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Journalists and librarians share a common goal of providing information to the public, yet very little is known about how journalists' information seeking behavior intersects with libraries. This case study seeks to understand the information seeking behavior of environmental journalists by investigating how their information needs intersect with the library and how their information seeking behavior changed over the course of their 9-month fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven environmental journalists at the beginning and end of their fellowship, while an open coding approach was used to identify themes. Generally, study participants conducted research by (1) identifying a story idea and conducting a preliminary search, (2) expanding their knowledge on the topic through scientific articles and interviews with experts, (3) conducting field research, and (4) completing research when information is redundant and they are confident with their knowledge. This process, and their growing feelings of confidence as they conducted research, were similar to, but not exactly, Kuhlthau's Information Search Process model. Their interactions with the library were mostly limited to accessing books and articles. Overall, there was little change in the participants' information seeking behavior, possibly due to limited time to learn new resources, reliance on preexisting research habits, professional competence, and lack of awareness of library services (e.g. librarians, workshops, and public academic library access). An understanding of journalists' information seeking behavior can help librarians conduct instruction and outreach efforts that address journalists' information needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the case of La Gordiloca, a Facebook-based journalist from Laredo, TX, to interrogate the increasing role of social media within news-making processes. Applauded by The New York Times as a paragon of twenty-first century journalism and under scrutiny from local businesses and law enforcement for defamation and misuse of official information, she occupies a space between digital journalist and social media celebrity. Combining a content analysis with focus groups of Laredo residents, we argue that her work reflects a constitutive paradox unique to social media journalism: Whereas new technologies expand opportunities for citizens to participate in the process of news production, they also enable the corrosion of norms/practices that oriented previous forms of news production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using gatekeeping theory as a conceptual framework, this study examines social media's influence on American sports journalists' perception of gatekeeping, particularly sports journalists who cover elite sports. Seventy-seven print sports journalists covering professional sports were asked if their definition of gatekeeper has changed since they began using social media for news-gathering purposes. Thirty-six participants did not think their definition of gatekeeper had changed. The 26 respondents who did think it had changed were asked to explain how. Responses were coded into 1 of the 5 categories in Shoemaker and Reese's Hierarchy of Influences model--individual, media routines, organization, extramedia, and ideological. Results suggest that for practitioners who do believe there has been a change, they see social media as changing their day-in, day-out job routines, as opposed to extramedia influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on legal treatise and be more pointed by not only reciting the history of the law and intrusive newsgatherings with issues regarding prying, spying and lying.

The term tabloidization describes the spillover of tabloid journalism's characteristics – which aim to attract recipients' attention – to other media types, particularly elite media. The validity of the common assumption that tabloidization has increased over the last decades is unknown since long-term studies are widely lacking. Applying a most similar systems design, the current study pursues several goals: On the macro-level, it aims to clarify whether campaign coverage of seven German and Austrian elite newspapers has become more tabloidized over six decades (1949–2009) and whether the long-term developments are related to three structural drivers of tabloidization – tabloid newspapers, commercial television, and the Internet. On the meso-level, the study investigates among outlet differences in tabloidization. Tabloidization is conceptualized as multidimensional, considering the topic, focus, and style dimension. The results show that tabloidization in general and in the single newspapers has increased, but only slightly and only in a few respects. While some of the hypothesized structural influences on tabloidization are confirmed, other, more situative drivers of tabloidization seem to account for short-term ups and downs in levels of tabloidization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hierarchy of influences model has been used to examine sociological influences on journalistic output originating from both inside and outside the newsroom. While providing useful snapshots of journalistic practice, studies using the hierarchical model have rarely accounted for changes in newsgathering over time. This study examines the emergence of climate journalism in the Philippines, one of the most vulnerable nations to the effects of climate change. Drawing on interviews with Filipino journalists, it finds that journalists struggled to place climate-related stories until after extreme weather events, particularly Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. News articles about climate change continued to grow in the following years, suggesting that a fundamental shift in the newsworthiness of climate change took place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how journalists covering international humanitarian crises make decisions regarding what types of information to include in stories. Specifically, the inclusion/exclusion of solutions-oriented information is addressed, since crises represent a key time during which the potential for international engagement is discussed in the mainstream media. Interviews with journalists covering hunger crises in Africa reveal an internal tension between maintaining a neutral, unbiased position and writing in a way that supports engagement and action. Ironically, perhaps, journalists find that including solutions-oriented information amounts to unethical and biased coverage, despite the fact that inclusion of solutions to social problems is an accepted and institutionalized aspect of the US news media's mandate to the public. Reasons for this seeming contradiction are discussed, and I argue that solutions-oriented information not only can be included without demonstrating bias, but that it ought to be included to support ethical coverage that properly informs citizens about potential paths for political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here I argue, first, that we should conceive of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as types of epistemically pernicious groups, and second, that while analyses of such groups have typically focused on relationships between individual members, at least part of what such groups epistemically pernicious pertains to the way that members rely on the groups themselves as sources of information. I argue that member reliance on groups results in groups being attributed a degree of credibility that outruns their warrant, a process I call groupstrapping. I argue that by recognizing the groupstrapping as an illicit method of forming and updating beliefs, we can make progress on some of the open questions concerning epistemically pernicious groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to establish reliable predictors of journalists' perceptions of the acceptability of various controversial newsgathering practices such as deception and intrusion have so far produced inconsistent results. This paper proposes an exploratory theoretical model, based on risk-taking theory, which identifies constructs that could be used to predict journalists' use of these practices. It validates this model using data from a survey of practising journalists in New Zealand. It shows that economic and organisational influences on journalists, their role perceptions, and their ethical orientation predict the extent to which journalists see these practices as justified. Organisational influences are moderated by experience, as predicted by risk-taking theory, but seem to have significance only for mid-level experience. This has important implications for journalism practice, regulation, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in news gathering and dissemination technologies have made it possible that news stories are being shared simultaneously around the world. One internationally newsworthy event can generate dozens of news reports in multiple languages almost immediately by means of translation. Although news translation research has gained traction over the last 15 years, it has thus far tended to focus only on one language pair or on European language combinations because of practical limitations (e.g., language proficiency of researchers, access to content). This paper will illustrate the benefits of collaboration across languages and cultures for deepening our understanding of global news translation. To explore the possibilities as well as the limitations of this multilingual collaboration, a speech by the Japanese prime minister commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender ending World War II and reports about this speech in English and German media are analysed. For a detailed comparative analysis, two direct quotations from the speech were selected which were included in nearly all of the reports. We reflect on the variation identified in the news reports with reference to sources the journalists used, their own language proficiency and the potential role of an intermediary text or language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even democracies endowed with the most active free press struggle to maintain diversity of news coverage. Consolidation and market forces may cause only a few dominant players to control the news cycle. Editorial policies may be biased by corporate ownership relations, narrowing news coverage and focus. To an increasing degree this problem also applies to social media news distribution, since it is subject to the same socio-economic drivers. To study the effects of consolidation and ownership on news diversity, we model the diversity of Chilean coverage on the basis of ownership records and social media data. We create similarity networks of news outlets on the basis of their ownership and the topics they cover. We then examine the relationships between the topology of ownership networks and content similarity to characterize how ownership affects news coverage. A network analysis reveals that Chilean media is highly concentrated both in terms of ownership as well as in terms of topics covered. Our method can be used to determine which groups of outlets and ownership exert the greatest influence on news coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermal imaging technology, which was once used primarily by the military, has made its way into the civilian world. Journalists have begun making use of the technology, and, as that use becomes more prevalent, concerns about legal issues also arise. This article, relying on tort privacy cases, Fourth Amendment case law, and theoretical conceptualizations of privacy, provides an in-depth examination of the legal implications surrounding the use of thermal imaging devices for newsgathering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies have examined how professional journalists use social media at work. However, we know little about the differences between younger and older journalists' use of social media for newsgathering. We conducted 16 in-depth interviews comparing eight young journalists (median age = 24) with eight older journalists (median age = 50) in Norway. The younger journalists reported using multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, to collect politically significant information, news observations, sources and comments. By comparison, the older journalists reported relying heavily on elite sources on Twitter. This reluctance to use a variety of social media platforms may limit older journalists' exposure to a variety of news sources. As a result, younger journalists seem to follow a more multi-perspectival approach to social media and may be more innovative in their newsgathering. Hence, younger journalists may be exposed to more diverse types of news sources than older journalists. Together, the findings indicate a generational gap in 'networked publics' concerning how younger and older journalists approach newsgathering in social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of data is often viewed as a potentially powerful democratic force in journalism, promoting the flow of information sources and enriching debates in the public sphere. We explore a key feature of the relationship between data and journalism, drawing upon the largest ever study of statistical references in news reporting (N = 4285) commissioned by the BBC Trust to examine how statistics inform coverage in a wide range of UK television, radio and online media (N = 6916). Overall, our study provides a cautionary tale about the use of data to enlighten democratic debate. While we found that statistics were often referenced in news coverage, their role in storytelling was often vague, patchy and imprecise. Political and business elites were the main actors referencing statistics and interpreting them, but many of their claims were neither questioned nor interrogated further by journalists, with statistics often traded by opposing sides of an argument without independent analysis. In order to enhance the independent scrutiny of statistics, we argue a radical shift in newsgathering and journalistic interpretation is needed, which allows reporters to draw on a wider range of statistical sources and to adopt more critical judgements based on the weight of statistical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Digital technology, the Internet and mobile media are transforming the journalism and media landscape by influencing the news-gathering and sourcing process. The empowering capacities of social media applications may constitute a key element for more balanced news access and 'inclusive journalism'. We will build on two contrasting views that dominate the social media sourcing debate. On the one hand, the literature shows that journalists of legacy media make use of social media sources to diversify their sourcing network including bottom-up sources such as ordinary citizens. On the other, various authors conclude that journalists stick with their old sourcing routines and continue to privilege top-down elite sources such as experts and government officials. In order to contribute towards this academic debate we want to clarify the Twitter practices of professional Belgian health journalists in terms of how they use the platform to monitor potential sources. Therefore, we examined the 1146 Twitter 'followings' of six Belgian health journalists by means of digital methods and social network analysis. Results show that top-down actors are overrepresented in the 'following' networks and that Twitter's 'following' function is not used to reach out to bottom-up actors. In the overall network, we found that the health journalists mainly use Twitter as a 'press club' to monitor media actors. If we zoom in specifically on the 'following' network of the health-related actors, we found that media actors are still important, but experts become the most followed group. Our findings also underwrite the 'power law' or the 'long tail' distribution of social network sites as very few actors take a central position in the 'following' lists while the large majority of actors are not systematically monitored by the journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores public knowledge creation by examining how the New York Times produced Pakistan news between 1954 and 1971, the formative period of United States of America (USA)–Pakistan relations. These years encapsulate not only the heyday of cooperation between the two governments, but also the American public's first major introduction to the South Asian country by the increasingly intrepid news media. A leader in shaping that introduction was the New York Times. While most studies of the American media focus on measuring the effect of news exposure and content on public opinion, this article focuses on the theoretically underexplored aspect of news production: foreign news gathering. With a lens on South Asia, it shows that foreign news gathering involves the straddling of on-the-ground political and logistical constraints that generate an atmosphere of high uncertainty. By exploring the limitations on news gathering faced by America's leading newspaper's foreign correspondents in Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s, this article identifies an important historical source of the ambiguity characterizing USA–Pakistan relations. The findings are based on recently released archival material that offers rare insight into the news-production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new framework which can utilize multi-modal social media information to automatically generate related reports for users or government. First, we utilize DBSCAN (Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) to detect events in official news websites. Then, some unofficial information details are extracted from social network platforms (Foursquare, Twitter, YouTube), which will be leveraged to enhance the official report in order to excavate some latent and useful information. In this process, we applied some classic textual processing methods and computer vision technologies to reduce the noise information uploaded by user generated contents (UGCs). Then, we applied LSTM-CNN model to generate the related image caption and successfully convert visual information to textual information. Finally, we extracted some latent topics using graph cluster method to generate the final report. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, we got a large of multi-source event dataset from official news websites and Twitter. Finally, the user study demonstrates the practicability of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between journalists and political sources has been characterized by a tug of war between reporters and officials where top politicians have the upper hand in the coproduction of news through their ability to provide critical information subsidies that most news media rely on. The dynamic of the journalist–source relationship has, however, mostly been analyzed in stable high-income democracies. This article goes beyond existing research by analyzing the relationship between reporters and officials in Nigeria, in principle, a democracy but in practice, a hybrid regime where journalists face substantial political pressures. Through a combination of content analysis and in-depth interviews, it shows how journalists in Nigeria are not only dependent on the information subsidies found in the West but also affected by politicians using positive (monetary awards) and negative (intimidation and violence) tangible incentives that go well beyond information subsidies. The article argues that this shapes the nature of coproduction of news in Nigeria and that more broadly, the resources available to politicians to influence journalists through such positive tangible incentives and the degree to which they, with impunity, can use negative tangible incentives, should be key dimensions for future comparative work on relations between reporters and officials as political communication research goes beyond stable democracies where money handouts and violence is unlikely to be the key factors influencing news production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how journalistic practices have evolved as news producers learn the importance of ensuring trusted individuals gathering content on the ground are kept safe. This research, in particular, focuses on the relationship between BBC journalists and those producing content and information in Syria to whom there is a duty of care. Drawing on interviews with BBC news journalists, this study finds that relationships with citizen journalists and social media literate activists have become more networked and complex over the past five years. Contributors have become trusted sources of content and intelligence, and journalists have at times encouraged eyewitnesses to participate in the newsgathering process. For an international broadcaster this poses challenges, both ethical and physical. Journalists must navigate the path between ensuring high-value information and content can be accessed while maintaining a rapport with people operating in a conflict zone. Journalists must fulfil their duty of care to these individuals, ensuring their safety in a country which is one of the most dangerous in the world to report from. Findings indicate a change in approach by news producers in terms of engagement with citizen journalists covering Syria. These changes in working practices are based on experience gained over 10 years where journalists have interacted with citizen journalists and eyewitnesses in breaking news situations across the globe. From the perspective of the journalist, a critical apparatus has also been developed to ensure links with citizen journalists can continue and flourish while minimising risks and challenges to both parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research adds to our understanding of health and science reporting by identifying and examining the numbers, types, and simultaneous uses of resources selected by health and science journalists and editors at the initial stages of reporting, and relates this to journalists’ perceived health reporting knowledge. A telephone survey of 141 health and science journalists and editors selected from 259 community newspapers in Missouri was conducted. Information sources included those that were highly credible, easy to access, already vetted by peers, and that enabled habitual reporting. Though the majority used multiple sources to generate story ideas, about one-third of respondents used no information sources. Journalists and editors’ perceived health reporting knowledge acted as a trigger in prompting more reliance on a wider diversity of information sources, greater use of empirical evidence in health stories, and more time spent researching/writing health stories. Implications for community news organizations include education to improve actual and perceived knowledge of journalists on health and science information gathering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study takes a theoretical approach of gatekeeping by assessing how transnational networks of news gathering indicate a shift in the conceptualization of journalism culture. Research on journalism culture, which has traditionally been conceptualized within a national system, is linked with the historical development of globalization to propose an analytical conceptualization of journalism culture in a transnational news-gathering environment. Based on empirical studies from the past six decades, the study presents three analytical levels of transnational journalism culture—evaluative, cognitive, and performative—that might provide a conceptual framework for empirical studies interested in news construction in a transnational space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are people more likely to notice and remember advertisements if people or things from the readers' own geographic area are featured? The authors found an answer to this question by figuratively moving the psychological laboratory into the field. They found that what may attract readers to an editorial item may not attract them to an advertisement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies conclude that from the point of view of journalists, the media convergence brings an improvement in the quality of journalism. Others argue that this phenomenon is rather a managerial subterfuge, as it requires fewer staff, and by default fewer journalists. The media convergence encourages the public to participate in the process of creating the content, but as a downside called upon is the difference in participation in that certain segments of the public are neglected and are unable to participate in the new media culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was aimed at ascertaining the level at which broadcast journalists in South-East Nigeria deploy the social media in news gathering and transmission. The survey research method was used while the questionnaire served as the measuring instrument. The entire 867 broadcast journalists in the South-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria constituted the population of the study from where a sample of 274 was drawn using the Taro Yamane's formula. Using the purposive sampling technique, the researchers found that broadcast journalists in South- East Nigeria have not significantly embraced the social media in the news gathering and transmission. It was therefore recommended among others that broadcast journalists in South-East Nigeria should embrace the social media platforms as the platforms represent potent tools for the practice of modern day journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KA-SAT is the first of the second generation of high throughput satellite (HTS) systems. Constructed by Airbus, it was launched in 2010. It delivers over 90 Gbps capacity over 82 spots in Ka-band over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It represents a complete infrastructure with the ground segment complement so as to deliver a suite of services including Internet access, broadcasting and satellite news gathering. The KA-SAT HTS system includes an integrated ground and satellite infrastructure: the ground infrastructure comprises a network of ten gateways that are connected to the main European point of presences, to the Internet backbone, to the network operations centre and a centralised operational control centre by Skylogic in Turin. Skylogic interfaces with all the customers. Besides the operational KA-SAT, there are four other HTS systems launched or to be launched by Eutelsat: EUTELSAT 3B launched in April 2014, EUTELSAT 36C in 2015, EUTELSAT 65 West A in 2016 and EUTELSAT 172B in 2017. These systems represent a range of HTS systems for Eutelsat, which push the envelope of applications and provide the performance critical to operators. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As society’s storytellers, journalists often draw upon a standard set of archetypal forms to convey all of the day’s news to their readers. This study considers the practice of commemorative sports journalism, in particular how (and by whom) the stories surrounding Title IX’s 40th anniversary were constructed at two of the nation’s leading sports news outlets. Drawing from a combination of narrative and critical discourse analysis grounded in hegemonic theory, we contend that ESPN and Sports Illustrated shifted away from the traditional battle-of-the-sexes narrative; the end result was a celebratory women-centric model, one that offered progressive ways of understanding Title IX but sometimes fell prey to flaws associated with what White has called the ‘content of the form’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the public and citizen journalism movements of recent years and offers some perspectives on how the current and future journalism can function to benefit democratic public life. A major argument of this article is that ‘conversation’ defines news as a process of negotiated social meaning and that it should be the organizing principle of today’s journalism. It is also argued that traditional journalistic principles such as objectivity and distance may no longer be useful to today’s citizen journalism and that we see a rise of new journalistic principles such as interactivity and transparency. Finally, borrowing from deliberative democracy literature, a bottom-up flow model to connect citizen and public journalism is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War, political persecution, and human rights abuses all drive millions from their homes. Some qualify for asylum as refugees, often after spending years in camps and intermediary locations before attaining asylum. The United States has been criticized for taking in relatively few refugees as well as for playing a role in the conditions that lead people to seek asylum. Once in the United States, though, how are refugees constructed in community discourses? Is an international or local frame more prominent? The United Nations established World Refugee Day to bring attention to the problems refugees face. This study tracks US coverage of World Refugee Day, analyzing it both quantitatively and qualitatively, to determine how refugees as people and as a political issue are constructed in the US press. Discursive features and measures of framing are discussed as indicators of journalistic practices of newsmaking and localization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The verification of social media content and sources are increasingly critical to journalists and news organisations. In this study, we report on findings from qualitative interviews conducted with 24 journalists working with social media in major news organisations in Europe. Our findings contribute to new knowledge on journalists' social media working practices. We find that social media content are often used as the primary news source, and journalists use several different verification strategies to verify social media content and sources. Journalists are also found to have various competences in verifying social media content, in particular visual content. Moreover, our study suggests user requirements for future innovations in tools to support the verification of social media content. To avoid trade-offs between verification and fast-paced publishing, journalists will need efficient and easy-to-use support both in the verification process and in structuring and organising an overwhelming amount of social media content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text clustering plays an important role in data mining and machine learning. After years of development, clustering technology has produced a series of theories and methods. However, in the text clustering of Chinese news, the mainstream LDA method suffers a high time complex. In order to improve the speed, this paper puts forward a new method in which neural network language model is first applied to text clustering. Text clustering is first converted to its dual problem called word clustering. With neural network language model, we can get word vector which can be used in the fuzzy k-means of the Chinese news keyword set. Based on the keyword clustering result, we can get text clustering result of Chinese news by a single transition. Experiments have show this method's running speed is five times faster than LDA. This method has been successfully used in the Sohu news recommendation system currently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the United States has significantly expanded its use of drone warfare. Experts are divided: some defend drones as a legal, effective way to target terrorists while others suggest drones are inaccurate and contribute to anti-Americanism. In addition, international public opinion differs starkly with Americans largely supportive of the program while publics across the globe condemn it. Suspecting news coverage might play a pivotal role in these differences, the authors explored the framing of the US drone program in American, British, and Arab news coverage. Consistent with research on social identity theory and ethnocentrism in news, they find that US coverage was more likely to frame the policy favorably – emphasizing its legality, strategic value and technological sophistication while downplaying civilian deaths – while British and, to a greater extent, Arab coverage was more critical. The authors discuss how these findings build on existing theory and explore the implications for US drone policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as “drones,” have gained media attention over the last several years with much of the focus centering on their military uses and their emerging role in newsgathering. News organizations, journalists, and private citizens have employed UAVs to capture and share breaking news, to provide glimpses of natural disasters that would otherwise be too hazardous for journalists to obtain, and to offer unique perspectives that enrich news storytelling. At the same time, media scholars have emphasized the need to better understand the privacy and ethical concerns surrounding UAVs. Legal restrictions to and implications of their use have been relatively unexplored. Given that evolving rules and regulations put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) may ground UAVs for journalistic purposes, it is important to understand what those legal barriers are and what they mean for the future of UAVs as tools for journalism. This paper advances by noting key benefits UAVs offer journalism before explicating the evolving rules and regulations of the FAA and how those are shaping the use of UAVs for journalism by private citizens, journalists, and news organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports findings from two studies regarding the role citizen reporting plays in emergencies. Findings from first study, a content analysis of citizen reporting about the Haiti Earthquake, Gezi Park Protests (Istanbul), Xynthia Storm (Europe) and Boston Bombings, indicates that citizen reporters were predominantly engaging in reporting of straight news. Citizen reporters were more likely to report their own observations than reporting or summarizing information they gathered from mainstream news sources. Relatedly, we found that citizen reporters were more likely to give voice to alternative sources of information, like bystanders or witnesses of incidents, than sources, such as government representatives. However, we also found that use of alternative sources does not necessarily translate to providing viewpoints that may contextualize the events. Namely, we found that episodic frames, rather than thematic frames, were likely to be utilized by citizen reporters. The second study, online interviews with citizen reporters whose coverage was content-analysed in the first study, found that a sense of editorial independence and disenchantment with the mainstream media's coverage of the incidents were the main sources of motivation for citizen reporters. Results also indicate that citizen reporters tend to adopt a 'publish, then filter' approach to reporting and fact-checking. Implications for information verification issues are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the extent to which professional journalism adopts and uses citizen journalism, such as user-generated content (UGC) and user-submitted stories (USS), at the individual, organizational, and community levels. In doing so, the study adopts a web-based survey of top U.S. news editors (n = 142) coupled with U.S. Census Data. The study reveals that experience as online journalists and online staff size play roles in the adoption and use of UGC. The study also finds that community structural pluralism is related to the adoption and use of news stories written together by professional and citizen journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Risk has drastically reshaped the reporting ecosystem in the Syrian conflict. This paper analyses the roles played by commissioning editors, staff reporters and international and locally hired freelance journalists who report the war in Syria. It gathers data from case studies of the reporting of the Sarin gas attacks in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta in August 2013 and other examples of reporting in Syria which appear to raise ethical questions. The current lack of reporters in Syria has serious ethical implications for news organisations and their ability to inform the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of county commissioners, chamber of commerce executives and journalists in western Kansas examined perceptions and attitudes toward change in a region of declining population. The surveys were augmented with follow-up interviews. The results showed a strong preference for locally generated news content and a belief that rural journalists should be both objective and community boosters. There was skepticism towards the Internet as a source of local news. While all respondents said they welcome newcomers, only one in five indicated they were comfortable with the rising numbers of Hispanics and Latinos in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of telegraphy in the United States shifted newsgathering from the public postal system to a private network dominated by telegraph companies and wire services, a nearly simultaneous revolution in journalism’s technology and political economy. Postal newsgathering had been open to all newspapers with few costs and constraints, while its telegraphic successor developed amid a web of regulations. A changing configuration of occupational rules, private business arrangements, and public laws regulated each stage in the production of telegraphic news, from source–reporter interactions to post-publication liability. This monograph analyzes the origins of rules that governed timely news—determining who got it, how fast, and on what terms—from the advent of telecommunication to the eclipse of telegraphic news relays. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the emergence of new, inter-local spaces of news production and consumption, drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with community reporters trained by a community reporter organisation based in the north of England. Practices of news production and content generation are focused on people's own communities and they are underpinned by an ethos of production, which is grounded in a critical consumption of news and collective processes of skill acquisition. Through an analysis of motivations and practices, we account for the values that sustain community reporter communities and discuss how such practices, while emerging from the place of local community, also extend across wider communities of interest. It is suggested that an evolving practice of skill sharing and mutual recognition could potentially stimulate the regrowth of democratic values. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Laws protecting newsgathering vary among US states, yet comparative studies of state press law are rare. Focusing on journalist's privilege, this study hypothesized that policy liberalism and public support for journalistic confidentiality would predict the strength of a state's journalist's privilege. The hypotheses involving policy liberalism and public opinion were supported. The study's findings suggest that states with higher levels of policy liberalism tend to create journalistic confidentiality protections, which may serve as a mechanism for government accountability. This finding also supports previous research suggesting that policy liberalism plays an important role in state newsgathering laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

None of those New Zealand men who served as official war correspondents in World War II are alive today to tell their stories. It is left to the media historian to try and piece together their lives and actions, always regretting that research had not started sooner. Sadly there is more information available about World War I and the life and actions of Malcolm Ross, the country's first official war correspondent, than there is about New Zealand's World War II correspondents. Nevertheless, remembering the work of these journalists is important, so this is a first attempt at chronicling the circumstances surrounding the appointment of the first of the official correspondents, John Herbert Hall and Robin Templeton Miller, for the 1939-45 conflict. The story of the appointment of men to cover the war, whether as press correspondents, photographers, artists or broadcasters, is one of 'absurd delays' which were not resolved until nearly two years of the war had passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We enjoy freedom of speech in New Zealand, even though the Bill of Rights Act guarantee can be over-ridden. We have a variety of privately owned news media, even though the vast majority are owned by overseas interests. We have state-owned radio and television, even though our major television network was freed of its public service broadcasting obligations in order to pursue commercial goals. We have high quality tertiary institutions to train our future journalists, even though the ranks of our newsrooms have been systematically depleted. We have sophisticated telecommunications services, even though only 1 percent of us have optical broadband. The qualifications will not be lost on you. In other words, when I reflect on our good fortune I see that it is tempered by shortcomings, actual and potential. In this address I argue that the shortcomings are increasing and, if unchecked, ultimately threaten the way we function as a society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates World War II-era newsreels in order to understand how journalistic discourses create the means for understanding emerging technologies within the practice of journalism. The essay lays out a theoretical rationale influenced by Walter Benjamin for looking at how emerging technologies are understood through public discourse. The analysis looks at newsreels as a form of visual storytelling that presaged television news, and we argue that the wartime press provided a milieu for understanding how newsreels, as a journalistic medium, could be critiqued and understood as a storytelling form and how this form of critique played an important part in characterizing their content as journalistically valid. By focusing on issues of production and censorship alongside the aesthetic and technical aspects of the newsreels, the press created the terms by which newsreels could be judged, evaluated, and eventually integrated into the broader production of journalism. Our analysis shows that while issues of production were important, newsreels gained their greatest legitimacy through the celebration and lionizing of the cameramen as courageous newsgatherers, equal in stature to the soldiers they filmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's OhmyNews reports unique consequences of citizen reporting and participation. While many citizen news operations have come and gone, OhmyNews has been remarkably successful and has become one of the most powerful news sites in its country. This case study explores the concept of journalistic professionalism among OhmyNews citizen journalists and assesses whether perceptions of their journalistic work align with Singer's dimensions of professionalism (i.e., cognitive, normative and evaluative dimensions). We then compare these perceptions to those of professional journalists within the organization and integrate them into journalistic role conceptions. Findings show that both groups work through collaboration, checks and balances, and a negotiation of autonomy. Both benefit from the partnership and share similarities, rather than differences, in their effort to remain sustainable in contemporary media culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes three consecutive studies (2001, 2006, 2011) in which national Israeli press reporters detailed how they obtained random samples of their recently published items (N = 1003): first, in order to explore the public interest in whether the standards of news production are deteriorating, improving or staying put; second, to indicate whether journalists adjust to the transforming news ecosystem; and third, to resolve the theoretical dilemma regarding the openness of news practices to change. While showing a general trend of conservatism, data indicate some statistically significant changes across time, not always in the expected directions. Reporters rely more often on ordinary citizens (who remain a marginal source), and public relations practitioners intervene more broadly in their items. They not only question their sources’ credibility more often, but also rely on slightly more sources per item and more cross-checking, mainly thanks to older contacts rather than to new voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]