News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism

by Colleen Cotter

• ISBN13: 9780521819619
• ISBN10: 052181961X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Written by a former news reporter and editor, News Talk gives us an insider's view of the media, showing how journalists select and construct their news stories. Colleen Cotter goes behind the scenes, revealing how language is chosen and shaped by news staff into the stories we read and hear. Tracing news stories from start to finish, she shows how the biases of journalists and editors - and the limitations of news writing formulas - may distort a story that was prepared with the most determined effort to be fair and accurate. Using insights from both linguistics and journalism, News Talk is a remarkable picture of a hidden world and its working practices on both sides of the Atlantic. It will interest those involved in language study, media and communication studies and those who want to understand how media shape our language and our view of the world.

Author Biography

Colleen Cotton is a senior lecturer in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a former daily news reporter and editor in the USA.

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The process and practice of everyday journalism	p. 13
An interactional and ethnographic approach to news media language	p. 15
Contradictory perceptions about news media behaviors	p. 17
The ethnographic advantage	p. 19
Exploring news and news language from the perspective of the practitioner	p. 23
Influences on media language and discourse	p. 24
Characteristics and tendencies of media language	p. 26
Conclusion: process and practice - underexplored dimensions	p. 29
Craft and community: Reading the ways of journalists	p. 30
Articulating primary values	p. 31
The craft ethos	p. 36
The community factor	p. 43
Conclusion: locating and understanding news priorities	p. 47
The ways reporters learn to report and editors learn to edit	p. 49
"Ways of speaking"	p. 50
Socialization into news culture	p. 52
Loci of learning	p. 61
Conclusion: the apprentice model and journalistic practice	p. 63
Conceptualizing the news	p. 65
News values and their significance in text and practice	p. 67
Determining "newsworthiness"	p. 68
News values govern journalistic practice	p. 72
News judgment and "instinct"	p. 77
Similarity and variation	p. 82
Conclusion: the role of news values	p. 85
The "story meeting": Deciding what's fit to print	p. 88
What happens at a story meeting: The Oakland Tribune	p. 90
Role of news values in story meetings	p. 94
Other news-community values	p. 97
Boundaries and norms of professional behavior	p. 100
Conclusion: news priorities in relation to practice	p. 106
The interaction-based nature of journalism	p. 110
Interaction through practice	p. 111
The supremacy of the local	p. 119
Loci of interaction	p. 125
The pseudo-relationship between news media and community	p. 128
Conclusion: identifying interaction in the journalistic context	p. 131
Constructing the story: texts and contexts	p. 133
Story design and the dictates of the "lead"	p. 135
Principles of newswriting	p. 136
Story design	p. 139
The lead	p. 151
Conclusion: the importance of craft	p. 169
"Boilerplate": Simplifying stories, anchoring text, altering meaning	p. 171
News discourse rules and boilerplate	p. 172
Features of boilerplate	p. 176
Implications of boilerplate	p. 180
Conclusion: responsibility and "neutral" text production	p. 185
Style and standardization in news language	p. 187
Background: language standardization	p. 188
Language standardization in the news context	p. 190
Journalists and language: complaints, values, and injunctions	p. 194
Changes and innovations in news style	p. 201
Conclusion: language awareness and journalistic identity	p. 211
Decoding the discourse	p. 215
The impact of the news process on media language	p. 217
Delivering the news	p. 217
Coherence of the text	p. 219
Linguists as "experts" in news stories	p. 220
Conclusion and key points	p. 230
Epilogue	p. 235
Appendices	p. 237
Story samples	p. 239
Outline guide for the analysis of news media language	p. 247
SPJ Code of Ethics	p. 251
Glossary of news and linguistic terms	p. 252
References	p. 259
Index	p. 272
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.