasingly replaced by data-driven analyses, and while some researchers have found that journalists in general are unable or even unwilling to respond to these new, more precise descriptions of audience perceptions (see e.g. Ryfe 2012; Anderson 2013), other researchers have found that new values about what journalists should do are also entering the newsrooms and the minds of individual journalists. Ultimately, Nikki Usher has written after having spent time at the New York Times when many new digital technologies were implemented, new news values associated with the public’s reactions to the work of journalists were altering how journalists did their jobs and what they thought about them. They were changing professional norms and expectations of how journalism was supposed to look, how journalists were supposed to act, and when and how news was supposed to be created. (2014, 226–227) Journalists’ reactions to the perceptions of their audience can change from person to person and place to place, but that journalists the world over are increasingly facing how their work is perceived is part of a more general development within journalism. People who were “formerly known as the audience,” as Jay Rosen, founder of the public journalism movement, has put it, have come to influence journalism of the 21st century in a number of ways. One way is the way in which their consumption of already-produced journalistic content can directly or indirectly influence the work of journalists when it comes to making revisions in previously published work or in their future journalism. Another, and perhaps even more important development, is the way people outside newsrooms come to participate directly in the production, publication and distribution of news. This development has been labeled “citizen journalism” (Gillmore 2004) by some observers. Others use terms such as “participatory journalism,”

Sixth influencing factor 129 which should not be confused with the “participatory journalism” Bernhard Cohen wrote about. In one of the first studies of the roles journalists can perform, Cohen famously distinguished between “the neutral reporter” and “the reporter as participant” (1963), but in the participatory journalism that has become a popular concept among some researchers in the 21st century, participants are people outside the newsrooms rather than the ones inside it. In this instance, participation refers to the more “collaborative and collective” process that journalism has become. Still others write about “user-generated content,” “active audiences” and “[p]rodusage” (Bruns 2005), where the journalistic production and consumption is blended. While there are differences in the ways in which these developments have been termed and modeled by the various researchers, practitioners and other observers, the concepts in general refer to the ways in which people outside newsrooms can interact with journalism in the perception process. In a digital era, people no longer have to content themselves with sending a letter to the editor or individual journalists, although such “audience mails” could amount to thousands a year according to Herbert Gans (2004/1979, 227). Now, comments can be included underneath, on top of or even within the journalistic products only seconds after the initial publication, and today audience reactions can essentially influence every stage of the process from “the initial information-gathering stage,” as Alfred Hermida has written, to “the stage at which a story that has been produced and published” (2011, 18). In light of this possible inclusion of people outside the newsrooms, researchers have started to model these new ways in which public perception and direct participation can affect everything from the news-gathering and the news-selecting processes to the editing and later publishing and distributing of news (Singer et al. 2011), all of which have challenged some of the most famous attempts at modeling journalism. In the first gatekeeper study within journalism, David Manning White focused on what he termed the “last gatekeeper,” since he knew that news stories in general and wire stories in particular were “transmitted from one ‘gate keeper’ after another . . . From reporter to rewrite man, through bureau chief to ‘state’ file editors at various press association offices, the process of choosing and discarding is continuously taking place” (1950, 384). But in a time when telegraphy has been replaced with many new digital transmission technologies, the “last gatekeeper” before journalism is perceived by readers, listeners and viewers is often people outside the newsrooms who have passed on the journalistic product to others. Friends, family members and other more professional intermediaries – including automated digital services – are now more and more the last gatekeeper. That this could happen was known already a century ago. Walter Williams and Frank Martin wrote in their textbook that “[n]ews spreads rapidly sometimes without the aid of the newspaper as distributor” (1922/1911, 174), and they also explained that carrier organizations could be employed to distribute journalism, but throughout the 21st century, this process has been made easier for individual persons to take part in, and by commenting, recommending and in other ways interacting with

130  Part II External factors individual journalists, audience perceptions have become a still more important influencing factor for journalistic actions.

A new model for the perception of journalism “[N]ewspapers focus and culminate public opinion. Is it not time that this institution, of such vast power in the life of the nation, should be developed on the higher plane of enlarged and enlightened study?” Joseph Pulitzer wrote in his attempt to prompt support for a journalism school (1904). But the enlightenment of journalists was not the only thing Pulitzer worked for. He also worked to enlighten the public itself, and he also found that the public’s perception of his work had both direct and indirect consequences for journalism. “Public service is the supreme end,” Pulitzer stated in his essay (1904, 46), and he believed that this should happen through both the presentation of news and views. In terms of the presentation of views, Pulitzer was not alone in thinking that the presentation of the newspaper’s own views was an impart part of journalism. In their textbook, Walter Williams and Frank Martin explained to their readers, Journalism in its practice involves more than the gathering and presentation of news. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, a newspaper that is only a newspaper is not, in the best sense, a newspaper. The presentation of the news makes necessary interpretation of this news and comment upon them. They went on to explain that “[t]he editorial page and policy supplement but do not supplant the news pages and the news” (1922/1911, 23). These editorial pages and policies at the World were for close to a decade left in the hands of Walter Lippmann, and Lippmann’s later career is a testament to what subsequently happened in the news media with the presentation of views. Lippmann worked at the World from 1921 to 1929, where he wrote editorials and also became an editor, before he started working for the New York Herald Tribune. His transition took place two years before the closure of the World. At the Herald Tribune, Lippmann was greeted on nothing less than the front page of the paper on September 8, 1931, and he was met with the headline of an editorial comment that simple stated, “To Mr. Lippmann.” The front-page editorial stated that “[a] scrupulously fair presentation of news and a wide-open door for the expression of every variety of opinion are the standards by which a reader is entitled to test the greatness of his newspaper,” and clarified that such an impartiality should not restrict “the acute mind and persuasive pen” of Lippmann. Lippmann would have other responsibilities. The welcome stated, Supplementing this impartial presentation of the facts these editorial columns strive to express clearly and frankly the convictions of the Herald Tribune . . . We expect Mr. Lippmann to be no more neutral in his articles than are these editorial columns. (New York Herald Tribune 1931)

Sixth influencing factor 131 In this capacity, Walter Lippmann has later been described as “the key figure” in the formation of a new group of commentators (Nimmo and Combs 1992 7) that formed and found its way into many news organizations in the late 20th century. This is a group of people who have been described under names such as “moulders of public opinion” (Bulman 1945), “opinion makers” (Rivers 1967) and “pundits” (Nimmo and Combs 1992), and who are allowed to offer their own views in the news. While the presentation of such views was important, it was news that concerned Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and many of the seminal figures within journalism the most. But while these and many later practitioners and researchers have concerned themselves with how journalists should – and could – provide such a public service in light of how audiences tend to perceive journalism, there have been few attempts at modeling what each of these different journalistic approaches to the public entails in terms of the different roles of the public itself. Michael Schudson is one such exception, since each of his three models of journalism in democracy entails a particular role for audiences. Historically, the advocacy model was first to appear, since the first newspapers were owned by, operated by or in other ways associated with political, religious or other special interests. In this model, journalists “should provide news from the perspective of a political party” and the aim “of news gathering is to advance the party” (1999, 119). In this model, audiences are thought of as constituents of a particular political ideology. The trustee model has in many if not most countries replaced the advocacy model, where “journalists are to provide news according to what they themselves as a professional group believe citizens should know” (1999, 120), and here, audiences are cast as citizens who are members of a public. In the third and last model in Schudson’s typology, the market model, “journalists should seek to please audiences, or at least those audiences that advertisers find attractive” (1999, 119), and here readers, listeners and viewers are construed as consumers. This study has in turn inspired other researchers to distinguish between what has been termed a supply-driven and demand-driven approach to audiences, where journalists in the first case view audiences as citizens and determine how they need to act as citizens, while audiences in the second are viewed as consumers and journalists are responsive to their needs (Skovsgaard and Bro 2017, 62). Michael Schudson and the researchers who were inspired by his modeling have not been alone. Another important attempt at modeling the relation between the roles journalists can play with the way their audiences are thought of has been made in Jesper Strömbäck’s “In Search of a Standard: Four Models of Democracy and Their Normative Implications for Journalism” (2005). In this article, Strömbäck equates models of democracy – procedural democracy, competitive democracy, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy – with different types of journalism, and he also describes and discusses the roles accorded to citizens. When Strömbäck, for instance, writes about the normative implications of participatory democracy, he associated this model with the fact that journalists “should frame politics in a way that mobilizes people’s interests and participation in politics” (2005, 340). The main point of interest is, however, on

132  Part II External factors the democratic model’s implication of the performance of the news media rather than on the implication of the roles of audiences of journalism, and this is an approach known from other seminal studies. Four Theories of the Press (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956), Media Systems (Hallin and Mancini 2004) and Worlds of Journalism (Hanitzsch 2011) all deal with aspects of the relationship between political systems, the press and the public. But most often it is the implications of these systems on news organizations that are of main interest, rather that the implications of the news organizations – or journalists themselves – on how the public is construed or approached. There is, in other words, a need for a new, supplementary model that can connect the principles, precedents, practices, production and publication of journalism with the actual perceptions of journalism among audiences. Here, once again, the journalistic compass might offer some assistance (see Figure 7.1). The compass was originally constructed in order to determine similarities and differences between some of the most important roles journalists play in order to provide a public service, but the compass can also function as a theoretical framework for looking at the roles the public is thought to perform for a journalist. In this framework, the compass incorporates two dimensions, and one of them has to do with the perspective of journalism. This dimension ranges from a representative focus to a deliberative focus. The second dimension is based on the dichotomy of active versus passive and has to do with the purpose of journalism, and when the two dimensions are connected, they designate not only four roles of journalism but also four roles of the public. Whenever journalists navigate toward the bottom part of the compass, the primary focus of journalists is on the actions and attitudes of decision makers in society. This is an approach that corresponds to the notion of a representative democracy in which citizens are left with the role of voters on election day. On the other hand, the journalistic roles that are situated in the upper part of the compass entail that citizens are active participants. Here, journalists have a deliberative perspective where they attempt to include the public more directly in journalism. This is an approach that corresponds with the notion of a direct

Communication

Participation

Deliberative Sheepdog

Passive Watchdog

?

Rescue dog

Active Hunting dog

Representative Ramification

Figure 7.1  The roles of the public related to the roles of journalists

Legitimization

Sixth influencing factor 133 democracy, and at the turn of last century, some journalists, editors and owners of newspapers even entertained the idea of a “government of journalism,” where the press and members of the public should take back the responsibility that had been given to politicians, the police and other authorities associated with the three branches of government. Each of these two perspectives can be further divided, and when journalists with a deliberative focus have a passive purpose, the aim is including private citizens in public communication. Here, deliberation becomes an end in itself. For deliberative journalists that have an active purpose, the communication becomes a means to other ends. Participation in the form of concrete action is what journalists attempt to prompt when they navigate toward the upper right-hand corner in the compass. In terms of the representative focus, the public might also be approached in two different ways. When journalists with a representative perspective are passive, the public is cast as those who have to live with the consequences of the actions or attitudes of the decision makers that journalists focus on. When journalists are passive-deliberative, they will often use citizens as markers who can exemplify the outcome of decisions made by politicians, CEOs and others. Here members of the public essentially express the ramifications of the decisions made by others. When journalists with a representative focus become active, the public will be used to prompt another outcome among their decision makers. Here, citizens are used as markers who can personify a problem or a potential, after which the journalists will approach decision makers in order to prompt action among them. In the first role, the public is included as an effect, and in the second role, they are included to affect others. Neither of these roles are, however, mutually exclusive, for as the history of journalism has shown, each of the four ideal, typical roles of journalists has enjoyed popularity at various times, and while any particular perspective and purpose can enjoy success for a while, journalism can later move in other directions. Few journalists and editors have experienced that more clearly that the ones who were employed at Joseph Pulitzer’s World from the time of its success in the early 20th century to its closure in 1931.

Practical problems associated with principles Journalists working for the newspapers Joseph Pulitzer established came to experience both the potentials and the problems of the perceptions among audiences. This influencing factor was responsible for the overwhelming success Joseph Pulitzer enjoyed for many years, and made it possible for him to live up to what had he had written about in terms of the importance for a newspaper to be successful: The more prosperous it is the more independent it can afford to be, the higher salaries it can afford to pay, the higher salaries it can pay to editors and reporters, the less subject it will be to temptation, the better it can stand losses for the sake of principle and conviction. (1904, 23)

134  Part II External factors The wealth his newspapers generated also allowed him to give something back to journalism in the form of a journalism school and the set of prizes that Columbia University were to administer. But while the newspapers Pulitzer first worked at and later acquired in St. Louis continue to exist to this day, the World is no longer in existence, and when the final issue was published on February 27, 1931, around 3,000 people were laid off. In all fairness, it should be noted that the closure happened long after the death of Pulitzer, but as he, William Randolph Hearst and other proponents of a more active journalism found out, it was not always easy to prompt action among the public. While the success stories, like the donation campaign to publicly fund the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, are well known, there are scores of other examples where journalists and editors, then and now, find it difficult to engage the public. “I wrote, but it did not seem to make a difference,” complained Jakob A. Riis (1901, 267) in the late 19th century. He later became one of the most famous journalists who worked to improve society by way of journalism, and this native Dane who had moved to the other side of the Atlantic in 1870 was later called “the most useful citizen in New York” and was lauded by Theodore Roosevelt for setting “a standard for all Americans” (Ware 1938, 78n). Riis, who especially was known for his work to better the lives of the many poor, sick and homeless people who lived in Manhattan back then, wrote about all the problems he found and often also included calls for help in his articles. The lack of responses led him to take pictures so that readers could better see for themselves, and he also started directly contacting more authoritative decision makers to ask for help. That was the reason he came to know Theodore Roosevelt, who was a police commissioner in New York from 1876 to 1880. This approach meant that Riis maintained the active purpose in journalism, but he shifted his perspective to representatives of the public rather than members of the public itself, since he discovered that it was more successful. In essence, Riis simply short-circuited the process where active journalists, editors and owners of newspapers were dependent on the perception – and possible reactions from their readers – after reading about problems. Rather than wait for such responses after publication, Riis approached them before publication and asked them to offer help. In the words of another seminal figure within journalism around the turn of last century, Lincoln Steffens, Riis “pulled wires” to prompt action (1903, 424), and this short-circuiting has since been a popular approach among many later generations of journalists and also part of the reason why journalism with a more deliberative perspective has been and continues to be challenged. For the help of private citizens can be hard to come by, while it is typically easier to enlist the help of the police, politicians, company executives and other authoritative decision makers, if for nothing else than because journalists know how to get in contact with them and can ask them what they will do to help. The problem with trying to engage the public in ways that Jakob A. Riis, Joseph Pulitzer and others attempted is perhaps best described in James Carey’s summary of Walter Lippmann’s critique of what the public could accomplish. “The average citizen had neither the capacity nor the interest or competence to direct society,” Carey

Sixth influencing factor 135 wrote about Lippmann’s criticism (1987, 7), and, essentially, the problem with attempting to enlist the public is threefold: problems with responses, with reflections and with their action radius. First of all, journalists have found it difficult to get hold of private citizens, whereas authoritative decision makers have points of contact that can more easily be reached. When the World was producing a news story that was to help the government save money, it took less than a day from when the journalists had sent out 14,000 telegrams until the newspaper had received more than 7,000 replies from banks all over the country that enabled the World to help solve the case before it was too late. Equally important can be that most private citizens have not reflected on all the problems that active journalists seek assistance in solving. This lack of what Carey called “capacity” is an expression of a lack of reflection on the part of the public, while journalists can more easily find people in organizations, companies and among public authorities who have experience with the issues in question. Persons working in some of these places might also be in the position where they can help solve the third and last problem, attempting to prompt the public to help. Namely, police commissioners, presidents and others have a greater action radius, since they can decide to assist with material help, manpower and other types of help that far exceed what an individual citizen can assist with. These are all practical problems that can affect the principles that journalists would like to adhere to, and as the previous chapters have shown, there is a multitude of other factors and forces, both internally and externally, that can affect the actions of journalists. The way these individual factors relate to one another and how their individual importance can change according to some overall drivers and determinants is the focus of the following – and the final – chapter of this book.

8 Conclusion The function of journalism

“I believe it is possible for this School to give dignity to the profession of journalism,” Walter Williams, the founding father of the first journalism school in America, said in his welcome address to the nation’s first journalism students (Williams 1929, 25). But Williams did more to raise the standards of the profession of journalism than establish, lead and teach at the journalism school at the University of Missouri. Williams also coined a creed for journalism that appeared in the textbook he wrote with his colleague Frank L. Martin, and that ever since has been taught to students in his own school and in many of the other journalism schools that have been established around the world. This creed contains the same hope for the profession of journalism that he expressed in his welcome address to the first students in his own school. “I believe in the profession of journalism,” the creed starts. Another of the seminal figures in the movement to give dignity to journalism, Joseph Pulitzer, had the same hopes for the future status and standing of journalism. “I wish to begin a movement that will raise journalism to the rank of a learned profession,” Pulitzer wrote a few years earlier as part of his own attempt to establish a journalism school (1904, 19). Pulitzer had no intention of running the school himself, but what the owner of some of the world’s biggest newspapers in terms of circulation lacked in time to take on the leadership himself, he had in monetary funds. So, in order to make his wish come true, Pulitzer made a generous donation to Columbia University for $2 million, the equivalent of more than $50 million today. The money were intended for a school of journalism for prospective students, but he also allocated $250,000 to establish a number of prizes for contemporary practitioners, and both are of course still very much in existence. According to some writers, this enormous donation has helped make Columbia University a fulcrum of journalism, and one of the school’s former students has even noted that Columbia University has come to be seen “as a metaphor – or an epithet – for journalism education” in general (Boylan 2003, 2). Similarly, the annual prizes that Pulitzer instituted have manifested themselves so strongly in the minds – and calendars – of many journalists that the day the winners are announced is known simply as “Pulitzer Day.” Joseph Pulitzer’s and Walter Williams’s ambitions to found journalism schools to raise the standards of journalism were not without their critics. One such critic wrote, with a reference to two of the most

Conclusion 137 well-known editors at the time, that the office of a newspaper “is the one true college for newspaper students. Professor James Gordon Bennett and Professor Horace Greeley would turn out more genuine journalists in one year than the Harvards, the Yales, and the Dartmouths could produce in a generation” (Hudson 1873, 713). Another critic responded specifically to Joseph Pulitzer’s plan by speculating whether the school would establish a “chair of head-lines, a chair of interviews, or a chair of scoops” (White 1904, 26). But Walter Williams’s and Joseph Pulitzer’s plans also drew support. Writing a few years after Walter Williams’s welcome address to the new students, another towering figure in American journalism, Walter Lippmann, lamented the standards of people working for newspapers. Journalism was, in the mind of Lippmann, largely left to the “untrained accidental witnesses” (2008/1920, 46), who might have good intentions but were ill-quipped to perform what Lippmann considered one of democracy’s most important functions. Lippmann did not start a journalism school, let alone finance the establishment of one, but his writing was an influence for many later founders of journalism schools – and Lippmann was even suggested for the advisory board when Wilbur Schramm drafted his “A Blueprint for a Journalism School” at the University of Iowa (1942). In time, the short-lived journalism courses at other university departments have given way to regular journalism schools, and although journalism schools in many western countries did not materialize before the dawn of the 20th century, these schools have come to be an important mechanism for professionalization (Tumber, Bromley and Zelizer 2000, 5). One of those who came to witness this development firsthand was James Carey. He joined what some have since termed “Pulitzer’s School” in 1988, and Carey has since noted that when “I first entered an American journalism education in 1957, it was a very fragile enterprise indeed. Faculties were typically small and, with some notable exceptions, undistinguished. They had little background in higher education,” as opposed to the turn of this century where he found them to be “strong, wellestablished, flourishing undertakings” (2000, 12). Despite this apparent success for the mechanism of professionalization, it is less clear if the establishment of journalism schools, journalism prizes and other favored means of Walter Williams and Joseph Pulitzer has succeeded in raising the dignity of the profession of journalism. Indeed, to some, journalism might not even be considered a profession at all, in comparison with professions like medicine and law, which both Williams and Pulitzer compared journalism to, since these professions have a stronger institutional mechanism for inclusion and exclusion of their members. People still enter journalism all over the world without formal training from a journalism school, and while it is certainly important to note that many of the professional ideals are not only distilled on university classrooms but also instilled in newsrooms, the recent decades have challenged not only who journalists are but also what journalism is altogether. For with the development of new technologies, it has become still easier for people outside the newsroom to produce, publish and distribute their own news or the news from others – no matter if they strive to work in the public interest or on account of

138  Part II External factors personal, commercial, political or other interests. What journalism is and who journalists are is therefore as relevant to discuss today as when Walter Williams, Joseph Pulitzer and others worked to establish the first journalism schools “to give dignity to the profession of journalism” (Williams 1929, 25). These questions will be addressed in this final chapter of the book, where the models developed in previous chapters will be used as a framework for describing and discussing just what journalism is; who journalists are; and what roles researchers, lecturers and practitioners could – and should – have in the future development of journalism.

Objectives and prejudices of the models “I believe it is possible for this School to give dignity to the profession of journalism,” Walter Williams told his first students, and with what must have been his next breath of air, Williams added that he believed it would also be possible for this school to “anticipate to some extent the difficulties that journalism must meet and to prepare its graduates to overcome them” (Williams 1929, 25). These were difficulties for journalism that he not only told his students about in classes but also wrote about in his strenuous study of The World’s Journalism (1915). In this study, Williams “summarizes in brief some notes of observations made in visiting nearly 2,000 newspaper offices in a world-tour, June, 1913, to May, 1914” (1915, 2), and here, Williams also noted the importance of taking these influencing factors into account when discussing the function of journalism. He wrote, The world’s journalism may not be rightly judged unless consideration is taken of the difficulties under which newspapers are produced. These difficulties are: Financial, arising from insufficiency of revenue, due to conditions of progress of population and business; mechanical or physical, due to lack of equipment and the obstacles of a difficult alphabet; and governmental, due to the laws or lack, due to the laws or lack of laws by which the press in many of its aspects is affected or controlled. (1915, 35–36) These three main factors are all somewhat outside the control of individual journalists, but Williams and his colleague Frank Martin made sure to include some of the more internal factors in their textbook, which was published a few years before and had become mandatory reading for students at the University of Missouri. The factors that can provide both difficulties and opportunities have continued to be of interest, and in the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, other researchers have offered their own studies and assessments of the different individual and collective sets of factors that can influence the actions of journalists. Many of these attempts at modeling the factors that can hinder and help journalists have been described in the previous chapters, and the descriptions of these models have been structured according to a framework relating to the six factors that have formed the overarching model of this book. This model consists of

Conclusion 139 the three internal factors (principles, precedents and practices) and the three external factors (production, publication and perception). Many of the attempts at modeling both the individual and collective sets of influencing factors of journalism could deserve mentioning, and some of the models that have found their way into this book could also have deserved mentioning in several chapters, since they relate to two, three or more of the six influencing factors presented in this book. But lack of space has necessitated an approach well known to most journalists: the need to shorten or even discard important facts and facets in order to comply with limits imposed by the intended platform for publication, in this case, a book, where space was also needed to develop a series of new models about the principles, precedents, practices, production, publication and perception. The problem of limited space was at the center of David Manning White’s seminal gatekeeper study, and the wire editor, who was dubbed Mr. Gates in the article, professed to have a few prejudices when selecting the most appropriate material for publication in his newspaper. This book needs to do the same, though not for “a publicity-seeking minority with headquarters in Rome” or “daylight saving time and warm beer,” as the anonymous wire editor explained to White (1950, 390), but rather toward particular scholarly approaches. For there are numerous publications that could have deserved citations in this text and even more that deserved an entry in the reference list of this book about the functions and influencing factors of journalism. Both areas have been of interest to researchers for decades, and over time many models have been presented. This book has paid homage to only some of them, but the ones included have been selected on account of their importance when it comes to inspiring researchers, lecturers and practitioners over the years. These are some of the standard models that have formed the foundations of much of what has since been modeled – in visual, written or other forms – when it comes to the influencing factors of journalism. These models also include some of the ones developed by practitioners. An important point throughout this book is, namely, that much understanding of the influencing factors of journalism is not just found in research-based studies. More often than not, the practitioners have written about these issues themselves while they worked in newsrooms, when they left to teach in classrooms or when they simply retired. The bridge building on the pages of this book also relates to a second prejudice that has come to shape many of this book’s decisions. For while many journalism schools in time have started doctoral programs – in 1912, the University of Wisconsin was the first to start a doctoral research program in the United States, while it took Columbia University an additional 90 years to do so – much of the resulting research from journalism programs around the world has not found its way back to journalists. Despite the growth of this research area, which has resulted in its own scholarly journals, books series and special divisions in major research associations, too much research has come to matter too little for the journalistic practitioners – both current and prospective ones. This book has therefore also focused more specifically on the factors that can help or hinder

140  Part II External factors concrete journalistic actions. While many past attempts at modeling the influencing factors have studied what influences content in the news media – or even all kinds of mass media – the model presented in this book is specifically targeted at the actions of journalists. The hope is that this work can function not only as a model of the influencing factors but also as a model for the influencing factors of journalism. That is, it is a model that can offer researchers, lecturers and practitioners a framework for, one the one hand, analyses of the many forces that can affect them, and, on the other hand, inspire possible solutions as to what journalists can do whenever they find it difficult to function according to the ambitions that Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and others who labored for the future of journalism. Rather than review most of the past research, the main objective of this book has therefore been to present models of the functions and influencing factors of journalism that are relevant to researchers, lecturers and, not least, practitioners – both those in the newsrooms and those who still reside in the classrooms. The overarching model details a collective set of factors that can influence the action of journalists, and this model has been compared to some of the other models that have been developed with that in mind. Each of the six influencing factors has then been presented and compared to other models from the past that relate specifically to this factor, and in each instance, a new model has been developed. In this way, the model is inspired by what journalists prove in their daily work, namely, that different vantage points bring the world alive in new ways. Common for all the new models presented – both the ones that deal with individual factors and the ones that focus on the collective set of factors – is that they are meant to supplement, rather than to substitute, past models. “Models, by definition, are meant to simplify, highlight, suggest, and organize,” as Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese have reminded users of their seminal hierarchy-of-influences model (2014, 2). The same is true for models presented in this book, but depending on the intended user, some models certainly have a greater reach and relevance than others.

Reach and relevance of models of journalism When viewed as a model of journalism, the chronology-of-journalism model describes six distinct but interconnected factors that individually and collectively can affect the actions of journalists. These factors can be of interest to researchers, lecturers and practitioners, since they inform all three of the factors that can affect the actions of journalists. Williams called these factors “difficulties” when he welcomed the first class at the journalism school at the University of Missouri, as well as when he presented the results of his exhaustive study tour around the world; but each of the factors also provides opportunities. Williams focused particularly on financial, technical and governmental factors and the ways in which they could halt the work of journalists or hinder them altogether. But these factors also offer opportunities for journalists, as Pulitzer knew better than most,

Conclusion 141 when it, for instance, came to the importance of the economic factors. Pulitzer wrote about newspapers, The more prosperous it is the more independent it can afford to be, the higher salaries it can pay to editors and reporters, the less subject it will be to temptation, the better it can stand losses for the sake of principle and conviction. (1904, 23) The same is true for the technological and governmental factors. At times they can constitute problems, and at other times they pose potentials for journalists and their employers. Governmental interference might have led the Chinese and Japanese newsrooms that Walter Williams visited on his world tour to delay or even withdraw news stories, but it was also governmental subsidies that helped some of the German newspapers he stopped by to survive. Likewise, the printing presses that posed problems in some countries were the reason that the work of journalists in other countries could be followed by millions of readers. The potentials and problems – and the relationship between them – become clearer for researchers, lecturers and practitioners when such influencing factors are detected and connected in models like the ones presented in this book. But the models – and this model in particular – not only strengthen an understanding of the factors that influence journalists but also inspire concrete actions among researchers, lecturers and practitioners. For as James Carey has reminded us, all symbolic representations have a dual function as both models of and models for – although some models are certainly more useful than others. Carey exemplified this by way of maps, where some are better at helping their users find their way than others. The same duality is true of the models presented in this book, and when it comes to researchers, the models can be helpful to those who are looking to find new vantage points and a new adjacent vocabulary for studying a particular influencing factor or the importance of a combination of factors, such as the external or the internal factors. The model might also inspire other researchers to venture into new areas. This is something that past models of the influencing factors of journalism have been successful in doing. As Shoemaker and Reese have noted, there has been a long and strong tradition of studying the effects of journalists, while researchers in the past have paid less attention to what affects journalists themselves. When used as models for journalism, the findings in this book can offer several starting points for such an approach, while simultaneously connecting each of these starting points to some of the past studies that have been referred to. As a model for, lecturers might also find that the six influencing factors can offer a useful framework. The six influencing factors not only point to important forces that can affect journalists and can be taught to students individually or collective but also describe a process, and as such the model offers a framework for the design of a course, where the semester is divided into six parts. Indeed, this model has been used with that in mind already. In one such instance, one

142  Part II External factors course dealt specifically with internal factors, while another dealt with the external factors. At another time, teaching relating to each of the six factors was split over several semesters, where both the theoretical and practical aspects that corresponded to of each of the factors were an integral part of both classwork and the list of required readings. Finally, the models presented in this book can also be useful for practitioners themselves since the model offers journalists – both current and future ones – a framework for relating actively to factors that can help and hinder them in their work. Each of the six factors entails both problems and potentials, and journalists can continuously consult the model of the influencing factors to encounter whatever might challenge their work. This way of using the chronology-of-journalism model can be done individually or collectively in a particular news organization, in a particular nation and even for the profession as such. In terms of the latter, previous chapters have been a reminder that movements have come and gone many times over the past centuries. Joseph Pulitzer attempted to start one to raise journalism to a learned profession, and later there have been movements to promote a more public journalism or a more constructive journalism. What some of these movements in essence are based on is an understanding that there is a discrepancy between the intentions of journalism and the realizations of journalism (see Figure 8.1). The public journalism movement, to take one example, was based on the widespread belief among both researchers and practitioners that journalism was no longer providing the proper public service. The proponents therefore wrote and talked much about the correct principles of journalism. But there were other challenges. For as one of the founding fathers described it, there were no “comforting precedents” to help them (Merritt 1995, 119), and they therefore had to develop new practices of their own. One of these practices has now become so institutionalized that most journalists have forgotten about its origin. But in order to give members of the public a greater say in both election and everyday coverage, the people experimenting with a more public journalism started using polls where journalists not only asked people what party and which politician they would vote for but also asked what issues they would like to see covered journalistically. This new practice made private citizens agenda setters, and it added to the long list of journalistic means, methods and techniques that might originally have been developed to prompt particular principles, but have later been used to The chronology-of-journalism

Intentions : Principle - Precedent - Practice

Internal factors

– Production - Publication - Perception : Realizations

External factors

Figure 8.1  Influential factors between intentions and realizations

Conclusion 143 service other principles. But proponents of the public journalism movement were not simply challenged by the internal factors. When they attempted to produce journalism, they discovered that it could be difficult to get members of the public to participate as news sources. They discovered that some types of platforms for the publication of news were better than others – and that some news editors and owners where more supportive than others. And last but not least, the movement that was based on an ambition to strengthen public participation had to come to terms with the fact that there were many members of the public that had little or no interest in taking part in public journalism. In each case, proponents of the public journalism movement were dealing with one of the six influencing factors of journalism, which could entail both problems and potentials. But as a model for journalism, the chronology-of-journalism model can also help individual journalists better understand what they have to take into account. In such instances, problems can arise from critical parts or even cuts in this succession of influencing factors. Here, ‘critical parts’ refer to a part of the process where the actions of journalists are hindered, while ‘cuts’ refer to when the actions of journalists are halted altogether, and where journalistic work never reaches the intended audiences on account of strikes, incarceration, or even worse, the killing of journalists, as still happens too often in some parts of the world. The extent to which actions of journalists are affected by principles, precedents and practices or by the production, publication and perception of journalism can change continuously. The importance of each, or the collective sets, of these factors can change from story to story and person to person, and there might also be differences over time and between different parts of the world, as Walter Williams showed in his study of The World’s Journalism (1915). Some news stories might have few apparent and easily reachable news sources, in which case the journalist who works on the story can find the production factor to be the most critical part of the work process. However, some journalists have access to more sources than others, and for these journalists, the most critical part of the chronology-of-journalism model might have more to do with editors who are reluctant to publish their work or give it the placement in the newspaper the journalists find is proper. Each of the six factors can constitute both problems and potentials, and the model can at best help journalists identify what they need to concern themselves with, in particular, and at best how they can remedy the problems. This happened when several of the active journalists, editors and owners of newspapers found that their journalism did not have the intended results. In some instances, it was difficult to prompt action among other people outside the newsroom, and the proponents of an active journalism therefore circumvented the chronology-of-journalism model. Instead of waiting for readers, listeners and viewers to respond to the problems brought forward, active journalists – like Joseph Pulitzer – simply used the then-new method of interviewing to contact politicians, police commissioners, company executives and other authoritative decision makers and ask them what they would do to help solve the problems. In this way, these journalists found that their intentions did not correspond to the realizations of their work, and in order

144  Part II External factors to remedy the problem, they started to identify the problems, and in the process, they essentially decided to short-circuit the chronology-of-journalism model so that they could enlist the help of others before the publication and perception of their work. In this sense, the chronology-of-journalism model was already in use long before it was modeled, but as opposed to former generations of journalists, current practitioners are now offered a model that can help them understand how intentions can become realizations. While the problems and potentials that can affect the action of the individual journalist can change continuously, the previous chapters have also shown that there are some larger, structural developments that can influence the process. For in the case of each of the six factors – and six chapters in this book – there seems to be some recurring determinants and drivers that can shift what factors offer the most important problems and potentials. These drivers and determinants seem to correspond with the ones Walter Williams singled out in his world study – such as the financial, technical and governmental – and they can come to affect how journalists relate to the individual factor or the collective set of influencing factors. Technology, to take one, has had an effect on the ways journalists could reach their news sources as part of the production process. Technology has also affected what kind of platform is available for publication, and the ways in which an audience can receive and come to perceive journalism. Some technologies have been particularly helpful when it comes to contacting authoritative decision makers, and this can affect the principles of journalism, the precedents they cling to and the concrete practices journalists employ. New technologies have now made it easier to find and get into contact with private citizens, and this development has in turn inspired some journalists to pursue a more deliberative perspective where journalism, in the words of some researchers, becomes more participatory. Drivers and determinants, such as technology and economy, can have a profound effect on each or all of the influencing factors; these structural factors should always be taken into account alongside more individual factors. For as this book has shown, the attitudes and actions of individuals – like Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and many of the other seminal figures of journalism that have figured prominently on the previous pages of this book – can also have an immense importance on journalists themselves, their colleagues and their competitors. This is a reminder that journalists are “affected by multiple sources of influence, and most of the time even simultaneously,” as Thomas Hanitzsch has noted in another context (2010, 8). This would be bewildering for most people and professions, and in particular for those people employed in newsrooms, who have deadlines that are measured in days, hours, minutes and even seconds, as opposed to many of those lecturing in classrooms, who have weeks, months or even years to finish their research publications. The reason why journalists can cope with this strenuous situation is that in most cases these multiple sources of influence are hidden from them in the form of journalistic routines that make work manageable, for as Walter Lippmann remarked in Public Opinion, people working in newsrooms would “die

Conclusion 145 of excitement” (1997/1922, 123) if they did not have stereotypes, standards and systems for how to operate. This is one of the advantages of what researchers have called the institutionalization of journalism, but as the chronology-of-journalism model reminds users, what constitutes potentials at one point might later come to function as problems. The disadvantage of closing one’s eyes and ears to the many and varied influencing factors of journalism is that it can become more difficult for journalists to further develop themselves, and this is indeed what some researchers have found to be happening at this point in time, where journalists are under pressure from many sides – and where it has become still more difficult to determine just what a journalist is and who journalists are.

What journalism should – and could – be “They object that a college of journalism would establish class distinctions in the profession – an invidious distinction of the few who had received benefits of a collegiate training against the many who had not enjoyed this advantage,” Joseph Pulitzer wrote in his defense for his endowment (1904, 11). The objection Pulitzer referred to appeared in a section of his essay where he went through the major points of criticism for establishing journalism schools. Each section of this part of his essay started with an exclamation – “They object” – after which Pulitzer would attempt to reject each of the objections. They ranged from the objection “that news instinct must be born” (1904, 5) and that journalism training can “be done only in the actual practice of the office” (1904, 8) to objections that existing colleges already teach the most important facets of journalism, thus why “no special department is required” (1904, 9) and “that schools of journalism have been tried and have failed” (1904, 13). There were many other objections, but in each case Pulitzer would argue against them. Only in the case of the objection that such schools of journalism would create “class distinctions” did Pulitzer not reject critique. Instead, he concurred. In the essay he simply wrote, “I sincerely hope it will create a class distinction between the fit and the unfit. We need a class feeling among journalists – one based not upon money but upon morals, education and character” (1904, 11). To this, Pulitzer later added in his essay that it would be important for this new class of journalists to find places to come together, as members of other professions did. For, as he mentioned, as yet the journalist works alone. If he is a college graduate he goes to his college clubs as a graduate, not as a journalist. He never speaks of another journalist as “my colleague,” as the lawyer or the physician does of his professional brother. He hardly ever meets other journalists socially in any numbers. But if the future editors of the city were in large proportion graduates of the same college and had a recognized professional meeting-place in which they could come together informally and discuss matters of common interest, would they not eventually develop a professional pride that would enable

146  Part II External factors them to work in concert of the public good and that would put any black sheep of the profession in a very uncomfortable position? (1904, 12) Walter Williams harbored the same hopes for what the journalism schools could prompt in terms of class distinctions and a stronger sense of community for the profession’s best-trained members. In his welcome address in 1908 to the first journalism students at Missouri, he noted that the school should help “give dignity to the profession of journalism,” and he promised that the school would “discover those with real talent for the work in the profession, and . . . discourage those who are likely to prove failures in the profession” (Williams 1929, 25). This was a class distinction that Williams would later return to and inform his students about in his writings. In the textbook The Practice of Journalism, which was first published in 1911, Williams and his cowriter, Frank Martin, noted how the “term journalist was once held in disrepute” – even by the profession’s own members (1922/1911, 15). But now, they wrote in 1911, to reassure their readers, and journalism students, the situation was improving. They wrote, Journalism has become a profession in which special aptitude, equipment, experience and training are increasingly necessary. The result of changed conditions, brought about by the marvelous growth of the press, has been to create a body of journalists performing a distinct profession. (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 16) They added that training in journalism schools was a necessary prerequisite for such a development. “The successful practice of journalism, however, demands now more than ever before trained personality,” they noted (Williams and Martin 1922/1911, 17). According to Williams, things were not only changing in America. In the conclusion of The World’s Journalism (1915), Williams reveals with delight at what he believes to be a “new world spirit” among journalists, who, although working under different conditions and influencing factors around the world, “are more and more possessed of the conviction that their profession is a profession of public service” (1915, 43). The new world spirit that Walter Williams believed to have found on his study tour to a couple of thousand newsrooms – which amounts to an average of five to six visits every day of his yearlong tour – might be overstating what was happening to the class feeling among journalists around the turn of the last century. But Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Williams were both supporters of the professionalization of journalism, and they both sought to help the process of creating a profession for journalists by establishing journalism schools, journalistic prizes, creeds with core values and other means that could help “encourage, elevate and educate in a practical way the present and, still more, future members of that profession,” as Joseph Pulitzer had written in what he called a “rough memorandum,” and in which he first illustrated his thoughts about donating a large sum of money to raise journalism to the ranks of a learned profession (cf. Boylan 2003, 12).

Conclusion 147 Other such mechanisms for creating a particular class distinction and feeling of communality could also be helpful, Walter Williams found on his world tour, where he noted the rise of unions for journalists in many countries. Here, he found that objections toward unions for lowering the dignity of journalism, lowering salaries and decreasing the opportunities for the best journalists seemed to be unfounded. Instead, the unions had not only led to better working conditions for journalists – including granting of holidays and increased wages – but also created an improved character of the journalistic work done, while not diminishing the professional spirit. Writing a few years later, Walter Lippmann, who was an advocate of stronger and better intellectually equipped journalists, noted that it would be important to know if “it would be worth while to endow large numbers of schools on the model of those now existing, and make their diplomas a necessary condition for the practice of reporting. It is worth considering,” he added (2008/1920, 48). On the upside, Lippmann believed that journalism schools would result in a “public recognition of the dignity of such a career,” so journalism “will cease to be the refuge of the vaguely talented” (Lippmann 2008/1920, 48). But Lippmann was also aware of the problems the introduction of journalism schools – and one might also add, journalistic prizes, creeds of core values and professional associations – could mean for the understanding of who journalists are and what journalism is. For as Walter Lippmann put it, [A]gainst the idea lies the fact that it is difficult to decide just what reporting is – where in the whole mass of printed matter it begins and ends. No one would wish to set up a closed guild of reporters and thus exclude invaluable casual reporting and writing. (2008/1920, 48) The questions of what journalism is and who journalists should be – and could be – that Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams and Walter Lippmann wrestled with at the start of last century are as relevant today as then. While journalism in most parts of the western world lacks the formal barriers – such as licensing, educational requirements or trade associations (Carlsson 2015, 8) – that are commonly associated with more classic professions, such as medicine and law, as Joseph Pulitzer repeatedly referred to for comparison, many persons and professional organizations continue to promote class distinctions. This work includes both steadfast and more suggestive means that can inspire journalists to uphold what is considered the most important values in journalism. The latter includes prizes, such as those Joseph Pulitzer instituted, and these have spread to the extent that critics have noted that when journalists meet it is to afford each other prizes. This is a contrast to, for example, researchers that often meet at conferences, seminars and in other forums with the explicit ambition of criticizing each other’s work. But these inspirational means can also include increase in salaries, special assignments and other work-related recognitions at the news organizations where journalists work. Examples of the first and more steadfast

148  Part II External factors approach to signaling what journalism is and who journalists are can be found both inside and outside the workplace. The most steadfast means in newsrooms are the firing of journalists, and while unions cannot resort to the same, they can resort to throwing members out, or they can make guidelines that restrict who can become a member. In some countries, journalists, even with a formal education from a journalism school, are not allowed in unions of journalists if they work outside the classic news organization. To advance such suggestive and steadfast means and measures, some unions have therefore, in the course of the 20th century, drawn up their own creeds or codes for the proper conduct of journalists. But one thing is what journalism – and who journalists – should be. Another and still more pertinent question is what journalism and journalists could be. For factors outside and inside journalism have challenged both. “Journalism,” James Carey came to write only a few years after he joined the journalism school at Columbia University, “has ceased to be a distinct activity” (1997, 329). His point was that the boundaries between the formats and the platforms for publication of journalism had been effaced. Information, entertainment, commentary and other formats are blending together, and the news organizations that in the past have provided the platforms for the publication of journalism were more and more subsumed in other types of mass media organizations. Part of this criticism already could have been expressed in the beginning of the century, when publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer were known for pandering to the public by every possible means. This includes the introduction of comics into newspapers, where one of them, called The Yellow Kid, eventually led to the naming of these papers as the yellow press. Walter Williams was also well aware that journalism could include more than the provision of information for the public. In the textbook he coproduced, Williams and his colleague, Frank Martin, defined journalism as “the gathering and presentation of news and of comment upon the news, of discussion of all that interests, entertains, informs and instructs” (1922/1911, 15). Even though the internal challenges to what journalism and journalists could be have been an inherent part of journalism for a long time, the issues have not become less complicated with time. Technological developments have meant that persons and organizations can now participate in the production, publication and distribution of content that resembles what traditional news organizations had monopolized. Turning out traditional newspapers, like Pulitzer’s World, demanded centrally located office buildings, hundreds of journalists and editors, commercial departments, printers and printing machines, trucks and delivery boys and much more manpower and many other types of material. But as transmission technologies have developed from electromagnetic telegraphy over telephone and satellite to the internet of the 21st century, it has become increasingly cheaper, easier and more accessible for everyone outside news organizations to connect with hundreds, thousands or millions of other people. If journalism is therefore defined as “the gathering and presentation of news and of comment upon the news, of discussion of all that interests, entertains, informs and instructs,” as Walter Williams and Frank Martin suggested, the number of journalists around the world has multiplied enormously

Conclusion 149 since the time when Williams could meaningfully take a world tour to visit the most important sites for news production in a year. Many companies that work to sell products have now also started referring to themselves as media companies, and since “journalist” has never been a protected title, still more people – whether they work to promote personal, political or commercial interests – can meaningfully refer to themselves as journalists and publishers of journalism.

Models of and for journalism researchers The many different challenges to what journalism should be – and could be – have made it popular among researchers, practitioners and other observers to write and speak of the end of journalism. Some of the ominous titles from books, articles and conferences read Farewell to Journalism? (McChesney 2012), Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights (McChesney and Picard 2011) and News without Journalists (Neveu 2010), and in his book Can Journalism Survive? from 2012, David Ryfe describes how journalism has been unraveling since journalists are unable or unwilling to develop. While some seem to have given up on journalism, others have attempted to promote new movements in line with the one that Joseph Pulitzer sought to start at the turn of last century, and throughout the last couple of decades, a number of new – and some old – movements have been promoted under names such as public and civic journalism, citizen journalism, community journalism, personal journalism, participatory journalism, analytical journalism, hybrid journalism, multimedia journalism, cross-media journalism, social journalism, constructive journalism and the list could go on. But before we give up on journalism or give way to something else, it might be worthwhile to consider just what journalism is. One of the problems with discussions of what journalism and journalists could or should be is that there is definitional elusiveness to the concept of journalism itself, and that there are few authoritative definitions around. Walter Williams and Frank Martin launched one bid for a definition more than a hundred years ago, when they suggested that journalism is “the gathering and presentation of news and of comment upon the news, of discussion of all that interests, entertains, informs and instructs.” A similar definition is found in many encyclopedias, where the most recent ones stipulate that the platforms for publication in time have come to include a broad number of outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, websites, social media and much more. The more research-based definitions includes David Weaver and Cleveland G. Wilhoit’s, who – in line with earlier work – define journalists as “those who have editorial responsibility for the preparation or transmission of news stories or other information, including full-time reporters, writers, correspondents, columnists, news people and editors” (1996, 4). Later work includes Brian McNair’s definition, which defines journalism as “any authored text, in written, audio or visual form, which claims to be (i.e. is presented to its audience as) a truthful statement about, or record of, some hitherto unknown (new) feature of the actual, social world” (2001/1998, 4). Another often-quoted definition was offered

150  Part II External factors by Denis McQuail, who defines journalism as “paid writing (and the audiovisual equivalent) for public media with reference to actual and ongoing events of public relevance” (2000/1983, 340). Michael Schudson has suggested that journalism could be defined as “information and commentary on contemporary affairs taken to be publicly important” (Schudson 2003, 14), and in one of the more recent and much cited articles titled “What Is Journalism?” Mark Deuze suggests that journalism is best described as an occupational ideology where journalists “invoke more or less the same ideal-typical value system” (2005, 444). This last description has less to do with actual practice, on which many of the other definitions center, and is more about principles, something that the author of one of the most used textbooks in English-speaking journalism schools has also noted. Melvin Mencher, who taught journalism for close to four decades at Pulitzer’s school, noted that his News Reporting and Writing was “written in the belief that journalism is a moral enterprise and that it gives meaning to its practice” (2010/1977, xiv). Another widely used textbook, Tony Harcup’s Journalism: Principles and Practices, describes the same dual aspects of both a practical and principle side to the definition. On one side, Harcup writes, “journalism is a form of communication based on asking, and answering, the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?” and on the other side, journalism more principally “informs society about itself and makes public that which would otherwise be private” (2015/2004, 6). In time, many other definitions have been offered, but Barbie Zelizer was right in her assessment in 2004 – and would be so today, also – that there is no widespread agreement on “what constitutes journalism and journalists at any one point in time” (2004, 23). Nonetheless, journalism schools have been established throughout most of the world, many thousands of journalists have been turned out over the past century, journalists – and their employers – receive particular judicial and financial support in many countries, and over time, there has been a corresponding growth in the number of researchers engaged in the field. The correlation between definitional elusiveness and institutional success, which many of the persons and organizations associated with journalism have enjoyed for many years, can both be seen as a paradox and as a logical outcome. But in light of the many challenges – and opportunities – that face journalism in the 21st century, it is high time that we come closer to an answer to what journalism is and who journalists are. These were the questions that Joseph Pulitzer, Walter Williams, Walter Lippmann and other seminal figures asked themselves and their contemporaries, and that they themselves not only sought to answer but also attempted to help bring about. These questions are still unresolved, and they might be questions we will never find a widely shared solution to, but the six influencing factors of journalism that are presented in this book might bring some of us a step closer. For in their very essence, the three internal factors (principles, precedents and practices) and the three external factors (production, publication and perception) not only work to inform and instruct researchers, lecturers and practitioners but also identify the elements of journalism – like Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel has attempted (2014/2001) – and help us define what journalism

Conclusion 151 in essence consists of. As such, journalism is based on the six influencing factors, while a journalist can be defined as someone whose work is based on a particular set of principles, precedents and practices, and whose work are can take on different forms in relation to their production, publication and the perception of their work. The definitions are in no way exhaustive, but they do offer a new vantage point and an adjacent vocabulary that hopefully can inspire future descriptions and discussions of what journalism is and who journalists are. The extent to which not only practitioners – both the present and the future ones – but also researchers and lecturers themselves will aid such attempts might even be guided by some of the other models in this book. For it is not just people in newsrooms who can be both passive and active and who can have both an exclusive and an inclusive perspective, where more people are invited into deliberations about pertinent problems. In this sense, the journalistic compass can also be a model that researchers in the future use as a model for their own work rather than as a model that can help explain the work of journalists. The perspective and purpose – which constitute the two dimensions in the compass – of journalism research have changed over time and space, and there are still differences between continents, countries and perhaps even within individual departments when it comes to the roles of researchers. But perhaps it is high time that we, as researchers, not only ask the objects of our studies to live within the realms of the models we develop of them and for them but also reassess some of these models and discuss the ways in which they can work as both models of research and models for research, so that we ourselves can better relate theoretically and practically to journalism and journalists.

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Index

active journalism 28 – 29, 48 – 49, 51, 71, 74, 96, 122, 134, 143 advocacy journalism 124, 131 agenda setting 26 – 27, 126 Albæk, Erik 8, 10, 70 Altheide, David 126 Anderson, C. W. 3, 16, 104, 128 audience 6, 8, 24, 34, 44, 46, 60, 68, 72, 92, 97 – 98, 106 – 107, 120 – 132, 144,  149 autonomy 28, 30, 38, 41 – 42, 110, 117 Bantz, Charles 112 Baranak, Patricia M. 90, 92 Barnhurst, Kevin 46, 65 Bartky, Ian 86 Bell, Allan 72 Benson, Rodney 116 Berelson, Bernhard 103 Berkowitz, David 8 Bernays, Edward 88 – 91, 93 – 94, 96, 97 – 98 Bernstein, Carl 67 Bertrand, Jean Claude 115 bias 103, 113 Blumler, Jay 25, 64 Boorstin, Daniel 89 Boyd-Barrett, Oliver 83 Boylan, James 54, 60, 80, 136, 146 Breed, Warren 6, 60, 109 Briggs, Asa 47 Bro, Peter 10, 34, 131 Bruns, Axel 104, 129 Bulman, David 131 Carey, James W. 3, 8, 9, 11, 19 – 21, 26, 30 – 31, 33 – 35, 37 – 38, 43, 46 – 47, 49, 52 – 53, 67, 70, 74, 82, 84 – 85, 99, 112 – 113, 119, 124, 134 – 135, 137, 141, 148

Cavling, Henrik 49 Chan, Janet B. L. 90, 92 Chomsky, Noam 87, 91, 92, 99 chronology-of-influences model 14 – 16, 142 – 145 citizens 22 – 23, 30 – 32, 49 – 51, 62, 70 – 74, 89, 91 – 97, 113, 121 – 125, 131 – 135, 142, 144 civic journalism, see public journalism codes 115, 148 Cohen, Bernard 5, 26 – 29, 32, 125, 129 Columbia University 1, 7, 9, 11 – 13, 16, 19 – 20, 33, 36 – 38, 40, 53 – 57, 60, 63, 67, 74, 80, 95, 99 – 100, 102 – 103, 114, 118, 119, 121, 134, 136, 139, 148 commercialism 14, 95, 104 – 105 Conboy, Martin 37, 46, 47, 52 convergence 112 Cook, Timothy 44, 45, 54 Cutlip, Scott M. 91 Delano, Anthony 37, 39 deliberation 31, 50 – 51, 95, 133, 155 deliberative journalism 74, 133 democracy 22, 33, 93, 109, 124, 126, 131 – 133 Deuze, Mark 113, 150 Dewey, John 22 – 23, 50, 69, 87 – 88, 93, 119, 124 digitalization 104, 127 Donsbach, Wolfgang 5, 8, 14, 26 – 31, 68, 92, 108 Durham Peters, John 52, 125 Durkheim, Emile 16 economy 106, 144 effects of journalism 4, 26 – 27, 119 – 120,  141 Elbot, E. 109, 110

162 Index Entman, Robert 65 Ericson, Richard V. 90, 92 Esser, Frank 8 events 5 – 6, 61, 65, 85, 89, 90, 103 Farrar, Ronald T. 12, 39, 40, 56, 68, 79, 101 – 102,  105 Fischer, Heinz-Dietrich 114 Folkerts, Jean 3, 9 form of news 65 Four Theories of the Press 24 – 26, 29, 36, 38, 125, 132 Fourth estate 31 framing 64 – 66, 68, 73, 126 freedom 37, 47, 85 Fulton, Richard 85 Galtung, Johan 4, 61 – 62, 70, 90 Gandy, Oscar 90 Gans, Herbert 6, 7, 62, 64, 70, 92, 95, 103 – 104, 105, 110, 112, 127, 129 Gatekeeping 4 – 6, 58 – 60,  104 Gieber, Walter 110 Gillmor, David 128 Glasser, Theodore L. 50, 52 Golding, Peter 46, 61 Gurevitch, Michael 25, 64 Gyldensted, Cathrine 3, 28, 51 Haagerup, Ulrik 3, 28, 51 Habermas, Jürgen 23, 119 Halberstam, David 21, 122 Hallin, Dan 5, 25, 41, 132 Hanitzsch, Thomas 7 – 8, 30, 33, 132, 144 Harcup, Tony 5, 31, 61 – 64, 67, 70, 72, 150 Harvard University 43 Headrick, Daniel 82 Hearst, William Randolf 48 – 49, 51 – 52, 54, 55, 67, 71, 108, 122, 124, 134 Hellmueller, Lea 27, 68 Hermann, Edward. S. 87, 92 Hermida, Alfred 129 Hierarchy of Influences Model 7, 8, 11, 14, 140 history of journalism 12, 36 – 39, 45 – 47, 49, 54 – 55, 71, 107, 108, 121, 123, 133 Hopmann, David N. 8 Hudson, Frederic 137 human interest stories 62, 69 – 70, 128 hunting dog role of journalism 31, 47, 51, 69, 94, 114, 132 hypodermic needle model 126 ideals 34, 44, 127 ideology 24, 43, 85, 131, 150

influencing factor of journalism 87 information subsidies 90 institutionalism 111 Internet 86, 104, 106, 113, 127, 148 inverted pyramid 45, 65, 83, 102, 112 investigative journalism 115 Janowitz, Morris 59 Johnstone, J. W. C. 5, 27 journalism education 16, 33, 66, 136 – 137 journalism schools 1 – 4, 6 – 9, 11 – 16, 19, 21, 24, 27, 33 – 38, 41, 45 – 46, 53, 56 – 60, 63 – 67, 74, 79 – 81, 98 – 104, 111, 114, 118 – 121, 123, 130, 134, 136 – 140, 145 – 151 journalistic compass 30, 34, 47, 51 – 55, 58, 68, 94, 96, 132, 151 journalistic perception 118 – 135 journalistic practices 56 – 76 journalistic precedents 29, 36 – 55 journalistic principles 21, 24 – 27, 28 – 34, 47, 75, 80, 113, 125 journalistic production 79 – 99 journalistic publication 100 – 117 journalist-source relation 92 Kovach, Bill 150 Lambeth, Edmund 50 Lemann, Nicholas 3, 9 Lewis, Seth 66 Libertarian approach 24 Lippmann, Walter 5, 21 – 23, 30, 34, 38 – 39, 42 – 44, 50, 59, 66, 68 – 71, 75, 87 – 88, 92 – 95, 97 – 99, 111, 116, 119 – 120, 123 – 126, 130 – 131, 134 – 137, 144 – 145, 147,  150 Louisiana State University 9 Lowery, Shearon 4 Lowrey, Wilson 44 Lule, Jack 65 management 6, 13, 100 – 101, 110 Mancini, Paolo 5, 25, 41, 132 Mann, R. S. 79 – 80 market-driven journalism 105 Martin, Frank L. 2, 57 – 60, 62 – 69, 72, 80, 83, 84, 86, 90, 95, 97, 101, 104 – 106, 107, 109, 111 – 114, 119, 126 – 130, 138, 146, 148 – 149 Mattelart, Armand 82 McChesney, Robert 3, 149 McCombs, Maxwell. E. 26, 125 – 126 McManus, John 105 – 106 McNair, Brian 7, 15, 149

Index  163 McQuail, Denis 24, 113, 149 – 150 media systems 25, 116 Mellado, Claudia 27, 68 Mencher, Melvin 63 – 64, 67, 70, 72, 95, 150 Merrill, John 24 Merritt, W. Davis 50 – 52, 142 Molotch, Harvey 92 Nerone, John 25, 46, 65 Neveu, Erik 3, 149 New York Times 49, 53, 121 – 122, 128 news media 2, 4 – 5, 10, 13, 24, 26, 30, 32, 34, 44 – 45, 61, 65, 70 – 72, 91, 95 – 97, 100, 108, 123 – 124, 126, 130, 132, 140 news net 6, 59, 81, 98, 126 – 127 news values 5 – 6, 13, 29, 61 – 63, 69 – 70, 90, 108, 113, 128 newspapers 1, 4 – 5, 7, 12 – 13, 21, 28, 30, 33, 34, 37, 39 – 46, 48 – 61, 63 – 65, 68 – 71, 79, 821 – 86, 88, 100 – 115, 116, 118119 – 130, 133 – 148 newsroom 2 – 4, 6, 10 – 13, 16, 21, 26 – 27, 33 – 34, 40, 42 – 45, 48, 49 – 54, 58, 60, 61 – 63, 66, 68, 75, 79 – 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 94, 95, 101, 104 – 105, 108 – 112, 114, 118, 121, 127 – 129, 137 – 148, 151 newsworthiness 83, 89 – 90 Nimmo, Dan 131 normative dichotomies 30 – 31, 34 Northcliffe, Lord 108 O’Neill, Deirdre 5, 61, 62, 70 objectivity 38, 41 – 44, 68, 84 – 85, 116 Palmer, Jerry 61 participatory journalism 29, 113, 128 – 129,  149 passive journalism 28 – 29, 49, 96, 123 Patterson, Thomas E. 5, 26 – 29, 31, 66, 68 Peters, John Durham 52, 125 Picard, Robert 3, 106, 149 Pike, Leslie Francis 79 press conferences and releases 90 – 91 press systems, See media systems primary definers 64 priming 126 professionalization 25, 42, 137, 146 pseudo-events 89 public interest 20, 29, 97, 122, 137 – 138 public journalism 3, 9, 50 – 52, 67, 71 – 73, 120, 128, 142 – 143 public opinion 1, 21 – 23, 39, 88, 89, 91, 106, 118, 121 – 123, 125, 130, 131

public relations 88 – 94, 99 public service 2, 10, 11, 13, 19, 21, 28, 33, 41, 45, 53, 57, 105, 118 – 120, 123, 130 – 132, 142,  146 public sphere 23 public trust 2, 19, 41, 119 Pulitzer, Joseph 1 – 4, 7, 9, 11 – 14, 16, 19 – 22, 28 – 30, 33 – 34, 45, 36, 38 – 45, 48 – 49, 51 – 57, 60, 62, 67, 71, 74 – 75, 80 – 81, 84 – 85, 87, 95 – 98, 99 – 108, 112, 114, 115, 118. 120 – 126, 130, 131, 133 – 134, 136 – 138, 140 – 150 quotations 42, 72 radio 44, 80, 103 – 104, 112 – 113, 149 Rampton, Sheldon 91, 97 Rantanen, Terhi 83 Read, Donald 85 Reese, Stephen 4, 6 – 11, 14, 15, 58, 64 – 65, 98, 1015, 110 – 115, 140 – 141 rescue dog role of journalism 31, 47, 69, 94, 114, 132 Reuters International 85 Riis, Jacob A. 48, 134 Rivers, William 131 role conception 5, 26 – 27, 32, 68 role performance 68 Rosen, Jay 3, 9, 50, 51, 67, 71, 73, 120, 124, 128, 149 Rosenstiel, Tom 150 routines 5, 7, 14, 44 – 45, 144 Ruge, Marie 4, 61 – 62, 70, 90 Ryfe, David M. 3, 45, 104, 111, 117, 128, 149 Sabato, Larry 54 Scheufele, Dietram A. 66 Schlesinger, Philip 6, 61, 62, 103 – 104, 110 Schramm, Wilbur 5, 24, 25, 38, 58, 80, 99, 103, 125, 132, 137 Schudson, Michael 7, 8, 15, 20, 21, 23, 32 – 33, 37, 41, 44, 46, 50, 52, 67, 84 – 85, 87, 89, 97, 108, 112, 116, 119, 124, 125, 131, 150 Schultz, Winfried 61 Seitz, Don 105, 107 sheepdog role of journalism 31, 47, 49, 51, 69, 94, 114, 132 Shoemaker, Pamela 4, 7 – 11, 14 – 15, 58 – 59, 105, 110, 111, 140, 141 Siebert, Fred 5, 24 – 25, 38, 125, 132 Sigal, Leon 64, 105 Sigelman, Lee 110 – 111 Sinclair, Upton 115

164 Index Singer, Jane 129 Skovsgaard, Morten 131 Snider, Paul 59 social control 6, 60, 109 social responsibility 24, 125 sources 2, 6 – 8, 13, 15, 26, 30, 32, 39, 43, 44, 57, 60, 62 – 65, 68, 70 – 73, 79, 81, 83, 89, 90 – 99, 105, 106, 109, 114, 119, 143 – 144 Standage, Tom 82, 85, 86 standards of journalism 136 – 137 Steel, Ronald 87, 125 Steffens, Lincoln 134 Stephens, Mitchell 42, 83 – 84 stereotypes 5, 44, 68 – 70, 73, 93 – 94, 98, 102, 125, 145 strategic ritual 43 Strömbäck, Jesper 131 subjectivity 4, 8, 60, 108 – 109 tabloid 44 technology 4, 43, 81 – 87, 144 television 5, 44, 86, 103 – 104, 105, 113, 127, 149 theoretical framework 132 third-party technique 91 Tocqueville, Alexander de 126 Tucher, Andie 36 Tuchman, Gaye 5 – 6, 43 – 44, 59 – 62, 64 – 66, 81, 92, 98, 103, 111 – 112, 126 – 127 Tumber, Howard 61, 137 Tunstall, Jeremy 61 University of Iowa 4, 24, 33, 36, 37, 38, 58, 80, 103, 137 University of Kansas 67

University of Missouri 2, 19, 36, 39, 45, 56, 66, 81, 82, 86, 87, 98, 100, 103, 104, 118, 136, 138, 140 University of North Carolina 9 University of Wisconsin 139 user generated content 129 Usher, Nikki 104, 107, 113, 128 Vos, Tim 4, 59 Vreese, Claes de 8 Ware, Louise 48, 134 Washington Post 53, 106, 116 watchdog role of journalism 31, 47, 51, 69, 73, 94, 114, 132 Weaver, David 5, 27, 30, 32, 149 Weber, Max 29 Westerstahl, Jørgen 43 White, David Manning 4 – 6, 8, 58, 60 – 61, 108 – 110, 126, 129, 137 – 139 Wilhoit, G. Cleveland 5, 27, 30, 32, 149 Williams, Walter 2, 3, 9, 11 – 16, 19, 21, 28, 30, 33, 36, 38 – 42, 45, 47, 53, 56 – 60, 62 – 66, 68 – 72, 74 – 75, 79 – 87, 90, 95, 97, 100 – 107, 109, 111 – 114, 116, 118, 126, 128, 129 – 131, 136 – 138, 140 – 141, 143 – 144, 146 – 150 Willnat, Lars 5 Woodward, Bob 67 yellow journalism 54 yellow press 148 Zelizer, Barbie 5 – 6, 9, 15, 24, 26, 27, 46 – 47, 54, 58, 60, 66 – 67, 109, 137, 150 Östgaard, Einar 61