Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 623-648).

This study examined environmental reporters and their attitudes toward the stories they cover. Sixteen journalists, from across the United States, who reported either full-time or part-time were asked to participate in a Q study by sorting fifty-four statements. On an 11point distribution grid from most disagree (-5) to most agree (+5).The statements were selected from a model of short term and long-term problems facing the environmental reporter. Issues raised in the statements included topics surrounding the beat. For example, do journalists who report on the environment feel frustrated by the short-term vision of reporting? Do they feel they are watchdogs for their community when reporting about environmental issues?Research revealed three factors that were labeled the "Watchdogs", the "Company People," and the "Frustrated Reporter." This study revealed that environmental reporting has emerged into a legitimate "beat" in the past thirty years. There is also a large gap between scholarly research has found and what the environmental reporter faces on a day-to-day basis while out in the field. / Department of Journalism

Jane Maria Eliza McManus, born near Troy, New York, educated at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, promoted the American maritime frontier and wrote on Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean affairs. Called a "terror with her pen," under the pen name of Cora Montgomery, she published 100 columns in 6 newspapers, 20 journal articles and book reviews, 15 books and pamphlets, and edited 5 newspapers and journals between 1839 and 1878.

This study sought to determine the demographics of the managing editors of the 111 religious magazines listed in the 1981 edition of Writer's Market and the similarity of those magazines' editorial practices to editorial practices described in magazine textbooks. The sixty-four managing editors who answered the questionnaire tended to be college-educated, to say their chief motivation for working on a religious magazine was serving God and man and to be satisfied with their work. Twenty-five per cent of the managing editors in the study had undergraduate majors or master's degrees in journalism. The magazines' self-reported editorial practices in such areas as copy handling, proofreading, layout and design were similar to those described in magazine textbooks.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 M39 / Master of Science

The impact of a female sportswriter's presence on a newspaper staff was examined by content analysis, studying photo and copy space devoted to both male and female sports coverage. Composite weeks, one each from each quarter of the year following the woman's date of hire were selected from the only four newspapers in the state of Indiana hiring female sportswriters. Compared to similar Indiana newspapers without female sportswriters, those with female staffers were found to devote more copy and photo space to women's coverage in the entire sports section, and on the sports section front page, papers with female sportswriters used more photos of women and devoted more total space (photos and copy) to women's sports coverage. The effect was consistent regardless of the newspaper's market size. / Department of Journalism

The U.S. Department of Defense employs both uniformed military personnel and non-uniformed civilian employees as information sources. The objectives of this study was to determine whether students, acting in the role of journalists, attributed greater credibility to uniformed or non-uniformed spokespersons and whether a difference in attribution could be measured when the topic being briefed was more specifically related to the military mission.Seventy undergraduate journalism students were randomly assigned to four groups and exposed to one of four videotaped press briefings. Two briefings announced the outbreak of hostilities involving U.S. forces or award of a major construction contract. Each of the announcements was delivered by a uniformed military public affairs officer or by a spokesperson in civilian business suit.Following the briefings, students evaluated the source using semantic differentials first developed by Berlo, Lemert and Mertz (1969) and prepared questions exactly as they would ask them following the spokesperson's prepared statement. The semantic differentials were analyzed using ANOVA. The follow-on questions were coded using methodology similar to that used by Einsiedel (1974) and evaluated using the "Coefficient of Imbalance" proposed by Janis and Fadner (1949). This second method was employed to determine whether data obtained and analyzed using the Coefficient of Imbalance would validate results obtained through the use of more traditional semantic differentials.Neither method resulted in findings which would suggest a statistically significant difference in the credibility attributed to the defense source by the student-journalists in any of the four treatments. / Department of Journalism