Norman P. Lewis

Why Twitter Displaces Broadcast Sports Media: A Model

The rising popularity of Twitter and the concurrent decline in audience size for local television sportscasts has fueled concern that the new medium is displacing traditional broadcasters. A model is offered that identifies the salient latent constructs that make Twitter a more attractive medium for connected fans in ways that transcend Twitter’s obvious advantage in timeliness. Issues relating to Twitter’s brevity, the public–private blending of athletes, parasocial interaction between users and who they follow, community building, homophily, and self-presentation are all addressed. The model offers propositions that can be tested by future research and provides guidance to broadcasters willing to adapt to what Twitter offers. Understanding why Twitter engages sports fans in a manner unlike that of previous technologies offers application for sports broadcasters trying to maintain audience share, as well as guidance for researchers seeking to explain the allure of the 140-character medium.

DTC genetic testing companies fail transparency prescriptions

In 2007, the American Society of Human Genetics issued recommendations for what the new and largely self-regulating industry offering genetic tests directly to consumers should disclose to potential customers. Websites for every DTC company offering health-related genetic tests as identified by a public policy group were evaluated for compliance with those transparency recommendations. The results showed that only six of the 25 companies studied met even 70% of the standards and that overall, the industry complied with the disclosure standards just 44% of the time. Further, the study revealed that even when companies met the letter of the law, they often failed to disclose to consumers the shortcomings associated with the tests and thus promoted genetic determinism. By failing to meet the spirit of the ASHG transparency recommendations, the DTC genetic testing industry demonstrates disdain toward the ethical principle of informed consent.

Plagiarism Antecedents and Situational Influences

A study of daily newspaper plagiarism over a ten-year period reveals the offense results from a combination of individual and systemic causes. An association between how the misdeed is termed and what sanction is applied, combined with evidence of a marked increase in disclosure and firings after the 2003 Jayson Blair case, reveals that plagiarism is situationally defined. Four types of plagiarism are identified, linked to three antecedents: rationalizing dishonesty, problematic techniques, and definitional ambiguity. Most plagiarism arises from professional routines that minimize attribution, yet is treated relatively harshly because it exposes a paradigmatic pretense of journalistic originality.

The Root of Journalistic Plagiarism Contested Attribution Beliefs

Journalists condemn plagiarism, yet rarely acknowledge disagreements over attribution standards. To document and evaluate those differences, journalists in broadcasting and print operations were surveyed (N = 953). Respondents were far less willing to attribute press releases than they were their colleagues’ work. They were more likely to consider attribution optional if they were under pressure to produce, worked for a broadcast medium, were a content creator, were less experienced, or saw their principles as flexible. The findings reveal that attribution beliefs are far more pliant than ethics policies suggest and illuminate some of the reasons why plagiarism occurs.

The Myth of Spiro Agnew's “Nattering Nabobs of Negativism”

Abstract In books, trade publications and newspaper articles, journalists often report that former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew described journalists as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” That journalistic maxim is wrong. Agnew used the phrase in the heat of the 1970 mid-term congressional campaign to refer to politicians critical of Nixon administration policies. Nothing in his speech referred to the press. Although the initial coverage of Agnews distinctive phrase was accurate, within a year journalists began to usurp the aphorism and conflate it with Agnews celebrated November 1969 speeches criticizing the news media. This article traces the origin of the nabob myth while recounting perhaps the two most remarkable media speeches given by a high-ranking official. Although journalists have perpetuated other myths, the misappropriation of Agnews alliterative phrase is distinctive because it reveals a primal journalistic need to recast criticism as a blame-the-messenger screed.

Gulf Papers' Oil Spill Coverage Differs from National Dailies

A content analysis challenges the notion that elite newspapers can speak for local dailies. Gulf dailies focused on the environment until the well was capped and then shifted to the local economy, while the national dailies focused on the accident.

The Personality of Plagiarism

Contrary to the water-cooler hypothesis of educators, journalism and mass communication students who plagiarize do not differ from their non-copying peers in the “Big Five” personality traits (study 1, n = 908). However, the two groups differ in a scale that measures integrity on a continuum between principles and expediency (study 2, n = 483). They also differ when asked to evaluate types of copy-and-paste Internet plagiarism. JMC majors do not differ from those in other disciplines in their propensity to commit plagiarism. The two studies show students consider plagiarism a relative offense and offer suggestions for educators trying to reduce its prevalence.

Idea Plagiarism: Journalism's Ultimate Heist

A survey (n = 953) and 8 interviews reveal journalists reject the notion that the sources of seminal story ideas should be attributed. Broadcasters and those in competitive markets were less likely than other journalists to see idea attribution as important, yet rejection of idea plagiarism was so widespread (74.1%) that no correlations surfaced with job type, career longevity, or ethical decision-making barometers. Although omitting the source of ideas may be widely accepted, it is not benign. Depriving readers of the origin of news limits their ability to critique a storys validity and in some cases precludes them from getting the story at all, as some journalists, especially broadcasters, would rather ignore a story than tacitly acknowledge a competitor.

From Cheesecake to Chief: Newspaper Editors' Slow Acceptance of Women

Abstract The struggle of women journalists to achieve equality in the newsroom begs the question of whether editors were reflecting social mores or practicing a more virulent form of male supremacy. The latter explanation is supported by a study of 680 editions of the newsletter of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Bulletin, from its inception in 1925 through the 1988 tenure of ASNEs first female president. Until the second wave of the women s rights movement took hold, editors saw women as sexual objects and housewives whose fragile and emotional natures left them congenitally unsuited for newsroom roles beyond the womens section. The unfiltered words of the editors betray a systemic gender bias that explains why newsroom discrimination was more entrenched than in society as a whole.

Data Journalism and the Challenge of Shoe-Leather Epistemologies

After prediction-defying elections in 2015 and 2016 in the United Kingdom and the United States rattled journalists, some publicly blamed data journalism—an indictment that raised questions about journalistic discourse surrounding the polysemic phrase and still-developing field. A content analysis (n = 612) of all published news stories over two years in four international news databases revealed the potential of journalists to embrace data as an empirical tool, for the phrase was most frequently associated with numerical analysis. However, the next most-frequent definitional category was electoral prediction, which was statistically more likely in the nations where data journalism is most often practiced, the U.K. and U.S. Correlating data journalism with electoral prediction also was statistically more likely in the month immediately after the surprising elections. Further, it was more likely to stimulate pushback from practitioners who saw data as epistemologically less reliable than “shoe-leather” approaches marked by observation and interviews with a few people perceived to be voter archetypes. The results reveal more than journalistic ignorance about polling techniques. They reveal an element of news culture that privileges traditional methods and dismisses unfamiliar evidentiary tools, which risks skewing audience understanding of data journalism.