Magazine 1997 Abstracts
Magazine Division
Risking Official Displeasure: The Trial and Tribulations of India’s First Newsweekly in 1780 • Debashis Aikat, North Carolina • James Augustus Hicky published India’s first newsweekly, the Bengal Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser in 1780. This paper narrates little-known facts about Hicky’s journalistic career, the influence of his newsweekly on society and other issues not probed by earlier researchers. An expatriate Irishman and a fiercely independent journalist, Hicky quickly realized that truly distinguished newsweeklies should serve society, even at the risk of official displeasure. Hicky’s newsweekly made interesting reading with its amply does of scurrilous reporting, risque advertisements reflecting the low morality in society and scandalous accounts of the misdeeds of British administrators in India.
Representation of Women in African News Magazines • Isaac Abeku Blankson, Ohio • Since the 1980s, the roles of African women have been changing toward more participation in the political, socio-economic and other significant sectors of the economies. More urban African women are taking jobs in high-level occupations in both the private and public sections and are making news almost every day. Unfortunately, the world media has the tendency to ignore or distort coverage of Africa. It is not surprising that these significant events in the lives of African women has gone unnoticed. A critical responsibility lies on African media to present such changing realities of events to the outside world. This study analyzed African news magzines to determine their coverage of women vis-a-vis men and to understand the importance African media ascribe to roles played by African women.
Catching a Glimpse of Hegemony in the Covers of Life Magazine during the Gulf War • Brian B. Feeney and Donnalyn Pompper, Temple • According to Gramsci, hegemony sustains its invisibility and illusion of common sense reality by constantly constructing social reality through the imposition of a seamless narrative overlay. Occasionally this process is disrupted by an event that exceeds the bounds of any text such as wars and disasters. For a brief moment, the seams are discernible in the narrative overlay. Life magazine’s coverage of the Gulf War was one such moment. The magazine returned to a heroic World War II grimmer of pictorial iconography during the period of heightened social anxiety immediately before and during the invasions of Kuwait and Iraq. This is especially evident in Life’s covers which a close reading reveals to be startling similar to many of its World War II covers in both tone and choice of subjects, even to the point of excluding people of color.
More than Angels: Women and Reform as a Topic in American Magazines, 1890 – 1910 • Agnes Hooper Gottlieb, Seton Hall • This paper examines how several types of magazines between 1890 and 1910 portrayed the emerging role of women in society. Specifically, this paper discusses the ways general interest magazines, reform journals and women’s magazines described and chronicled women’s increasing involvement in reform activities. During the discussion of women’s magazines, special attention is paid to the role of Good Housekeeping in order to illustrate well just how pro-active this publication was at a time when its circulation soared in the United States.
An American Title Abroad: A Cross-Cultural Study of One Popular Magazine in the U.S. and U.K. • Carolyn Kitch, Temple • This study examines one major American-owned magazine, Good Housekeeping, as it is published in the United States and the United Kingdom. Through a combination of methodologies, content analysis, interviews with editors, and interpretation of industry data, the researcher examined how cultural, demographic, geographic, and economic factors influence editorial content in different countries, despite a strong brand name that identifies the parent and subsidiary publications as the «same» magazine.
Magazine Myopia: Coverage of Development Programs in the Philippines by American Weekly Periodicals, 1950s-1990s • James Landers, Wisconsin • For 40 years, American agencies financed and directed efforts to transform the political ecomony of the Philippines. Almost none of the programs accomplished the intended goals. During most of the era, American newsmangazines usually ignored information indicating that development programs were inappropriate or ineffective because of cultural incompatibility. When analyses were published, most concluded that Filipinos were to blame for the failures, which left more people in poverty in the 1990s than during the 1950s.
Images of Older Women in Magazine Advertisements: A Content Analysis and an Analysis of Content • Melanie Laverman, Iowa • This paper looks at the images of older women in the media and what these images say about American culture and our attitudes toward aging. In particular the study focuses on images of women age 50 and older in mainstream magazine advertisements.
The Impact of Media Ownership: How Time and Warner’s Merger Influences Time’s Content • Tien-tsung Lee, Oregon and Hsiao-Fang Hwang, Northwestern • The increasing concentration of media ownership has been a popular research topic for mass communication scholars. Their usual focus is on diversity of voices in press coverage. However, because media conglomerates likely own more than only news media, the impact of such ownership invites investigation beyond news content. Our findings suggest that conglomerate ownership could force a leading news magazine to show favoritism toward the products of its parent corporation.
Martha Stewart Media: Revisiting Domesticity • Ann Mason, Georgia State • Martha Stewart has recently been showering the country with images of domesticity, images which may affect people’s conceptions of women’s roles. A qualitative textual analysis was conducted to determine whether or not the Martha Stewart media products perpetuate traditional sex role stereotypes for women. The results suggest that although the media messages occur within a predominantly domestic sphere, a stereotypically feminine sphere, the images of women presented are empowering, rather than oppressive.
The Hoary-Headed Apostle of Satan and Press Freedom in America: The Seditious Blasphemy Libel and Censorship Trials of Freethought Journalist Abner Kneeland • Charles Mayo and Richard Alan Nelson, Louisiana State • This study looks at the career of Abner Kneeland, an important freethought figure in the 1830s, and the legal actions for seditious blasphemy brought against him by Massachusetts authorities in his capacity as the Boston-based publisher-editor of the nationally-distributed The Investigator. As a freethinker, Kneeland devoted his journalistic efforts to promoting news and opinion about religious and political matters formed independently from traditional authority or established beliefs. His hard-fought censorship trials for individual liberty, reminiscent of earlier dissident pamphleteers seeking freedom from authoritarian actions by European monarchs, point to the rejection of democratic secular humanism at a critical time in American national history.
Jane Grant, The New Yorker, and Ross: A Lucy Stoner Practices Her Own Style of Journalism • Beverly G. Merrick, New Mexico State • One of the founders of the New York Newspaper Women’s Club was Jane Grant, first wife of magazine publisher Harold W. Ross and co-founder of The New Yorker. Grant is most known for championing women’s issues even as she wrote articles for the front page. She organized the Lucy Stone League which established legally that it is not necessary for a woman to take her husband’s name at the time of marriage. Her efforts to elevate the status of women journalists and of women in general have gone undocumented in the mainstream media. This purpose of this study is to present a biographical examination of her life, which addresses these oversights.
How the Nineteenth Amendment Was Framed in the Pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal • Sarah Wright Plaster, Ohio • This paper examines the extent to which Ladies’ Home Journal framed the goal of suffragists and the subsequent passing of the Nineteenth Amendment as securing the vote for women and not for women’s right to seek public office. All articles having to do with suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment were analyzed the year prior, the year of, and the year after the amendment’s passage. Study also examines how the winning of the vote was framed as an extension of a woman’s relationship to the men in her life and how women’s vote would be a continuation of the established Anglo-Saxon political power base.
Magazines in Capitalist Russia: Impact of Political and Economic Transitions • Leara Rhodes, Georgia • As Russia is making the transition from a state centered economy to a private sector centered economy, the media are making a transition from being a political resource model to being a commodity. The impact of these transitions on magazines is made using a cross-national comparative study of the Russian edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. The transition is evaluated through policy decisions, organizational issues and production using the magazine and other periodicals to illustrate the negative and positive impacts of the transitions. This study of Cosmopolitan magazine illustrates that media in Russia are a limited commodity and will not be fully commodified until major policy changes are made.
The Role of Barriers to Entry in the Success or Failure or New Magazines: An Exploratory Study • Kathryn E. Segnar, Temple and Fiona A.E. McQuarrie, University College of the Fraser Valley • The concept of «barriers to entry» has been well established in economic research, but has not been extensively applied to the magazine publishing industry, despite its potential utility in exploring the high failure rate of new magazines. Barriers to entry are defined as factors which give existing market participants advantages over new market entrants. This exploratory study compares one new magazine, at the time of its inception, to three established magazines. The results suggest that established publications do enjoy some market advantages such as larger subscriber bases and high levels of revenue, however, new publications can gain competitive advantages through such factors as retail price and staff expertise.
From Pretty Blondes and Perky Girls to Competent Journalists: Editor & Publisher’s Evolving Depiction of Women from 1967 to 1974 • Joey Senat, North Carolina • The purpose of this paper is to examine the lexicon used by Editor & Publisher in describing women from 1967 to 1974. This paper concludes that Editor & Publisher contained much of the sexist lexicon feminists were criticizing newspapers for at that time. E&P, though, may have been more than a reflection of newspaper norms. At a time when newspapers were being called upon to recognize and avoid language that trivialized women, E&P’s steadfast practices of calling attention to women’s looks and calling them «girls» may have implicitly conveyed to some in the industry that such complaints themselves were trivial and than such language was appropriate.
Gospel of Fearlessness or Outright Lies: A Historical Examination of Magazine Letters to the Editor, 1902-1982 • Brian Thornton, Midwestern State • If you could hear people talk about journalism in 1902 and then again in 1982, would public discussion about the press change? And if you tracked public conversations about journalism over 10 years, what themes might materialize? To try to answer these questions, this research compared 2,154 letters to the editor published in 10 popular magazines from 1902 to 1912 with 41,822 letters printed in 10 magazines from 1982 to 1992. The purpose is to provide historical perspective on published conversations about journalism by magazine readers.
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