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Social Meanings of News
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Social Meanings of News
A Text-Reader

Edited by:

March 1997 | 549 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

What is news? Why does news turn out like it does? Social Meanings of News takes on these deceptively simple questions through an essential collection of classic and contemporary studies by leaders in the field of mass communication. Rather than applying a journalist's viewpoint to answer the questions, the book starts from the premise that news is a human construction shaped by the social world from which it emerges. In order to bridge the book's multiple methodologies and varied research approaches, Editor Dan Berkowitz introduces a conceptual scheme based on level of analysis and research paradigm. Each of the following six sections begins with an overview to help the student glean key concepts and understand their implications. The book then closes with an epilogue offering carefully crafted, yet concise examples of how concepts can be applied to study news from a socially-oriented perspective.


 
SECTION ONE: INTRODUCTION
 
Why a 'Social Meanings of News' Perspective?
 
PART ONE: A FRAMEWORK FOR THINKING ABOUT NEWS
Michael Schudson
The Sociology of News Production
Barbie Zelizer
Has Communication Explained Journalism?
James S Ettema, D Charles Whitney, and Daniel B Wackman
Professional Mass Communicators
 
SECTION TWO: NEWS AS SOCIAL PRODUCTION
 
PART TWO: SELECTING NEWS: THE INDIVIDUAL GATE KEEPER
Pamela J Shoemaker
A New Gatekeeping Model
David Manning White
The Gate Keeper
A Case Study in the Selection of News

 
Glenn L Bleske
Ms Gates Takes Over
Dan A Berkowitz
Refining the Gatekeeping Metaphor for Local Television News
G A Donohue, C N Olien, and P J Tichenor
Structure and Constraints on Community Newspaper Gatekeepers
 
PART THREE: ORGANIZING NEWS: NEWS AS A WORKPLACE PRODUCT
Warren Breed
Social Control in the News Room
A Functional Analysis

 
Charles R Bantz
News Organizations
Conflict as a Crafted Cultural Norm

 
John Soloski
News Reporting and Professionalism
Some Constraints on the Reporting of the News

 
Sharon Dunwoody
Science Writers at Work
 
PART FOUR: PROFESSIONALIZING NEWS: NEWS AS JOURNALISTS' NORMS AND ROUTINES
Gaye Tuchman
Making News by Doing Work
Routinizing the Unexpected

 
Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester
News as Purposive Behavior
On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandal

 
Mark Fishman
News and Non-Events
Making the Visible Invisible

 
Nina Eliasoph
Routines and the Making of Oppositional News
 
PART FIVE: SELLING NEWS: NEWS AS ECONOMIC ENTITY
J Herbert Altschull
Boundaries of Journalistic Autonomy
Charles R Bantz, Suzanne McCorkle and Roberta C Baade
The News Factory
John McManus
The First Stage of News Production
Learning What's Happening

 
Matthew C Ehrlich
The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork
 
SECTION THREE: NEWS AS TEXT
 
PART SIX: TELLING NEWS: NEWS AS FAMILIAR STORY
Robert Rutherford Smith
Mythic Elements in Television News
S Elizabeth Bird and Robert W Dardenne
Myth, Chronicle, and Story
Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News

 
Richard C Vincent, Bryan K Crow and Dennis K Davis
When Technology Fails
The Drama of Airline Crashes in Network Television News

 
Dan A Berkowitz
Non-Routine News and Newswork
Exploring a What-A-Story

 
Jack Lule
The Rape of Mike Tyson
Race, the Press, and Symbolic Types

 
 
PART SEVEN: IDEOLOGY AND NEWS: NEWS AS SOCIAL POWER
Barbara Zelizer
Journalists as Interpretive Communities
Stephen D Reese
The News Paradigm and the Ideology of Objectivity
A Socialist at the Wall Street Journal

 
Marian Meyers
News of Battering
James Stewart Ettema
Press Rites and Race Relations
A Study of Mass-Mediated Ritual

 
Cynthia-Lou Coleman
Science, Technology, and Risk Coverage of a Community Conflict
 
PART EIGHT: EPILOGUE: APPLYING THE TOOLS TO STUDY NEWS

Classic readings remaining relevant for a study of media theory today

Mr Adrian Crookes
School of Media, London College of Communication
August 8, 2013

Rather than scout out the library for all the key journalism texts - get this book! Throughout the years I have taught journalism studies, Journalism methods and Journalism practice, this book has been a vital element in my teaching. Likewise, it has been and will continue to be, a key textbook to my future journalism course.

Mrs Line Thomsen
Inst for Information & Media Studies, Aarhus University
February 22, 2012

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