by Cheung Kwai-yeung. / Includes bibliographical references / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

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.

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.

Fourteen Malawian news editors Q-sorted fifty-four stories under two situations: their real environment which is a developmental press system, and a hypothetical ideal situation emulating a western libertarian system. The Qconcourse was constructed using eighteen news value combinations developed by Water Ward through a 3x3x2 factorial design. The stories were sorted along an eleven point bi-polar continuum from "most likely to use" to "least likely to use."The study showed that in an ideal situation, all Malawian editors selected stories with conflict, known principal and impact. In their own situations, the editors split into two: Pro-government Editors who selected known principal, conflict and magnitude stories; and Privatelyowned Newspaper Editors who valued known principal and impact, followed by conflict and oddity. Despite the use of these news elements, the study showed that environmental factors in their own situations such as organizational policy and ownership also influenced story choices. Progovernment Editors would rather use a "normality" story, than use one with conflict, impact and known principal, but speaking ill of government. / Department of Journalism

No description available.

This paper examines the characteristics of The Best American Short Stories and the personalities reponsible for this series. More specifically, the goal of the paper is to add intelligence to the general store of knowledge in the area of the American short story, first, by demonstrating through statistics, biographical data and a summation of critical opinion the salient characteristics of the series; second, by giving statistical-analytical data relative to the periodicals furnishing the selections; third, by presenting statistical-biographical characteristics of the authors contributing to the series; and fourth, by making a biographical examination of the important personalities intimately associated with the series. / Typescript. / "August, 1957." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Robert G. Clapp, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56).

The research addresses three research questions in this study: (1) What kinds of information are included in employee newsletters?; (2) What are the sender’s purposes?; (3) Is there a relationship between employee newsletter content and the sender’s purposes? An analysis of relevant literature will help in the development of our knowledge of employee newsletters. The review of literature that follows in Chapter 2 also will identify factors that have led to the popularity of the newsletter as a means of internal communication

"November, 1994" / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English & Linguistics, 1995. / Bibliography: leaves 199-212. / Introduction -- Bilingual editing of magazines -- Bilingual editing of magazines in Hong Kong -- Survey and interviews -- Grammatical bases for textual analysis -- Textual analysis -- Discussion and conclusion. / In cross-cultural or intercultural encounters of the modern age, mass communication has become a daily feature of our technological civilisation, and mass media have facilitated effective international information flow. Bilingual editing becomes an important medium of mass communication. The effectiveness of such communication rests upon the grammatical, lexical, sociolinguistic, socio-cultural, discourse and strategic competence of participants (editors, writers, translators and readers). It rests upon their ability to creatively use and to sensitively respond to language. In this dynamic process of communication, a bilingual editor not only plays the role of translator but also acts as a mediator; as Hatim and Mason (1990:223) suggest, s/he "has not only a bilingual ability but also a bi-cultural vision". -- In view of the diversity of usage of bilingual editing in the media, this research delves into the role of translation from English to Chinese in the bilingual editing of magazines in Hong Kong. This area is of interest for four reasons: first, since the press medium engages most translation practitioners, a study in this area may help future practitioners to have a better understanding of this science and art and its practice; second, text types are highly diverse, allowing room for discussion of translation devices; third, Hong Kong is a typical meeting place of the East and West and bilingual editing serves as a tool of information flow; fourth, the rising status of Chinese in Hong Kong approaching 1997 will enhance the role of bilingual editing. -- The study focuses on translation only from English and Chinese, or vice versa. In as much as there is very little academic attention to bilingual editing and its nature, processes and techniques, or to the role of translation in bilingual editing, it is believed that this research will help facilitate cross-cultural communication between Westerners and Chinese. -- The objective of this study is to derive new insights into the translation process with the support of contemporary approaches, and to descant on different lexical, grammatical and cultural features between English and Chinese; and most important, to elicit from the above features a set of parameters which may promote consistency and precision in the discussion of translating articles of the abovementioned press medium. -- Editors and theorists agree that an understanding of the source language text is essential. To review the basis for understanding the source language correctly, a text analysis of an English text and its Chinese translation will be performed. This analysis will take a functional approach which is based on Halliday's model of analysing the functional grammar of English. The first concern is with the analysis of clause complexes. The thinking behind this concern is influenced by Bell's approach to the clause. Such a functional approach is applied to the Chinese text. This does not' mean a complete application of Halliday's functional model to the Chinese language, but the functional approach will be used as a tool to reveal the relationship between the two languages as well as to analyse the source language. -- Case studies developed from the textual analysis of different types of magazines and from discussions with the translators or bilingual editors about their views of the translating process will be presented. Samples of articles illustrating the difficulties and challenges are also cited. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / viii, 212 [28] leaves ill

Determining what is newsworthy is a daily challenge even to the very people who source news, produce and disseminate it. This study is part an exposition and exploration of the different approaches that media researchers have used to explain and determine the value of news. Like similar research before it, this study more specifically delves into the news selection process of news of one particular newspaper with the goal of investigating why and how news is selected for publication in the front page. News is the 'result of many forces: ranging from source power, journalistic orientation, medium-preference and market model, news values and production routines and processes. The study briefly expounds on the different definitions of news as perceived in terms of the developed and developing world. Just as journalists do not operate in a vacuum, a close examination of the various definitions reveals that news cannot be defined in isolation. Its definition is intrinsically tied to that of news values. Also explored here are debates about news values and their Western rootedness. Here reference is made to literature regarding theories on the social construction of meanings and on the gatekeeping concept.The study is informed by similar research in gatekeeping studies and sociology of news studies. It is important to state at the outset that the study is not concerned with how news is produced but why there is a bias for certain kinds of news. I am interested in explaining why and how the writers and editors at the East African Standard make decisions about what is worthy of being published on the front page of the newspaper. This distinction is necessary because the theories that inform this study transcend news sourcing and production. This study takes cognizance ofthe fact that one cannot separate social processes from the individual and vice versa. For this reason, this study investigates and analyses the biases of individual gatekeepers at the East African Standard as well as their collective biases. In the concluding section, this study calls for an alternative paradigm for journalism and news. The foregoing discussions in the other sections prove that a universal definition of news and what is newsworthy will not suffice and there is need to contexualise it.

PhD (English) / Department of English / This study sought to analyse the discourse strategies in the editorials of the Daily Graphic newspaper as texts constructed in an African English as a Second Language (ESL) setting and the editorials of the New York Times of America as texts constructed in an Anglo-American English environment. The objective of the study was to discover the differences and the similarities that exist between the discourse strategies of the editorials of the Daily Graphic newspaper and the editorials of the New York Times. This objective is achieved by analysing five features of text. First, the rhetorical structure of the two editorials were analysed to find out the rhetorical strategies used in composing the editorials. Second, the micro-genre variation between the two editorials was examined. In addition, the thematic development of the two editorials was carried out. Also, the study investigated the rhetorical appeals preferred by the editorials from the two different socio-cultural settings. Finally, as newspaper editorials, the use of attribution was studied to find out how the editorials disclose the sources of their information to make it clear to their readers where they get their information from. The findings of the study revealed some differences and some similarities in the discourse strategies employed by the two editorials. The Daily Graphic as a newspaper published in an ESL setting in Africa exhibited the unique use of some discourse features that reflect the socio-cultural setting different from that of the New York Times as a newspaper published in the socio-cultural environment of Anglo-American English. / NRF