WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT NEWS...

The Center for the Study of Public Scholarship and the Journalism Program of Emory University present

WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT NEWS...

AND WHY IT'S WRONG

Kevin Barnhurst

Professor and Interim Head, Department of Communications University of Illinois at Chicago

Monday, February 28, 2004

12:00 Noon

Jones Room, Woodruff Library

Lunch will be served. Please email awalker@emory.edu to reserve your space.

Common sense would say news today has gotten shorter and faster, more event-packed, more focused on people, and more localized. But measurements of the who, what, when, where, and why of news show the opposite. During the past century, journalists have instead focused more on their own judgments, opinions, and predictions. Interpretation replaced news. The fast-paced, 'round-the-clock, 24/7 new clothes of what I call the new long journalism hide these changes in plain site. Ideological work takes place behind the scenes, unobserved and not consciously hidden. In the case of news, U.S. journalism during the twentieth century enhanced its power over political deliberation behind a curtain of counter-factual beliefs.

KEVIN BARNHURST’s areas of specialization include political communication, narrative studies of news consumption, critical analysis of journalism, visual media culture, and qualitative methods. His most recent book, The Form of News, A History, with John Nerone, won the ICA Outstanding Book Award, the MEA Suzanne Langer Award for outstanding scholarship on symbolic form, and the AEJMC Covert Award for best research on the history of the media. His more than 100 scholarly publications include several journal articles, book chapters, and shorter pieces in English and Spanish. He lectures frequently at universities in Latin America and Europe, and has been a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York City, and Faculty Scholar of the UIC Great Cities Institute.

For more information, please contact Anne Walker at 404-727-7602 or awalker@emory.edu