The People Formerly Known as the Audience: Rethinking the Public:

Chapter 9: The Audience for News

• Themes:
• Any news consumer has a range of consumption habits
• This includes TV, radio, newspapers, and now internet sources such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and various online news sites.
• There are no news consumers apart from the news
• This theme highlights the debate over whether journalists should cater stories to a specific audience. The chapter claims that this is not essential because without the news first shaping the stories, there would be no news consumers.
• Intensive v. extensive readers
• Intensive readers were the readers of the past who had a few and erhaps spiritual texts memorized and reread often
• The invention of the novel and newspaper led to the extensive reader who has read multiple books and papers less deeply but from a broader range of topics
• Emotional connection to news sources
• Often a newspaper or new anchor will develop an emotional relationship with the consumer rather than a disconnected, surface level relationship with the consumer.

• Questions:
• Should journalists reach for sensational stories or stories with substance?
• How should news sources adapt their delivery to still provide the public with news if the public has such a short attention span?
• Do we have an emotional connections with news sources? Or any other media outlet such as a magazine, television show, or Facebook?

Chapter 10: News as Literature and Narrative

• Themes:
• A news story is both news and a story
• Most journalists claim they just report the facts without recognizing the storytelling aspect of their job
• Implicitly or explicitly the writer learns to tailor the fact to a form and format in which their relationships will come to make sense
• Re-enforce morality issues and anonymities –
• For example: homosexuality in the news used to be an anomaly and example of a morality issue, now it is more common to see gays and lesbians covered in the news without commentary on morality
• There are different zones of journalists domain in terms of telling a story:
• Both sides (political argument)
• A culturally criticized group (sex offenders)
• A shared value category (sports).
• There are times when a journalist abandons the neutral stance- during tragedy, danger, natl. security and feel aligned with the general public
• For example, September, 11^th when tragedy, threatened national security, and danger were combined.
• Sometimes an urban symbol gets more media attention than a suburban community piece
• This is because it is a symbolic capitol and represents a community that doesn’t exist on the ground
• Questions
• What is form?
• Do we see morality issues in the media today that utilize cultural anomalies?
• Is it ok that journalist’s abandon a neutral stance of reporting during times of tragedy, national security, and danger?

Chapter 11: The Law, Democracy, and News

• Themes
• When a society enjoys an elected legislature and an independent press the consequence can be great, but there is no automatic link between press and democracy
• In history, very oppressive regimes had a press that endured censorship or was only a tool of propaganda
• In capitalism, publishers can sensor based on what will sell
• Debate over whether the government could constitutionally enhance public debate and discussion only by staying out of media regulation altogether?

• Questions
• This chapter claims that the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” does not provide the best environment for freedom of expression. If this is true, then what does?
• This chapter proposes, “News can either be fair or free, but not both.” Is this statement true and why?