Dr. Dan Berkowitz's new formulation of the gatekeeping metaphor should be of interest to all ACE members, particularly those in the television section of the Electronic Media SIG. This article explores the media's selection of stories for local television news shows. The Indiana University study combines qualitative and quantitative observations gathered over a seven-week period at a network affiliate newsroom in Indianapolis, IN (the nation's 24th largest TV market). Unlike previous researchers who have portrayed single gatekeepers, Berkowitz found six key decision makers for the two evening newscasts. Although he also discovered in a related study (Berkowitz, 1989a) "that 77.5% of potential stories were discarded by the assignment editor before the news day began," this study concludes that group dynamics have replaced the lone copy editor who previously decided an item's newsworthiness.
The study used five criteria for coding a story's newsworthiness: 1) conflict, 2) timeliness, 3) proximity, 4) significance, and 5) known principal (familiarity of people, institutions, or issues). These types of stories were developed from literature concerning newscast quality (e.g. Wulfemeyer, 1982a): 1) "issues" stories, 2) "unexpected events" (spot news), and 3) "entertainment" (soft news, human interest stories, etc.).
In addition, Berkowitz coded 14 categories for topics of potential news stories. He collapsed several of those categories into one ("miscellaneous") category because each contained fewer than five percent of the total number of stories included in this study. Seven categories remained: accidents & disaster, government & politics, crime, miscellaneous, business & economics, education, and health & welfare.
Over a four-week period, a total of 391 stories survived the assignment editor's desk (first gate) and were coded. Slightly more than half of them (57.8%) aired. By story type, more than 55% of the issue-related stories aired, 66.7% of unexpected event items and 53.7% of the entertainment items aired. Chi-square analysis showed these differences were insignificant.
Analyzed by topic, those stories that aired most frequently were accidents & disasters (73.4%), government & politics (62.0%), and crime (60.7%). Unplanned events aired considerably more frequently than did stories about planned events (66.0% to 49.5%). Discriminant analysis of the five news values revealed that timeliness (FC = .85) was the greatest determinant of a story airing followed by significance (.46) and proximity (.25). However, the five criteria accounted for only 19.4% of the variance in why potential news stories were aired. Interviews with newsroom decision makers revealed that the easier a story is to report, the greater its chances of airing. In explaining their use of news values, decision makers described a balance of importance, interest, and visual impact.
ACE members dealing with newsrooms should remember that television news content is built from easily explained information that can provide a good audience draw and can be assembled efficiently. Although visual impact was rarely mentioned during the decision makers' daily planning sessions, it was mentioned frequently when they were later asked to describe their decision making framework. Berkowitz concludes that spot news can "close the gate" on planned events. But even resource and logistical constraints can "close the gate" on spot news coverage.
The fundamental message here is make it interesting enough to pass through the first gate (the assignment desk), keep it simple, make it easy to report, and make it visual. Then keep your fingers crossed.
Editors have always been recognized as gatekeepers who decide where, when and how information will be published. However, editors do work within a certain structural context that may affect the outcome of the gatekeeping process. In this study, 155 Minnesota community newspaper editors, including 59 weeklies, and editors of 90 dailies in six Midwestern states were interviewed by telephone in 1985 for their perceptions of some of these constraints. The sample was restricted to non-metropolitan communities of 60,000 or less, and each newspaper was from a different county.
For their purposes, the authors limited constraints to values, routines and organizational management. Among the factors which may cause media organizations some problems are the professional standards that determine the use, nonuse, the modification and layout of news. This includes the major priorities of gatekeepers and their professional ethics. Another factor is the implementation of standards in routines of news selection, including time and space pressures. The organizational structure for personnel recruitment, management and change also is a concern. An important question is how information generation, together with maintaining economic support through advertising and circulation, affect editors' decisions.
In examining those issues, the researchers compared newspapers in small, less pluralistic communities with those in larger, more pluralistic ones.
While both rural and urban editors share the value orientation of the power group, the small-town editor has a more limited pool of advertisers. How does this affect reporting on power groups or prominent individuals who deviate from the norm?
In the telephone interview, editors were asked to rank production, circulation, advertising and news-editorial concerns from most-to-least important in terms of the decisions they made on their papers. They were also asked an open-ended question as to which were the toughest decisions to make.
All editors ranked news and editorial as their first concern, although advertising tended to rank higher as a concern among weekly newspaper editors in small, less pluralistic communities. The "toughest decisions" for editors as a whole were negative news about individuals, 44 percent; news selection and display, 33 percent; pressure from individuals and groups, 23 percent; organizational and personnel problems, 19 percent; legal reporting, nine percent; and business concerns, eight percent.
Editors of daily newspapers under outside ownership perceived more organizational problems. None of the editors of weekly newspapers even mentioned organizational problems.
The results suggest that information dissemination might be a basic professional characteristic that transcends structural differences in journalism. However, communicators in rural areas should be aware of an editor's general bias toward maintaining the economic health of the newspaper. Articles that directly challenge this concern may not be printed.
While this research succeeds as an exploratory study in raising more questions than the data can answer, I wish Donohue, Olien and Tichenor could have reported their results more quickly. When the data were gathered, the farm crisis in the United States was intensely felt in rural communities. How this affected answers from weekly editors, especially concerning advertising, would be useful to know in a follow-up study in more healthy times.
This study also suggests strong possibilities for future research on how organizational management at large metropolitan dailies affect editors' decisions, especially regarding negative news about individuals.
Some photographers have resigned themselves to Kodachrome's slow film speed as a necessary, if unwelcome, trade-off required for the sharpness and fine grain that are a hallmark of the Kodachrome line. Others have switched to Ektachrome or Fujichrome. Both offer higher film speeds than Kodachrome or can be pushed to higher film speeds. But the results are often marginal, especially for critical reproduction in magazines or books. Now, Lewis Kemper, a wildlife photographer based in Yosemite National Park, writes that push-and-pull processing of Kodachrome is available through The New Lab in San Francisco and other independent professional Kodachrome labs. For diehard Kodachrome shooters, the ability to push this film opens greater possibilities for using faster shutter speeds or obtaining greater depth of field. And for photographers who use zoom lenses with small maximum apertures, push processing may make using this unique film possible for the first time.
Kodachrome can be pushed up to two stops, but Kemper obtained the best results by limiting Kodachrome 64 to a one-half- or one-stop push (i.e., shooting at a film speed rating of 90 or 125). Kodachrome 200 responded well to as much as a 2-stop push. So Kemper recommends rating it at :400,500,600 or even 800 ISO.
"Pull processing" is seldom considered in connection with slide films, but Kemper makes a convincing case for it in certain situations. (You "push" film by rating it at a higher film speed than its nominal ISO. Conversely, you "pull" a film by rating it at a lower film speed.) Shooting Kodachrome 64 at ISO 50 lowers the contrast. "On bright sunny days where the contrast is too great, you'll get better looking photographs," says Kemper. In addition, for people who make Cibachrome or Type R prints from slides, reducing the contrast makes it easier to make a color print from the slide.
Kemper does not discuss Kodachrome 25 in his article.
The New Lab is just one of a number of professional labs around the country that process Kodachrome. However, it is the only one that has a prepaid mail order program, according to Kemper. To check the details, contact The New Lab toll free at 1-800-526-3165 (excluding California).
This slim (170 pages) book is a report prepared for the Rural Economic Policy Program of The Aspen Institute under a grant from the Ford Foundation to the University of San Francisco. The project originated at a 1988 conference on the importance of communications and information systems to rural development in the United States, held in Aspen, Colorado.
Basic to this project was a belief that telecommunications is important to rural development because of its "potential for promoting long-term growth, diversification and stability." Most new rural jobs are in services, the writers note, and most of these service jobs involve the creation, processing, or management of information. They believe modern telecommunications has the potential to overcome the historic barriers of rural geography and distance.
This book begins with a comprehensive look at rural America in the information age and ends on clearly-stated policy goals and recommendations. It calls, appropriately, for government leadership to help set and implement needed telecommunications policy changes. These are spelled out in some detail.
The book also contains chapters on the rural economy, the role of telecommunications in that economy, telecommunications policy issues affecting rural America, and the rural telecommunications infrastructure. An important appendix outlines "the players" (e.g., long distance carriers and REA).
Also of interest is a report on the original Aspen conference. It is useful not only for the information it contains, but also because of the insights it reveals into the thinking behind the larger study.
One important strength of this work is the amount of data presented. We may know something of the current plight of rural America, but we need more factual information of just this type. The book also has a very useful list of references. There is no index, but the topical organization and descriptive headings limit the need for one.
Those with a specific interest in rural telecommunications obviously have good use for this book. Those with an interest in rural development or rural communications in general also will find it to be a valuable reference to have on hand.
The premise of this book is simple: "I intend to help you learn to write better." It probably could be of some help to each of us, but it's not likely to help any of us very much.
Robert G. Hays
University of Illinois