Eating, Reading, and Writing: An Interview with Andrew Lam

Award-winning author and New American Media editor Andrew Lam discusses his work, contemporary journalism, the complexity of cultural exchange, and what he hopes to see when his work is read in a classroom

Assessing the Functions of African Cultural Values in Journalism Practice: A Case for Ethical Journalism in Africa

This study investigated the functional role of African cultural values in the practice of ethical journalism in Nigeria, using Ananmbra State as a case study. The objectives centred on determining the functions and use of African cultural values in ensuring ethical journalism practice in Nigeria. The survey of 162 journalists working with different media and information organizations in Anambra State used questionnaire and Focus Group Discussions to obtain data. Findings revealed that the journalists studied perceived African cultural values as having a useful role in the practice of journalism in Nigeria. This role covers a broad range of issues which centre on encouraging: ethical practice, dedication to duty, hard work, and development-inclined journalism. It was recommended that the training and re-training of journalists to equip them with knowledge of African cultural values and inculcate in them the orientation of resorting to the values in their day-to-day journalistic activities is imperative.    Key words: African cultural values, ethical challenges, ethical journalism, functions, journalism practice, perception

Trends in Cultural Journalism

Various studies report that cultural journalism increasingly focuses on service and entertainment instead of serious arts coverage. The press prioritizes popular culture over traditional high arts to growing extent. However, this shift in journalistic attention doesn’t necessarily signify a straightforward decline in aesthetic standards, as popular cultural forms like film have developed along the lines of high art principles in the past decades. This article charts trends in American, Dutch, French, and German film journalism between 1955 and 2005. It demonstrates that coverage is typified by a serious aesthetic approach from the 1970s onwards. The principles of art are seen to steer journalists’ attention to an important degree: the review remains the predominant journalistic genre, and newspapers devote more attention to films by prestigious directors than strictly commercial moviemakers. As such, film’s prominence in the press doesn’t seem to indicate a decline in serious cultural journalism but rather a revaluation of a popular cultural form

Journalism Versus Cultural Studies

According to academics in the field of cultural studies, the belief that journalism can report the world truthfully and objectively is not only wrong but naive. However, they claim that the incorporation of cultural studies into academic teaching allows journalists to be trained to overcome illusions of this kind and to see behind the superficialities of traditional professional practice. This paper is a critique of these claims and a response to those academics who have disputed the author's previous work on this issue. It examines eight claims about journalism made by cultural studies academics and shows them all to be seriously flawed. They are either logically incoherent, ignorant of the nature of journalism, or seek to impose a political agenda onto the curriculum

When Facts, Truth, and Reality Are God-Terms: On Journalism\u27s Uneasy Place in Cultural Studies

This article tracks the uneasy coexistence of journalism and cultural studies, arguing that the tensions between the two fields have worked to mutual disadvantage. The article suggests that rethinking the ways in which journalism and its inquiry might be made a more integral part of cultural studies could constitute a litmus test of sorts for cultural studies. Figuring out how to embrace journalism\u27s god-terms of facts, truth, and reality alongside its own regard for subjectivity and construction could help move cultural studies into further degrees of maturation as a field

Journalistic Practice and the Cultural Valuation of New Media: Topicality, Objectivity, Network

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, American journalism is undergoing an existential crisis provoked by the emergence of digital and networked communication. As the economic model of producing journalism is undergoing significant changes, this study argues that the crisis of journalism is primarily a cultural crisis of valuation. Because the practices that traditionally defined the exclusivity of journalism as a form of public communication have been transposed to the online and digital environment through social media and blogs, such practices no longer value journalism in the same terms like in the age of mass media. The key to understanding the cultural crisis of journalism in the present, this study argues, is to revise the traditional narrative and its associated terminologies of the institutionalization of journalism. Journalism is thus defined as a structure of public communication, which needs to be enacted by producers and audiences alike to become socially meaningful. The consequence of seeing journalism as a structure sustained through social practices is that it allows to see the relation between audiences and their journalistic media as constitutive for the social function of new media in journalism. Through the analytically central dimension of practice, the study presents key moments in the history of modern journalism, where the meaning of new media was negotiated. These moments include the emergence of topical news media oriented toward a mass market (the penny press in the 1830s) and the definition of a schema of objectivity which valued journalistic practice in professional and scientific terms around the turn of the twentieth century in analogy to photographic media. In each phase, material, cognitive and social practices helped to define the value of a given new medium for journalism. Through the schemas of topicality and objectivity, journalistic practice institutionalized a privileged structure of public communication. The legacy of defining these schemas is then regarded as the central reason for the cultural crisis of journalistic practice in the present, as practices have been transposed and re-valued to sustain either forms of alternative journalism (as peer-production) or forms of self-communication in network media like blogs. Neither the form nor the technology of the blog alone can explain this differential social relevance but only the different ways in which social practices integrated and value new media. The study synthesizes an interdisciplinary array of concepts from cultural studies, sociology and journalism studies on subjects such as public communication, interaction, news production and cultural innovation. The theoretical framework of practice theories is then applied to an extensive body of primary and secondary source material, in order to retrace the cultural valuation of new media in a historically-comparative perspective. The study offers a theoretical and empirical contribution to the analysis of cultural innovation, which can be adopted to other cultural forms and media

Social Movements as Agents of Innovation: Citizen Journalism in South Korea

This article aims to further develop the field of innovation studies by exploring the emergence of citizen journalism in South Korea’s social movement sector. To achieve this aim, the framework of innovation theory has been extended to innovations in social fields beyond technology and the economy. Our findings show that the emergence of citizen journalism resulted from brokerage activities among journalists, labor and unification activists, and progressive intellectuals. Despite different cultural visions and structural interests, these groups succeeded in building coalitions and constituted a sociocultural milieu which promoted reciprocal learning by allowing actors to realize new ideas and to exchange experiences. The empirical part of the study is based on a social network analysis of social movement groups and alternative media organizations active in South Korea between 1995 and 2002.Innovation, citizen journalism, social movement, civil sphere, social network, democratization

Journalism in a Small Place

Journalism in a Small Place explores the changes and challenges in journalism and communication in the Caribbean in the twenty-first century. Tracing the history of media in the English speaking Caribbean, this book provides insight into the development of these industries from their inception under British imperial rule to their current focus on advancing national development in the post-independence period. The influence of US media on media content and cultural tastes, and the lingering effects of colonialism on media are also investigated, drawing on globalization theories of hybridity. Interviews with journalists, editors, and media owners in English speaking Caribbean countries provide firsthand insight into the profession and practice of journalism in the region, highlighting the social and cultural context in which the media industries operate. Additionally, this book describes the current economic success of Caribbean journalism and the factors driving its new trends. It provides an overview of the current state of Caribbean journalism as it reflects on these questions: What is the purpose of journalism in small Caribbean countries? What are the challenges of practicing journalism in the Caribbean in the twenty-first century? What is the future of journalism in the Caribbean? In response, Storr develops a theoretical and practical response to concerns of professional ethics, responsible performance, and the training and education of journalists in the region. In doing so, Journalism in a Small Place elucidates the impact of journalism and communication on the social, political, economic and cultural aspects of Caribbean people's lived experiences, and journalism's power to promote and effect social change

Identity, Empathy and Argument: Immigrants in Culture and Entertainment Journalism in the Scandinavian Press

Cultural and entertainment journalism deals with aesthetic experiences, advice on cultural consumption, as well as reflection and debate on ethical and moral humanistic issues. Does this sub-field of journalism systematically represent immigrants and integration differently than the other news and commentary articles? Comparing immigration discourse in a representative sample of six Scandinavian newspapers between 1970 and 2016 using content analysis we find that cultural journalism, while clearly reverbing with the dominant national issues at the time, did provide alternative perspectives. It not only brought up themes like racism, multiculturalism, national identity and religion more often, but was also more positive, more gender-balanced and more often gave a voice to immigrants than other news did. A closer qualitative reading further suggests a typology of ten main story-types, varying relatively little over time and across national borders. Cultural journalism in this case illustrates how the cultural public sphere can positively contribute to the debate of complicated issues in the public sphere by offering resources for identification, empathy and arguments for specific points of view.publishedVersio