"Book People: Evangelical Books and the Making of Contemporary Evangelicalism" traces the conjoined histories of evangelical Christianity and evangelical book culture in the United States. Although existing studies of religion, media, and business have explored evangelical print culture in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, historians rarely have lent their attention to the century that intervenes. Addressing this historiographic silence, this dissertation's chapters move from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. These chapters center their narrative on the middle decades of this period, when ministerial and entrepreneurial evangelicals increasingly turned to books not only as tools of cultural and theological discipline but also as commercial opportunities. By the end of the century, the marketplace had molded evangelicalism into a constituency that everyone from ministers to scholars to politicians to suburban shoppers to international media conglomerates regularly imagined, addressed, and invoked. Drawing on such archival sources as business records, meeting minutes, advertisements, editorial correspondence, marketing plans, sermon collections, and interviews, "Book People" illustrates how contemporary evangelicalism and the contemporary evangelical book industry helped bring each other into being.

BACKGROUND: It has been claimed that the involvement of commercial companies in medical and health research poses risks relating to potential conflicts of interest. In response, many journals have developed conflict of interest policies, and there has been a proliferation of related guidance from publishers, professional associations and commercial companies, mostly centred on processes of voluntary disclosure. Studies and commentaries on these have raised concerns regarding the adequacy of such practices, but there has been limited analysis of the underlying context – how and why policies have been constructed in this way – or exploration of alternative approaches. AIM: This thesis examines how actors within medical journal publishing conceptualise conflicts of interest. It analyses their understandings of conflicts of interest: which types of interest are deemed most significant; which actor groups are seen as conflicted; and how conflicts are managed. Through doing so, it explores the barriers to, and possibilities of, change. METHODS: The study draws on two distinct sets of data. The first is a sample of conflict of interest policies and guidance. The second is 48 semi-structured interviews with actors working in a range of roles related to medical journal publishing. These data were thematically analysed to illustrate how medical journal publishing conceptualises and manages conflicts of interest, to identify perceived strengths and weaknesses of current approaches, and to identify potential opportunities for improvement. RESULTS: There appears to be an established discourse around conflicts of interest, which emphasises particular stakeholders, while others, who also have opportunities to influence journal content, are frequently absent from the debate. Financial interests are readily highlighted, while non-financial ones receive less attention and are thus often unregulated (Chapter 5). High levels of consistency characterise the ways in which actors discussed the management of conflicts of interest: for example, self-disclosure was regularly highlighted, despite the acknowledged weaknesses of this approach (Chapter 6). The existence of further mechanisms that offer the potential to assist in managing conflicts of interest were identified, though findings suggest that, in practice, these currently have limited uptake (Chapter 7). Interviewees’ suggestions of how conflicts of interest might be better managed (e.g. through greater data transparency) are also analysed. Overall, narrow interpretations of conflicts of interest and their management appear to have become institutionalised in ways that serve to limit the uptake of alternative approaches. DISCUSSION: Given the substantive importance that medical research can have on health policies and treatments, robust processes are required to protect the integrity and legitimacy of journals. This research shows that existing, institutionalised understandings of conflicts of interest have critical limitations, which leaves medical publishing open to potentially unethical practices that may be a source of bias in published evidence. This poses a significant threat to the desire to attain ethically robust, peer-reviewed medical/health research that can be used to inform policy and practice. Drawing on the interview data, the thesis explores some possible alternatives that may warrant further consideration.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-55). / The optical videodisc is a publishing medium that permanently stores large amounts of visual and aural data. The technology needed to support videodiscs is understood and available. Digital augmentation of the optical videodisc can exploit this technology for data publishing. Not only can this data be used in raw form, it can also reference the video that it augments. Publishing requires an author to create the publishable material, and this thesis addresses the problem of authoring digitally augmented videodiscs. / by Steven Edward Yelick. / M.S.V.S.

Communication trough documents have become a key element in every company?s life, communication channels expanded to include not just print but fax, web and email. Marketing and market studies repeatedly show that personalized documents (delivered through these channels) can positively influence customer relationship hereby help to achieve business success. For IT companies these changes created an exciting new opportunity to develop new solutions and offer new services. There are several companies on the market of personalized document creation which offering high quality product and services. Therefore it might not be easy to make the right choice, to find the most fitting solution and the best vendor. The main objective of this thesis is to provide detailed information about personalized document creation in general and to introduce the market leading vendors and their technology.

This thesis examines the continuing growth of the House of Murray during the 1820s-1840s. Prior to the 1820s, Murray had enjoyed massive success with the publications of the work of Lord Byron, whose celebrity, and the profits generated, contributed significantly to the House’s prestigious reputation. Murray’s move from Fleet Street to Albemarle Street in 1812 also signified the House’s shift from bookselling to publishing, which enabled Murray to attract an increasing number of high-profile names from the worlds of literature, travel and exploration, the sciences, and politics. Murray’s drawing-room at Albemarle Street became renowned throughout the trade for its gentlemanly gatherings, comprising of the luminaries of the day. The four chapters of this thesis explore how Murray (re)established the House identity in different markets during the 1820s-1840s, as the Romantic epoch diffused into an increasingly commercialised era, with new production methods, an expanding marketplace, and increasing competition. Chapter One considers Murray’s use of the drawing room at Albemarle Street to construct a House identity amongst selected members of his inner circle. It also looks at the importance of the Byronic legacy to the House and the means by which Murray sought to protect it. Chapter Two engages with the contrasting side of the House, namely the ‘cheap’ publications, which Murray published in response to the growth of this market in the late-1820s and early-1830s. During this time Murray used some of his well-established assets, such as Byron, Crabbe and the Quarterly Review, to retain the prestige of the House, while attempting to reach new readers within the burgeoning middle class. Chapter Three examines Murray’s correspondence with some of his female authors to consider how the House responded to authors of both genders, and, with reference to ongoing scholarship regarding ‘women’s writing’, questions the veracity of a gender-centric approach when applied to the study of archival materials; the chapter’s findings suggest that both Murray’s male and female authors were treated similarly. The final chapter explores how Murray strove to retain control over the House’s reputation as international trading possibilities developed. The roots of the 'Handbooks' and the 'Colonial and Home Library' are also traced back further than has previously been considered, and read within the context of the ongoing re-branding of Byron discussed in Chapters One and Two. The House’s literary figures, and the Quarterly Review, were used by Murray in the 1840s to promote the values and prestige of the House in America, Europe and the Colonies. This thesis offers much previously unpublished archival material from the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland. It builds upon previous scholarship on John Murray and seeks to contextualise some of these lines of enquiry through providing a sustained study of the House during the 1820s-1840s. It uses quantitative analysis, where possible, to provide further grounding for some of its claims, and situates the findings within the growing body of research in this area. It is the underlying aim of this thesis to foreground the House’s shift from the ‘Romanticism’ of the early-nineteenth century towards the ‘commercialism’ of the mid-nineteenth century, whilst serving as a point of reference for further scholarship on the John Murray Archive during this time period.

This thesis highlights the importance of ethical awareness amongst photojournalists, their complex professional practices and digital photography in relation to photographs submitted for publication in UK national newspapers. At the current time in the UK photojournalistic context, the ethical significance of photojournalists' practice is often silenced. This thesis aims to bring their voices to the surface. By adopting a social constructivist approach, this study draws on data collected from semi-structured interviews from twenty-five professional photojournalists. The interviews provided data which reflect the thoughts, opinions and views of professional photojournalists currently practising and that have submitted photographs to UK national newspapers. Below are the key themes of this study: - In constructing the importance of ethical practices in relation to newspaper photographs, I developed a representation that conceptualises the ethical relationship photojournalists have regarding challenges they face, being an eyewitness to history and their photographic identity. This representation positions practices relating to ethical activities conducted and understood by photojournalists; encapsulating the 'ethical eye'. - Ethical awareness amongst professional photojournalists is evident in the acts of both taking and working on photographs. I developed the idea that photojournalists utilise an 'ethical eye' while taking and working on photographs. - In further examining the 'ethical eye', I constructed the 'deontological ethical eye' which conceptualises the ethical duties faced by professional photojournalists. This research suggests that these duties aid in guiding them when taking action in ethical situations. - Photojournalists take 'care' while taking photographs, exhibiting excitement and dedication to their profession. I contend that even though photojournalists take 'care' with their photographs, this may be in vain because newspapers may make their own changes to the photographs. - I argue that photojournalists are socialised despite the lack of a structured working environment. In addition, I argue that they act as ethical role models for their professional peers; aiding in deterring unethical behaviour and helping to maintain the 'traditions' of photojournalism. - Photojournalists' personal views relating to the complex changes within their industry reveal challenges faced by photojournalists. I assert that although digital photography has been a great benefit to photojournalism; it has also brought about pressures, difficulties and concerns for photojournalists. - Throughout this study, I draw upon the perspectives of photojournalists, and I establish that there is a lack of communication between photojournalists and newspaper staff. - It is also established that photojournalists do not receive ethical codes or guidelines from newspapers regarding photo manipulation. However, there is an unwritten 'code' within the photojournalism community; the socialisation of photojournalists is a key factor in dictating their ethical practices. The implication of this study goes beyond a consideration of professional comradery between photojournalists and newspaper staff. To establish ethical boundaries, I argue that photojournalism is becoming increasingly boundless in that anyone can submit photographs, from anywhere, making the management of the profession difficult. Yet, through the optimistic views of photojournalists, newspaper photographs will remain at the forefront of visual communication. The findings of this research were considered in light of existing theory as discussed in Chapter Two. The research findings for this research were highlighted in Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, I discuss digital photo manipulation, ethical views of photojournalists regarding their practice and digital photographs. Chapter Six discusses the judgment values and views of photojournalists on the current challenges and future state of photojournalism; as well as the way in which photojournalists are socialised into their profession. Limitations of this research study were reviewed, and recommendations for future research were outlined in Chapter Seven. Photographic discussions are important; especially those concerning ethics within photojournalism because it can help improve and may spark participation in photographic discussions. Discussions could create awareness, guiding professional photojournalists and those involved in photojournalism on how they conduct themselves while performing their professional ethical duties. Photography is a topic of interest to many people, not only because it is fascinating, but because most people at one point or another have picked up a camera and taken photographs.

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In the frame introduction to Willa Cather's My Ántonia (1918), an unnamed author encounters her childhood friend Jim Burden on a cross-country train. Jim asks the author why she has never written anything about their mutual friend Ántonia. To answer Jim's criticism, she proposes they both write stories about Ántonia, but only Jim honors the agreement. The rest of the novel is put forth as Jim's manuscript "substantially" as he brought it to the author (xii). This scenario is but one of several ways My Ántonia evokes Cather's experience ghostwriting S.S. McClure's My Autobiography (1914) for, just as the authorial voice in My Ántonia dissolves into Jim's, Cather had to adopt McClure's perspective to write her former employer's life story. Going further, Cather worked closely with her book editor Ferris Greenslet and the production editor R.L. Scaife to be sure Houghton Mifflin would paginate the introduction with roman numerals and thereby produce the effect of a true authorial preface. The introduction recalls the preface of McClure's autobiography, which acknowledged Cather for "cooperation" that contributed to "the very existence" of his book. Interpreting My Ántonia and My Autobiography as projects connected by authorial process, textual allusion, and even typesetting suggests the complicated and elusive nature of collaborative labor in the literary marketplace, as well as the extent to which modern literary texts responded to those complexities. Working on a task or project with a partner or in a group can frustrate, energize or empower those involved, but whatever feelings it inspires, interactive labor often has a life of its own. This is the idea of collaborative momentum. My dissertation examines relationships among authors, agents, editors, publishers, and unofficial "middle men" to argue that supportive and adversarial cycles of interactive labor in the modern American literary marketplace created the basic parameters of modern authorship. I show that as professional specialization becomes more rigid and institutionalized, the literary field paradoxically created new spaces for nebulous but crucial cooperative labor. In particular, the effect I call collaborative momentum facilitated the exchange of economic and symbolic capital. Additionally, I show that narratives of the modern period are inextricably invested in corporate and institutional labor systems that surround them and can be interpreted as rhetorical attempts to reform and improve those systems. By analyzing the author's cultural identity in relation to rising institutional collaborators of the modern era, I contribute to the steadily growing field of authorship studies while adding to ongoing scholarly conversations about individual authors and texts. My chapters analyze the systemic production of literary identity, reciprocal relationships between editors and authors, the modern apparatus of literary debut, and the role bibliophilia and book collecting played in the production of The New Negro. I therefore highlight four paradigmatic examples of interactive labor while simultaneously emphasizing that collaborative momentum as I describe it was crucial not only to those with privilege but also to individuals and groups struggling against inequality, whether it was Salish novelist D'Arcy McNickle, Alain LeRoy Locke, or self-employed literary agent Flora May Holly. My work helps scholars see a power structure that granted disproportionate credibility to white men as literary creators and publishing industry insiders, yet it also shows a modern American literary culture shaped as much by the experience of marginalized individuals and groups negotiating a discriminatory publishing industry as it was by aesthetic contests between popular fiction and high modernism. My first chapter, Character, Personality, and the Editor Figure: William Dean Howells and the Institution of Image-Building establishes that the same cultural logic that allowed Samuel Clemens to develop a public persona as a fictional character also empowered William Dean Howells to create his literary identity as the nation's foremost editor figure. Further, I argue that image-building was a collaborative affair; Howells and many others helped define Mark Twain, and countless authors and critics came to define Howells as the Dean of American Letters in the 1890s and as America's "pious old maid" after his death in 1920. I argue that Howells' persona-work extends to his novel A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). The main characters--co-founders of a fictional literary magazine--have contrasting identities: one is ostentatious but lacks substance; the other is so unsure he hardly has an identity. Labor crises at the magazine and in the city streets gesture at the problematic nature of a personality-driven culture that had come to define selfhood without emphasizing a moral or ethical element. In chapter two, "Reciprocity and the `Real' Author: Willa Cather as S.S. McClure's Ghostwriter," I trace a cycle of debt--monetary and symbolic--from McClure's rise as magazine editor to a moment of financial crisis in 1912 that led his corporate board to oust him from his own magazine. To pay off his debts, he asked Willa Cather to author his autobiography. I read the ghostwriting project as an example of how mutual debt is generative, for Cather accepted the role out of personal loyalty and took no money for her work. Cather's fictional works, including My Ántonia and The Professor's House (1925), engage with the cycle of debt and indebtedness and imagine a narrative exchange unclouded by any question of money but tied, instead, to a dream of self-sacrificing friendship. My article "It's Mr. Reynolds Who Wishes It: Profit and Prestige Shared by Cather and Her Literary Agent," in Cather Studies Volume 9, "Willa Cather and Modern Cultures," draws on material from this chapter. My third chapter, "Discovery of the Month: D'Arcy McNickle and the Apparatus of Literary Debut" takes up as its interpretive focus changing institutions of literary career-launching. My approach brings together two scholarly conversations, one preoccupied with McNickle's refinement of his perception of Native cultures and the other, informed by a history of the book methodology, concerned with the cultural systems that codified twentieth-century authorial identity and credibility. McNickle is an important example of how institutions of discovery functioned. The exceptional aspects of McNickle's story--the nine-year duration of his effort to publish his first book, his outsider identity, and the number of avenues he tried in order to become established make him an ideal example. To better understand McNickle's relationship with literary agent Ruth Rae, I frame my analysis with the story of the literary agent's rise as an integral figure in literary debut. Turning to McNickle's fiction in the second part of this chapter, I analyze his The Surrounded as a reaction to cultural institutions of literary discovery. McNickle narrates the tragedy of failed mediation and gestures at an alternative model of interaction. He embeds this thematic exploration in his allusions to the Salish oral tradition, so that the text itself mediates an experience of cultural discovery. Chapter four, "Irrepressible Anthologies, Collectible: Bibliophilia and Book Collecting in the New Negro," continues my analysis of the literary middle man's collision with American modernity by tracing the intersection of anthology, book collecting, and bibliophilia as they pertain to The New Negro's book design, artistic form, and multi-generic content. While recent studies have linked the anthology to Boazian ethnography and modernist collage, I provide a more immediate reading of the philosophies of collecting inherent to modern and African American print cultures. I read The New Negro as a book production process structured by efforts to produce an object worthy of being collected. My also analyzes of how the anthology's book design interacts with the positions on materiality and collecting at play in its collected prose and poetry. This case study of the creator-intermediary as collector historicizes modern book collecting and appreciates African American bibliophiles as an alternative to the dominant white American and European book collecting traditions. Appreciating these distinctions suggests, ultimately, that a significant aspect of the exchange of economic and symbolic capital in the modern age was to mediate a contested present day by refashioning ideas about the past.

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These days, fact-checking is a fashionable term in the worlds of both politics and the media. On broadcast news, tickers run below the speeches of politicians, with claims annotated in real-time and occasionally labeled as false. In newspapers like the Washington Post and online information hubs like Politifact.com, writers invoke the term to flag reporting that aims to correct or clarify the public record. At times, "fact-checking" efforts are themselves called out for partisan bias or personal gain. The term is now practically mainstream, used in everyday conversation to indicate disbelief. ("I'm going to have to fact-check you," CNN anchor Jake Tapper said to former Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in August 2016, expressing surprise that she was the mother of a 12-year-old.) Given the proliferating parties of interest that now claim to be engaged in some sort of fact-checking endeavor--from policy think tanks to Facebook--it's no wonder that a term originally reserved for the pursuit of journalistic accuracy now suffers from muddied public understanding. This study focuses on fact-checking in the context of print magazines: the media genre that innovated a formal version of the practice nearly a century ago. Magazine fact-checking, unlike the "fact-checking" tickers of broadcast news and newspaper postmortems, focuses not on setting the record straight after the fact, but rather on getting the story right before it goes to print. If a magazine fact-checker does her work well, she'll remain invisible to the reader. And that's because the published story, after her fact-checking, will afford the reader an experience uninterrupted by questionable logic, unreliable sources, or suspect data. Magazine fact-checkers aim for this level of perfection by employing a rigorous process that goes far beyond the verification of names, dates, and numerical figures. To illustrate this process, and explain my personal investment in this craft, I share my own experience working as the head of a city magazine's fact-checking department. To gain perspective on magazine fact-checking as practiced elsewhere in the nation, I interview other fact-checkers, writers, and academics. I also draw on case studies, media history, and personal anecdotes to examine some of the fundamental questions that inform the practice. (Among them: what is a fact? When does information become true? And what are the limits of a fact-checker's pursuit of truth?) In the world of fact-checking, there are best practices in the craft, and nuances to consider. Fact-checking also wades into deeper waters: those of philosophy, ethics, and social bias. But at its core, fact-checking is quite simply an application of critical thinking skills: skills that can be honed, and used for good. At a time when the media has lost the faith of many Americans, the magazine fact-checker can play a critical role in building that trust, one scrupulously vetted story at a time.