Magazine Media Division
2021 Abstracts
Research Paper • Student • Lydia Cheng • The practice and presentation of slow journalism: A case study of Kinfolk magazine • This paper contributes to the literature on slow journalism by analysing how elements of slow journalism is presented in the popular literary lifestyle magazine, Kinfolk. Based on a textual analysis of the editor’s letters from 30 issues of Kinfolk, this study found that the practice of slow journalism is manifested in the magazine through four ways: an emphasis on community, advocating for slowness in both production and consumption of content, and a niche editorial presentation.
Research Paper • Faculty • Lisa Phillips, SUNY New Paltz • Gender, the New Journalism, and the Early Careers of Gloria Steinem and Gail Sheehy • New Journalism has a woman problem. The core works critics, scholars, and the readers associate with the phenomenon are largely written by men, with subject matter—cars, wars, politics, motorcycle gangs—that often privileges male sources and perspectives. Yet a number of women writers consciously embraced the reporting methods, style, subjectivity, narrative structure, and subject matter of New Journalism, with several achieving levels of commercial success comparable to their male colleagues. Despite these accomplishments, women writers’ legacy in New Journalism remains tenuous. Joan Didion is the only woman who is consistently seen as part of the core canon of New Journalism writers. Several others occupy a far less certain position. What accounts for the tenuous foothold of women writers in the New Journalism? This article will address this question by looking at the process by which the accomplishments, writing style, and reportorial methods of two women journalists, Gloria Steinem and Gail Sheehy, connected them to New Journalism and the social and cultural forces that shaped their professional reputation and legacy.
Research Paper • Faculty • Gabriel B, Tait, Ball State University; George Daniels, The University of Alabama; Dorothy Bland, University of North Texas • Fifty Years of Black Enterprise Magazine Covers: A Visual Analysis of Black Business • The same year Black Enterprise Publisher Earl G. Graves, Sr died, his magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary. A content analysis of 509 Black Enterprise covers shows how it represented Black business professionals and issues. While they appeared more often in the last two decades, women were significantly less likely than men to be on the front of the magazine. Gracing the magazine cover most often were Barack Obama and Former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault.
Research Paper • Faculty • Kelsey Whipple, University of Massachusetts Amherst • Cancel or be canceled?: How U.S. arts and culture journalists perceive the influence of politics and cancel culture in their work • Modern cultural journalists have a unique relationship to cultural knowledge, capital and authority that attracts them to audiences and establishes them as arbiters of culture. Through a series of in-depth interviews with 73 American arts and culture journalists conducted in 2020, this study seeks to understand how these journalists perceive the influence of politics on their work, as well as their own roles in “cancel culture.” Findings suggest they see the intersection between national politics and popular culture as an increasingly valuable realm for explication in their work. However, their views on cancel culture are mixed, based in fear and anger. Many journalists believe it is their responsibility to support the cancelation of cultural figures who have committed perceived wrongs, while others are afraid of being canceled themselves for unwittingly committing a cultural faux pas in their journalistic work.
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