Magazine 2016 Abstracts
Digital Excellence in U.S. Magazines: An Analysis of National Magazine Award Categories and Calls • Aileen Gallagher, Syracuse University • This study examines the categories and calls for entry for the digital National Magazine Awards from 1998 to 2016. Researchers tracked the addition and subtraction of digital categories, and analyzed calls for entries to determine how definitions of excellence in magazine journalism have changed. Researchers found new technology and media platforms create different standards of excellence than traditional print editorial content. The Magazine of the Year award further alters the way prizes assess a publication’s caliber.
Towards a Typology of Magazine Digital Longform: How Is Online Literary Journalism Different from Print? • Aleksandr Gorbachev, University of Missouri, Missouri School of Journalism; Berkley Hudson, University of Missouri • To better understand how magazine journalism works in the digital environment of the twenty-first century, it seems valuable to look at the Internet profile of one of the most praised and established genres: longform, narrative or literary journalism. To explore this, a qualitative typology was devised to determine the specific characteristics of digital longform content as a way to compare with print magazine stories. Four different digital longform outlets—The Atavist Magazine, Narratively, The Big Roundtable and Matter—were compared to those produced by two legacy magazines, The Atlantic and GQ. A total of 295 stories were analyzed: 199 published by digital longform publications and 96 in print. The analysis yielded a number of insights, including that narrative still stands on its own, whether in print or online, and that many opportunities remain for enhancing digital longform journalism with multimedia elements.
The New Yorker’s Lillian Ross: The Literary Journalism Canon’s Neglected Eavesdropper • Annie Rees, University of Missouri-Columbia • When Tom Wolfe codified the term “New Journalism,” he left out many established writers including The New Yorker’s Lillian Ross. Critics were frustrated by Wolfe’s insistence on a burgeoning field of “new” journalism when many felt that the four tenets of New Journalism—scenes, dialogue, the third person, and status details—were variations on themes that had been in practice by skilled writers for decades. This paper argues that Lillian Ross has been left out of the nonfiction canon too often, and in her absence from anthologies of “new” journalism, not enough study has been made in way she innovated literary journalism. Although within her body of work there has been some focus on “Portrait of Hemingway” (1950) and Picture (1952), less attention has been paid to other features, particularly the continuing “Talk of the Town” pieces she wrote through the 2000s.
Millennials and the Future of Magazines: How the Generation of Digital Natives Will Determine Whether Print Magazines Survive • Elizabeth Bonner; Chris Roberts, University of Alabama • Through a mixed-methods study utilizing a preliminary survey and focus groups, this qualitative work seeks to reveal how Millennials feel about print magazines in the Internet age. Participants reported reading magazines for reasons pertaining to content, aesthetics, entertainment, escape, habit, and ease of use. Findings revealed instrumental themes, reported as recommendations to the magazine industry, as these digital natives will inevitably dictate the fate of print media in the coming years.
Repairing the Gamer Community: Paradigm Repair in Early Gaming Magazines Nintendo Power and Sega Visions • Gregory Perreault, Appalachian State University; Malik Rahili • Video game journalism began amidst widespread negativity surrounding gaming (Williams, 2003). Gaming journalism began its existence under attack because of the audience to whom they appealed. Paradigm maintenance is process by which journalists reaffirm why they do what they do. In this case, gaming journalists had to repair the paradigm of the gamer identity, in order to defend the motivation behind their work. This study argues that early gaming magazines Nintendo Power and Sega Visions repaired the gaming paradigm during the development of gaming’s mainstream acceptance from 1991-1995 by challenging stereotypes of gamers as anti-social, anti-intellectual and generally childish.
Uprising to Proxy War: How Time Inc. and Newsweek framed the Syrian conflict (2011-2016) from War versus Peace Journalism Perspective • Nisha Garud • Based on the theoretical framework of Johan Galtung’s war and peace journalism perspective, this study examines framing of the Syrian conflict in Time Inc. and Newsweek. A total of 255 stories published during the five years of the conflict were analyzed for the dominant conflict frame (war versus peace frame), salient indicators of war and peace journalism and variations in framing during three significant stages of the conflict. A quantitative content analysis revealed war journalism dominated the U.S news magazine coverage of the Syrian conflict. Analysis also showed significant differences in Time Inc. and Newsweek’s coverage; Time Inc. employed more war journalism indicators whereas Newsweek employed more peace journalism indicators. The study suggests that scholars should consider the type of news media and its associated characteristics such as style of writing, space for coverage, and production time as factors that are likely to influence the preference of journalists to frame stories from a war over peace journalism perspective.
Magazines and Social Media Platforms: Strategies for Enhancing User Engagement and Implications for Publishers • Parul Jain, Ohio University; Zulfia Zaher; Enakshi Roy • Using theoretical perspective of Uses and Gratification and Big Five personality traits, the current research examines magazine readers’ social media behavior by exploring users’ preferred social media platforms for connecting with magazines, genre of magazines most likely to be accessed via social media sites, and motivations behind doing so. In addition, we also examine engagement strategies that are most likely to attract more readers and retain the interest of current users. Finally, we explore the relationship between accessing magazines via social media platforms and personality types. To answer the above questions, we employ two studies utilizing focus group discussions and survey methods. The findings indicate that most people expect a magazine to have a presence on major social media platforms and indicate varying motivations for accessing magazine’s social sites such as opportunity to get targeted and relevant messaging. In addition, users suggest various engagement and content strategies that may be relevant to publishers such as inclusion of visual and video content. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.
Home computing’s halcyon days: Discourse frames in computer magazines in the mid-1980s • Terry Britt, University of Missouri • This study examines the computer magazine market in the mid-1980s with regard to prevalent topics in articles in presenting discursive frames about home computing to readers, and how the content provided insight to actual and potential uses of computers. Looking at articles published from 1984-1985 in three large-circulation general computer magazines, the study finds three discursive frameworks – advisory, instructive, and social/cultural – routinely present within both the topics and the content of the magazines.
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