The Mackerel Wrapper

A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Dinasaur watch No. 1 -- news or comedy?

COMM 150 and COMM 207 students take note (and COMM 221 students notice the format for the news release, which is a model of good PR work) --

Want to know why the "mainstream" news media are in trouble? Here's one indicator. It's a news release from Indiana University quoting Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications, who did research showing the Daily SHow with Jon Stewart "is just as substantive as network [news] coverage." Says the release:
Not surprisingly, a second-by-second analysis of The Daily Show's audio and visual content found considerably more humor than substance -- Stewart himself has insisted that he is a comedian and not a journalist. A similar analysis of network coverage found considerably more hype than substance in broadcast newscasts. Examples of such hype included references to polls, political endorsements and photo opportunities.

"Interestingly, the average amounts of video and audio substance in the broadcast network news stories were not significantly different than the average amounts of visual and audio substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart stories about the presidential election," she wrote in the paper.

"It should be noted that the broadcast network news stories about the presidential election were significantly shorter, on average, than were The Daily Show with Jon Stewart stories," she added. "The argument could be made that while the amount of substance per story was not significantly different, the proportion of each story devoted to substance was greater in the network news stories ... On the other hand, the proportion of stories per half hour program devoted to the election campaign was greater in The Daily Show."
Fox's conclusion was not a happy one -- "neither one is particularly substantive. It's a bottom-line industry and ratings-driven. We live in an 'infotainment' society, and there certainly are a number of other sources available."

Question: If the network news departments are dinosaurs, is The Daily Show one of those sleek little mammals running around in the underbrush waiting to inherit the earth?
Posted by at

1 comment:

Pete said...

Thanks for posting, Jennifer. Do we live in an "infotainment society?" If so, is that necessarily a good thing or a bad thing? What responsibilities does it put on the "infotainers?" Are they gatekeepers?

Monday, October 9, 2006 at 11:37:00 AM CDT

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Blog Archive

About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.