The liberal field of journalism and the political – The New York Times, Fox News and the Tea Party

This article looks at the challenge posed to the liberal field of journalism by Tea Party populism and Fox News’ attempt to claim the cultural capital of journalism. The Tea Party have defied expectations of a political and rhetorical normalization, declaring liberalism and the New York Times as iredeemable enemies of the populist people. The Times’ coverage of the Tea Party, analyzed in this article, assumes an importance beyond merely covering a political story as it articulates the present state of the field and its understanding of the political. What this author finds is a normative liberal universalist interpretation of the Tea Party movement between the pessimissm of Lippmann or the redemptive humanism of Dewey. The populists are either treated as irrational pseudo-political actors or the credibility of the field is bestowed upon them as the redemptive embodiment of democracy. Neither approach is able to explain populism’s immutable antagonism at an ontological level or the persistence of the Tea Party’s fetishized notion of an America reconciled in private property

The Concerns of Competent Novices during a Mentoring Year

In an innovative group mentoring approach, four experienced midwives mentored four new graduates during their first year of practice. The new graduates were in practice as case-loading registered midwives having completed a three year Bachelor of Midwifery degree. Detailed data about the new graduates' concerns were collected throughout the year of the mentoring project. A range of practice areas—administrative, working environment, professional culture, clinical issues and the mentor group itself—were prominent issues. New graduates were concerned about their own professional development and about relationships with others particularly relationships within the hospital. Technical questions focussed more on craft knowledge that develops through experience than on clinical skills or knowledge. Identifying these concerns provides a foundation for mentors, preceptors and those designing professional development support programmes for the first year of practice. It may be that new graduate midwives educated in a profession with a narrowly defined scope of practice have a different range of concerns to new graduates who have wider scopes of practice. The use of a group model of mentoring for supporting new graduate midwives proved stimulating for mentors and highly supportive of new graduates