A Tale of Two Industries: An Interpretive Analysis of Media Reports on Textiles and Apparel in North Carolina

This qualitative study explores recent textile and apparel industry dynamics from the point of view of the news media to understand how such dynamics are presented to the general public. North Carolina, having been home to many jobs in these industries, was used as a case study. Data were a total of 600 articles from two of the state’s primary newspapers spanning the period from 1998 to 2003. Content of these articles was analyzed via a hermeneutic, interpretative framework to develop a thematic interpretation of the image of the two industries provided by the news media. Several themes were tied together through three broad topical areas—industry changes, strategic initiatives, and the impact of loss—and provide a multidimensional view of the industries as presented to the public. Further research is needed to understand the impact this image might have on public perceptions of the future of these industries

A Preliminary First Amendment Analysis of Leglisation Treating News Aggregation as Copyright Infringement

The newspaper industry has recently experienced economic difficulty. Profits have declined because fewer people read printed versions of newspapers, preferring instead to get their news through so-called news aggregators who compile newspaper headlines and provide links to storied posted on newspaper websites. This harms newspaper revenue because news aggregators collect advertising revenue that newspapers used to enjoy. Some have responded to this problem by advocating the use of copyright to give newspapers the ability to control the use of their stories and headlines by news aggregators. This proposal is controversial, for news aggregators often do not commit copyright infringement. Accordingly, the use of copyright to help the newspaper industry would likely require amendment of the existing statute. This Article analyzes the constitutionality of such potential legislation under the First Amendment. As the Article will show, legislation that treats news aggregation as copyright infringement changes the traditional contours of copyright in ways that expose copyright to serious First Amendment scrutiny. This analysis will show that Congress does not have a completely free hand in choosing how, if at all, to help the newspaper industry. In fact, Congress must be careful not to unduly restrict the practice of news aggregation