scholarly journals Press releases as a hybrid genre

Pragmatics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Catenaccio
Keyword(s):  
Press Release ◽  
The Other ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Corporate Websites ◽  
Linguistic Strategies ◽  
The Press ◽  
Newspaper Reporting ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
Multiple Receiver ◽  
The One

Press releases are short pieces of writing issued by companies or institutions to communicate newsworthy information to the journalist community on the one hand, and to the general public (indirectly through newspaper reporting, or, increasingly, directly by making press releases available on corporate websites) on the other. While ostensibly informative, press releases also carry an implicitly self-promotional purpose, in so far as the information they contain comes from a source internal to the organization which is the object of the release itself. This paper explores the generic features of press releases and investigates the way in which they codify the different communicative purposes and multiple receiver roles which distinguish the genre. Drawing on Bhatia’s work on genre (Bhatia 1993, 2004), and building on Jacobs’s preformulating features (Jacobs 1999a), which can be seen as linguistic strategies aimed at achieving the primary and most ostensible purpose of the press release (i.e. getting the story in the news with as little manipulation as possible on the part of journalists), the paper identifies a set of moves and strategies common to the genre, and links them to communicative purposes on the one hand, and to envisioned audiences on the other. It is argued that the press release occupies a hybrid position along the informative-promotional continuum, and that identification of its communicative purpose relies as much on core as on peripheral textual features.

scholarly journals Stranger Games: The life and times of the spintriae

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Press Release ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Numeral ◽  
Daily Telegraph ◽  
The Press ◽  
River Thames ◽  
The One ◽  
The Guardian

Abstract In 2010 a Roman token was discovered in the mud of the Thames near Putney Bridge in London. When the token was discovered to have an erotic image on one side and a Roman numeral on the other, and was identified in a Museum of London press release as a rare Roman “brothel token”, the press reported on the story in the expected manner, for example: “A Roman coin that was probably used by soldiers to pay for sex in brothels has been discovered on the banks of the River Thames” (Daily Telegraph, 4 Jan 2012) and “Bronze discs depicting sex acts, like the one discovered in London, were used to hire prostitutes-and directly led to the birth of pornography during the Renaissance” (The Guardian, 4 Jan 2012). Even before this particular spate of media interest, these curious tokens have generated confusion, speculation and prurience-often simultaneously. They are of interest to games scholars because the speculation often includes the suggestion these objects may have had a ludic function, and were used as game counters. This paper will look at some of the proposals that have been offered by way of explanation of these peculiar objects.

scholarly journals Press releases — the new trend in science communication

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (03) ◽  
pp. C02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Autzen
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Press Release ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Press ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Media ◽  
The University

Scientific institutions have for a long time known the importance of framing and owning stories about science They also know the effective way of communicating science in a press release This is part of the institution’s public relations. Enhanced competition among research institutions has led to a buildup of communicative competences and professionalization of public relations inside the institutions and the press release has become an integrated part of science communication from these institutions. Changing working conditions in the media, where fewer people have to publish more, have made press releases from trustworthy scientific institutions into free and easily copied content for the editors. In this commentary I investigate and discuss the communicative ecosystem of the university press release. I especially take a close look at the role of the critical and independent science journalist in relation to this corporate controlled communication

The Position of the Insurance Press in relation to Insurance Offices and Insurance Interests

1881 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-28
Author(s):  
Cornelius Walford
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

I think the time has arrived when the subject indicated in the title of this paper may be fairly and fully considered. It is certainly one which must frequently have presented itself to the managerial mind; and there can be no reason why this question should not be discussed with as much philosophic calmness as any of the many theoretical problems, or points in practice, which continually present themselves for reflection, and perchance for decision.The point may indeed arise—whether I am the proper person to introduce the topic. I take the individual responsibility of deciding in the affirmative. I have, on the one hand, been as frequently assailed by the insurance press, as any one, and, on the other, received as much kindness and friendly recognition as any man can desire, and more than I claim to deserve. It may be that in either case the extreme has been reached, or passed. I have the advantage of having been a writer upon the press, insurance and general, from the days of my youth, and I say at once that my sympathies are largely on that side. But I think that the familiarity which draws me to the side of its virtues, also renders me, at least in some degree, cognizant of its short-comings. I have the further advantage of having been on various occasions consulted by managers on the one hand, and by editors on the other, upon the points which I now proceed to discuss.

Liberaal en flamingant. Pol De Mont als politicus

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-225
Author(s):  
Ludo Stynen
Keyword(s):  
Student Leaders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Press ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of

De dichter Pol De Mont, ooit een der eerste Vlaamse studentenleiders, raakte al snel bekend om zijn strijdbare Vlaamsgezinde, democratische en vrijzinnige standpunten. Bovendien wist hij als spreker moeiteloos een publiek mee te slepen. Toen de Antwerpse Liberale Vlaamsche Bond hem aar voren schoof als kandidaat voor de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 1890 was dat niet naar de zin van machtige Association libérale. Deze bijdrage heeft aandacht voor de perscampagne tegen De Mont, voor de tegenstellingen binnen de Antwerpse liberalen, en voor De Monts activiteiten in de Antwerpse provincieraad waarvoor hij in 1892 wel verkozen raakte. Belicht wordt de moeilijke relatie van toonaangevende Antwerpse liberale kringen en het flamingantische enerzijds, de onverenigbaarheid van De Monts idealen met de partijtucht anderzijds.________Liberal and supporter of the Flemish movement: Pol De Mont as a politician.The poet Pol De Mont, once one of the first Flemish student leaders soon became known for his militant pro-Flemish, democratic and liberal views. Moreover, he effortlessly managed to win over the public as a speaker. When the Antwerp Liberal Flemish Union proposed him as a candidate for the local elections in 1890, this displeased the powerful Association libérale. This contribution focuses on the press campaign against De Mont, the contradictions within the group of the Antwerp liberals, and the activities of De Mont in the Antwerp provincial council into which he did get elected in 1892. The article discusses the difficult relationship of the leading Antwerp liberal circles and the pro-Flemish movement on the one hand and the incompatibility between the ideals of De Mont and the party discipline on the other hand.

scholarly journals Public Service Television and Civic Engagement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Jackson
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Main Channel ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
Elected Representatives

The news media figures prominently in most appraisals of democracy today. This is because it is the main channel of communication between elected representatives and citizens; and the (self-appointed) watchdog of the powerful. While news organisations are sometimes reluctant to accept the responsibility that comes with such power, it is implicit in the core principles of journalistic philosophy, whereby attempts to constrain or censor the news media are seen as threats to democracy itself. However, these normative roles also are surrounded by many tensions that surround the ability of our news media to perform their democratic functions. This chapter discusses four of these tensions: (i) diversity versus commonality; (ii) the information necessary for citizens to participate effectively in democratic life, versus the entertainment-driven focus of an increasingly commercial-oriented media; (iii) the need of the media to treat people as citizens on the one hand and as consumer publics on the other; and (iv) broadcasters' relationship with the press.

The Pitfalls and Perils of Being a Digital Journalist in Venezuela

2020 ◽  
pp. 319-337
Author(s):  
Mariateresa Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Freedom Of The Press ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Press ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

To be a journalist in Venezuela is very dangerous. In the past decade, there has been an increase of attacks against media and their personnel. On the one hand, attacks against journalists include harassment (physical, digital, legal), illegal detentions, kidnapping, and assassination. On the other hand, digital media have experienced blockages (DNS), internet shutdowns and slow-downs, failures in the connection, and restrictions to access internet-based platforms and content. Since 2014, the situation is deteriorating and limitations to exercise the right to freedom of expression have increased. However, this issue remains understudied; hence, this chapter considers primary and secondary data to analyze the types of limitations experienced by Venezuelan digital journalists from 2014 to 2018, explains the effects of ambiguous regulations and the use of problematic interpretations, and describes the inadequacies of national policies to promote freedom of the press.

De ontzuildheid nabij ? : Een exploratief inhoudsanalytisch onderzoek naar verzuildheid en ontzuiling van de naoorlogse geschreven pers in Vlaanderen

Res Publica ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-480
Author(s):  
Bart Distelmans
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Onderzoek Naar ◽  
The Press ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

During the postwar period, the Flemish press-scene changed fundamentally.  Alongside further commercialization and concentration, a process of structural depoliticization or depillarization took place: (financial) links betweenparties and trade unions on the one hand and newspapers on the other disappeared. This article examines the impact ofthese structural transformations on the newspapers' content. We emphasize marks of (de)pillarization in Flemish newspapers during cabinet formations. In 1958, the press took undeniably sides in the battle between the pillars: information about the formation of the new cabinet formed the background for these fights. In 1981 most attention went to the cabinet formation itself. The pillarization ofthe content was however on a more latent level not neglectable. Compared to 1958 and 1981 the old alliances between press and ideological institutions were far less visible in the content of 1995's newspapers. Apparently the depillarization ofthe Flemish press-content is an ongoing, longlasting process.

scholarly journals Editing and genre conflict

Pragmatics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Pander Maat
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Context ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
The Press ◽  
Positive Statements ◽  
Press Report ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Although corporate press releases are ‘preformulated’ to fit some of the conventions of journalistic reports, their style at times seems quite different from the one favoured by journalists. That is, there appear to exist stylistic conflicts between the press release genre and the press report genre. This study investigates the nature of these conflicts by means of a corpus analysis of the reworking strategies employed by journalists that actually use press releases to compose press reports. Roughly, two orientations can be discerned behind the journalistic transformations of release copy: Readability and neutrality. In order to improve readability, journalists create shorter and less complex sentences, use everyday words, replace numbers and symbols by words, and insert short bits of background information. In order to preserve neutrality, they remove company and product names, tone down or remove positive statements, and introduce the company as source for statements they do not want to be responsible for. Some transformations are more complex in that they are carried out in both directions: For instance, the company name may be removed as the subject in a press report sentence, but in other cases it may be introduced in the press report. These two-way operations are shown to be sensitive to different orientations at the same time. For instance, removing company names from the subject position may help preserve neutrality, while introducing it may personalize the text and hence improve readability. In the discussion, the genre conflict between press releases and press reports is analyzed in terms of the incompatibility of the stylistic constraints both genres need to satisfy. Some of the incompatibilities derive from differences in the communicative purposes characteristic of the two genres, while others probably have to do with the specific organizational context that co-determines the style of press releases.

scholarly journals The case of Dr. Piotrovich with forensic medicine subtle vision

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 454-468
Author(s):  
V. I. Stolts
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
The Press ◽  
Professional Issue ◽  
The One ◽  
Broad Generalization

The Bureau of the Gynecological Society instructed me, as an expert on the Petrovich case, to examine this case in today's public meeting. Taking into account, on the one hand, the fact that Dr. Petrovich is one of our members and that the determination of his moral guilt on a professional issue, drawn up not on the basis of subjective interpretations, which is full of the court's opinion, the opinion of the press and public opinion, but on the basis of strict and objective verification of Petrovich's actions should be of interest to the Gynecological Society, and on the other hand, having in mind the broad generalization of conclusions from this case in relation to doctors, as the prosecutor did in his speech and as the press does to this day, I I willingly took on this task and I want to share with you, gentlemen, my views on this matter and ask you to give your competent opinion on the issues that I will have the honor to pose and the resolution of which should clarify the guilt or lack thereof of Piotrovich.

Foreign Policy and Peacekeeping Initiatives of the Vatican in the Second Half of the 1930s — Early 1940s in the Reflection of the Soviet Press

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Evgenia Tokareva
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Other ◽  
Preliminary Conclusion ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Press ◽  
The One ◽  
The Catholic Church

In the extremely difficult international situation of the second half of the 1930s, relations between the USSR and the Vatican occupied a very insignificant place. This is partly why the sources that would cover this problem more prominently are very scarce. Under these conditions, the Soviet press becomes an important and still insufficiently appreciated source. With the general strict censorship of the press of this period, it allows us to identify various, but sometimes quite significant nuances of perception of the Vatican policy in the Soviet Union. The first event that influenced some reassessment of the image of the Vatican was the VII Congress of the Comintern, held in 1935, which put forward the tactics of a united front, which assumed, among other things, cooperation with confessional organizations of workers, and even with the petty-bourgeois strata of the population. In the light of this new tactic, a certain line is beginning to be drawn, albeit almost imperceptibly and even, perhaps, unwittingly, between the Vatican as a political force and the national structures of the Catholic Church. A more noticeable reassessment of the image of the Vatican took place in 1938, when the differences between Italian fascism, German Nazism, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other, on racial problems and on the issue of the persecution of the Catholic Church became obvious and could not fail to attract the attention of Soviet diplomats and, following them, the Soviet press. The subsequent election of Pope Pius XII to the papal throne in 1939 allows us to strengthen this line and enrich it with attention to the Vatican's peacemaking policy. But the conclusion of the Molotov — Ribbentrop pact once again returns the image of the Vatican to its supposedly political conjuncture, but this time in the interests of the other side, which has now become the main opponent of the USSR, i. e. England and France. And only the German attack on the USSR allows for a brief moment to see the possibility of forming a different image of the Vatican, an opponent of racism and fascism in all its manifestations. A careful reading of the press allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion about the absence of a clearly developed and formulated position of the governing bodies of the Soviet Union in relation to the Vatican, which varied, albeit slightly, depending on changes in the foreign policy interests of the Soviet state.

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