Compromising the Craft: A Mixed-Methodological Analysis of the Products and Processes of Storytelling in Local Television and Digital News

Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, station ownership was highly restricted to ensure that owners could not dominate in any one market nor own more than a handful of stations across all markets. The Act deregulated station ownership, redefining the role of the station owner from a financial supporter of public communication to an aggressive competitor in the television marketplace. With nearly three quarters of Americans citing local television and digital journalism as their top sources for information, this study serves two purposes: (1) to confirm the existence of storytelling as a professional, value-driven journalistic behavior in local television news and (2) to discuss the current state of the storytelling norm within the context of the larger crisis of journalism. The data from this dissertation come from four methodological approaches to the study of local television news: (1) observations of 18 days of news packaging inside ten local television newsrooms across seven companies and six markets, (2) qualitative comparisons of 32 cases of news packaging for the 6:00 pm newscasts that aired during the observation days, (3) two content analyses of each of the television and web products published in connection to the 32 cases and (4) 62 long-form, semi-structured interviews with the managers, producers, reporters and photographers responsible for those 32 cases. Findings indicate that journalistic norms are indeed vulnerable to corporate demands in particular when combined with a lack of meaningful managerial support. These data show that storytelling in local television news is a performance compromised by the search for economies of scale, where whether an event is covered is primarily the decision of people other than those who determine how an event should be covered

News narratives and television news editing

This study seeks to understand how and why television news editors impose meanings onto news packages through montage editing. Through a qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews, this study will advance the notably few past narrative editing studies by investigating the norms and routines of television news editors. While other researchers recognize the significance of studying montage editing in television news, this is the first study to clarify the relationship between montage techniques and the creation of television news narratives

Implementing multi-sensor systems in a functional language

Journal ArticleWe discuss a methodology for configuring systems of sensors using a functional language. To date no such general methodology exists, and existing multi-sensor systems have been hand-crafted around a particular application. Our main point is that the use of abstraction and of functional language features leads to a natural and simple approach to this problem. Our work exploits features of a particular functional programming environment, Function Equation Language (FEL) running on the REDIFLOW simulator, to develop a simple fault-tolerance scheme that avoids complicated issues of state restoration and switching protocols, and to develop implementations of multi-sensor systems that are very close to the abstract system specification and are hence manifestly correct

A fault tolerant sensor scheme

Journal ArticleMulti-sensor systems pose the problem of how to coherently and efficiently treat the data provided by the various sensors. However. the availability of greater numbers of sensors also broadens the ability to build fault tolerant sensor systems. We define a framework in which sensors can be abstractly defined in terms of computational processes operating on the output from other sensors. Such processes are called logical sensors. Logical sensors make sensor configuration and integration easier and facilitate reconfiguration of senor systems to that fault tolerance can be both expressed and achieved

Logical sensor systems

Journal ArticleMulti-sensor systems require a coherent and efficient treatment of the information provided by the various sensors. We propose a framework the Logical Sensor Specification System, in which the sensors can be abstractly defined in terms of computational processes operating on the output from other sensors. Various properties of such an organization are investigated, and a particular implementation is described

Metabolomic Evaluation of Neutrophilic Airway Inflammation in Cystic Fibrosis

Metabolomic evaluation of cystic fibrosis (CF) airway secretions could identify metabolites and metabolic pathways involved in neutrophilic airway inflammation that could serve as biomarkers and therapeutic targets

Fine-mapping identifies multiple prostate cancer risk loci at 5p15, one of which associates with TERT expression

Associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 5p15 and multiple cancer types have been reported. We have previously shown evidence for a strong association between prostate cancer (PrCa) risk and rs2242652 at 5p15, intronic in the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene that encodes TERT. To comprehensively evaluate the association between genetic variation across this region and PrCa, we performed a fine-mapping analysis by genotyping 134 SNPs using a custom Illumina iSelect array or Sequenom MassArray iPlex, followed by imputation of 1094 SNPs in 22 301 PrCa cases and 22 320 controls in The PRACTICAL consortium. Multiple stepwise logistic regression analysis identified four signals in the promoter or intronic regions of TERT that independently associated with PrCa risk. Gene expression analysis of normal prostate tissue showed evidence that SNPs within one of these regions also associated with TERT expression, providing a potential mechanism for predisposition to disease