Category Books

Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader » (1st Edition)

Book cover image of Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader by Daniel A. Berkowitz

Authors: Daniel A. Berkowitz
ISBN-13: 9780761900764, ISBN-10: 0761900764
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Sage Publications (CA)
Date Published: January 1997
Edition: 1st Edition

Author Biography: Daniel A. Berkowitz

Book Synopsis

What is news and why does it turn out the way it does? These questions are addressed in this Reader. Classic news studies representing several methodologies and approaches are presented to guide students in their initial exploration into the topics. Berkowitz provides an orientation for a social approach to studying news, departing from the premise that news is a human construction that gains its characteristics through the social world from which it emerges. The first section of readings introduces a theoretical background for analyzing the sections that follow. Each of the eight sections are clearly and concisely introduced by Berkowitz, enabling students to interpret the salient points from and implications of representative articles in the field.

	Acknowledgments
	Overview: Why a "Social Meanings of News" Perspective?
	A Framework for Thinking About News	3
1	The Sociology of News Production	7
2	Has Communication Explained Journalism?	23
3	Professional Mass Communicators	31
	Selecting News: The Individual Gatekeeper	53
4	A New Gatekeeping Model	57
5	The "Gate Keeper": A Case Study in the Selection of News	63
6	Ms. Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study	72
7	Refining the Gatekeeping Metaphor for Local Television News	81
8	Structure and Constraints on Community Newspaper Gatekeepers	95
	Organizing News: News as a Workplace Product	105
9	Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis	107
10	News Organizations: Conflict as a Crafted Cultural Norm	123
11	News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on the Reporting of the News	138
12	Science Writers at Work	155
	Professionalizing News: News as Journalists' Norms and Routines	169
13	Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected	173
14	News as Purposive Behaviour: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents and Scandals	193
15	News and Nonevents: Making the Visible Invisible	210
16	Routines and the Making of Oppositional News	230
	Selling News: News as Economic Entity	255
17	Boundaries of Journalistic Autonomy	259
18	The News Factory	269
19	The First Stage of News Production: Learning What's Happening	286
20	The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork	301
	Telling News: News as Familiar Story	321
21	Mythic Elements in Television News	325
22	Myth, Chronicle and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News	383
23	When Technology Fails: The Drama of Airline Crashes in Network Television News	351
24	Non-Routine News and Newswork: Exploring a What-a-Story	362
25	The Rape of Mike Tyson: Race, the Press and Symbolic Types	376
	Ideology and News: News as Social Power	397
26	Journalists as Interpretive Communities	401
27	The News Paradigm and the Ideology of Objectivity: A Socialist at the Wall Street Journal	420
28	News of Battering	441
29	Press Rites and Race Relations: A Study of Mass-Mediated Ritual	457
30	Science, Technology and Risk Coverage of a Community Conflict	483
	Epilogue: Applying the Tools to Study News	497
	Name Index	503
	Subject Index	513
	About the Editor	531
	List of Authors	533