Detritus

Tentative set reading list for this semester - “Journalism and the Political Process.”

Weeks 1 - Introduction - no readings. 

Bennett, W. Lance. “The Press, Power and Public Accountability”. In Stuart Allan (ed) The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism. London: Routledge.

McNair, Brian. (2000) “Journalism and Democracy: The Debate.” In Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge.

Jones, Alex S. (2009) “The Media and Democracy” in Losing the News. Oxford: OUP. 

Tiffen, R. (2008) ‘Australia: Gladiatorial Parties and Volatile Media in a Stable Polity’ in Stromback, J. and Kaid, L. (eds) The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World, London: Routledge, pp.109-23.

Beecher, Eric (2011) ‘Beecher: Media Inquiry has mandate to address problems” Crikey 16th September 2011  http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/09/16/beecher-media-inquiry-has-mandate-to-address-problems/

Weeks 4 and 5 – IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOURNALISTS AND POLITICIANS COLLABORATIVE OR ADVERSARIAL?

 Graber, Doris. (2009) “The struggle for control: News from the presidency and congress.” In Mass Media and Democracy. Congressional Quarterly.

Megalogenis, George (2011) “Unprincipled politicians – and the press – shown the door by disillusioned public. The Australian, December 31, 2011. URL: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/unprincipled-politicians-and-the-press-shown-the-door-by-disillusioned-public/story-e6frgd0x-1226233564021 

Sabato, Larry (1993) “Inquisition American Style: Attack Journalism and Feeding Frenzies.” In Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism has Transformed American Politics. New York: Free Press.

Stanyer, James (2007) “Introduction: Actors, Systems and Systemic Trends.” In Modern Political Communication: Mediated Politics in Uncertain Times. Cambridge: Polity.

Tanner, Lindsay (2011) “Politicians fight back” In Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. Melbourne: Scribe.

Weeks 6 and 7 – DO JOURNALISTS SHAPE THE WAY THAT THE PUBLIC THINKS ABOUT POLITICS?

Entman, Robert M. “Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power” Journal of Communication 57.1 

Weaver, David,  Maxwell McCombs, and Donald L. Shaw (2004) “Agenda-Setting Research: Issues, Attributes, and Influences”. In Lynda Lee Kaid (ed) Handbook of Political Communication Research.

Vallone, Robert P.;Lee Ross; Mark R. Lepper “The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 49(3), Sep 1985, 577-585.

 Media Watch “Gunning for the Greens” ABC Online URL http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3010433.htm

WEEK 8 – STUDY WEEK.

Weeks 9 AND 10 – DOES POLITICAL JOURNALISM REPRESENT THE PUBLIC INTEREST?

McChesney, Robert (2000) “The US Media at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century.” In Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times.

Neighbour, Sally (2011) “The United States of Chris Mitchell”. The Monthly URL: http://www.themonthly.com.au/power-rupert-murdoch-and-australian-s-editor-chief-united-states-chris-mitchell-sally-neighbour-3589

Rothwell, Nicholas (2011) “A Mirror to the Nation at large”. The Australian, September 17^th. URL: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/a-mirror-to-the-nation-at-large/story-fn59niix-1226138622228

Schudson, Michael (2008) “Why democracies need an unlovable press”, in Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press. London: Polity.

Weeks 11 and 12 – DOES POLITICAL JOURNALISM ILLUMINATE OR OBSCURE THE POLITICAL PROCESS

Coleman, Stephen (2011) Representation and Mediated Politics: Representing Representation in an Age of Irony. in Kees Brants and Katrin Volmer (ads) Political Communication and Postmodern Democracy.

Didion, Joan (1988) “Insider Baseball” The New Yorker URL http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1988/oct/27/insider-baseball/?pagination=false

Hastings, Michael “Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter.” GQ October 2008 http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/200810/michael-hastings-newsweek-presidential-campaign?printable=true

Norris, Pippa (2001) “Cares Less? Cynical Media, Cynical Public?” in A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Weeks 13 and 14  - IS THE INTERNET MAKING POLITICAL JOURNALISM OBSOLETE?

Alterman, Eric (2008) Out of print: The death and life of the american newspaper. The New Yorker URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all

Flew, Terry and Wilson, Jason. (2010) Journalism as social networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 11.2.

Hermida, Alfred (2010). “Twittering the news: The emergence of ambient journalism.” Journalism Practice,  4 (3), 297-308.

Simon, David (2009) Testimony at the Future of Journalism Hearings. Real Clear Politics URL: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/09/david_simon_testimony_at_the_future_of_journalism_hearing_96415.html

#pomodorojerk part 2 - further instructions

First I will just say that my non-compulsory little writing experiment produced some fairly lulzy brain explosions on Twitter for some reason. Just let me emphasise that none of this is compulsory. Do it, don’t do it, no skin off my nose. It’s working for me, it seems to be working for some other people. That’s great. 

Some people will have been doing this for more than a week now. So a few additional instructions. 

1. Make sure you do weekly totals. A bad day or two might be discouraging, but if you look at what you have achieved over a week, the good days should have smoothed out the bad, and you should have a few thousand words to your name that you didn’t have before. It’s also good in terms of thinking about your goals, hopes, dreams etc and how you are working towards them. 

2. Remember that whatever you have now will be useful; there are lots of words and creative ideas there that weren’t there before. After a bit over a week for me, I now have a chunk of my project done. (It’s a book in my case, and I have written a chunk that will be a chapter, but much shorter projects are fine too obviously.) The material written in daily sessions may seem rough when you read it back over. That’s okay. There is material there to work with, and you might like to think of what comes out after editing as your first draft. What you have produced is a lot of words and, if what the research tells us is true, you’ll have produced more creative ideas per page than you would have with other writing methods. 

3. Editing time is separate from writing time. As you go on to edit this, do not, under any circumstances, stop writing new words every day. Instead, start devoting a separate block of time (maybe another 25 minutes, longer if you want as long as it’s consistent) to licking what you have into shape. That shape will be, effectively, a first draft. If you have to prioritise one of these two tasks, make it the new words. I try to keep editing and writing separated - I don’t like to edit something I’ve produced less than a week ago, so I can approach it dispassionately. 

So, from today on, I’ll still be doing and tweeting my new words. But I’ll also be pulling stuff I did in the first week into a draft of my introductory chapter. Maybe you could do all this too if it’s working for you so far. 

Lastly, I’m thinking about starting a private Facebook group where people can chat about this, and we can talk about how we’re going. Would there be any takers? 

Writing club #pomodorojerk - the rules

This is not a new year thing - I have been working on this basis for a little while - but I just thought today would be a good day to extend the invitation to a writing fellowship I am starting based largely on the ideas of Robert Boice with a hint of Pomodoro-type timer deadline nonsense. 

Boice’s work and research was mainly directed at academics, but the principles apply to anyone with a writing project of any kind, and who feels they don’t have time. I won’t rehearse all of Boice’s ideas here, but he pretty conclusively demonstrated that those who write every day in short bursts rather than bingeing produce (a) far more writing (up to 15X more than those writing under some other models!) and (b) more creative ideas than those who try to write in blocks. 

We are also motivated by accountability to peers - so this kind of thing works best in a fellowship. 

Here are the rules of our adaptation. 

1. Get yourself one of the many free Pomodoro timers. 

2. Every day, do exactly 20 or 25 minutes writing, using the timer. 

3. The writing must be NEW WORDS - editing and research need different daily blocks assigned to them eventually. If you need to check something, mark it, leave it and move on with the new words. Do not self-edit as you write. It is crucial that your daily writing block involves NEW WORDS. 

4. You are allowed to have a one-page plan for your task beside you as you write. 

5. Keep at one task (or chunk of a task - a section or chapter) until you have completed some kind of draft, then put it aside for editing later. 

6. Post your daily times and wordcounts on Twitter with the hashtag #pomodorojerk (thanks to @tobiasziegler for the hashtag) - eg “@jason_a_w: 25 minutes, 520 words #pomodorojerk”

7. At week’s end or beginning (depending on what everyone else wants to do) we’ll get in some kind of chat program (also for 25 minutes or so) to discuss the past week’s goals and achievements, and what we’re going to try to do with our writing for the next week. Eventually, if people are comfortable, we can read drafts etc, but that’s not so important. 

Message from my other sister in Townsville on FB.

We are ok. Girls snored through the whole thing thank goodness, though it is still blowing quite hard out there. Just sent a video of the wind we still had about an hour ago. We are lucky 16% of Townsville that still have power. We have had about 30 minutes sleep so it is going to be a long day with two well rested children that want to go and play outside……

Message from my sister in Townsville on FB

Sorry I wasn’t quite with it when you called - managed to grab an hours sleep! Trees down here in Douglas, probably wont be going anywhere for a while. So happy the worst is over, still have 100km winds coming through though. Unsure of what’s happening up north. Happy happy happy to have dodged the worst.