New Long Journalism

The New Long Journalism Project takes measurements of news media content, including news reports and their visual presentation, to track the long-term trends in what journalists produce and what “news” means. The changes documented so far include more than 100 years of newspaper reporting, 25 years of network evening newscasts, 20 years of National Public Radio news programming, and internet newspaper sites since 2001.

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Book (working title)
YADDA NEWS: Long Journalism in America

During the current crisis in American journalism, news organizations are laying off workers and rushing to the internet. But rather than a sudden development, the changes in American news emerged over a century in the texts journalists were producing. Today U.S. journalists no longer put out event-centered news. Based on long-term content studies (see the links below), news stories today are not brief, close-to-home, or focused on people anymore. Read on . . .

Chapter 1. Long: The Length of News (View as HTML)

Chapter 2. Who: People in the News (View as HTML)

Chapter 3. What: Events in the News (View as HTML)

Chapter 4. Where: Locations in the News (View as HTML)

Chapter 5. When: Time in the News (View as HTML)

Chapter 6. Why: Explanations in News (in progress)

Postscript. How U.S. Journalism Forgot its Public (Two Stories)

THE STUDIES
Research on News Ideology

News Ideology in the Twentieth Century. In Diffusion of the News Paradigm, 1850–2000, pp. 239–62. Ed. Svennik Høyer (University of Oslo) and Horst Pöttker (University of Dortmund). Gothenburg, Sweden: Nordicom, 2005.

Research on Internet News

The Form of Reports on US Newspaper Internet Sites, An update. Journalism Studies, Spring 2010, forthcoming.

The Internet and news: Changes in content on newspaper websites. Paper delivered to the Political Communication Division, International Communication Association, Chicago, May 24, 2009.

News Geography & Monopoly: The Form of Reports on U.S. Newspaper Internet Sites. Journalism Studies 3.4 (November 2002): 477–89.

Technology and the Changing Idea of News: An Analysis of Content on U.S. Newspaper Internet Sites. In Reflections of Power: Critical Perspectives on U.S. Journalism History in the 20th Century, Ed. William S. Solomon. New York: SUNY Press, forthcoming.

Research on Radio News

The Makers of Meaning: National Public Radio and the New Long Journalism, 1980 – 2000. Political Communication 20.1 (January–March 2003): 1–22.

Queer Political News: Election-year Coverage of the LGBT Communities on National Public Radio, 1992 – 2000. Journalism Theory, Practice & Criticism 4.1 (February 2003): 5–28.

Research on Television News

Second author with Richard Doherty. Controlling Nature: Weathercasts on Local Television News.Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 53.2 (June 2009), in press.

Second author with Catherine A. Steele. The Journalism of Opinion: Network Coverage in U.S. Presidential Campaigns, 1968 – 1988. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13.3 (September 1996): 187–209.

With Catherine A. Steele. Image Bite News: The Coverage of Elections on U.S. Television, 1968 – 1992. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2.1 (February 1997): 40–58.

Research on Newspapers

The Great American Newspaper. American Scholar 60 (Winter 1991): 106–112.

With Diana C. Mutz. American Journalism and the Decline of Event-Centered Reporting. Journal of Communication 47.4 (Autumn 1997): 27–53.

With John C. Nerone. Design Changes in U.S. Front Pages, 1885 – 1985. Journalism Quarterly 68 (Winter 1991): 796–804.

Second author with John Nerone. Visual Mapping & Cultural Authority: Design Change in U.S. Newspapers, 1920 – 1940. Journal of Communication 45.2 (Spring 1995): 9–43.

With John Nerone. The President Is Dead: American News Photography & the New Long Journalism. In Pictures in the Public Sphere, 60–92. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Write

Your input is welcome. Please use the link below or write to Kevin G. Barnhurst, Department of Communication (MC-132), 1007 W. Harrison St. BSB 1148A, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60607-7137.

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