Edward C. Pease

Radio—The Forgotten Medium

Although television is now dominant, radio surprisingly remains a medium of unparalleled power and importance. Worldwide, it continues to be the communications vehicle with the greatest outreach and impact. Every indicator--economic, demographic, social, and democratic--suggests that far from fading away, radio is returning to our consciousness, and back into the cultural mainstream. Marilyn J. Matelski reviews radios glory days, arguing that the glory is not all in the past. B. Eric Rhoads continues Matelskis thoughts by explaining how and why radio has kept its vitality. The political history of radio is reviewed by Michael X. Delli Carpini, while David Bartlett shows how one of radios prime functions has been to serve the public in time of disaster. Other contributors discuss radio as a cultural expression; the global airwaves; and the economic, regulatory, social, and technological structures of radio. Collectively, the contributors provide an intriguing study into the rich history of radio, and its impact on many areas of society. It provides a wealth of information for historians, sociologists, and communications and media scholars. Above all, it helps explain how media intersect, change focus, but still manage to survive and grow in a commercial environment.

Framing Brokeback Mountain: How the Popular Press Corralled the “Gay Cowboy Movie”

This study of 113 reviews of the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain finds that although U.S. critics applauded it, the discourse underlying their reviews created three complementary but conflicting frames that direct attention away the movies core theme of destructive rural homophobia. Our interrogation of press reviews revealed that reviewers framed the film as a “universal” love story while simultaneously encouraging audiences to read it as a “gay cowboy movie.” The tension between these competing frames—perhaps an artifact of reviewers’ lack of language to articulate the queer issues privileged in the films narratives beyond a heterosexual–homosexual dichotomy—results in disagreement about the “proper” interpretation of the film. The result, whether we see the film as “universal” or “peculiar,” is a paradoxical invisibility for queer identity, and yields a third frame in which homophobia is represented as a relic of the past. The tension among these contradictory frames illustrates how efforts in the mainstream press to privilege queerness struggle to exist within heteronormative space. Comparing the films queer protagonists to culturally familiar heterosexual symbols such as Romeo and Juliet, or Western icons John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, ironically elevates queer visibility while simultaneously relegating queers and queer experiences to the margins. Rather than celebrating Brokeback Mountain for its challenges to heteroideology, press reviews ultimately worked to appropriate Annie Proulxs voice, diluting her storys intended condemnation of brutal and destructive homophobia.

Professional Orientation Equals Second-Class Status in Academe:

Communications professionalsnewspaper reporters and editors, PR and advertising executives, broadcasters and others-are cherished commodities on college campuses. Wooed to the classroom, they give journalism and mass communication programs credibility in the media industries, establish important personal and institutional links between classroom and newsroom, and yield concrete benefits for students, and faculty and-sometimes-generate scholarship funds. Many journalism educators, including these professionals-turned-educators, argue strongly for the benefit of maintaining both front-line professional skills and industry contacts. “Professionals should do more than talk,” contends one former PR practitioner, now a journalism professor in Indiana. “They should be able to do the work they talk about.”’ But although professionals-turnedteachers agree that real-world experience increases their classroom effectiveness and informs their research activities, many responding to a 1990 survey said the commodities that made them attractive to journalism schools in the first place-their professional experience and industry contacts-sometimes work against them once o n campus. This is consistent with Schweitzer’s 1988 finding that professional consulting work ranked lowest among 12 factors considered in promotion and tenure decisions, particularly at institutions offering graduate programs.* A survey of 1,423 members of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the nation’s primary journalism educators group, found that the classic, divisive tension between the “chi-squares” and the “green eyeshades” is far from dead. In addition to detailing the extent and kind of their ongoing professional media activities, respondents discussed how those involvements play in the classroom and with promotion and tenure committees, department heads and college administrators. Even though journalism education in general acknowledges the value of maintaining balance in classrooms and conferences between professionals and scholars, many who actively pursue media industry connections off campus say they are made to feel like second-class citizens on campus. Most of these survey respondents had worked in media industries before joining faculty ranks. For them, faculty internships, consulting and part-time work offer a way to stay sharp in the classroom and to feel more connected to their former occupations; many of them miss the immediacy and bustle of the newsroom.