Doctor of Journalism

A quick follow-up (see the comments for the previous posts):

There is another obvious explanation for why columnists (and indeed almost all journalists, editors, media owners etc) strenuously deny that they have any power. This has to do with the professional self-image of journalists. When journalists are asked in surveys what they see as the key societal role of journalism, there is one answer that always ranks highly almost regardless of where the survey is done: Journalism should investigate/critique/oppose those in power. This “Fourth Estate” view of what journalism should be like is deeply embedded among journalists (and in many countries also supported by law, for example through laws that allow journalists to protect their sources). In the minds of journalists, journalism is by definition anti-establishment, regardless of whoever happens to be part of the establishment at the time. Journalism is the underdog, the friend of the common man, and the enemy of all those that abuse their power (please note I am not saying that journalists seriously think that this is what journalism is like - I’m just saying that this is the ideal that most journalists aspire to).

When people point out that journalists increasingly are the establishment, and that journalism is in fact a power center in society that should be investigated and examined in the same way as any other power center, then they are questioning one of the fundamental parts of the journalistic self-image. For how can you be the underdog if you have power? The reflex reaction of most columnists/journalists/editors/etc is thus to just deny that they have any power at all.

NB: There are more interesting things to be gleaned from the Power of the Commentariatreport (and some issues about the methodology of the report), so I will probably return to it in future posts. Meanwhile, check out Martin Moore’s blog for a funny and to-the-point take on the navel-gazing exercise of commenting on those who comment…

Upcoming here at doctorofjournalism.com: Wed May 21 I’m going to the ICA conference in Montreal (no link this time, just see previous posts) and I’ll do my damnedest to live blog from the event. Knowing how my good intentions turned out last time, I’ll probably end up writing just one incoherent post on the last day of the conference or something. But I’ll try! Promise!

OK, so now I’ve had time to check out the “Power of the Commentariat” report, issued jointly by the Reuters Institute and Editorial Intelligence. It got me thinking about lots of stuff so I’ll probably have to do two posts - mmm, filler!

Briefly, the report offers some comments on how/whether/to what extent British newspaper columnists are powerful or not, primarily using interviews with columnists and media stakeholders as method of study. I could go into more detail, but as you can just read the report I’ll skip the executive summary.

The first and most striking thing to me was the insistence, sometimes so incessant so as to be quite moving, of the columnists interviewed that they are fundamentally powerless. “I don’t have any power at all,” says Peter Oborne of the Daily Mail. “I don’t see myself as influencing people,” says Gideon Rachman of the FT. The columinists almost uniformly deny that they have any effects at all. However, in the interviews with politicians, press secretaries and other professional communicators that are also part of the study, it clearly emerges that politicians do care and do think about what columnists write, and that they may indeed have the power to change or at least influence policy (though probably not as often as people outside the media may think).

So the research indicates that commentators have power, yet the commentators strenuously deny it. Why is this? One explanation seems to have to do with how the commentators define the concept of power and the notion of effects.

It is pretty clear from the study that the commentators have a very limited view of what “effect” means. For the most part, they equate “effect” with “changing someone’s mind” or “making someone act in a way they wouldn’t otherwise”, i.e. a columnist making someone vore for a particular party as a direct result of a column, for example. Most media research would in fact agree with the columnist that this is a relatively rare form of “media effect” (and very difficult to empirically measure, to boot). It does not seem to enter into the columnists’ minds (I am exaggreating a bit here) that they may well have other effects that also make them powerful: the power to strengthen existing opinion, for example, or the power to set the agenda of the public debate. If you have a very limited notion of what constitutes power and what a “media effect” is, then it becomes easy to deny that you are powerful. And the report rightly highlights these other forms of power - and interestingly, while many of the columnists agree that they may be able to spark debates, setting agendas etc, they still deny that they are powerful. Many individuals would probably wish to have the agenda-setting power that a column in a daily broadsheet grants. Most of us are, after all, not columnists. If columnists are completely powerless, what does that make us non-columnists?

I did a seminar presentation at the OII (Oxford Internet Institute) today on “Issues and problems in studying user-generated content and the news”, which in retrospect was a wholly inapproporiate title since I spent more time talking (rambling, really) about my recent pilot study comparing user-generated content on the The Sun and Aftonbladet web pages. The Sun is, of course, the best-selling tabloid (indeed the best-selling daily newspaper) in the UK, and Aftonbladet occupies that same position in Sweden.

Basically, my argument goes like this (and I’ll try really hard not to be boring): when newspapers introduce user-generated content features (e.g. inviting audiences to start a blog using the newspaper blog platform, take part in forum discussions, comment on articles, send in their own images and videos etc) it is often couched in terms of “empowering readers” and suchlike, but of course the main reason for introducing such features is that the newspaper hopes to monetize (that’s “make money on” for those of you not in the newspaper business) them. Empowering readers is at best an epiphenomenon to making money.

Therefore, newspapers aren’t really interested in “empowering readers”. Any opportunity given to readers to create their own content, be it low-involvment and simple (selecting way the newspaper web page is presented to the reader through RSS feeds), or more high-involvment and complex (inviting readers to produce and submit their own images, texts and videos), will therefore be very limited in scope and highly structured. Newspapers will not, as a role, invite readers to take part in collaborative newsgathering, create distributed systems for accreditation and assigning relevance, or even to rate/grade/mark articles, as these processes would all threaten to undermine journalistic authority. Why would anyone read the paper if the paper itself helps demonstrate that anyone can do what they are doing?

There are exceptions, of course, some more succesful than others (see Neil Thurman’s research for an overview of UGC provision in UK newspapers). But overall, when newspapers provide readers with opportunities to create their own content on the newspaper web page, they are hardly being revolutionary, nor are they “empowering readers” to any great extent. Newspapers are still very much ruled by the “we write, you read”-mentality - because they want to be.

Just saw this opinion piece on the BBC News web page. Clive James makes the point that the media are focusing too much on verbal slip-ups of politicians (the piece is written mainly in reference to US politics and the current democratic candidate campaigns). “Cool!” thought I, “Always interesting to see some self-reflection on the soundbite society from a journalist.” I was, of course, disappointed.

Read the article. I find it striking that Clive James never actually talks about what could possibly cause this phenomenon, why it is that the media focus som much on these slip-ups, how they fit in with existing frameworks for covering politics etc. Instead, he just presents a ‘greatest hits’ of slip-ups from Eisenhower to Dan Quayle (more from the latter than the former, naturally), in my mind just falling victim to the same soundbite tyranny that he ostensibly criticises. The question of why the news media are so obsessed with gaffes remains entirely unanswered.

Another, slighly related note: my esteemed fellow blogger John Kelly rightly criticises the Oxford Mail for its unreflective and uninformative crusade-type coverage of the closing of local post offices here. Background and analysis are difficult to do and above all not cost-effective. Yet another case of a catchy slogan and some general outrage aimed at “the establishment” substituting for good journalism. For more info on the dire state of British local and regional journalism, check out my previous post on the subject.

PS: I am writing this blog post still wearing my pyjamas. I have now truly joined the ranks of blogdom. And I’m not looking back.

In a comment on a recent post, Rania asked about conferences. Where should you send your precious paper once you’ve written it? Travel budgets are limited so you want to get proper bang for your buck. And these days, it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry are organizing their own conference. So how to choose?

Well, the first thing to realize is that you don’t go to conferences primarily to get feedback on your work, though it is nice when that happens (and some conferences are actually better than others, feedback-wise - keep on reading). You go to conferences to network, to see and be seen. Are there others doing work in your area? What are they saying? What can you learn from their work? And can you hit them up for a joint-authored article to be submitted somewhere? Or get into some nice international research network that looks good on your CV but doesn’t requite you to do anything (hint: most international research networks are of this variety)? It’s an old adage that the most important parts of all conferences are the spaces between the paper/panel sessions.

There are basically two choices when picking conferences: go big, or go small. Either you pick one of the really big conferences (lots of people increases chances of networking and coming across research that is of interest to you), or you pick a smaller conference that is really focused on/relevant for your current research topic (increases the chances of networking with the right people and getting feedback from people who actually know your field). Feedback-wise, smaller conferences are generally better, as your time slot at a big conference is likely to be very small - I have 15 mins to strut my stuff at the ICA. Some get only 10. Better have a snazzy PowerPoint. Or a loud voice and a good joke to make people remember you. I suck at PowerPoint, but I have a loud voice. Jokes? I dunno. Why did the journalism scholar cross the road?

If you want to go big, these are your choices:

ICA (no link, I’ve linked plenty to ICA in previous posts).
ICA, the International Communications Association, is the monster truck of media & communications conferences. Bigger and badder than everyone else and with an engine that just keeps running (ICA conference venues are planned years beforehand - the 2012 conference is in Phoenix, Arizona, in case you’re wondering). As I’ve said before, the ICA is a predominantly US association and as such its conferences follow the US pattern: very competitive, prizes given out for best paper, best book, etc, poster sessions, massively big, and held at a Sheraton/Hilton/Grand Hotel conference venue (no dinky European-style campus conferences here!). On the plus side, it’s great for networking, and the sheer size means lots of diversity in terms of subject areas covered - you are almost bound to find several interesting sessions, many quite surprising if you expect only old US-style quantitative research (I fondly remember a session on “The zombie in popular culture” at the 2005 ICA conference in New York). Also note that dissing the ICA is a favourite pastime of European academics and those who do not get their papers accepted. The ICA has actually changed a lot in recent years and is far less “US-led” than it once was, and they have introduced open feedback to increase transparency - something few other conferences do.

IAMCR
This year held in scenic Stockholm. IAMCR stands for International Media and Communications Research Association and was founded in the seventies as an explicit reaction against the US dominance of the ICA. The years of enmity between IAMCR and ICA are long gone and the two organizations frequently cooperate. Sad, as I’ve heard a lot of old-timers reminisce wistfully about actual punch-ups taking place in the past. Still, IAMCR explicitly aims to be global and usually attracts more scholars from Asia, South America and sub-Saharan Africa than does the ICA. So the IAMCR is also good for networking, especially if you want to get to know what people outside the US and Europe are doing. IAMCR is slightly smaller than the ICA but still big, and the diversity is still great, so what I said about the ICA goes for the IAMCR as well. IAMCR is also generally better at catering for young and early-career academics - there are opportunities to get published through the IAMCR’s publication series and journals, if you talk to the right people (and have a good paper!).

I would say something about ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) as well, but I’ve never been (I may go to Barcelona despite not getting my paper accepted - so there!), so I don’t really know what they are like. Judging from their web page, they’re a more US-style conference, and I would suspect ECREA is trying to set themselves up as a serious competitor to both the ICA and IAMCR. They’re doing OK so far, their first conference was a success according to people I know who were there, and the second one this year looks set to be big as well.

As for smaller conferences, it’s impossible to list them all. Many are not annual but one-off events, you’ll just have to use your own judgment whether you think it’s worth going or not. If you are unsure, why not email the conference organizers beforehand to get an idea about number of participants, if they have ideas about publishing a proceedings volume etc? Good conference listings can be found at the ICA and at Nordicom.

I wish I could have gone to this conference, but somehow I think my current grant wouldn’t cover it.

In case you wonder about the title, what the web is all about is revealing intimate details about your personal life (or someone else’s personal life, which is even better). Since my personal life is boring (wife, child, two mortgages, receding hairline etc etc) I thought maybe I’d get away with revealing some intimate details about my work life instead. I know, I know, it’s a bit of a cop-out, but considering the reeeally boring stuff I used to publish on this blog even this has to count as an improvement. So here it is:

As previously advertised, I had a paper accepted for the 2008 ICA conference in Montreal. The ICA has an acceptance rate of around 40-45 per cent (or so I’m told), i.e. of all paper and panel proposals sent in, 40-45 per cent get accepted. This is not as harsh as the annual MLA or APSA conference, but for us more sedate media/journalism scholars, this still means you have some serious competition. Most people therefore don’t send in just one paper/panel proposal to the ICA, but several. As did I: two panel proposals and one paper. The panel proposals were rejected, the paper accepted. Here’s the reviewers’ comments I received:

unfortunately I disagree almost completely with many of the authors’ sweeping assumptions. some remarks: - the distinction between organizational and occupational professionalism remains underdeveloped; furthermore, the linkages between these notions and the established literature on journalism as a self-referential/self-organizing social system (the German/Austrian tradition) or the notion of professionalism as a form of organizational control by journalists over their work (US tradition) is ignored. also: the description of occupational professionalism seems the same as occupational ideology? Explore. finally: the organizational professionalization argument seems related to the literature on neo-institutionalism in journalism studies? again, a vast body of literature is ignored or brushed aside. - ultimately, the author gets stuck in a neo-Marxist “the worker” versus “the manager” rhetoric, which is largely unreflective toward the working realities in many news organizations. So i would like to see the research rather than the current descriptive literature review. however, because I am a strong supporter of more news production research, I will signal the division to accept this paper.

Ooh! Well, lucky the reviewer liked the subject matter, at least. Here’s the other comment:

This is an interesting and thoughtful discussion but the paper promises more than it delivers. The conclusions are too impressionistic, grounded in a very selective review of literature rather than in a set of claims tied to a systematic study of shifting conceptions of professionalism. A paper of this kind would benefit from a broader and deeper literature review. From the “older” sociology of the professions literature, Lasrson’s The Rise of Professionalism is conspicuous in its absence. From the large and growing body of more recent literature, see (for example) Dave Allen’s work on corporatization of professionalism, some of it collected in his book Democracy, Inc. In short, too many of the claims advanced in this paper about what’s missing from the discussion of professionalism is only missing from the sliver of literature the author decided to review.

Ouch!

Well, I did earn some of these comments - I have only showed you the revised version of this paper, not the original, after all, as the original really had some serious problems. I’m sensitive to the comments that I hadn’t reviewed enough of the relevant literature, so I did that - the revised version has a bibliography that’s two full pages longer than the original. Also, the original paper was too one-sided, and I have attempted to remedy that as well. However, I don’t think the second reviewer read my paper very thoroughly: of course I didn’t reference Larson, as my point was that journalism studies has ignored most sociology of professions since Larson, i.e. my object was not to review the general literature on professions and professionalism (lord knows there are a lot of those reviews out there already), but to point out that in journalism studies, people in general have not kept up to date with sociology of professions/occupations, and are generally satisified with a reference to Larson or somesuch, ignoring recent work by Friedson, Evetts and others.

However, overall I am actually very happy with the feedback, as it helped me prepare a better version of the paper. And at least you get feedback from the ICA.

But sometimes one wonders about the thoroughness of the peer review process. Here’s one of my rejected panel proposals:

Tabloid Journalism Proposal

And here’s the two reviewers’ comments:

Comments for the author: none.

And:

bit light given that there will be 3 papers. not economical/inclusive use of scheduling space at ICA.

OK, that’s helpful - not! I’ll keep that in mind for next time: have more participants.

Here’s my second panel proposal:

Post-Communism Proposal

And here’s the feedback:

the rationale is very clear - the abstracts are not. furthermore there seems to be a contradiction: the rationale announces a sharp critique of western/US style journalism studies frameworks, but the abstracts suggest those are indeed quite useful to explain the shift in value-orientations occurring in these countries?

And:

important topic but the collection of papers cohere on a very general level. journalism studies would have been better off if these papers were submitted individually to the paper competition–rather than as a panel.

Well, I’ll have to say those reviewers who gave feedback on my paper were more helpful. Anyway - what do you think? Are these reasonable assessments of the proposals? I spent more time on the proposals than on the paper, so I’m too close to see.

Just got this in my inbox (this is not the whole thing, just the essentials - the link was added by me):

Dear Henrik,

We sincerely regret to inform you that your paper titled “Comparing European Journalisms” has not been accepted for presentation at ECREA’s 2nd European Communication Conference “Communication Policies and Culture in Europe” in Barcelona, 25 to 28 November 2008.

We have received an overwhelming amount of proposals (1438 proposals, involving almost 3000 people), and we regret having to reject a considerable amount of quality proposals. Because of the enormous interest in the conference, we hope you understand we will not be able to answer any individual questions regarding proposals.

Bleh. Some clarifications, though: for ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association), you don’t send in full papers (like for the ICA, see previous post), only abstracts, so technically, it’s my abstract that’s been rejected, not my paper (the paper hasn’t been written yet). I knew I should have spent more time on that abstract and not just cribbed and adjusted from another abstract I had submitted for another conference… .

Interestingly, this year ICA (again, see my previous post) had taken concerns about the transparency of the peer review process seriously and so allowed paper submitters to actually read the reviewers’ comments. Previously the ICA has been much like the ECREA, i.e. your paper gets rejected (or accepted) and you have no idea why. As ECREA grows, I’m guessing they will eventually have to do the same thing. For now, though, I will have to be satisfied with a no-reason rejection.

Here’s the abstract that was rejected, by the way:

Abstract (359 words)
Comparative research on European journalism (particularly on journalism’s relationship – if any – with a European Public Sphere) is is an academic growth area: since the beginning of the 2000s, a number of large-scale, pan-European research projects examining various aspects of European journalism has taken place (some are still ongoing). Most of these are in one way or other financed by the EU in some way, and most deal with similar issues, journalistically mediated communication on Europe and European issues, broadly defined. Some projects deal more specifically with journalism than others, but most include at least some element of journalism research, be it content analysis of news coverage, analysis of EU public communication strategies and its targets, or interviews with journalists.
Through a meta-analysis of key publications from four EU-funded projects that deal specifically with journalism and news media - AIM Project (Adequate Information Management in Europe, 04-07), EMEDIATE (Media and Ethics of a European Public Sphere from the Treaty of Rome to the “War on Terror”, 04-07), EURONAT (Representations of Europe and the Nation in Current and Prospective Member-States: Media, Élites and Civil Society, 01-04), and EUROPUB (The Transformation of Political Mobilisation and Communication in European Public Spheres, 01-03) – this paper asks: What are the core methodological and definitional issues in comparing European journalisms? How is journalism defined and operationalised, and what consequences does that have for the image of European journalisms presented by these research projects? The conclusion is that while these projects represent serious and comprehensive efforts to understand European journalism in a comparative perspective, comparative methodologies remain underdeveloped in some aspects. “Journalism” is often operationally defined as “quality journalism” or “serious journalism”, ignoring the importance of tabloid/popular journalism; and press journalism is over-represented and emerging genres of online journalism (news blogging, citizen journalism etc) are under-represented. This paper argues that while these methodological issues are difficult to overcome, ignoring them will serve to reify established definitions of journalism. Using operational definitions that are based on accepting the self-presentation of the object of study (i.e. using operational defintions based on how journalism views and defines itself) will also potentially cause problems of reflexivity and lack of critical research.

I thought it read pretty interesting, though I could have developed it more (on the other hand - it’s an abstract, how much detail can you go into in 500 words?). What do you think? Any comments/suggestions?

Posts in the near future will continue my reflections on the peer review process, rejections, feedback etc. Watch this space.

In about three weeks time I’ll be going to the annual ICA conference, held this year in scenic Montreal, Canada. For those of you not in the know, ICA stands for the International Communication Association and their annual conference is the biggest, baddest, rootin’-est, tootin’-est academic event of the year for us media/journalism scholar types. The ICA is widely considered to be a very “American” organization, “American” being media researcher-speak for very competitive, favouring quantitative methodologies over qualitative, and generally being very influential and important even though we (Europeans) vaguely would prefer it not to be. Big poster sessions, prizes awarded for best paper and other things we more sedate European academics are weirded out/scared by. Still, it’s the place to see and be seen, so I’m going. I make it sound like I’m making a sacrifice but I am not, really - I got a paper accepted, I have a travel grant the size of an elephant so it’s not like I’m paying, and I’m going to see some friends I haven’t seen in a long time. So I’m not complaining, good fun will be had by all.

Now, on to the important stuff: the paper I’m presenting. As I said, I got it accepted, but only barely. The anonymous reviewers thought the paper basically sucked but they were going to accept it anyway (it must have been the cute font I used). Since I don’t like presenting stuff that sucks, I took the opportunity to rewrite and resubmit - yes, you are allowed to do that for some conferences, and the ICA is one of them. Anyway, the deadline for submitting a revised paper was April 30th and on April 29th (Damn, I’m good) I was done and sent it in. If I have got wordpress figured out, you should be able to download a version of the paper below. Basically, the paper presents a framework for analysing the changes that are taking place within journalism, based on some recent sociology of work and occupations. Download it, print it, read it, send it to your friends, give it to your students - and let me know if it makes sense, if you have a moment. Because as it happens, this will also form an important part of the theoretical framework for my research project - you know, the one I never talk about nor give you an opportunity to comment on. So, since you asked for it (well, you didn’t), here it is! Read ‘em and weep!

EDIT: If you want to try before you buy, here’s the abstract:

Abstract (220 words)

The notion of professionalism figures prominently in journalists’ own discourses about their occupation, as well as in scholarly accounts of the practice(s) of journalism. However, when accounting for changes in the profession and changes in professionalism, journalism scholarship has not been very good at taking the wider context of changes in work/labour/occupational structures into account, and nor has journalism scholarship been very good at incorporating up-to-date scholarship from the sociology of work and occupation. This paper seeks to remedy this by introducing Evetts’ model of two competing discourses of professionalism, organizational and occupational professionalism, and using this and other recent sociology of work/occupations to put changes in journalistic labour into a wider context of structural work and workplace change. The paper applies the ‘two professionalisms’ model to journalism through examining how four key contemporary trends in work organization impact on journalistic labour and the shaping of journalistic professionalism: (1) the general deregulation of labour markets, (2) proliferation of short-term contracts and other forms of flexible employment, (3) technologisation of the workplace, and (4) concerns over de-skilling of parts of the workforce. This examination is used to generate a set of research questions highlighting previously under-studied areas in journalism scholarship, areas that the paper argues are important to understanding journalism as a professional practice at the beginning of the 21st century.

EDIT: Fixed the link to the paper, or rather: my wife, who knows way more about this Inter-Web stuff than I do, fixed the link to my paper. It should be downloadable now.

The Two Professionalisms of Journalism

…I’m blogging about my blogging. It can’t be helped. It can’t be avoided. Everyone does it. Endless self-referentiality and navel-gazing is, after all, what the blogosphere is all about. I’d better just accept it.

So, here it is: I haven’t posted here in over a month, partly because parenthood has been keeping me busy, but also, I confess, because I have made my own blog so mind-numbingly boring. If it’s boring to write, then it’s boring to read, so I am not only boring my readers, I am boring myself as well. I’ve increasingly found it difficult to come up with something interesting to say - heck, I’ve found it difficult to come up with something uninteresting to say, and as a career academic you’d think I would have mastered uninteresting by now. This is bad.

I mean, look at this (from my “About” page):

I started this blog because I wanted a different forum for my ideas, thoughts and comments. As a scholar of journalism, the time lag of academic publishing (measured in months or years) often feels particularly frustrating as my object of study exists in a totally different time frame (measured in hours or even seconds). A blog is different. A blog allows me to publish topical commentary while it is still topical. A blog gives me the opportunity to field-test ideas as I get them. And above all, a blog allows for feedback from a wider circle of people.

Gahd! What a load of crapola! Have I ever commented on something topical (OK, I have, but not often)? I don’t even want to comment on something topical, I am a media historian, I want to comment on things that happened a hundred years ago. If it happened two hundred years ago, even better - twice as good, in fact. As for the rest, when have I ever “field-tested ideas as I get them” on this blog? I sure managed to sound both naive and pretentious at the same time with that one. I don’t think I’ve made a single post directly related to my actual research project.

It all started out with the best of intentions, as the road to Hell always does. I didn’t want to have another “I think”-blog, I wanted an “I know”-blog, or even a “Someone other than me knows even better”-blog. What does it matter what I think? There is no shortage of pundits pontificating about the media, substituting anecdotes and case-of-one sociology for evidence. I wanted this to be different! I wanted this to be about the facts, what we actually know about media and journalism. And evidently, I wanted it to be boring.

I’m having a blog crisis, as you can see. I want to continue blogging, mostly because the Internet is full of ex-bloggers, and I don’t want to become one of them. I am not a one-hit wonder, I’m a fellow at Oxford for chrissakes! So I am going to have to change the way I write. I have no particular plan for how, other than “not being boring” being high up on the agenda. One reason I am a media scholar is that I (surprise, surprise) enjoy it, so I think I’ll start by posting stuff I enjoy writing, rather than writing because I feel a ton of Lutheran guilt weighing on me. Lutheran guild is not quite as guilty as Catholic guilt, but on the other hand I can’t get absolution, which actually increases the weight of the guilt in real terms.

So, dear readers (hi, mom!), prepare for the relaunch of doctorofjournalism.com, coming soon to a browser near you. I promise more excitement, more upskirt pictures of Britney Spears and all those other things that make the study of media and journalism so rewarding. As soon as I figure out how to post links to documents I’ll put up a paper I recently submitted to a conference for your delectation. It has to do with my research project, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even get some feedback on it. Maybe my blog will become interesting for advertisers because I’ve used the phrase “upskirt pictures of Britney Spears” twice in this post.

See you on the funny pages, everyone.

The State of the News Media 2008. As always, it’s an engrossing read, but among the more interesting conclusions are that user-generated content plays little role in creating and disseminating news content, and that interactivity on media sites (both traditional and alternative) still is limited.

In contrast, while journalists as a professional group (survey commentary here) are becoming more pessimistic about the future - particularly their financial future - they are eager to embrace new technologies and their pessimism does not extend to technology and its (possible) effects on journalism. So while it seems journalists do want to use the potential of technology to do new things, there are less of those new things available from news sites than you would expect.

Typically, the part of the report I was most looking forward to reading, a special report on the state of newsrooms and newsroom practices, will not be available until later. Oh well, all good things come to those who wait.