“News Philosophy” Impacts Generation of Story Ideas, Report by Cox Center Research Team Shows

Journalists understand that their organizations have strategic approaches to the coverage of news, and these approaches, called “news philosophies” by the journalists, have impact on the story ideas that the journalists generate and on the structures and techniques used to tell those stories.

That was the conclusion reached by a research team from the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia and contained in a research presentation the team made in Chicago in late November at the annual conference of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR).

The team consisted of Drs. Lee B. Becker and Tudor Vlad, director and assistant director of the Cox Cener, and four doctoral students in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College.

	Prof. Gerald M. Kosicki from Ohio State University and Dr. Tudor Vlad between sessions.

Two of the doctoral students, Amy Jo Coffey and Nancy Nusser, are research assistants in the Cox Center. The other two doctoral students on the team were Lisa Hebert and Noah Arceneaux.

The team studied news decision-making in a single city in the southeast of the United States on one day in the Spring of 2004. The team visited the city magazine, the daily newspaper, a weekly newspaper, a radio station and three television stations on that day and interviewed 35 journalists.

The interviews provided “strong empirical support for the concept of news philosophy,” Dr. Becker told the audience members at the Chicago meeting. He said that journalists understood their organization had a general approach to news and that this approach was used to differentiate the organization’s product from others in the market.

The journalists also were able to talk meaningfully about story ideation, or the process of generating story ideas that could become stories. “They also understood that they could tell stories in different ways, and that they could use different elements, such as drama, scene setting and character development, in telling stories,” Dr. Becker said.

What was most important, according to the research team, was the finding that the techniques used to generate story ideas were different for media organizations based on the news philosophy they operated under. In addition, the news philosophy shaped story narrative structure and the selection of narrative techniques.

The city magazine, for example, had a philosophy of providing “entertaining” accounts of events in the community “from a positive angle,” an editor of the magazine was quoted in the report as saying. As a result, the magazine relied on an extensive network of correspondents who were expected to “pitch” story ideas to the editors on a regular basis. Another editor said she writes in ways that “readers can understand a little bit and feel like they kind of know” the people in the story.

Approximately 130 researchers attended the conference, held Nov. 19 and 20 in Chicago. Research focused on survey research methodology and findings of public opinion studies on a variety of topics, including the just-completed 2004 U.S. presidential elections.

At the business meeting at the end of the MAPOR conference, Dr. Vlad was elected to the executive board of the organization. MAPOR is a regional chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

At the luncheon meeting on the first day of the conference, Rob Daves, polling expert at the Minneapolis newspaper, the Star-Tribune, received the the 2004 MAPOR Fellow award. The award recognizes individuals who have had made a significant contribution to MAPOR and to public opinion research.

Daves was a participant in a Cox Center workshop in Romania in May of 2004, where he explained the importance of public opinion research in the coverage of elections in the U.S.

Dr. Becker was designated MAPOR Fellow in 1996.

	Rob Daves was named MAPOR Fellow.

Click here to read "The Impact of Newsroom Philosophy on Story Ideation and Story Narration."

Click here to learn about read about the May 2004 workshop in Romania.