You'll be older too

For those of you who still drop by this blog every once in a while (if only to ignore Laura's wake up call below :-) and who are able to read Norwegian, I would like to recommend to you: Steen's Beboerne. It is a booklength piece of feature journalism about life and death in a Norwegian rest home and about care of senior citizens in general. It makes for a fantastic break from fast news journalism, and it'll make you think about your grandparents and about your parents and your downstairs neighbours and about your own old age.

Well done, Steen.

The first chapter is available here.

Updating // Blogging

Hello there all!

A wake up call: I will now challenge you all to update your state of affairs in this public forum!

Is there still someone (else) visiting this blog every now and then? Do you have your own blogs somewhere else? Which blogs do you follow (any interesting links?) How are your projects etc.? AND: how are you all doing?

I'll start:

I have started to slowly realize the power of blogging. I still haven't put up my own, but I think I am in the process of doing so. I regularly check some blogs - personal and media (research) related - such as these:

http://www.mattilintulahti.net/mediablogi/ (FIN)
http://www.apinalaatikko.com/ (FIN)
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/ (US)

At the moment it feels a bit like I am stuck with my PhD project, even if it is slowly progressing...

My project was (may you not recall) about public/civic journalism in three Finnish newspapers. I have collected all my materials, and I should start analyzing the interviews now. By the way; any good advise with using Atlas.ti?

Actually this is the reason why I feel that I am stuck: I think I have repeated the previous sentences for a year now! I hope I'll be able to move in the near future. :)

Well, I have also taken part in some conferences/seminars. I presented a paper here in Tampere in a conference called "Public sphere(s) and their boundaries" in May and I took part in ECREA's Summer School in Tartu, Estonia in August, which was useful and fun! I have also been preparing an article to be published in English.

I'll also have couple of courses of teaching coming up and I am taking a course on pedagogy on my own, too.

But that's about it. How about you others? Has anyone besides Christine already finished?

Best,
Laura R

New Journal on Journalism: Journalistica

The first issue of Journalistica is supposed to be out by now (...has anybody seen it?) Journalistica is a Danish journal on journalism which will be publishing research articles not on media, culture or politics, but on - journalism. This means that political, cultural and media issues will be discussed, of course, but always with a focus on their consequences for journalism. The journal accepts articles in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian as well as English. The first issue is concerned with Ethics in Journalism (it had to be, says editor).

Good riddance

Sooooo---yes, I handed in my dissertation (April 5, 2:57 pm). Please excuse me for copying-and-pasting, but here comes an English summary - for your information.

Writers Who Make a Scene. Spectacular Personal Reportage in Denmark Today as Patterned on the Work of Günter Wallraff and Hunter S. Thompson. PhD dissertation submitted to the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication: Division of Rhetoric, University of Copenhagen, Denmark ∙ April, 2006.

Through a striking and consistent rhetorical practice, the German writer and social critic Günter Wallraff (1942-) and American writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson (USA, 1937-2005) have each established their own personal brand of written journalistic reportage, namely wallraffing (role reporting) and gonzo journalism. Both are frequently imitated by colleagues all over the world, though oftentimes in a reductive fashion which turns on the negative positioning of the writer as being simply an alternative to a staid ‘mainstream’. They present themselves as more subjective, sensitive, audacious and creative than the rest. This dissertation argues for establishing spectacular personal reportage as a subgenre based on wallraffing and gonzo as rhetorical patterns which include a common ethos based on a belief in the individual (and revealed) rhetorical agency of the reporter. Through close readings (with Leff (2003) as a major point of reference) of texts by Wallraff and Thompson alongside texts by some of their prominent Danish successors (Michael Elsborg, Allan Nagel, Mads Brügger, Jakob S. Boeskov, Morten Sabroe, Claus Beck-Nielsen, Michael Jeppesen, and Flemming Chr. Nielsen), the dissertation highlights a number of rhetorical pitfalls regarding the writer’s presentation of self and enactment of agency. Generally, however, an argument is made for recognizing this subgenre as a potential stronghold for rhetorical agency in the print media. More specifically (with reference to Sheard (1996)), the texts are read as performances of critical and mediatory epideictic work-in-progress. Each writer sets out to experimentally establish some common ground between the social situation in the field on the one hand and the rhetorical situation on the other. They seek, sometimes almost desperately, to affirm and exemplify basic standards of journalism or human interaction, in a substandard world. Typically the reporters therefore willfully challenge their own standards, by bringing themselves into tricky or even dangerous situations (cf. readings in Chapter III: Handling Weapons in Writing) where they grabble with the question of what kind of (journalistic) truths to pursue (cf. readings in Chapter IV: Handling the Truth in Writing) and finally make interaction and negotiation with other people, including the reader, the focus of concern (Chapter V: Handling Other People in Writing). The adoption and adaption of the epideitic role becomes a critical, unusually physical and precious process as rhetorical momentum must be created more or less from scratch. In some texts the quest for common ground or matters worth celebrating simply fails, and in others a rhetorically iconoclastic approach is required before any epideictic celebration can begin.
The dissertation is written in Danish as a contribution to the debate within professional journalism, journalism studies, and rhetorical studies in Scandinavia regarding the question of personal and admitted perspectives versus disguised or corporate ones and, moreover, to enable and qualify the practice of spectacular personal reporting in the Scandinavian languages in the future.

How about Tartu, Estonia?

Hello there!

Is anyone of you planning to go to Summer Shcool in Tartu, Estonia this year? Here is the info:
http://www.comsummerschool.org/

Did aynone attend last year? Was it worth it?

I think I will apply even though the topic Enlarging Europe - enlarging participation? is not entirely in line with my reserach topic. I hope I will meet many of you there, if I get accepted.

Take care!
Laura

Nordic Media and Journalism Research

New journalism research in Denmark

A week ago a dissertation on journalism was published in Danmark.
The dissertation is written by Ida Schultz from Roskilde University Centre. For you who read Danish the title is: "Bag om nyhedskriterierne. En etnografisk feltanalyse af nyhedsværdier i journalistisk praksis".

Ida Schultz combines ethnographic newsroom studies with Bordieu and his concepts: journalistic field, newshabitus and newsroom capitals.
Schultz's aim is to explore news values and newsworthiness as well as journalistic practices ans the structures that enable or constrain them.

The dissertation conceptualises news work as ongoing positioning within the journalistic field. Specifically, the dissertation shows how many working definitions of newsworthiness ('timely', 'original' as in scoop) are not simply the result of gatekeeping or organizational routines within single newsrooms, but are constructed relationally across the field as such.

Schultz argues that the ongoing positioning of stories, by-lines and media points towards a central, doxic news value in the Danish journalistic field: Exclusivity. In short her conclusion is that newswork is also about positioning the news.

Schultz's dissertation points towards five conclusions:

1. The five news criteria of Danish news journalism (timeliness, importance, identification, conflict, sensation) can not solely explain newsworthiness.

2. Newswork is positioning: Newswork is about positioning stories in relation to the current affairs, about positioning in relation to competitor-collegueas and about positioning the media in the journalistic field.

3. Exclusivity is an important news value.

4. The ideal of The Good Journalist har changed from Information (1945-1964) to Agenda Setting (1965-1984) to Exposure (1985-2004)

5. Professionalization of the field has meant a loss of journalictic autonomy.

If you understand Danish I here link to an article I wrote last week about the dissertation
http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/default.asp?articleid=12235

Alle the best
Gitte

Anybody planning on going to IAMCR Conference?

Hi!

I was wondering if any of you is planning on going to the next IAMCR Conference in Egypt? I haven't decided myself yet - depends on whether I got money or not - but it would be nice to know if some others are on their way to there.

/merja