This document provides an overview of journalism, including definitions, the nature of news, and its importance. It defines journalism as the selection and distribution of factual news stories to audiences. News is defined as timely information about unambiguous events that are meaningful, unexpected, and involve elite people or nations. The functions of news in a democracy are to inform citizens and hold governments accountable. People seek news out of basic human instincts and to feel connected to others. The conclusion discusses upcoming team projects to create news programs on chosen topics.

1. Journalism
Week 2.
Definition & Importance
Mar. 13, 2015

2. What is journalism? Why important?
1. The definition of Journalism
- Etymological definition
- Definition
2. What is news?
- Definition
- Newsworthiness (news value)
- Function
- Who affects news
3. Why important
- Why people want news
- News and democracy
4. Team projects
- The details of team projects
- Setting up teams

3. -

4. 1. The definition of Journalism
○ Etymological definition
journalism = jour + (n)al + ism
suffix forming nouns of action from
verbs
suffix meaning of condition, doctrine
dies(day, Latin) - diary (a daily record of events), diurnal
↓
jour(French) - bonjour
↓
jour(English radix, meaning of a day)
journey: a day trip → trip
journal: a book for inventories and daily accounts
→ daily publication (newspaper, magazine...).
journalism: everything on journal → the press/ news
gathering, processing, and dissemination of news
to the audiences.

5. 1. The definition of Journalism
○ Academic definition
- The professional selection of actual news facts to an audience
by means of distribution methods.
- The networked practice of producing, editing, forwarding, sharing
and debating public information
- Journalism as a set of norms, values, and ideas practiced by
professionals
- Journalism as an institution of ideology, culture.
-The 4th estate, a watchdog
- Objective journalism, Investigative journalism, photo
journalism,
Yellow journalism, hype journalism, pack journalism, data
journalism,
advocate journalism, public journalism, alternative journalism,
PD journalism…

6. 2. What is news?

7. What is news
○ Definition
- News is about events, not state-of-affairs. News aims at current
rather
than past or future events. News is the report of an event, not
the
experience of an event. (Halberstam, 1987)
- News is usually defined as information that is timely. Relevant
to the
concerns of its audience, and presented in a form that is easy
to grasp.
(Bennet)
- News is what a well trained editor decides to put in his paper.
(Johnson, 1926)
- News is what newspapermen make it. (Gieber, 1964)
- The news is what the newspaper plays up. (Mahim, 1924)
- What a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a

8. 2. What is news
○ Newsworthiness - news value (Galtung & Ruge, 1965)
1- Frequency
An event that unfolds within a publication cycle of the news medium is more
likely
to be selected than a one that takes place over a long period of time.
2- Threshold
Events have to pass a threshold before being recorded at all; the greater
the
intensity (the more gruesome the murder or the more casualties in an
accident),
the greater the impact and the more likely it is to be selected.
3- Unambiguity
The more clearly an event can be understood and interpreted without
multiple
meanings, the more likely it is to be selected.
4- Meaningfulness
The culturally familiar is more likely to be selected.
5- Consonance
The news selector may be able to predict (due to experience) events that
will be
newsworthy, thus forming a “pre-image” of an event, which in turn increases
its
chances of becoming news.
6- Unexpectedness
Among events meaningful and/or consonant, the unexpected or rare event is

9. What is news
○ Newsworthiness - news value
7- Continuity
An event already in the news has a good chance of remaining in the news
(even if its impact has been reduced) because it has become familiar and
easier to
interpret.
8- Composition
An event may be included as news less because of its intrinsic news value
than
because it fits into the overall composition or balance of a newspaper or
news
broadcast.
9- Reference to elite nations
The actions of elite nations are seen as more consequential than the
actions of
Other nations.
10- Reference to elite people
Again, the actions of elite people, likely to be famous, may be seen by
news
selectors as having more consequence than others, and news audiences may
identify with them.
11- Reference to persons
News that can be presented in terms of individual people rather than
abstractions
is likely to be selected.

10. 2. What is news
○ Denis MacShane (1979)
- Conflict
- Hardship and danger to the community
- Unusualness
- Scandal
- Individualism.
○ Harcup and O Neill s (2001)‟ ‟
- Power élite
- Celebrity
- Entertainment
- Surprise
- Bad news
- Good news
- Magnitude
- Relevance
- Follow-ups
- Media agenda.
○ The Missouri group (2005)
Impact, Conflict, Novelty, Prominence, Proximity, Timeliness

11. What is news
○ The function of news (media)
The news serves a vital democratic function. The news constructs a
symbolic world that has a kind of priority, a certification of legitimate
importance.
1. News provides citizens fair and full information so that they can make
sound
decisions as citizens.
2. News provides coherent frameworks to help citizens comprehend the
complex
political universe.
3. News serves as common carrier of the perspectives of the varied groups
in
society: multiperspectival.
4. News represent the public and speak for and to the public interest in
order to
hold government accountable.
5. News evoke empathy and provide deep understanding so that citizens at
large
can appreciate the situation of other human beings, non -elite. and
learn

12. 2. What is news
○ Age of on-line journalism
Declining the role of gatekeeper
- curating service (select, organize, and look after the news)
- interactivity - feed back, prosumer
-customisation of content - ‘individualization, curation service
- hypertextuality - offering information about information
- multimediality

13. 2. What is news
○ Who/what affects news - gatekeeper
- Who select, transmit, limit, extend, and interpret a news
Reporter, editor, peer group, news organization, routines of
newsroom,
owner of media, government, interest group, advertisement, public
opinion, environment….

14. 3. Why important?
○ why people want news?
- The awareness of instinct:
People crave news out of basic instinct.
They need to know what's going on out there beyond their direct
experience,
to feel security, to plan, to negotiate their lives.
- Man is a social animal
- how about き もり引 籠 ?
- The result of evolution

15. 3. Why important?
- Mirror neurons
Subset of Neurons activates both while observing and while
performing:
Actions such as grasping
Emotions such as sadness
Watching someone receive painful events such as shocks
“Thus, our capacity for empathy – the ability to share another’s
emotions and feelings – is based in a simple ‘mirroring’ mechanism
implemented by the human MNS that allows us to use the same
neural resources to represent states of the self and others in
an overlapping way.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmx1qPyo8Ks
(NOVA scienceNOW : 1 - Mirror Neurons)
Empathy, learning, self awareness, language

16. 3. Why important?
News and Democracy - Representative democracy

17. 3. Why important?
○ News and Democracy
News shapes the way we see the world, ourselves and each other. It is the
stories
of journalists that construct and maintain our shared realities (Carey,
1989).
News can become a singularly important form of social glue; our consumption
of
stories about current events large and small binds us together in an
“imagined
community” (Anderson, 1983)
Imagined community
Actual community - FtF
Imagined community - by news media.
a nation is a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who
perceive themselves as part of that group.
After inventing print, after newspaper disseminated
"The modern nation, no matter how small or socially homogeneous, can only
be
an imagined community. And, as an imagined community, it needs its members
to feel as if they have an intimate knowledge of one another. It needs
constantly
to be narrated through structures that are resonant and familiar to all

18. 3. Why important?
○ 2 views of democracy in relation with News
1. classical view of democracy
Rational and active citizens who seek to realize common good
through
the collective initiation, discussion, and decision of policy
questions
concerning public and who delegate authority to agents to carry
through the broad decisions reached by the people through
majority
vote.
- role of news
The education of an entire people to the point where their
intellectual,
emotional and moral capacities have reached their full potential
and
they are joined, freely and actively, in a genuine community.

19. 3. Why important?
○ 2 views of democracy in relation with News
2. realist model (Lippmann)
- Elite rule in a democracy
Citizen is not sovereign but lives in a world which he cannot
see, does
not understand and is unable to direct. The public is merely
those
persons who are interested in an affairs and can affect it only
by
supposing or opposing the actors.
- role of news
serve as guides to reasonable action for the use of uninformed
people.
good machinery of record.

20. 3. Why important?
Education for democracy
Tocqueville,
What sustains democracy are the intermediary groups or
associations
that bring people together, that formulate, articulate, and
crystallize
opinion, and that provide collective bases for political action.

21. 4. Team Projects
More details on TP
○ Making a news program
- duration: 10 ~12 minutes.
- program style pick one of them
1. ordinary news program
an anchor delivers 5~6 reports, each report's duration is about
2mns.
the topic of news is free (common in subjects or not).
team members discuss their topics and news order
2. In-depth news program
one topic (ex, problems and solutions of college lectures given in
English)
There is no anchor person
the whole video clip is about 10
team members discuss the topic and allocate each member's role
- PM has to keep a diary of team project.
(when/where/who/how long/topic… the team project progress)