Compiled by Robert Stewart (stewartr@ohio.edu)

• Radio and Television on the Internet, by Mike Adams and Daniel Fortune, New World Media. "In the 1950s it was Canadian media theorist Marshall McCluhan who said that in the beginning each new media resembles an old ones it purports to replace. For example, didn't the very first moving pictures resemble the dramatic stage play, vaudeville and the live magic show? It took several decades for movies to actually take advantage of a moving camera and the concept of the shot."
  
  
• Local TV: What Works, What Flops, and Why, by Tom Rosenstiel, Carl Gottlieb, and Lee Ann Brady, The Project for Excellence in Journalism (January 1999). "Skip the Jerry Springer commentary. Lose the body bag shot. Forget the idea that viewers demand mayhem in their local television news. Quality, it turns out, sells."
  
  
• Doing Justice with Cameras in the Courts, by Fred Graham, Media Studies Journal (Winter 1998). "For advocates of cameras in courts, an unfunny thing happened on the way to the millennium—the televised O.J. Simpson trial. In the early years of the 1990s, television coverage of trials expanded rapidly. The concerns of some lawyers and judges that cameras would adversely affect trials were rarely borne out in the growing number of cases that were televised, and it appeared that the camera had made its case. But within two years of the debacle in Judge Lance Ito's courtroom, the rush to televised judgment had stalled."
  
  
• Feeding the Ravenous Appettite of the Press, interview with Barry Scheck, Media Studies Journal (Winter 1998). A defense attorney and law professor argues that reporting privileged information before it appears in court undermines the fairness of trials.
  
  
• Communications jobs, US News & World Report (from US News Career Guide: 20 Hot Job Tracks,"). "HOT- TRACK RUNNER UP: TV news producer. This fall as many as 30 new 24-hour cable news stations went on the air, while local stations and networks added more news to their schedules."
  
  
• The Poynter Institute for Media Studies Online Articles:
  
  Broadcast Journalism Bibliography
  Editorial Meetings to Generate Enterprise
  Enriching Your News Stories
  Getting More Diversity into Content
  Library Resources
  Recruiting People of Color
  Reporting With the Internet
  

• The Diana Aftermath, by Jacqueline Sharkey, American Journalism Review (from November 1997). "Media excesses fueled public outrage and triggered calls for restrictions on newsgathering. Will another round of criticism set the stage for reform?"
  
  
• The Web Effect, by Steve Gelsi, Forbes (from August 13, 1997). "Yes, plenty of old media entities are rushing to establish a web presence if they don't already have one. But the story has other, less obvious dimensions that also merit notice. Money and ideas are not just going from old to new—they're also flowing back the other way."
  
  
• Violence on TV: A Lot of It Is on the Network News, by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post (from August 12, 1997). "From 1993 through 1996, the homicide rate in the United States dropped by 20 percent. The picture was slightly different on the network evening news, where coverage of murders— of celebrities, of tourists, of ordinary Americans—soared by an average of 721 percent during the same period, compared with the three preceding years."
  
  
• How Low Can TV News Go? by Steve Johnson, Columbia Journalism Review (from July/August 1997). "A Morality Play in Chicago Wins Applause, But Will the News Really Change?"
  
  
• News Lite, by James McCartney, American Journalism Review (from June 1997). "Network newscasts are turning away from traditional hard news in favor of entertainment, tabloid topics and news you can use. Is this an abdication of an important agenda-setting role, a desperate strategy for survival—or both?"
  
  
• Risky Journalism ABC's John Stossel bucks a fearful establishment. xInterviewed by Jacob Sullum, Reason (April 1997). "While preparing a 20/20 segment on multiple chemical sensitivity that aired in January, John Stossel sent ABC associate producer Deborah Stone and her sister-in-law, Julie, to Dr. Grace Ziem, an MCS specialist in Baltimore. Prior to the visit, Ziem sent the two healthy women a 16-page questionnaire that included items such as 'Do you crave sweets?' and 'Do you ever forget what you read?' as well as queries about headaches, chest pains, and other symptoms. They answered the questions honestly and brought the completed forms to Ziem's office, where a physician's assistant gave them brief physical exams. After looking at their answers, Ziem told them they were chemically sensitive. She warned Julie not to get pregnant. She recommended that Deborah move out of New York City and enlist a 'smelling buddy' to walk around with her, steering her away from dangerous odors. She charged each woman $925 and prescribed $3,300 in lab tests. Later Ziem heard through the grapevine that the patients were ABC confederates and that Stossel, who had requested an interview, planned to discuss MCS in the context of 'junk science.' She also read a transcript of Stossel's 1994 special, 'Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?,' in which he took a hard look at overhyped hazards such as dioxin, asbestos, and pesticide residues. Surmising that Stossel would not portray her in a positive light, Ziem not only backed out of the interview, she filed criminal charges against him, Deborah Stone, Julie Stone, and two other producers, accusing them of surreptitiously recording the conversation at her office."
  
  
• "You News: It's Not Your Father's Newscast Anymore," by Andie Tucher, Columbia Journalism Review (from March/April 1997). "Call it 'News Lite' or 'News you can use' - by whatever name, TV is racing for relevance. But what gets lost along the way?"
  
  
• Saving CBS News, by David Zurawik and Christina Stoehr, American Journalism Review (from April 1997). "That's the challenge facing President Andrew Heyward. But running a network news operation, and measuring success or failure, have changed dramatically since the network's glory days."
  
  
• The Legacy of Richard Jewel, by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, Columbia Journalism Review (from March/April 1997). "When the finger-pointing has stopped and the juicy settlement is no longer news, something lasting may actually come out of the Richard Jewell episode. And it isn't what many people think."
  
  
• The Lion's Share, by Marc Gunther, American Journalism Review (from March 1997). "Rather than attacking courts for unfavorable outcomes like the one in the Food Lion case, journalists should face up to their own shortcomings and be more careful in their reporting."
  
  
• Steady Year for Salaries, by Bob Papper, Michael Gerhard and Joe Misiewicz, RTNDA Communicator (from March 1997). "Fueled by the Olympics and a presidential election, electronic journalism salaries enjoyed raises a bit above inflation nearly across the board in 1996. Radio news managers also reported salary increases, and several key positions in television newsrooms commanded higher-than-normal salary increases."
  
  
• Why Relevance is Obsolete, by Jeff Greenfield, Time (from February 24, 1997). "Here's a news summary that will hearten all those fearing an onset of O.J. withdrawal: Last Wednesday, the NBC station in Los Angeles led its broadcast with a report, unconfirmed at the time, that Michael Jackson's wife had given birth. A few weeks earlier, the drunk-driving arraignment of Olympic skating champion Oksana Baiul made the CBS Radio Network news. The murders of JonBenet Ramsey and Ennis Cosby promise to be staples of prime-time newsmagazine shows for months to come. These disparate stories all involve matters that mainstream broadcast journalism would once have shunned."
  
  
• The Cable Guy, by Marc Gunther, American Journalism Review (from January/ February 1997). "Fast-rising NBC star Brian Williams' decision to become the anchor on the 24-hour news network MSNBC speaks volumes about how television news is changing."
  
  
• Spelling Out What You Don't Know, by Sinéad O'Brien, American Journalism Review (from December 1996). "When you can't nail down an aspect of a story, is it a good idea to share that information with . . . viewers?"
  
  
• The News Wars, by Richard Zoglin, Time (from October 21, 1996). "Last Sunday's presidential debate was something of a dud in the ratings, drawing only three-quarters of the audience that saw the first Bush-Clinton-Perot encounter in 1992. But no one who missed the event could possibly have felt left out—not if they glanced at a newspaper the next morning, or watched television news, or listened to a radio talk show, or tapped into any one of dozens of computer Websites. In fact, for the next 24 hours they could hardly escape the darn thing."
  
  
• More News, Lower Standards, by Robert MacNeil (excerpts of a speech, Allen H. Neuharth Center for Excellence in Journalism, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, October 16, 1996). "Taking the news media as a whole, which is the way that most of the unsympathetic public sees the profession—en masse—you would have to say that news produced by those respected traditions is in decline. The question is, are the forces causing the decline pushing such journalism out of existence? Paradoxically, there is more stuff calling itself news now than ever. So let me rephrase my millennial question: Does more so-called news mean the end of news?"
  
  
• Schmoozing With the Stars, by Alicia C. Shepard, American Journalism Review (from July/August 1996). "Don Imus put the spotlight on Washington's celebrity journalist dinners—glitzy events where journalists mingle with top government officials and Hollywood stars. Are they a symbol of an elite press corps out of touch with its audience or just fun-filled nights on the town?"
  
  
• Is Local TV News the Scourge of God? Worse Than Locusts? Or just a thoroughly misguided, embarrassingly vacuous, and utterly reprehensible abuse of the public trust? Might #10 (from February/March 1996). "What's notable about local TV news is not just that it sucks, or that it's driven by advertising, or that its suckiness is nearly uniform from station to station. Certainly, this could almost as easily be said about most talk radio, local newspapers or, indeed, magazines. What's notable about local TV news is that it's near impossible to find anyone willing to defend it. From journalism professors to print reporters to media watchdog groups to those who work in the field, everyone is primed to denounce what passes for information on television. Just how bad is local TV news?"
  
  
• Fighting Back, by Alicia C. Shepard, American Journalism Review (from January/February 1996). "Companies unhappy with coverage are attacking the way information is obtained rather than the merits of a story. CBS' decision to scuttle a "60Minutes" piece on tobacco suggest the approach is working."
  
  
• CBS, 60 Minutes, and the Unseen Interview, by Lawrence K. Grossmann, Columbia Journalism Review (from January/February 1996). "The controversy over the aborted 60 Minutes tobacco segment has raised enough issues and questions to fill an imposing journalistic tome on news practices, policies, and ethics."
  
  
• Why Americans Hate the Media, by James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly (from February 1996). "Why has the media establishment become so unpopular? Perhaps the public has good reason to think that the media's self-aggrandizement gets in the way of solving the country's real problems."
  
  
• A Double-Barrelled Assault: How Technology and Judicial Interpretations Threaten Public Access to Law Enforcement Records, by Jamison S. Prime, Federal Communications Law Journal (from 48:2 1996). "It's a scene straight out of the eleven o'clock news: Police in the affluent Chicago suburb of Lake Forest rush to a residential neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon. A ten-year-old boy has been found not breathing in the back of his family's van. When the officer arrives, the boy is dead, an apparent strangulation victim. But instead of the influx of news trucks, normal in such a situation, the town remains quiet—local citizens unaware of the tragedy unfolding down the street."
  
  
• Tabloids, Talk Radio, and the Future of News: Technology's Impact on Journalism, by Annenberg Senior Fellow Ellen Hume. "This paper is the conclusion of a project conducted at The Annenberg Washington Program and draws from the Program's conference Changing the News. It is in part a journalist's 'examination of conscience,' attempts to map out practical ways in which journalists might abandon some old habits, restore others, and invent some new ones to ensure a healthy role in our emerging multimedia culture. Ideally, these approaches will enable the news media to serve more effectively both their own market imperatives and the public interest. Some of the suggestions offered here may seem obvious; others may seem at first to be difficult or impractical. They involve mostly tinkering rather than radical changes. But together, these ideas aim to help journalists reverse a deterioration in the quality of news content that has made them increasingly vulnerable in the new media landscape."
  
  
• The Fairness Doctrine: A Solution in Search of a Problem, by Adrian Cronauer, Federal Communications Law Journal (from 47:1 1995). "For most of this century, American broadcasters suffered from diminished First Amendment status in comparison with their brethren in the print media. Broadcasters' editorial judgments were subject to oversight and second-guessing by the Federal Communications Commission under what was called the "Fairness Doctrine." In 1987, the FCC ceased to enforce the doctrine and in the following years, Congress tried several times to revive it. Many observers in the media and on Capitol Hill now insist the issue is at last dead. Rumors and speculation, though, continue to abound over an eventual revival of the Fairness Doctrine. Advocates of the doctrine's return are now looking to the courts to force the FCC to do what it has refused to do on its own initiative and what Congress has been unable to mandate."
  
  
• Realigning Journalism with Democracy: The Hutchins Commission, Its Times, and Ours, by Stephen Bates, Annenberg Washington Program Annual Reports. "The 1947 report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press stands as a landmark in the history of press criticism. Written by Robert Maynard Hutchins and a dozen other preeminent intellectuals of the day, A Free and Responsible Press offers an astute, literate, and impassioned indictment of the nation's mass media. The 133-page report contends that the press is free for the purpose of serving democracy; a press that shirks its democratic duties will lose its freedom. The report calls on the press to improve itself in the name of morality, democracy, and self-preservation."
  
  
• Tomorrow’s Broadcast Journalists, A report and recommendations from the Jane Pauley Task Force on Mass Communication Education (originally published September 1996), Society of Professional Journalists National Convention. Broadcast news is seen as a glamour business, so glamorous that a vast oversupply of potential employees graduate each year to compete for some of the lowest entry-level wages offered. If the measurement of success were only the number of young people who want to enter the business, then broadcast journalism programs would be considered wildly successful. But, it isn't. Other measurements are causing increasing concern among educators, industry professionals and the graduates who enter the business. Something is wrong. As the numbers of students who want to be broadcast journalists grow, so do the indications of deep problems.