Carolyn Kitch

‘A news of feeling as well as fact’ Mourning and memorial in American newsmagazines

When famous people die, the public mourns them primarily in the same forum where they came to ‘know’ them in life – the news media, which become national healers. This study examines how American newsmagazine journalists have covered the deaths of 12 major celebrities. It reveals that this practice did not begin as ‘the Diana phenomenon’, but rather has been taking shape for four decades. The death of Diana, and more recently that of JFK Jr, were the same journalistic story as the passings of other figures as diverse as Judy Garland, John Lennon, John Wayne, and Elvis Presley. Their lives and deaths were made meaningful through a ritual narrative with consistent themes: the celebrity was ‘one of us’ while also representing our greatest hopes; and though the death was tragic, it reminded us of societal values that somehow had been forgotten. Commemorative journalism reaffirms rather than informs, and its subject is collective identity – social, generational, and national.

A Death in the American Family: Myth, Memory, and National Values in the Media Mourning of John F. Kennedy Jr

This article provides narrative and rhetorical analysis—considering structure, language, and emphases in content and presentation—of journalistic coverage of the 1999 death and funeral of John F. Kennedy Jr. It contends that, because of JFK Jr.s particular symbolic role in the Kennedy story, journalists explained his significance in terms of cultural and mythic themes, including family and nation, tragedy and hope, and sacrifice and redemption. The evidence comes primarily from newsmagazines, which have played a key role in the construction of “the Kennedy myth” for forty years.

“USEFUL MEMORY” IN TIME INC. MAGAZINES

This article examines the summary journalism of Time Inc. (the corporate core of the multimedia conglomerate that now also includes America Online, Warner Brothers, and Turner Broadcasting) at a time when mass media have become a primary means by which most people understand the past. The focus of this study is the worlds leading magazine company, which pioneered retrospective journalism more than 80 years ago and continues to dominate this practice today. An analysis of its “special issues” and other memory products published over the past two decades reveals a number of rhetorical strategies by which their creators have taken on the work of public historians while creating products that blend the commercial and cultural functions of journalism. The large body of evidence provided by this one company further suggests that media memory products tend to characterize the past in five consistent ways: as permanent, as personal, as memorial, as visual, and as collectable.

Generational Identity and Memory in American Newsmagazines

This article examines the role of journalism in constructing generational labels - such as the Baby Boom, Generation X, Generation Y and the ‘Greatest Generation’ - and in articulating their meaning over time. Through narrative and rhetorical analysis, it examines 20 years of cover stories about generational identity in leading American newsmagazines. The study contends that, even while they situate particular people within particular historical contexts, such ‘special reports’ employ common narrative devices and themes of youth and nostalgia, blending the stories of individual groups into broader notions about generational and national identity. This kind of reporting extends journalists’ cultural authority and is a matter of memory as well as ‘news’, offering not just definitions of current social identity but also future understandings of a shared past.

Mourning “Men Joined in Peril and Purpose”: Working-Class Heroism in News Repair of the Sago Miners’ Story

Initially promising to replicate the story of the 2002 rescue at the Quecreek mine in Pennsylvania, news coverage of the January 2006 coal mine accident in Sago, WV, went terribly wrong when journalists incorrectly reported the miners’ “miracle” survival. Analysis of 761 newspaper, newsmagazine, and broadcast news reports illustrates how journalists corrected a mishandled story, and offers a glimpse into their broader role in constructing politically affirming national mythology. The final story of Sago was one of a rural community with class pride, distinct gender roles, and other “traditional” values presumed lost—a nostalgic parable of blue-collar patriotic sacrifice.

“Redemption for Our Anguished Racial History”: Race and the National Narrative in Commemorative Journalism About Barack Obama

This article considers how race was discussed in commemorative journalism produced after Barack Obama’s election and inauguration by major American newspapers, magazines, and television news. A discourse analysis of these commemorative media texts reveals competing—though often overlapping—narratives. Some celebrated Obama’s victory as a racial milestone, claiming it for African Americans past and present, yet another hurdle crossed in the continuing struggle for equality. Other commemorative texts either elided or marginalized racial issues, instead emphasizing diversity and democracy in a narrative of generalized American “freedom” and unity. The narrative in each text, however, was ultimately a tale imbued with nationalist ideology, emphasizing unity and progress at the expense of discussing issues related to contemporary racial inequality in America. Overall, although the coverage of this election demonstrated some change in racial representation, the overall discourse on race in America—and journalists’ thematic avoidance of racial issues—did not.

“A living archive of modern protest”: Memory-making in the Women’s March

ABSTRACT The Women’s March, held on January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States, made news across the world as a surprisingly powerful current event that signaled possible political and social futures. Yet this event was also threaded with the past. This essay examines the uses and constructions of memory in the marches and their mediation, drawing on news and social media coverage, on my own on-site experience at the Washington, DC, march, and interdisciplinary scholarship that may provide theoretical context for understanding the event’s nature and lasting importance. It considers the rhetorical and material memory work, on the ground, of both the official ceremonies and the marchers’ more vernacular expressions, as well as the complex interplay of mediation, resulting in definitions of the event as historic in its own right and as a map for the future.