1. Chapters 8 and 14 – Newspapers and the Culture of
Journalism
While these slides were created using material from the above textbook,
they are not official presentations from the publisher, Bedford/St.
Martin’s. In addition, many slides may contain professor’s supplemental
notes on various media topics.

2. “People don’t actually read
newspapers. They step into them
every morning like a hot bath.”
Marshall McLuhan

3. “Real news is bad
news—bad news
about somebody,
or bad news for
somebody.”
Marshall McLuhan

4. In This Chapter…

5. Terms FYI…

6. “Types” of Journalism
1. Yellow journalism
2. Objective journalism (inverted
pyramid)
3. Interpretive journalism
4. Advocacy journalism
5. Precision journalism
6. Literary journalism
7. Consensus-oriented journalism
8. Conflict-oriented journalism
On the next Evaluation, you will find five
fill-in-the-blank questions over these.
Go over them in your textbook.

7. Current Statistics
and Issues
• Declining
Readership:
– 1971 – 78% of
adults read the
paper once a day
– 2007 – 51% do
• Declining Dailies:
– 1950-2006 the
number of daily
papers in the
United States
dropped from
1,772 to 1,452

8. Information Overload

9. News Values
• Today’s News Definition:
– News - the process of gathering
information and making narrative
reports—edited by individuals in for-
profit news organizations—that offer
selected frames of reference; within
those frames, news helps the public
make sense of prominent people,
important events, and unusual
happenings in everyday life.

10. Newsvalues and The
“GateKeeping” Process
• News Values
– Newsworthiness
– Proximity
– Timeliness
– Impact
– Prominence
– Conflict
– Human Interest

11. Newspapers and Democracy
• Of all mass media, newspapers
have played the longest and
strongest role in sustaining
democracy.
• We need heroic reporters to go
where we cannot.
• What is a “free country” without a
“free press”?
• Between 1996-2003, 338 reporters
have been killed trying to do their
jobs—one-hundred of them were
murdered.

12. • Critics say:
– The formulaic design and reporting
styles discourage new approaches to
telling stories and reporting news.
– One-city newspapers only cover
issues that impact upper-middle-class
readers and don’t report enough on
issues impacting the poor and
working class folks.
– Chain ownership takes away the
emphasis on serving a community—
and instead, focuses on profits.
– Chain ownership discourages
watchdog journalism—for fear of
offending investors or advertisers.
Newspapers and Democracy

13. • Twitter
• Blogs
• Other Social Media
• RSS Feeds
• Jon Stewart

14. Fake News
• The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart
• The Colbert Report
• Their humor is in poking
fun at the typical
conventions the media use
to tell stories.
• Audiences, particularly
younger ones, have grown
tired of the same old
formulaic packaging of
sound bites and
newscasts.
“There’s no journalist
today, real or fake,
who is more
significant for people
18 to 25.”
--Seth Siegel, advertising and
branding consultant, talking
about Jon Stewart
What about The Onion?