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Heroes, Villains & Twice-Told Tales
Heroes, Villains & Twice-Told Tales:
The Normative Power of Journalism's Worklore
by
Frank E. Fee Jr., Doctoral Student
School of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Correspondence to:
Frank E. Fee Jr.
4700 Highgate Drive
Durham, NC 27713-9489
(919) 493-7932
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
FAX: (919) 962-0620
A paper submitted to the Qualitative Studies Division of the Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual convention
Chicago, IL, July 30-Aug. 2, 1997
Heroes, Villains & Twice-Told Tales:
The Normative Power of Journalism's Worklore
It is no small question to ask what shapes those who shape the daily news
report. Why events are chosen for dissemination by the news media, what facts
are selected for a story, and the ways those facts are collected, assembled, and
framed have significant impact on how we see and respond to the world around us.
Yet while scholars over the years have examined the products of journalism in
myriad ways, comparatively little attention has been focused on the worker
culture of the journalists themselves.[1]
This research focuses on how the profession's heroes and villains and its
worklore help create and sustain the work culture of journalists. Its purposes
are twofold. One is to suggest a methodology for examining D and offer a
preliminary analysis of D the influence of the craft's lore and mythic figures.
The second objective is to promote a research agenda for scholarly investigation
of journalism's worklore.
A review of the literature indicates that one of the least-studied areas of
the news workplace is the creation of the professional culture of journalists,
how it is sustained, and how those influences on the worker culture in turn
affect the daily news report.[2] Much of the popular image of journalists D
irascible, irreverent, hard-drinking, competitive D seems traceable to the play
and subsequent movie, The Front Page, and a number of popular books written by
journalists and carrying such titles as Deadlines & Monkeyshines[3] and Drunk
Before Noon,[4] provide ample anecdotes about journalists' personality quirks
and amusing stories about newswork.[5] This paper draws from organizational
communication theory in positing that the stories told among journalists about
their work are more than simply interesting, perhaps funny, yarns. Occupational
lore is a powerful constituent in creating and maintaining culture within
organizations and occupations.[6] Journalism's folk heroes and antiheroes model
behaviors that have been salient to how journalists see their work processes and
their very definition of news. The stories have a normative effect, giving new
journalists insights and informal training in "the way we do things around
here," and reaffirming for all journalists identification with their work
community.
Further, the lore may be a barometer of the state of the industry. By
monitoring the profession's stories about heroes, villains, and "the way things
really are" over time, scholars may better grasp the changing social context and
the material realities of the profession. For instance, is it just happenstance
that in late 1996 there were stories running through the profession about fights
in newspaper newsrooms?[7] Or, had profit pressures and economic straits over
the past few years[8] raised the stress levels in newsrooms to a dangerously
high level?[9] Does a lack of discernible heroes on American newspapers relate
in any way to enrollment fluctuations in the news-editorial sequence at many
journalism schools?[10] Or to the quality of potential news-ed students and the
applicant pool available to the profession? Apprehending the stories of the
workplace may offer insights into important changes in the work force.
Moreover, by examining the worklore of journalists it is possible to draw a
better understanding of why the news is what it is. This is terribly important
because if journalism's lore either affects or reflects the state of things in
the newsroom, it influences the news that is published and broadcast to millions
of people daily.
RESEARCH FOCUS
This paper explores the worklore of journalism in the second half of the
twentieth century[11] to (a) identify heroes and antiheroes of the craft, (b)
analyze the normative qualities of their fame or notoriety, (c) identify a
typology of stories told in newsrooms about journalists and their trade, and (d)
better understand the dynamics of storytelling and journalism worklore.
Recent studies of daily newspapers across the United States suggest that it is
the individual newsroom culture that most influences the perspectives and
activities of journalists. These data indicate that the external professional or
institutional culture is not the dominant influence on how news is defined and
enacted at various newspapers.[12] In discussing news culture, then, it is
important to acknowledge the distinctions seen in Weaver and Wilhoit's survey
research between the local worker culture and the professional culture beyond
the newsroom door. National, regional, and state associations; codes of ethics;
and workshops and conferences offer the opportunity for professional or
institutional culture formation among journalists. However, Weaver and Wilhoit
report that the newsroom, with its "day-to-day interaction with editors and
colleagues" is "the most powerful force over their conceptions of values,
ethics, and professional practices."[13]
HEROES
Roger Rollin suggests ways of systematically examining types of heroes and
myths in American popular culture.[14] His is a typology of types or
hierarchical levels of heroes drawn from Northrop Frye that with some adjustment
may apply to journalism and organizational settings in general. At the top are
the Super Heroes, who are "not only superior, they are different. ... with us
but not of us . ... serious characters."[15] In organizational settings, these
may correspond to the larger-than-life hero figure who founded the company or is
associated with periods of significant growth D a Thomas Watson of IBM, an Al
Neuharth of Gannett. Type Two is the Supreme Hero, "only 'superior in degree' to
other humans, but so great is that degree of superiority that they function as
demi-gods. They are not beyond natural law, able to leap tall buildings in a
single bound, but they scale tall buildings rather readily."[16] The third type,
the Leader-Hero, is above his or her associates but subject to many of the same
limitations as the rest of society,[17] while the fourth type, the
Everyman-Heroes, "tend to be ordinary mortals thrust by chance or circumstances
into extraordinary circumstances. Unlike most mortals, however, they do not back
off: they accept the challenge, rise to the occasion, and thereby raise
themselves above the legions of the average."[18] Often, there is a comedic
quality about an Everyman-Hero that gives him or her human scale.
To initiate this research, the following criteria were used to screen potential
"heroes" in the worklore:
1. Must have worked in journalism since 1950.[19]
2. The individual's name is instantly recognizable by working journalists,
including those outside large metropolitan daily newspapers and metro broadcast
markets.
3. The individual's example, work, or professional activities have normative
value for other journalists (i.e., behaviors that instruct other journalists in
practices or philosophies of journalism).
4. The combination of name recognition and normative power makes possible
linguistic code references readily understood by a majority of journalists
without full explanation of that individual's influence on journalism.[20]
These criteria help distinguish between heroes and celebrities, following
Rollin's distinction that "although all heroes are celebrities, not all
celebrities are heroes."[21] Particularly in the organizational setting, the
ability of heroes to provide role models and lessons is what sets them apart,
suggesting Rollin's Leader-Hero. In organizations, according to Deal and
Kennedy, "Heroes are symbolic figures whose deeds are out of the ordinary, but
not too far out. They show D often dramatically D that the ideal of success lies
within human capacity."[22]
If the test of heroes is that people look up to them, respect them, learn from
them, and attempt to emulate their behaviors, then the surprising fact appears
to be that journalism has few heroes, particularly in this half of the twentieth
century. For instance, a query put out on three journalism-related listserves D
Journet, a journalism educators list; Jhistory, devoted to journalism and mass
communication history; and SPJ-L, the list of the Society of Professional
Journalists D received less than a dozen nominees for heroes or villains, and
villains tended to outnumber heroes.
Just Doing Their Job: Woodward and Bernstein
Arguably the archetypal craft heroes of the second half of the twentieth
century are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters best
known for the Watergate investigation that contributed to the resignation of
President Nixon.[23] Their coverage harked back to the muckrakers at the
beginning of the century[24] and, with their book, All the President's Men,[25]
and the movie it spawned, their story "ennobled investigative reporting and made
of journalists modern heroes."[26] Historian Michael Schudson has studied the
Watergate era at length and writes:
At its broadest, the myth of journalism in Watergate asserts that
two young Washington Post reporters brought down the president of the
United States. This is a myth of David and Goliath, of powerless
individuals overturning an institution of overwhelming might. It is high
noon in Washington, with two white-hatted young reporters at one end of t
he street and the black-hatted president at the other, protected by his
minions. And the good guys win. The press, truth its only weapon, saves
the day.[27]
Besides giving American journalism what some might contend was its high-water
mark in public esteem, at least in the last fifty years, the story of Woodward
and Bernstein gave journalists models and lessons in ideology and performance,
even decorum, that have had a powerful effect ever since. Schudson refers to the
normative value of the Watergate story:
In their account of their own reporting, Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein insisted that they did nothing exceptional. They denied that
their manner of reporting was distinctive; to them, "investigative
reporting" is just plain reporting. They were, in short, just doing
their job. If All the President's Men is read as a set of instructions,
a handbook for aspiring journalists (and unquestionably it was being
read that way), it provides a counsel of caution. Where Woodward and
Bernstein took liberties with law or rules of confirming information
they received, they apologize. Where they followed rules D like the
guideline they established of confirming every important charge with the
testimony of at least two informants D they are proud. They make a case
for a journalism true to an ideal of objectivity and false to the
counterfeit conventions justified in its name.[28]
"The Most Trusted Man In America": Walter Cronkite
Television has created mass audiences in ways newspaper journalism could never
do. Thus, it is easier to find heroes in broadcasting and two who seem to meet
the criteria are Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Here, in particular, one
must be careful to distinguish journalism's heroes from its celebrities. The
difference between a Peter Jennings and a Walter Cronkite is a function of
role-modeling, or what the individual offers in the way of information that can
be used by another individual to make a difference. For journalists, Jennings is
estimable,[29] but as a network news anchor, just what his example models for
the rest of journalism is less certain.[30] Walter Cronkite, on the other hand,
enjoyed unprecedented credibility for a journalist, and at least for the
foreseeable future his "Uncle Walter" persona is likely to have a powerful
effect on broadcast and print journalism. He, too, was a news anchor, but was
seen as an active journalist in many of the stories he reported.[31]
In professional terms, Walter Cronkite represents a highly visible embodiment
of journalism's supreme value: objectivity. As historian Chester Pach points
out, "Walter Cronkite did not earn his reputation as the most trusted man in
America by making partisan, gratuitous, or controversial comments about the
news, but by reporting it 'the way it was.'"[32] To single out one episode of
Cronkite's career risks diminishing his many other exploits, but recent
conversations with journalists suggest his 1968 pronouncement on the Vietnam War
may have been an archetypal moment for the craft. "To say that we are mired in
stalemate seems the only realistic, yet satisfactory conclusion," Cronkite told
viewers in assessing the Tet offensive. "The only rational way out ... will be
to negotiate [and] not as victors."[33] According to Pach, "No other television
journalist offered such a full evaluation of Tet."[34] And if public opinion had
already begun to turn against continued American involvement in Vietnam,[35]
Pach says "Cronkite's declaration that the war was a stalemate had a profound
effect on at least one viewer, Lyndon Johnson."[36] As Picard reports, "That
broadcast reportedly led Lyndon Johnson to observe, 'Well, if I've lost
Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.'"[37]
"See It Now": Edward R Murrow
Edward R. Murrow's legacy may be in the many men and women of broadcasting,
such as Mike Wallace and Barbara Walters, who have built careers on
hard-hitting, investigative journalism. His heroic status in journalism rests
ostensibly on his unflinching toughness in bringing down Senator Joseph
McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts. As historians Jean Folkerts and Dwight
Teeter note, "Murrow ... stepped far beyond the featureless objectivity upon
which McCarthy had fed. Murrow spoke out at a time when few dared to oppose
McCarthy publicly."[38]
Besides standing up for the powerless and afflicted, however, Murrow's mark in
the journalism culture may be his vision of journalism's potential, as suggested
in the textbooks' many references to his challenges to the industry and to the
audience. Radio, Murrow said:
[I]f it is to serve and survive, must hold a mirror behind the
nation and the world. If the reflection shows radical intolerance,
economic inequality, bigotry, unemployment or anything else D let the
people see it, or rather hear it. The mirror must have no curves and
must be held with a steady hand.[39]
He attacked television programming as a mixture of "decadence, escapism, and
insulation from the realities of the world,"[40] warning that the medium could
"illuminate," "teach," and "inspire" "only to the extent that humans are
determined to use it to these ends. Otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a
box."[41] And he challenged his audiences. "We can deny our heritage and our
history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result," he told viewers of
his 1954 McCarthy interview. "There is no way for a citizen of a republic to
abdicate his responsibilities."[42]
In sum, Woodward and Bernstein, Cronkite, and Murrow achieved hero status in
the news culture because they exemplified the highly valued craft norms of
truthfulness, dauntless pursuit of the story, standing up to the powerful, and
integrity, and credibility with the audiences. Cronkite, and Murrow in
particular, also were able to express journalism's highest aims with eloquence
backed up by deeds that were in the most valued craft traditions and that in
themselves became benchmarks for future performance. It is especially important
to note that despite the large organizations that were behind their work, they
also were seen as lone individuals in the pursuit of truth, and became role
models for journalists everywhere.
VILLAINS
If journalism's worklore has been able to produce few heroes, the going has
been only slightly easier for antiheroes and villains among the press corps.
Although Deal and Kennedy do not discuss villains or antiheroes in the
workplace, such archetypes are identified here as portraying the opposite traits
of heroes. They represent journalism's dark side. Just as the heroes are seen to
exhibit the best in journalistic behaviors, the villains or antiheroes are noted
for their abrogation of important craft norms and values. Rollin says that in
popular culture, "Only the attempt on the hero, the doer, guarantees that one
will become a famous villain."[43] Here, if we substitute the abstractions truth
or trust for the persona of "hero," we have a better understanding of antiheroic
qualities in the worklore.
Three journalists who fall into the category are Janet Cooke, R. Foster Winans,
and Janet Malcolm. It will be seen that just as dimming worker memories may
erode a hero's status, so time D or in one case, doing time D may wash away at
least some of the onus if not the sins.
"Plagiarism and Fabrication": Janet Cooke
The Washington Post has the dubious distinction of having employed journalism's
greatest heroes and its most egregious villain. Janet Cooke invented a teen-age
victim of the drug culture and subsequently lost the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and
her job when the fabrication was discovered.[44] She also admitted to false
items on her r sum . A 1996 profile calls her "one of the most infamous figures
in journalism. ... Her case has come to symbolize such diverse issues as
plagiarism and fabrication, anonymity and unnamed sources, minority recruitment,
newsroom ethics, r sum fraud, the precarious practice of New Journalism."[45]
For breaking journalism's cardinal rules of truth, she has been "universally
vilified from the moment her transgression was revealed."[46] The episode also
led "editors around the country" to "move toward cutting down on the use of
'unidentified' sources," and "raised many questions about the Pulitzer awards
process."[47]
Making a Buck: R. Foster Winans
A handful of reporters have gone to jail in recent decades for refusing to
reveal information about their stories. R. Foster Winans, a columnist for the
Wall Street Journal, served time for revealing too much too soon to too few. In
1987 he was caught in insider trading, tipping stockbroker friends to stories
before they appeared in his "Heard on the Street" column.[48] None lamented his
departure from journalism and it was widely agreed that his breach of trust and
misuse of power gave a black eye for the profession.[49] His example is brought
up whenever other financial journalists' ethics are questioned, as in the more
recent case of Dan Dorfmann.[50]
"Betrayal": Janet Malcolm
Cooke and Winans were fairly clear-cut examples of dishonesty in newswork.
Janet Malcolm, on the other hand, presented the culture with a much more complex
issue aptly summed up in a trade journal article headline, "Hold Your Nose and
Defend Janet Malcolm."[51] Malcolm's notoriety began when she became embroiled
in a long-running libel suit involving charges she fabricated certain quotes in
a New Yorker magazine series on psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson.[52] The issue of
whether Malcolm had fabricated quotes in the Masson articles, and whether it was
legal if she had, ultimately came before the United States Supreme Court.
Despite the belief held by many journalists that direct quotes must be verbatim
statements of their sources, the Supreme Court said, in part, that "writers and
reporters by necessity alter what people say, at the very least to eliminate
grammatical and syntactical infelicities."[53] The profession's protracted
debates over Malcolm's performance and an outcome in her favor that many felt
gave journalists "a license to lie"[54] were just part of Malcolm's notoriety
within the profession. In March 1989, a two-part New Yorker series she wrote[55]
attacked the profession, saying a journalist is "a kind of confidence man,
preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and
betraying them without remorse."[56] Her denunciation of journalists, and
Malcolm's own court problems, over time diverted attention from her target in
the 1989 articles, journalist Joe McGinnis.[57] The charge touched off a
long-running brouhaha in the profession,[58] prompting a Columbia Journalism
Review article in which twenty prominent journalists were interviewed about
Malcolm's claims of editorial seduction and betrayal.[59] The jury of her peers
was mixed in its judgment about her criticism of the profession, just as there
was debate about whether quotations could be altered so long as the source's
intent was preserved. What came out was a sense that at worst, relationships
between journalists and sources are subordinate to the obligation journalists
have toward serving readers.[60] But while Malcolm has her defenders, her name
is associated in many conversations among journalists with abrogating the
profession's norms of objectivity and accuracy.
TWICE-TOLD TALES
The normative power of journalism's heroes and villains on practitioners
represents an external influence of the professional or institutional culture.
As such it is only part of how journalism's mythology shapes the culture. In the
newsroom, minor-scale heroes are the characters in stories whose drama and
action help create what Deal and Kennedy call "rituals of work life."[61]
Story-telling, as Pacanowsky and O'Donnell-Trujillo report, offers the group
information "worthy of emulation (when the story glorifies success) or deserving
of caution (when the story accentuates failure)."[62] Stories, then, "are not
merely entertaining narratives but are constitutive of organizational passions
as they call attention to significant possible future scenarios."[63] On
Rollin's typology of heroes, the characters in these tales tend to be
Everyman-Heroes, thrust by chance into situations in which by cleverness, luck,
or hard work they triumph in some way. Stories collected to date can be roughly
placed in several categories, including power and resistance, individualism,
keys to success, work rules, coping (often with the help of strong drink),
self-image, capricious environment, technology, and "the good old days." As
suggested above, further field research is needed to fully develop this
typology.
Nostalgia Stories
Running through much of journalism's consciousness is a nostalgia for "the good
old days" when, as Carl Sessions Stepp suggests:
The newspaper man and woman [was] engaged in a holy calling,
admired if not loved, feared if not revered, licensed to cross-examine
presidents and lounge alongside heartthrobs, intoxicated with the rush
of insider access, immune from the indignities of crass commerce. Making
a difference. Commanding attention. Mattering.[64]
In recent years there have been several indulgent and sometimes downright
longing backward glances at such rough-and-tumble newsrooms as one in Los
Angeles of the 1940s, where a female city editor "sometimes used a baseball bat
to enforce her will upon reporters in a city room that always seemed to reek of
cigar ash, printer's ink, stale whiskey, and cigarette smoke."[65] Former
Harper's magazine editor Louis Lapham relates that the oldest reporter in the
San Francisco Examiner newsroom in 1957 had an alphabetized file of stories
"(fires; homicides; ship collisions; etc.)" with blank spaces "for the relevant
names, deaths, numbers, and street addresses" D "stock versions of maybe fifty
or sixty common newspaper texts" from which he drew for vividly written stories
prepared with what, to the neophyte, seemed astonishing speed.[66] Often, such
traits of newsroom characters D drinking, profanity, gallows humor, and files of
stock stories D illustrate mechanisms for coping in a chaotic, unpredictable
occupation.
Rules of the Road
In Rochester, New York, where Gannett Co. Inc. owned two newspapers but
encouraged a competition between the two news staffs, reporters in the 1980s
could be evaluated in part on the basis of the quality of their work and partly
on whether they had beaten "the other paper" at the other end of the room.
Although each occupied one half of a block-long room divided by a partition, the
news staff of each newspaper was forbidden to encroach on the other's area in
the building. Legend in both newsrooms was the story of a Times-Union city
editor caught using his computer to probe the files of counterparts on the
Democrat and Chronicle metro desk. The lessons of the story were two: the high
sanctions against snooping in such close quarters, but also just how competitive
the staff members could be despite single ownership of the newspapers. New staff
members were told the story with both lessons in mind.
Erick Newton says Roy Grimm, former Oakland (CA) Tribune managing editor and
before that, city editor, "taught many, many people by telling anecdotes."[67]
Of two themes Newton remembers, the "Thank God We Aren't An Afternoon Paper"
group refers to time constraints placed on newspapers that make "Kennedy taking
off to fly west" difficult as time zones are crossed and the peculiar language
of headlines "verbs being written without tense."[68]
Newton also mentions "Just Work Like Hell," a frequent theme in stories told by
newsroom supervisors to subordinates and in Oakland spiced with supporting
examples such as "the woman who gave birth in the woman's room" and "the guy who
died at his desk."[69] At another newsroom, the managing editor's "It's no good
if it's not in the paper" became a well-used line to squelch bull sessions and
get everyone back to work.
Unpredictability
The capriciousness of editors and other internal power wielders is a theme
resonant among reporters, and much lore features supervisors bested in the end
by their newsroom minions. Lisa Friedman of The Bakersfield Californian cites a
tale told on the Internet about a New York Times reporter, "one of the best
reporters on the staff" who "during the McCarthy era ... was 'punished' for his
views and dumped on the obit desk. Maybe they thought he would quit. Instead, he
turned death writing into an art form, turning out truly inspiring
obituaries."[70] The value of such stories was demonstrated when Friedman
relayed it to "a friend at another paper who was demoted from covering the
county to night cops! I think it shows a real newspaperman's can-do grit."[71]
Editing: Terror in Time and Space
Deadlines, details, and space converge in nightmares reported by some
journalists during their early days learning page layout. "The Seven-Column
Blues,"[72] a brief cautionary ballad of chaos wrought in all departments of the
newspaper because "ya dummied seven columns on a six-column page!"[73]
underscores for newcomer and veteran alike the interdependence of newspaper
functions, highlights job pressure, and restates the consequences of poor
performance.
Nightmares involving page layout are sometimes reported by neophyte layout
editors. A possibly extreme case reported by the author illustrates the tension:
On the first week of laying out the local section of a daily, the author each
night had a different nightmare on a single theme. One night the end of the
world was occurring. As stars exploded on a bleak, moonlike landscape, the
editor was in a concrete bunker feverishly trying to finish his page layouts and
get the paper out. Another night, the editor, a recently returned Vietnam War
veteran, dreamt of being with a patrol on an ambush in the jungle. As other
members of the patrol engaged in a fierce firefight, the editor desperately
tried to get his pages done. And so it continued for five nights. After his
weekend off, the editor's nightmares went away, but they were recounted to
successive generations of layout editors to illustrate (1) that job-related
sleep disruptions are not uncommon but (2) they do go away in time. The story
also conveys underlying themes that the job requires singleness of purpose and
the ability to ignore everything else around you.
Skills
The risk of too much creativity, especially in large type, is subject of many
stories told in newsrooms. Bill Huntzicker, a former reporter, recalls that
"when I started at the Associated Press in Minneapolis in 1967, we were told
about the headline that read 'Fertile woman killed near Climax,' which
supposedly appeared in a Minnesota paper."[74] "Fertile and Climax are both
small Minnesota towns, or so I was told," he says. "I was told the story in my
orientation as a warning about unknowingly creating puns."[75]
Many of the stories told in newsrooms relate to skills, frequently with
cautionary twists. Headline stories, such as the one above, warn of pitfalls for
the unwary copy editor, and there are instructive and scary interview stories
(e.g., name mix-ups, lost notes) and photography stories (often trickster tales
of clever manipulation to get the photo) in every newsroom as well.
Power and Resistance
In the genre of newsroom stories involving bosses and staff, there exists a
subgenre of "exit" stories. At one newspaper, a departing staff member is
reputed to have walked into the managing editor's office and, in the words of
the Country-Western song, proclaimed, "You can take this job and shove it." At
the Chicago Daily News, according to Christopher Harper:
A copy editor was fired but had to work his last day. At
lunch, he bought a fish. He cut the fish in two and wrapped the back
end
in paper and wrote HTK (head to come) and sent it though the
pneumatic
tube. He then sent the head a short while later before leaving the
building.[76]
Trickster stories, often relating to pay and promotion, show up in the newsroom
lore as well. Desley Bartlett, an Australian journalist, tells of working for a
"born-again Christian" who "enforced an in-house rule of taking a Christian view
of the news and promoting family values."[77] He adds:
At the same time career advancement was stalled, for all sorts of
reasons D mostly economic, according to the management. Low-ranking
journos, in particular cadets, were always asking how to get promoted.
The story goes that one innovative cadet wrote the boss a memo and said
God had come to her in a dream and told her to ask for a promotion. The
reply D "Ask and ye shall receive, I have today authorised your
promotion." I don't know how true it is but I do know the cadet WAS
promoted.[78]
Creativity in pursuit of cash in Chicago is related by Ralph Otwell, who tells
of the expense statement filed by Ray Brennan, the "fabled reporter ... who
exemplified all the traits immortalized in the Front Page."[79] Upon returning
from a military junket to the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line, Brennan, handed
in an expense statement "punctuated with entries reading, 'Taxicabs,' and dollar
amounts. Adds Otwell:
The executive editor, Milburn P. Akers D a former political
editor who knew all the common tricks of cheat-sheeting D bounced it
back to Brennan with a notion, "Cabs at the Arctic Circle?" Quietly, and
with studied precision, Brennan revised the expense account. For every
mention of "Taxicab" he inserted "Dog Sled" and sent the form back to
Akers. Akers, knowing when he had been bested by a creative reporter,
initialed the expense account and sent it along to the cashier for
reimbursement.[80]
Technology
Until recent years, technology in the newspaper newsroom has been slow to
change, and one encounters in virtually every newsroom the story of the
old-timer who refused to learn how to operate a computer terminal.[81] In some
places, the old-timer went into retirement still holding out for his manual
typewriter. Some newspapers even sent the typewriter he used off with him.
Typewriters in particular seem to give rise to a variant of the John Henry saga,
even if instead of a steel-driving man the image is of a Royal-driving man.[82]
It has been suggested, too, that technology has become the new scapegoat in the
workplace, and journalists frequently lament the constraints brought by
computerization of newswork.
Youth and Age
In many newsrooms there is a continual tug over youth and vigor vs. age and
experience. Whether because of low pay or love of the job or both, many
journalists work well beyond normal retirement age, and some become subjects of
stories that reify the "old warhorse" ethic. In day-to-day shoptalk in the
newsroom, veterans often snicker at mistakes made by inexperienced, often young
reporters. An item in a recent trade publication affirming the wisdom and
experience of longtime staffers began, "Latch on to the old geezers and sop up
all you can from them."[83]
At the same time, there is always a sense that journalism is for the young and
vigorous. A song written by a staffer on the Irish Times of Dublin focuses on
the sad end of an old journalist in a newsroom inhabited by "sharp, keen young
men about town."[84]
ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION
The archetypal heroes and villains identified here provide one set of clues
about journalism's professional culture. The stories are another piece of the
puzzle. Because this is the beginning of an exploration and the research is
preliminary, it is premature, if not presumptuous, to talk of "findings."
Instead, the results may be seen in terms of hypotheses emerging from the
material and more questions to be answered. The hypotheses include:
1. Heroes and folk tales are complementary rather than interchangeable
influences on the work culture of journalists. Heroes and villains tend
to be associated with core values and emerge from the center of the
craft, while stories as worklore tend to embrace a wider range of
behaviors and concerns. The heroic figures seem to be associated with
how the profession views its relationship with external audiences, while
the work tales often focus on how journalists get along as colleagues
and co-workers, or the nitty-gritty of the job.
2. Heroes and villains or antiheroes are not the same as the characters
in journalism's folk stories. Rollin's typology for popular culture
heroes helps explain there are degrees of hero and villain, and the
external, professional craft hero is at a higher plane than the
characters who enliven newsroom stories. Often the former are more
serious and correspond to the Supreme Hero or Leader-Hero, while the
local characters are portrayed in more playful terms and reflect the
Everyman-Hero.
3. It is arguable that a high degree of conservatism, the restoration of
craft order, is at work when a professional or external culture selects
its heroes and villains. Individuals become a professional culture's
heroes not for being at extremes but because they exemplify the
culture's core values and beliefs. Woodward and Bernstein were embraced
by the profession for their celebrity among the public and celebrated
for using so well the widely accepted craft practices they themselves
insisted were just good journalism.[85] Similarly, the antiheroes' relation to
those
core values is what energizes the worker culture to treat them as villains.
Antiheroes,
too, may exert a powerful normative influence on practitioners. The stories of
their
transgressions reify the craft norms and journalists' self-image by
reinforcing the
penalties for abrogating journalism's written and, more often, unwritten
rules. Janet
Cooke and Janet Malcolm were excoriated by the profession for abusing its
tools and the
public trust, thereby risking bringing the profession into ill repute.
4. Stories emerge from the flashpoints, the nexus of the journalists
with newsmakers or audiences, or the points of interaction among
subgroups within the craft, such as reporters and editors, copy editors
and reporters, editors and page designers, young and old, the junction
of different work technologies.
An Absence of Heroes
The relative absence of heroes in the recent lore of journalism is grounds for
further research, and possibly concern. It may be that a reason for the lack of
heroes is the nature of journalism itself, its dedication to full disclosure and
unsentimental detail. According to Rollin:
There is a high correlation between the potentiality of a
hero-figure for serving the psychological needs of hero-worshippers and
the vagueness of the hero's image. Archetypes and stereotypes are
functional because they are one-dimensional D "cool" in McLuhanese. They
allow audiences to fill in the blanks on their own, to recreate the hero
best suited to their individual fantasies. The hero who can be both seen
and heard, in living color (or colorlessness), can thus be at a
disadvantage. An individuals' very uniqueness serves as a bar towards
the evocation of archetypal and stereotypical responses."[86]
Rollin also notes that in popular culture, "the hold on the popular imagination
of real-life popular culture heroes is usually brief. They too are subject to
the merciless scannings of the mass media and often they do not hold up."[87]
Given a work culture that sees its mission partly as debunking myths and heroes
in public life, there is little wonder that the culture celebrates so few heroes
in its own ranks. Irreverence of the early part of the century is held by some
to have given way to cynicism in the latter half,[88] leaving the profession at
a loss for hero figures to follow.
Women, Minorities
The research to date suggests another conclusion that merits further study,
namely that in journalism's heroes, antiheroes, and worklore there is a strong
element of sexism. For instance, a feminist critique might suggest that those
women who are featured in the worklore either are favored for the masculine
qualities (e.g., the bat-wielding female city editor), or devalued as
incompetent.[89] Moreover, if there are few heroes in twentieth-century
journalism, particularly the second half, none of them seem to be women,
although there are many notable female journalists. Among journalism's
antiheroes, the results are mixed but it might be argued that of the examples
discussed in this analysis, Cooke and Malcolm have greater name recognition
among journalists than any of the male villains who have been nominated.[90] If
the work culture is the repository of news frames, the absence of female heroes
in even a very small pantheon may suggest larger problems in news presentation.
Sea-Change for the News Culture
Organizational changes in the industry and the growing "corporatization" of the
media[91] are bringing new forms, such as implementation of work teams and
quality circles,[92] or so-called citizen-based reporting,[93] for which the
craft lore and traditions have little relevance and may, in fact, be seen as
obstructions. Indeed, an exploratory examination of the literature suggests much
of the lore of journalists sets the stage for a confrontation with today's
powerful market forces and trends. Running through many stories about
journalists, from the mundane shop talk of a reporter talking about her latest
story to celebrations of singular reportorial feats,[94] is the image of the
"lone gun"[95] taking on society's evils and failings, and those responsible for
corruption and incompetence. There seem no approving tales about newsroom
committees.
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Endnotes
[1] One of the notable exceptions is the insightful, if somewhat dated, work of
sociologist Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News,
NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1980).
[2] Gans talks about the role of journalists in story-telling and mythmaking
for the public (p. 294), but little direct attention is given to the stories and
myths that sustain the news culture. Other sociologists producing notable work
in this area include Gaye Tuchman, for example Making News: A Study of the
Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978). As Becker, Fruit and
Caudill say, "While the literature on the training and backgrounds of
journalists is not extensive, there is a massive literature looking at
journalistic values, particularly those associated with the concept of
professionalism." Lee B. Becker, Jeffrey W. Fruit, and Susan L. Caudill, The
Training and Hiring of Journalists (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1987),
18. Much of the journalist socialization literature begins with Warren Breed,
"Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces 33
(1955).
[3] John J. McPhaul, Deadlines & Monkeyshines: The Fabled World of Chicago
Journalism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962).
[4] Ken Hoyt and Frances Spatz Leighton, Drunk Before Noon: The
Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Washington Press Corps (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1979).
[5] Fred Fedler, among other media historians, has pointed out that the
portrayal of journalists "as scoundrels: as prying, rude, ruthless, adversarial,
arrogant, and unethical. ... (and) as heavy drinkers, even drunkards" began in
the nineteenth century. Fred Fedler, "From 1850 to 1950: Assessing the
Historical Stereotype of Journalists as Heavy Drinkers." Paper presented to the
History Division of the Southeast Colloquium of the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication, Gainesville, Fla., 9-11 March 1995.
[6] See, for instance, Terrence E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy, Corporate
Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1982).
[7] Jeremy Bagott, "Copy Desk Diplomacy 101," Editor & Publisher, 9 November
1996: 56.
[8] See, for instance, John H. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the
Citizen Beware? (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); Douglas Underwood, When MBAs
Rule the Newsroom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
[9] There is a small but growing literature of stress in newswork. Cook and
Banks identify burnout in the newsroom, particularly among copy editors. Betsy
B. Cook and Steven R. Banks, "Predictors of Job Burnout in Reporters and Copy
Editors," Journalism Quarterly 70 (Spring 1993). Research led by Giles in the
early 1980s identified stress among newspaper editors. Robert H. Giles, Newsroom
Management: A Guide to Theory and Practice (Detroit: Media Management Books,
1991). In their surveys of journalists, Weaver and Wilhoit found rising job
dissatisfaction. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American
Journalist in the 1990s (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996).
[10] For 1995, Ohio State University's Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass
Communication Enrollments reported, undergraduate enrollment in journalism and
mass communication programs remained unchanged from 1994. Dorothy Giobbe,
"J-program Enrollment Flat," Editor & Publisher, 7 December 1996, 4-5.
[11] The rationale here is that it is the most-recent history of journalism and
its practitioners that is most salient in the profession today.
[12] Weaver and Wilhoit, 169.
[13] Ibid., 171. In a more limited study involving ethics, "day-by-day newsroom
learning" was the decidedly more influential than the nearest other influence,
"family upbringing," leading Lambeth to say, "Clearly, to be effective, ethical
dialogue must include the members of the newsroom and take account of the
newsroom's day-by-day encounters with issues of principle and value." Edmund B.
Lambeth, Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession, 2d. ed.,
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 181.
[14] Roger R. Rollin, "The Lone Ranger and Lenny Skutnik: The Hero as Popular
Culture," in Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick, ed. The Hero In Transition
(Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983), 14-45.
[15] Rollin, 27.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., 28.
[18] Ibid., 29.
[19] The rationale here is twofold. First, there is evidence in the literature
and anecdotally that even heroes have "lifetimes," after which their influence
wanes. Second, this research seeks to capture processes that are current and
ongoing, hence the focus on the last half-century of journalism.
[20] This criterion, which borrows from Bormann's fantasy theme analysis,
relates to the creation of codes and cryptic references that are clues to the
existence of fantasy types that help members of groups gain and maintain
cohesion and sensemaking ability. Ernest G. Bormann, "Fantasy and Rhetorical
Vision: Ten Years Later," Quarterly Journal of Speech 68 (August 1982).
[21] Rollin, 15.
[22] Deal and Kennedy, 37.
[23] It should be noted that Woodward has lost considerable luster since the
early 1970s as his subsequent reporting methods have been questioned and as he
moved into the managerial ranks of The Washington Post, see, for instance, Bill
Kovach, "A Summer of Corrosion," Editor & Publisher, 26 October, 1996, 48.
Bernstein, on the other hand, moved out of the news spotlight and retains much
of his prestige among journalists. The effect of their book, and more so, the
movie, may have helped freeze their Watergate work in a moment in time and
insulated Woodward's Watergate identity from his later persona.
[24] Michael Schudson, The Power of News (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1995), 164.
[25] Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President's Men (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1974).
[26] Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory (New York: BasicBooks,
1992),104.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American
Newspapers (New York: BasicBooks, 1978), 188.
[29] For example, he was voted "best evening news anchor" in Washington
Journalism Review's eighth annual poll, although no particular reasons for the
outcome were indicated. Judy Flander, "The Winners," Washington Journalism
Review, March 1992, 43.
[30] Michael Massing, "Is the Most Popular Evening Newscast the Best?" Columbia
Journalism Review, March/April 1991.
[31] Robert G. Picard, "Journalist As Hero: The Adulation of Walter Cronkite,"
in The Hero In Transition, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall W. Fishwick (Bowling
Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983), 199.
[32] Chester J. Pach, Jr. "And That's the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the
Network Nightly News," in The Sixties: From Memory to History, ed. David Farber
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 97.
[33] Picard, 199.
[34] Pach, 110.
[35] A number of analysts have suggested that a sizable proportion of public
opinion had turned against the war as early as mid-1967. See, for instance, Neil
Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (New York: Random House, 1988).
[36] Pach, 112.
[37] Picard, 199.
[38] Jean Folkerts and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Voices of a Nation: A History of
Mass Media in the United States (New York: Macmillan College Publishing Co.,
1994), 453.
[39] Quoted in Folkerts and Teeter, 439.
[40] Ibid., 443.
[41] Ibid., 410.
[42] Ibid., 453.
[43] Rollin, 23.
[44] David A. Maraniss, "Post Reporter's Pulitzer Prize Is Withdrawn," The
Washington Post, 16 April 1981, A1.
[45] Mike Sager, "Janet's World," GQ June 1966, p. 203.
[46] Ibid.
[47] John Consoli, "1981 Was a Controversial Year for Daily Newspapers," Editor
& Publisher, 2 January, 1982, p. 8.
[48] Kara Newman, "Walking a Tightrope," American Journalism Review, October
1996, 36.
[49] Lambeth, Committed Journalism.
[50] Newman, 36.
[51] "Hold Your Nose and Defend Janet Malcolm," Quill, January/February 1991,
p. 8.
[52] Janet Malcolm, "Annals of Scholarship: Trouble in the Archives," New
Yorker, 5 December 1983, 12 December, 1983.
[53] Quoted in Andi Stein, "Taking Note of the Law: A Study of the Legal and
Ethical Issues in Cases Involving Reporters' Interview Notes," Paper presented
to the Law Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication annual convention, Anaheim, CA, 10-13 August, 1996.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Janet Malcolm, "Reflections: The Journalist and The Murderer," New Yorker,
13 March, 20 March 1989.
[56] Quoted in Marvin Gottlieb, "Dangerous Liaisons: Journalists and Their
Sources," Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1989, 21.
[57] Lambeth, 90.
[58] Michael Hoyt, "Malcolm., Masson, and You." Columbia Journalism Review,
March/April 1991.
[59] Gottlieb, 21.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Deal and Kennedy, 60.
[62] Michael E. Pacanowsky and Nick O'Donnell-Trujillo, "Organizational
Communication as Cultural Performance," Communication Monographs 50 (1983), 139.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Carl Sessions Stepp, "The Thrill Is Gone," American Journalism Review
October 1995, 15.
[65] Bill Walker, "Back When It Was Fun," Quill September 1996, 22.
[66] Louis H. Lapham, "Gilding the News," Harper's July 1981, 34.
[67] Erick Newton, personal correspondence, 5 November 1996.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Lisa Friedman, personal correspondence, 5 November 1996.
[71] Ibid.
[72] "The Seven-Column Blues," BONG Bull No. 268, 13-14 April, 1994, 1. BONG
Bull, a periodic electronic publication edited by Charley Stough of the Dayton
(Ohio) Daily News, is one of the few sources for journalism's minor folk tales
and worklore themes. Its perspective tends to be that of copy editors rather
than reporters and photographers, however.
[73] Ibid.
[74] Bill Huntzicker, personal correspondence, 5 November 1996.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Christopher Harper, personal correspondence, 6 November 1996.
[77] Desley Bartlett, personal correspondence, 10 November 1996.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Ralph Otwell, personal correspondence, 11 November 1996.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Resistance to computers appears to be in the tradition of
nineteenth-century journalists who resisted arrival of the typewriter and the
telephone in the newsroom. See, for instance, Fred Fedler, "Early Innovations:
Their Impact on Newsrooms," Paper presented to the History Division of the
Southeast Colloquium of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication, Knoxville, Tenn., 14-15 March 1997.
[82] "I want to believe better prose was produced at typewriters," says one
former journalist. "It also seemed to me that the louder you hammered, the more
active the verb." Allan Wolper, "Recalling the Days of the Typewriter," Editor &
Publisher, 30 November 1996, p. 40. For contrary views from the last century,
see Fedler, "Early Innovations."
[83] Terry M. Clark, "Find a Geezer and Start Learning," Editor & Publisher, 23
November 1996, p. 40.
[84] Mickey McConnell, "Boys of the Byline Brigade." Collected by folk musician
and former journalist Robert Stepnoe. Personal communication.
[85] Schudson, Discovering, 188.
[86] Rollin, 22.
[87] Rollin, 24-25.
[88] See, for instance, Paul Starobin, "A Generation of Vipers: Journalists and
the New Cynicism," Columbia Journalism Review March/April 1995.
[89] For example, the "culprit" in the lyric of "The Seven-Column Blues," is
female.
[90] For instance, in his discussion of Janet Cooke, Lambeth (3) mentions the
case of New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly, who resigned when it was
learned he had made up the identity of a British soldier alleged to have shot a
boy in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Although the Daly case gained notoriety at the
time, (see, for instance, Consoli, 8), Cooke remains far better known for her
fabrication.
[91] See, for instance, McManus, Underwood.
[92] See, for instance, Nancy Davis, "Testing Teamwork," Presstime February
1994, 24-27; Scott Johnson, "Newsroom Circles: The State Rearranges Its Newsroom
and News Coverage," Quill March 1993, 28-30
[93] Davis Merritt, Public Journalism and the Public Life: Why Telling the News
Is Not Enough. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995.
[94] Such as the Watergate coverage.
[95] See, for instance, Jim Sachetti, "Journalists Are Loners," ASNE Bulletin
April 1995, 20-21; Philip Meyer, "Moral Confusion: The What, Why, and How of
Journalism Is Changing," Quill November/December 1994, 31-33.
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