Today’s digital environment has revolutionized the way journalism is manufactured and consumed. Recent changes both empower citizens and present challenges for news organizations and their journalists. Among these challenges is the rapidly growing news aggregation business. News aggregators are websites that do not produce much original content, but curate and organize news articles created by others using human editorial judgment, computer algorithms, or a combination of both. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to evaluate the state of the news media and its relationship with news aggregators in an attempt to answer this central question: Do news aggregators facilitate or impede the news industry’s ability to serve its normative functions in a democratic society? I will argue that while aggregators have improved access to news and amplified the amount of information available to citizens, effective democracy requires the existence of news organizations that employ professional journalists who know how to report new information, not merely to restate and repurpose existing articles. News aggregators build their businesses around monetizing third-party content, effectively stealing readership and advertising revenue from the original publishers. This has created a news industry that is undermanned and struggles to produce quality journalism.

This study examined the differences in reporting in Radio-Television of Serbia's (RTS) main newscast, Dnevnik 2, between the period of Slobodan Milosevic’s rule (1989-2000) and the period after the establishment of democracy in Serbia (2001-2009). The data were gathered by the content analysis of 63 RTS newscasts in the period 1989-2009. The research included quantitative analysis as well as additional observations of RTS newscasts noted at the time of coding. The major findings suggest that in the democratic period (2001-2009) RTS newscasts become shorter, more consistent in duration, less dedicated to coverage of state and ruling party officials’ activities, and more inclined to reporting about social issues and other political events. The number of voices in RTS newscasts became significantly higher. The overall reporting became more balanced and more diverse. At the same time RTS kept the old priority in news reporting which put Official Stories in leading positions and remained occasionally inclined to increase the number of Official Stories in times of important political events. Based on these results this study derived the following hypotheses for state/public service television stations in countries in transition: 1) consistency of duration of newscasts increases as the regime in the country becomes less controlling 2) the dominance of Official Stories decreases as the regime in the country becomes less controlling 3) the number of sound bites in newscasts increases as the regime becomes less controlling (the number of voices in newscasts increases as the democracy progresses), and 4) the coverage of Official Stories increases in times of important domestic political events, possibly those that have endangered national security, even if the regime becomes less controlling.

This study examined how Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS portrayed the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision from the time of the decision, January 21, 2010 until the mid-term elections November 2, 2010. The broadcast transcripts were read for emergent frames to see how the stations framed coverage. The cable channels had the most coverage. MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS framed the decision negatively, Fox News portrayed it positively, and CNN was neutral to negative in coverage.

This qualitative frame analysis examines how print media handles the concept of Fundamentalist Christianity. The researcher examined news reports in four prominent national newspapers over the ten-year period between 2000 and 2009 for references made to Fundamentalist Christianity. The sample is examined on the basis of Mark Silk's "topoi," a term taken from classical rhetoric meaning commonplaces or themes (1995). Silk outlines seven common topoi on which stories about religion are written, and these are utilized as a framework for this present study. While much has been written and researched on how religious groups, Fundamentalist Christians, and Evangelicals use mass media to promote their message to a secular audience, few studies have examined how the secular press frames Fundamentalist Christianity. This study, therefore, fills an existing literature gap by dissecting the portrayal of a demographic that has had a historical and cultural media presence for more than a century.

Narrative journalism has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in mainstream daily newspapers in the United States during the last decade. This popularity has encouraged many journalistic experts to proclaim that narrative journalism is well-liked by readers and may well become the savior of daily newspapering. This study attempts to determine reader preferences in four areas : appeal, believability, comprehension, and retention.

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three broad theoretical frameworks of community, discourse, and action. I use work by Michele Willson (2006) to explore how community exists in the virtual realm. Drawing upon the scholarship of Jurgen Habermas (1991) and more recent adaptations and extensions of Habermasian public sphere theory from Aaron Barlow (2006), I ask can online communities set the foundation for a public spheres, and if so, how do they function as virtual public spheres? Building upon understandings of online community and virtual public sphere(s), I utilize work by Manuel Castells (1997) and Jeffrey Juris (2005) to understand how community and discourse can enable collective action. These lines of analysis provide the structure through which I examine Daily Kos and Reddit. Using ethnographic methods, I place the voices and perspectives of users within this theoretical structure to produce a comprehensive look at the function of collaborative online political information communities.

"We Have to Record the Downfall of Tyranny": The London Times Perspective on Napoleon Bonaparte's Invasion of Russia aims to illustrate how The London Times interpreted and reported on Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. This thesis explains how England feared its grip on Europe was slipping away due to a French takeover of the continent. This work details the English struggle in order to provide a broader analysis through a newspaper of how nations indirectly involved in the Napoleonic wars understood the conflict.

A group of Utah citizens, supported by the Salt Lake Tribune, campaigned in May and June of 1968 to change Utah's liquor distribution system from a state-owned package method to one which would allow mixed drinks. Opponents of the change were supported by the Deseret News.The two newspapers became the spokesmen for the two opposing groups. A careful analysis of them shows that of the 2,844.6 column inches of space in the Tribune, and of the 1,856.2 column inches in the News, exclusive of advertising, more than eight per cent in each newspaper supported the editorial stand of that newspaper, while only slightly more than six per cent opposed it.Neither the Salt Lake Tribune nor the Deseret News lived up to the standards of the journalism profession in the handling of the liquor issue in Utah. A complete view of the issues could not have been seen by reading either newspaper. Both were guilty of serving special interest groups; both used their news columns for opinion; both suppressed news and facts which did not conform with their own views; and both failed to be fair and impartial in reporting the two sides of the issue.

President Gordon B. Hinckley, the fifteenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, excited the membership of the Church by increasing the number of temples available to members. He announced that the Church would construct smaller buildings – as compared with existing temples at the time – thereby allowing for greater numbers of temples to be built. He set a goal to build 50 temples in a two and half-year period: double the number the Church had ever attempted to build in any decade. Thirty-four of these temples were built in the United States, and newspapers – both local and national – covered the construction of these temples with over 330 articles. This thesis analyzes the newspaper coverage of temples built within the United States from October 1997 through December 2004, and draws important conclusions from this data regarding the nation's perception of the Latter-day Saint temples.Each of the 330 articles was scored according to specific criteria, and grouped by region (as defined by the Church's official web-site). Then, after individual and regional scoring, overall newspaper exposure for the Church's small temple building was scored for the United States as a whole. As each temple's unique story unfolded in the newspapers, the general public's view of the Church's small temple construction became clear. Although quite a few of the proposed temples experienced opposition with regard to building specifics and anti-Latter-day Saint efforts, Church departments and members negotiated, compromised, and softened the impact of this opposition, and many people welcomed the temples into their communities.In addition to gaining a sense for the public's viewpoint, some global observations emerged from this study, revealing the importance of professionalism within Church departments and programs when working with the media and public. A few observations also revealed three lessons to be remembered in future temple building relations. But most importantly this study shows that not only did the Lord's revelation through a prophet open the way for the Church to build more temples, but as a by product of this revelation, the smaller temple concept helped to lessen the controversial and negative articles that the larger temples tended to generate.

In January, 1914, the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brought out the first issue of what was to become the Relief Society Magazine. Before this, the women of the Church had been served by the Women's Exponent, founded in 1872 as the second women's publication in the west. During 1914, the Exponent's successor was a monthly guide to the Relief Society's coursework, known as the Bulletin. In January, 1915, it became the Relief Society Magazine.The magazine became a leader in the Relief Society work as a forum for idea exchange, a medium for administration, an outlet for creative talents, and a lesson guide.In December, 1970, the last Magazine appeared. The end came for the publication in an effort on the part of the Church to strengthen the family unit through combining magazines it published. New eras come, bringing change, but for the women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, their past includes a Magazine which reflected their interests, strivings, and work.