Author Archives: Kevin M. Lerner
The Applied Liberal Arts
As I sat in my qualitative research methods class this Spring, I thought a lot about the intersection between various ways of gathering and creating knowledge in the world. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about these overlaps, either. What a journalist does when gathering information is not necessarily all that different from what […]
Six months later
The blogging impulse nags at me again. I searched “Press Critic” on Google, and found myself on the first page with Jack Shafer, Jay Rosen, and Jim Romenesko. And searching for “The Wayward Press” puts me ahead of Liebling himself. If the Google algorithm is going to reward me with such comparisons, I feel I […]
We interrupt this serial…
…to bring you an important message from CJR Daily. I referred to the then-unpublished study “A Measure of Media Bias” in my 602 term paper, “Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the media.” In the paper, I am dismissive of it, as I am of all content analysis of journalism […]
The idea of professionalism
Note: This is part three of the serialization of my term papers. This section of “Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalism” follows directly from this first post in the series. — Eliot Freidson (1994) dates the organization of professions to the post-industrial era, when work became less focused on the […]
Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the media
Note: This is part 2 of a multi-part series of my term papers from the fall. In this installment, the abstract from my Research Foundations final project (This is unconnected to the previous post.): Abstract Observers and critics of American journalism argue about the nature of bias in newspapers, magazines, and television journalism. They agree, […]
Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalism
Introduction (Note: This is the first part of a multiple-part series that I am tentatively calling “My Fall 2005 term papers”) A.J. Liebling, the journalist, press critic and general bon vivant, attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University before starting his career. His assessment of his education was famously less than sanguine. He once […]
"NPR Activists and Classical Monks"
Bailey, G. (2004). NPR activists and classical monks: Differentiating public radio formats. Journal of Radio Studies, 11(2), 184–193. Theory and background: Bailey’s study was funded by a group of radio broadcasters who wanted to understand their audiences. Non-commercial radio stations in major markets have shifted away from their previous “crazy-quilt” programming to adopt a single […]
A Milestone
I keep this Microsoft Word file on my desk called “everygradassignment.doc.” I just pasted in that last reading summary, and I am quite proud to say that I just surpassed 10,000 words written for the semester in my two classes. I’m hoping that with 15- and 18-page term papers still to be written, I’ll double […]
The end of the reading summaries
Pettigrew, K. E., & McKechnie, L. E. F. (2001). The use of theory in information science research. Journal of The American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), 62–73. Shera, J. H. (1972). Communication, culture, and the library. In The foundations of education for librarianship (pp. 81–108). New York: Wiley. Webber, S. (2003). Information science […]
World I, World II, World War II, and World III
Brookes, B. C. (1980). The foundations of information science. Part I. Philosophical aspects. Journal of Information Science, 2, 125–133. Bush, V. (1945). As we may think [Electronic Version]. The Atlantic Monthly, 176, 101-108. Retrieved Nov. 10, 2005 from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush. Saracevic, T. (1999). Information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1051–1063. Vannevar […]
Press Criticism 