This compelling, often surprising book demonstrates the ways news articles of today draw from age-old tales that have chastened, challenged, entertained, and entranced people since the beginning of time. Through an insightful exploration of hundreds of New York Times articles, award-winning professor and former journalist Jack Lule reveals mythical themes in reporting on topics from terrorist hijackings to Huey Newton, from Mother Teresa to Mike Tyson. Beneath the fresh facade of current events, Lule identifies such enduring archetypes as the innocent victim, the good mother, the hero, and the trickster. In doing so, he sheds light on how media coverage shapes our thinking about many of the confounding issues of our day, including foreign policy, terrorism, race relations, and political dissent. Winner of the MEA's 2002 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics

Media Anthropology is an interdisciplinary reader that represents a convergence of issues and interests on anthropological approaches to the study of media. While other books on this topic examine traditional anthropology and push that field toward the media, in this book, editors Eric W. Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman take a novel approach by analyzing media studies and guiding that field toward anthropological thinking. This anthology charts media anthropology as a field of study and provides examples of current research that identify its major concepts and methods in chapters written by leading scholars from several countries and academic disciplines. Key Features: Offers original articles, and a few selected reprints, from leading worldwide scholars in a variety of academic disciplines to provide the most integrated treatment of this interdisciplinary topic Contains introductions that set the context for articles written from varying points of view Includes a "Theory into Practice" section that shows how anthropological concepts and methods can improve the teaching and practice of media studies Makes the relevant literature accessible in an up-to-date and even-handed organization, offering students a broader understanding than they could obtain from other books, which are primarily anthropological in disciplinary orientation Media Anthropology is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate students studying media anthropology in communication and media studies, journalism, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies programs.

Though much has been said about Japanese-American incarceration camps, little attention is paid to the community newspapers closest to the camps and how they constructed the identities and lives of the occupants inside. Dependent on government and military officials for information, these journalists rarely wrote about the violation of the evacuees’ civil rights. Instead, they concentrated on the economic impact the camps—and the evacuees, who would replace workers off to enlist in the military and work for defense contractors—would have on the areas they covered. Newspapers like the Cody Enterprise and Powell Tribune in Wyoming, the Lamar Daily News, and the Casa Grande Dispatch regularly published overly optimistic updates on the progress of construction, the size of the contractor payrolls, and the amount of materials used to build the camps. Ronald Bishop and his coauthors reveal how journalists positioned the incarceration camps as a potential economic boon and how evacuees were framed as another community group, there to contribute to the region’s economic well-being. Community Newspapers and the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps examines the rhetoric and journalistic approach of the local papers and how they informed the communities just outside their walls. This book will appeal to scholars of history and journalism.

Resistance Advocacy as News: Digital Black Press Covers the Tea Party examines the Black and mainstream press’s digital interpretations of the Tea Party during President Barack Obama’s first term. The Tea Party narrative and the white ideologies disseminated by conservative groups was, and continues to be, an intricate story for journalists to tell. This book tracks coverage of the Tea Party from the modern group’s beginning in early February of 2009 until two weeks after the 2012 general presidential election in November. While many mainstream journalists either fail to recognize, or ignore all together, the racial component that the Tea Party poses to Black solidarity, this book shows that Black reporters working for the Black press absolutely recognize the racial component and provide more thorough discussions than their mainstream counterparts. Historically, the Black press has existed to fill holes of misrepresentation in the mainstream press; to that end, this book addresses questions surrounding the ongoing necessity of the Black press and whether our society is “postracial,” combining a quantitative analysis of implicit racial frames with a qualitative analysis of resonant myth, and providing empirical evidence that Black people still struggle to have their voices heard in the mainstream press.

How do stories of particular events turn into global myths, while others fade away? What becomes known and seen as a global iconic event? In Stories without Borders, Julia Sonnevend considers the ways in which we recount and remember news stories of historic significance. Focusing on journalists covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event in a variety of ways - from Legoland reenactments to slabs of the Berlin Wall installed in global cities - Sonnevend discusses how certain events become built up so that people in many parts of the world remember them for long periods of time. She argues that five dimensions determine the viability and longevity of international news events. First, a foundational narrative must be established with certain preconditions. Next, the established narrative becomes universalized and a mythical message developed. This message is then condensed and encapsulated in a simple phrase, a short narrative, and a recognizable visual scene. Counter-narratives emerge that reinterpret events and in turn facilitate their diffusion across multiple media platforms and changing social and political contexts. Sonnevend examines these five elements through the developments of November 9, 1989 - what came to be known as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stories Without Borders concludes with a discussion of how global iconic events have an enduring effect on individuals and societies, pointing out that after common currencies, military alliances, and international courts have failed, stories may be all that we have to bring hope and unity.

"Examines how newspapers have changed over the past few years, becoming story papers. Comparing 850 stories, story approaches, and unofficial sourcing in twenty American newspapers from 2001 and 2004, Weldon reveals a shift toward features over hard news, along with an increase in anecdotal or humanistic approaches to all stories"--Provided by publisher.

From cynical portrayals like The Front Page to the nuanced complexity of All the President’s Men, and The Insider, movies about journalists and journalism have been a go-to film genre since the medium's early days. Often depicted as disrespectful, hard-drinking, scandal-mongering misfits, journalists also receive Hollywood's frequent respect as an essential part of American life. Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the story of how Hollywood has treated American journalism. Ehrlich argues that films have relentlessly played off the image of the journalist as someone who sees through lies and hypocrisy, sticks up for the little guy, and serves democracy. He also delves into the genre's always-evolving myths and dualisms to analyze the tensions—hero and oppressor, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and falsehood—that allow journalism films to examine conflicts in society at large.