The Fixers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Medical Insurance ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
International News ◽  
Community Members ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
News Industry ◽  
Set Up

This book conducts a cultural analysis of the labor of the news fixer—the locally based media employee who helps international correspondents research stories, set up interviews, translate foreign languages, and navigate unfamiliar regions. Foreign reporters often say that their work would be impossible without these local news assistants. Yet, fixers are among some of the most exploited and persecuted people contributing to the production of international news. Targeted by militant groups, by their own governments, or even by their own neighbors, fixers must often engage in a precarious balancing act between appeasing their community members and pleasing the correspondents who visit from faraway. Though foreign news outlets routinely depend upon news fixers’ insider awareness of politically tense situations in order to keep their own reporters safe in the field, fixers themselves continually face detainment, injury, and death. Even so, international news organizations almost never provide their fixers with hazardous environment training or medical insurance. What is more, fixers rarely receive professional credit from the reporters who hire them, suggesting that their often life-threatening labor is deeply undervalued. Drawing upon 75 interviews with fixers from 39 different countries, this book argues that although fixers’ labor is essential to international news reporting, it is still relegated to the shadows of the international news industry.

scholarly journals Soft Power, Hard News: How Journalists at State-Funded Transnational Media Legitimize Their Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-631
Author(s):  
Kate Wright ◽  
Martin Scott ◽  
Mel Bunce
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
International News ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Transnational Media ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
News Organizations

How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a comparative study of journalists working for international news organizations funded by the Chinese, US, UK and Qatari governments. Using 52 interviews with journalists covering humanitarian issues, we explain how they minimized tensions between their diplomatic role and dominant norms of journalistic autonomy by drawing on three – broadly shared – legitimizing narratives, involving different kinds of boundary-work. In the first ‘exclusionary’ narrative, journalists differentiated their ‘truthful’ news reporting from the ‘false’ state ‘propaganda’ of a common Other, the Russian-funded network, RT. In the second ‘fuzzifying’ narrative, journalists deployed the ambiguous notion of ‘soft power’ as an ambivalent ‘boundary concept’, to defuse conflicts between journalistic and diplomatic agendas. In the final ‘inversion’ narrative, journalists argued that, paradoxically, their dependence on funding states gave them greater ‘operational autonomy’. Even when journalists did resist their funding states, this was hidden or partial, and prompted less by journalists’ concerns about the political effects of their work, than by serious threats to their personal cultural capital.

News

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
José van
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Public Values ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
News Industry

This chapter examines how the advent of data-driven publishers, such as BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, as well as the rise of the Big Five platforms, have shaken the news sector’s economic, technical, and social foundations. The proliferation of online audience metrics and algorithmic filtering, promoting the personalization of news and advertisements, has fundamentally transformed how news is produced, circulated, and monetized. The triangular content–audiences–advertising configuration that constituted the legacy news industry is unbundled and rebundled through online platforms. As a consequence, the professional practices and institutional standards once set by legacy news organizations are seriously challenged. Key public values, such as journalistic independence and the trustworthiness of news, have come under scrutiny as new online players in this sector reconfigure the conditions of production and distribution.

Imagined Audiences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Financial Instability ◽  
News Production ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
News Industry ◽  
Audience Behavior ◽  
Comprehensive Study

The news industry faces profound financial instability and public distrust. Many believe the solution to these ongoing crises is for journalists to improve their relationship with their audiences. This raises important questions: How do journalists conceptualize their audiences in the first place? What is the connection between what journalists think about their audiences and what they do to reach them? Perhaps most important, how aligned are these “imagined” audiences with the real ones? Imagined Audiences draws on ethnographic case studies of three news organizations to show how journalists’ assumptions about their audiences shape their approaches to their audiences. In doing so, it examines the role that audiences traditionally have played in journalism, how that role has changed, and what those changes mean for both the profession and the public. It concludes by drawing on audience studies research to compare journalism’s “imagined” audiences with actual observations of news audience behavior. The result is a comprehensive study of both news production and reception at a time when the connection between the two has grown more important than ever.

History and experience of a volunteer ambulance first responder scheme in London

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 344-348
Author(s):  
Saman Al-Sahab ◽  
Aditi Nijhawan ◽  
Tim Kirkby ◽  
Shadman Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Cardiac Arrest ◽  
Blue Light ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Ambulance Service ◽  
First Responder ◽  
Emergency Responders ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Set Up

Emergency responders (ERs) are volunteers who attend category 1 (immediately life-threatening) and category 2 (emergency) 999 calls on behalf of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS). ERs aim to arrive first on scene to these incidents to provide essential life-saving interventions prior to the arrival of further ambulance resources. ERs come from a wide range of backgrounds and undergo a thorough selection, training and mentorship process before advancing to working in a two-person ER crew. Compared to most traditional volunteer first responder schemes, the LAS ER scheme, which was set up in 2008, involves an enhanced skillset, dispatch to medical and traumatic emergencies in addition to cardiac arrest, and the use of blue-light vehicles to reduce response times. Over a period of 13 years, the scheme has grown in scope and size, and now operates with more than 120 volunteers based at seven ambulance stations across London.

“We’ve Lost the Basics”: Perceptions of Journalism Education From Veterans in the Field

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Ferrucci
Keyword(s):  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Journalism Education ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Teaching Technology ◽  
The People ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
News Industry ◽  
New Entrants ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study examines the perceptions that veteran digital journalists working at news organizations, the people who traditionally have hiring power, hold concerning how new entrants into the news industry are being prepared by journalism programs. Using in-depth interviews with 29 full-time digital journalists (journalists who only publish online), this study finds that while veterans said educators are doing a good job teaching technology, there is too much focus on it to the detriment of traditional journalism skills. These findings are then discussed through the lens of the theory of disruptive innovation.

Het Korrigeren Van Fouten Bij Het Leren Spreken Van Een Vreemde Taal.

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Aart Pouw
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Error Prevention ◽  
Set Up

Teachers of foreign languages have many problems in dealing with errors in oral communicative exercises: should errors be corrected or does correction interfere with the communicative effort of students? The present study reviews research in this field, in particular the need of correction, its effects and the risk of "fossilization". Emphasis is on the studies of teachers' correction behaviour in the classroom, which seems to be rather ambigous for students; the effects on communication are rather negative. There are few studies dealing with oral work and peer-correction or self-correction. Studies on grammatical judgements show the need of prudence. Effective studies of error gravity from a communicative point of view have to be set up. The effects of methodologies of error prevention or correction need to be studied. The effects of errors have to be measured in communicative situations by means of native - non-native interaction.

6 Compassionate neighbours – an innovative model building caring communities

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 362.1-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly Attridge ◽  
Heather Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Terminal Illness ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Conference ◽  
Development Context ◽  
Caring Communities ◽  
Set Up

IntroductionIn 2014 St Joseph’s Hospice set up compassionate neighbours (CN) to address social isolation for those experiencing a chronic or terminal illness. Built on foundations of community development principles the neighbours provide emotional and social support to community members. With significant funding from Nesta we are upscaling the project with seven other hospices.AimOur aim is to build a wider network of CN who are supporting people in their local communities; we will test and learn how the project can be replicated in other areas. Our ultimate aim is to create a social movement establishing a network of CNs across the country.MethodWe are training and mentoring other hospice adopters to replicate the project in their own areas whilst testing which ingredients are key to the success of the project. Our review of the programme including formal evaluation will form the basis for a potential national roll out across the country.ResultsReview of our progress including a recent conference for CN feedback from hospice CEOs and project leads describes ongoing interest in the CN programme. There is additional interest from other hospices and other organisations outside of the Nesta programme. That said challenges exist around local implementation of a model shaped elsewhere translation of particular principles underpinning the CN programme and concerns around long-term sustainability and ownership of the network.ConclusionFurther thought is required about how to build the social movement and whether this effort should sit within the hospice sector or within a community development context in the future.

scholarly journals The New Advertisers: How Foundation Funding Impacts Journalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Ferrucci ◽  
Jacob L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Important Distinction ◽  
Influence Model ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
News Industry ◽  
Foundation Funding ◽  
Editorial Decisions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Hierarchy Of Influence ◽  
Journalistic Practice

Many journalism stakeholders have begun looking to philanthropic foundations to help newsrooms find economic sustainability. The rapidly expanding role of foundations as a revenue source for news publishers raises an important question: How do foundations exercise their influence over the newsrooms they fund? Using the hierarchy of influence model, this study utilizes more than 40 interviews with journalists at digitally native nonprofit news organizations and employees from foundations that fund nonprofit journalism to better understand the impact of foundation funding on journalistic practice. Drawing on previous scholarship exploring extra-media influence on the news industry, we argue that the impact of foundations on journalism parallels that of advertisers throughout the 20th century—with one important distinction: Journalism practitioners and researchers have long forbidden the influence from advertisers on editorial decisions, seeing the blurring of the two as inherently unethical. Outside funding from foundations, on the other hand, is often premised on editorial influence, complicating efforts by journalists to maintain the firewall between news revenue and production.

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