A specialist magazine for journalists in South Africa and Africa established in 1990 and published by the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.
-from Sage Full-Text Collections
Holdings: 1996-
Humanities and social sciences. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
In this essay, Lasica explores how blogs have started to inform traditional media sources and states his belief that this trend will continue into the future. He praises blogs’ unmediated quality, arguing that it is their raw, impressionistic tone that sets them apart from the “lifeless, sterile and homogenized” throng of mass-media produced news. While the lack of any sort of formal editing can sometimes result in blog posts that are poorly thought-out or highly biased, it can also result in the documentation of unusual news nuggets ignored by the mass media.
Lasica then considers perspectives from three influential bloggers: Dan Gillmor (a Mercury News reporter who was among the first to start a personal blog), Doc Searls (senior editor of Linux Magazine and owner of a blog examining marketplace trends) and David Winer (owner of Scripting News, a business and technology blog started back in 1995). Gillmor praises blogs for allowing user interaction and notes that he utilizes his blog to gain feedback on stories he’s working on for the Mercury News. Searls argues that blogs provide a way to connect journalists to “other journalists’ journals”, as well as to experts working within a particular field. Because a blog’s popularity is directly based on reader trust and incoming links, he argues that blogs grant readers greater choice in determining where they turn for news. As a result, many blog authors have become increasingly professional and authoritative on the subjects of their blogs. Winer advocates a new sort of personal journalism, unmediated by newspapers or magazines. He stresses individual interests and passions and argues that indulging these passions results in a proliferation of interesting and unique news stories.
A journalist and blogger himself, it is no surprise that Lasica examines blogs from a journalistic perspective. Yet while he paints a clear picture of blogs’ influence on journalism, Lasica fails to discuss how blogs might impact other readers, such as random visitors or industry insiders who turn to blogs for information on readers’ opinions and new trends. How does audience reception affect the production of posts?
Although Lasica mainly considers “news blogs” (a loosely defined category encompassing all types of niche news), many of his conclusions hold true for fashion blogs as well. For example, many fashion blogs epitomize the raw tone of news blogs and capture unusual trends not featured in traditional media. Furthermore, in a rapidly growing blogosphere, fashion blogs are usually remarkably well connected, with a series of links to other blogs on almost every front page. Most of these blogs are created and maintained by people outside the industry, whose passion for fashion results in a unique, organic perspective.
epstein writes about hollywood, diamonds and everything else.
sometimes he writes for slate
by the Berkeley China Internet Project out of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Call#: Van Pelt Library E856 .S76 2003
All of the people interviewed, other than Woodward of course, agree that the role that Woodward and Bernstein played has been overemphasized and that, other than maintaining public interest in the scandal, they were not integral in allowing the event to play out as it did. However, many more people can recall the names Woodward and Bernstein than names that some of the interviewees cite as important players, such as John J. Sirica, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over Watergate-related trials. This can be accounted for by the fact that the story of the Washington Post investigation, as told in the book and the movie All the President’s Men, glamorizes the journalists and journalism in general, and it dramatizes the story with the mysterious portrayal of Deep Throat and the shadowy scenery of Washington D.C.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.J6 E38 2004
Chapter 6 of Journalism in the Movies deals with films about conspiracy and paranoia. Ehrlich argues that the collapse of the Production Code, Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, and other factors contributed to a general feeling of mistrust and angst in the 1970’s and that this feeling was reflected in the films made during the decade. To make his argument, he focuses on movies that center around the media and with journalists as crusaders against evil and corruption. Specifically, he compares the style and content of All the President’s Men and Network. While All the President’s Men portrays the men who work for the newspaper as “a shining beacon of truth,” Network focuses on a television network that is part of a larger evil involving the rest of corporate America. Additionally, while the former film was produced in documentary style, the later is exaggerated and satirical.
More than any other aspect of the film, the image of the two young reporters remains in the minds of those who have seen it. Yet, as has been discussed at length, there is a controversy surrounding the accuracy of the portrayal of the journalists. Ehrlich analyzes the validity of this controversy by comparing he actual events of Watergate with the account of the journalists’ role in these events in the movie. According to Ehrlich, Nixon was reelected despite Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation, and he did not run into serious political trouble until the Senate hearings that occurred a year after the first article was published in the Washington Post. In fact, Nixon did not resign until after the book by the same name as the film was published. So, Ehrlich concludes, the reporters were certainly not responsible for Nixon’s fall from glory. However, the film accentuates their role by establishing the main characters as “fearless foes of corruption” in a mysterious and believable “documentary-noir” style executed by director Alan J. Pakula. The movie is relatively straightforward in its analysis of good and evil. The office of the Washington Post is brightly lit, while most of the rest of Washington D.C. is shrouded in darkness.
As a result of their portrayal in All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein have become the central players in America’s collective memory of Watergate. The screenwriter, Goldman, cut out parts of the book involving the senate hearings and many government figures who helped bring down the president, assuming that the audience could “fill in the rest of the story for themselves.” In 1976, this may have been the case. However, the movie has helped to determine which aspects of the story have been transferred “from fact to legend,” and the parts that we are expected to fill in become markedly less glamorous without the benefit of handsome actors and the infusion of drama through “shadowy scenes.” Even today, Woodward and Bernstein “remain securely ensconced in American mythology.”
Call#: [z] Lost copy. E860 .L36 1983
The authors argue that one of the most important aspects of the story that has become a part of the legend is the role of the media. Watergate taught the country a lesson about the importance of a free press – the legend tells us that the Watergate cover-up never would have been revealed if not for the press. The Watergate legend also remembers journalists as heroes, which the authors state is hardly ever accurate. The movie All the President’s Men, as well as the book of the same name, contributes to this aspect of the country’s collective memory. The authors believe that an overblown image of newspapermen is dangerous because members of the press can become conspiracy theorists in hopes of cracking a non-existent ring of corruption and “exposing wrongdoing.” Making moral judgments and being a government watchdog, Lang & Lang argue, are not a reporter’s job.
The authors credit Bernstein and Woodward with doing a good job at investigating Watergate. Publicity through the press did prevent Nixon from regaining public support and from thwarting attempts to persecute his crimes, and press kept the issue alive in the mind of the public. However, they point out that there were many other people involved, and that the journalists only played a small roll. The press depended on information from official bodies such as the Senate Watergate Committee, the Special Watergate Prosecution Force, and the House Judiciary Committee. Yet, Bernstein and Woodward are still the first (and often only) names that come to mind as the “good guys” of Watergate. Lang & Lang explain, “ since the facts are so quickly forgotten, the folklore is what survives.”
Call#: PN1995.9.J6 B3 1976
Another example of a famous crusading journalist is Gregory Peck's character in Gentlemen's Agreement. Peck's character pursued a story revealing the ugliness of anti-Semitism in post-war America by pretending to be Jewish. He pressed on despite the adverse affect it had on his professional and personal life, and ultimately writes an admired story. Somewhat similarly, Woodward and Bernstein press on despite ambiguous threats and warnings of immanent danger from Deep Throat. Barris mostly focuses on films from the 1950's in this section of the book. He states that the 50's was a hay day of journalist crusader films partially because the House Un-American Activities Committee was threatening the free speech of filmmakers all the time, and because they didn't seem to care as much about truth as about carrying out a paranoid witch hunt. They had "descended on the movie industry like a vigilante mob." It is likely that Hollywood writers felt victimized and that portraying of journalists as idealized heroes, and sometimes even martyrs, was a way to express their discontent about the rights and values that they felt were being suppressed by the Black List.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.U64 H65 2003
Like Cameron, Sorlin, and Toplin, Myron Levine brings up the fact that the film belittles the contributions of people other than Woodward and Bernstein to bringing some members of the Nixon administration to justice. However, Levine states, Woodward and Bernstein played an extremely important role in maintaining pressure on other investigators and government bodies to act against corruption. The author also points out that the editor of the Washington Post, Benjamin Bradlee (portrayed in the film by Jason Robards) was extremely careful about publishing only substantiated allegations. Levine believes that this journalistic standard has also changed over time. He finds it unfortunate that, as a result of the near instantaneous speed with which news gets to today’s readers, media outlets no longer seem concerned with confirming the facts before print. Ultimately, All the President’s Men reflects the backlash against the modern White House’s attempt to strictly control the flow of information about the president and his administration.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.H5 T66 1996
For the film to be interesting to the audience, it had to depict the every day tasks of the characters, phone calls, note taking, and staff meetings, as exciting and dramatic. The director, Alan J. Pakula, portrayed “typewriters, pencils, pads…as important weapons that could bring down some of the most powerful men in the country.” The movie begins with an close shot of a typewriter; each key stroke sends out “cannon shots, suggesting the power of the press in exposing assaults on freedom.” This strategy served to glorify both journalism and the protagonists. Many people other than Woodward and Bernstein were involved with bringing down the conspiracy, but the movie elevated these two journalists to the roles of primary and practically sole players in most people’s memory of this historical event. Toplin ultimately excuses the glorification of Woodward and Bernstein as a common tendency of docudrama, and he credits the film as “a bold an informed view of a significant crisis in American political life.”


