Breaking News Errors & Money in College Football -- Some Things I Want to Study

1. Errors in live breaking news coverage -- on Twitter & live TV news, stories "evolve" live, leading news consumers to learn information that can turn out to be incorrect. Is there a correlation between the speed with which a news organization reports information in a breaking news scenario and how incorrect it is? This could be tested through interviews with reporters and TV producers while also testing the tweets or scripts in a quantitative way. This is important because as news consumption becomes more immediate, reporters run the risk of doing more harm than good -- by reporting false or incorrect information.

2. College football TV contracts -- How have corporate TV contracts in college football changed how sports journalists cover their subjects? This is important, specifically in the discussion of concussions in football. Sports journalists must decide whether or not to cover this story, running the risk of upsetting sponsors or the corporate wing of their sports division. Football on ESPN has higher ratings than any other cable channel. This could be tested by interviewing TV reporters as well as college athletic directors and conference CEOs. However, it would be difficult to gain that access. An example of a change in coverage is ESPN dropping out of Frontline's documentary about concussions in the NFL.

I also considered looking into whether or not journalists can sustain their careers on low pay, after reading this article on Al Jazeera America's blog yesterday. I don't think I am interested enough to research it but I thought the article was worth sharing with the class.

What is friendship and how do you know?

Concept:

The mutual and constant expression of care, concern, and kindness between two or more people.

Possible measures:

frequency of interactions

count:

text messages

phone calls

emails

facebook

Level of rapport

- body language

- tone of voice / ease of conversation

- conversational content

Loyalty

- instances of helping the other person

Some big problems facing Austin & the U.S.

Inequality between schools in high income and low income communities 

Household affordability in Austin -- raising cost of living 

Poor transportation options in certain parts of Austin 

Intimidating World of Research Journals

Journalism Studies
This journal describes itself as "a forum for the critical discussion and study of journalism as both a subject of academic inquiry and an arena of professional practice. " It is published six times per year. 

Article Title: Journalistic Use of Exemplars to Humanize Health News
Hinnant, Amanda; Len-Riozs, Maria; Young, Rachel. Journalism Studies, 2013. Vol 14, Issue 4, p539-554. 

Abstract from the Author:
Health journalists often use personal stories to put a “face” on a health issue. This research uses a sociology-of-news approach, based on data collected from 42 in-depth interviews and three surveys with health journalists and editors (national, N=774; state, N=55; and purposive, N=180), to provide a first look at how important journalists think exemplars are to their stories. Results show journalists select exemplars to serve the purposes of informing, connecting, and getting attention. Some of the strategies journalists use to locate exemplars pose ethical concerns. Further, journalists rank the use of exemplars lower in aiding audience understanding compared with the use of experts, data and statistics, and definitions of technical terms.

Link to article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1461670X.2012.721633#.UidzT3azKpg

The International Journal of Press/Politics
This journal (IJPP) is published quarterly and is aimed at how press and politics interact in an increasingly globalizing world. It publishes empirical and theoretical research.

Article Title: Cooperative or Adversarial? Journalists' Enactment of the Watchdog Function in Political News Production
Eriksson, Goran; Ostman, Johan. The International Journal of Press/Politics, July 2013 vol. 18 no. 3304-324.
Was published online before print April 3, 2013, doi: 10.1177/1940161213482493

Abstract from the Author:
This study examines how power relations between journalism and political actors vary across the news production process. Applying a process approach, it addresses this issue by exploring journalists’ enactment of the watchdog role in two key moments of news production: the interactional phase and the news-construction phase. The study is conducted in the context of press conferences with the Swedish Government and involves data from question-and-answer sessions and published news content that was initiated by such press conferences. With a low or moderate extent of journalistic aggressiveness in the interactional phase, the results indicate that this moment is characterized by cooperativeness and can be described in accordance with an exchange model. By contrast, the analysis of the published news content demonstrates a high extent of criticism and is in line with an adversary model. Altogether, the findings contribute new evidence to suggest that the power relations between journalists and political actors vary across the moments of news production, and that journalistic autonomy increases in the later phases of the process. The differences in the extent of watchdog-role performance are discussed in terms of a strategic ritual by which news journalism promotes a favorable image of itself as a public watchdog institution.

Link to article: http://hij.sagepub.com/content/18/3/304.abstract