Thesis: B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1975 / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES. / Includes bibliographical references. / B.S. / B.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The purpose of the research was to look at how editors at Gannett, America's largest newspaper chain, perceive the role of journalism graphics and graphic artists in the newsroom.Nineteen editors from newspapers of various circulation sizes, participated from across the country. They sorted Q statements that covered areas related to journalism graphics as: use of color, balancing graphics with other content, graphics relationship with design, reader needs, and how graphics serve literacy.An analysis of the Q statements collected for this study showed two distinct factor types. They were identified by this researcher as the Communitarians and the Zealots.The Communitarians were characterized as trying to balance graphics with other aspects of journalism such as story, photo and design in an attempt to put the reader first. They were unwilling to elevate graphics to a necessity in presenting a story. The Communitarians saw graphics as one tool among many to conveyinformation.The Zealots saw graphics as an absolute necessity for any worthy journalistic endeavor. They saw graphics as the answer to attracting young readers, to serving a population with literacy issues, and to enhancing any work the newspaper is doing. The Zealots rejected statements that did not show graphics in the most positive way.Two camps emerged within the Gannett ranks regarding journalism graphics. The Zealots hold on to the allure of color and graphics made popular by USA Today in the 1980s and early 1990s. Communitarians acknowledged that graphics are an effective tool, but considered the practice of similar importance with other methods of conveying information. / Department of Journalism

Bibliography: p. 124. / Also issued as a B.S. thesis in the M.I.T. Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1974. / MIT OSP Project 70149. ANPA Grant.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-51).

<p>In this thesis I'm trying to examine the meaning potential of visual elements and layout in a Swedish newspaper front page and the same newspaper's website's start page, drawing on theories about multimodality and social semiotics developed mainly by Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress. The study is focusing on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and the website aftonbladet.se and compares these three different days. In this thesis I also try to examine what the newspaper communicate about its identity through the different visual components. My conclusion is that visual elements and layout have a great importance regarding what a newspaper communicate about how the news articles should be read, but what can be said about a company's identity mostly depend on the genre the newspaper belongs to and how well the reader knows that particular genre.</p>

In this thesis I'm trying to examine the meaning potential of visual elements and layout in a Swedish newspaper front page and the same newspaper's website's start page, drawing on theories about multimodality and social semiotics developed mainly by Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress. The study is focusing on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and the website aftonbladet.se and compares these three different days. In this thesis I also try to examine what the newspaper communicate about its identity through the different visual components. My conclusion is that visual elements and layout have a great importance regarding what a newspaper communicate about how the news articles should be read, but what can be said about a company's identity mostly depend on the genre the newspaper belongs to and how well the reader knows that particular genre.

J. Francis Reintjes, Donald R. Knudson, Hsin-Kuo Kan. / Prepared under a ANPA grant.

The impact of digital (new) media has caused both challenges and threats to newspapers’ continuing existence as a profitable and influential mass medium. While this is not the first time in history that new media appear to be challenging the future of the newspaper medium, from one perspective digital media offer not only direct competition, or alternative ways to produce and deliver news, but also possibilities for convergence, for making new media part of the traditional newspaper, inducing whole new possibilities for publishing. From another perspective, the newspaper medium is an old concept; a powerful mass medium with very profound consumption patterns, strongly associated with its traditional output medium: ink-on-paper. The purpose of the present work has been to examine the impacts digital media have on the old, well-established newspaper medium, and what consequences these impacts have for the future of newspaper as a mass medium, that is, is the medium the message? In order to achieve this aim, the present work has been carried out from three different angles: digital media, publishing and reading behaviour and presentation factors. The areas have been examined using several methods: instrumental experiment, eye-tracking experiment, secondary analysis, and case study design. Newspapers’ ’to be or not to be’ depends, in a theoretical sense, on what media constitute. The medium is the message in the sense that, in the definition of a mass medium, the strength of the newspaper message is that it is recognized as the newspaper concept. It is not, in that the message per se is dependent on the medium it is reproduced on, as a newspaper can be considered a newspaper even if presented on a digital medium, yet the specific way the content is presented will always depend on the technology and characteristics of the chosen output medium. Thus, while defusing the output medium’s significance for the concept, the strength of the newspaper, and its industry, lies in what hitherto constitutes the message: accurate, credible, serendipitous, and diverse content, but which is continuously adapted to the technology of the output medium, thus benefiting from it and further strengthening the developed, digitalized newspaper concept, or what will become of it. The newspaper industry has great potential to differentiate itself in a world where news is becoming increasingly commoditized, though it must further emphasize its power, which lies in the long-defined ‘old’ newspaper concept. Moreover, the industry must be aware of the fact that this refashioning and adaptation is a slow process. / QC 20100804

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished