news production - Re: front page

[Christianna I White]

with regard to Gertraud Benke's request, specifically b and c.  for a while in
1998 I was in contact with Py Kollberg about her work, published in 1998 as her
Licentiate thesis in the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University,
S-notation --a computer based method for studying and representing text
composition.  She used--and I think developed or at least helped develop
--Trace-It, a program that records key strokes and other commands (such as
moving a mouse) for later analysis.  I don't know if this is the direction that
your study might take, but it is very interesting work.  (and hi Py, if you're
out there--long time, many computer crashes. . . )

chris white
presently using email as an elaborate procrastination device in preparing for
the comprehensive part of my preliminary examination.  sigh


>(b) description of the text production in the newsroom (I myself did an
>ethnographic study of how journalists worked with the texts, i.e. did they
>work with a wire text on the computer screen, or did they compose a new
>text - I would appreciate anything along these lines, i.e. how does a text
>go through the editing cylce. A good match to that is Bell, Alan (1990):
>The Language of News Media
>
>(c) Changes done in the editing process / rewriting process.
>I have a very nice conf. manuscript by Houghton, Diane &  Hewings (1992):
>Making economics more accessible? A study on the process of rewriting an
>economics text for a wider readership; - but I'd naturally prefer something
>on news texts. (However, there is something on this also in Bell, 1990; and
>also in one of the van Dijk's, 1988).
>
>
>At 19:13 23.8.1999 , you wrote:
>>At 03:11 PM 8/23/99 +0100, Waleed Al-Amri wrote:
>>
>>>Could anyone please direct me to publications on the subject of the
>>>features, linguistc or otherwise, of the 'front page' in dailies
>>>mainly. Your help will be greatly appreciated.
>
>Kress and Hodge (1979): Language as Ideology - is certainly an early reference
>Bell, Alan (see above)
>van Dijk (1988): News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
>van Dijk (!988): News Analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
>
>You might also look at Kress, Gunther & Leeuwen, Theo (1996): Reading
>Images. Routledge. The system presented there for analyzing pictures and
>graphics etc. is not put to use for a front page itself (but to some other
>pages), but I have heartd some talks by Gunther Kress who applied it in a
>comparision of the front pages of two different English papers. (Maybe he
>has written up something on that?) In any case, I think this might be a
>useful tool for the analysis.)
>
>Thank ya!
>Gertraud