This study examined promoting recorded country music from Atlanta, Georgia, and explored why Atlanta is important in this field. It was learned, through interviews, that promoters wanted radio airplay and top trade publication chart ratings. Radio station program directors decided upon playlists from reading trade publications, efforts by record promoters, listener requests and focus groups, and from reported sales. Stores used album and poster displays, charts, and played music for promotion. The business is one of personalities and experience, as much as product promoted. Large conglomerates are fast changing it.

This study seeks to show how Nike, Inc. has effectively followed a strategy to increase the sale of its products that can be characterized as propaganda. Regarding method, this is a qualitative study which applied the propaganda analysis plan developed by Jowett & O'Donnell (1992) to examine and describe (1) Nike's ideology, (2) corporate structure and culture, (3) purpose, (4) targeted audiences, (5) the dissemination of the propaganda, (6) techniques for increasing its effectiveness, (7) existing counterpropaganda and contradictions, and (8) the effectiveness of the campaign. The study provides evidence that Nike engages in propaganda through an organized, systematic, and deliberate attempt to influence the beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and actions of specific audiences for the purpose of accomplishing fixed objectives.

The study determines and evaluates changes in the 10:00 p.m. newscasts of the Dallas-Fort Worth network affiliates following personnel and ownership changes, and a reduction in length of one station's newscast. Scripts and audio recordings of the newscasts were collected during four-week periods before and after the changes. The data were analyzed and supplemented with interviews conducted with the stations' news directors and producers. Conclusions drawn were that ownership changes had more impact on the presentation of the news than on its content, changes in anchormen and producers had more effect on presentation than on content, and a reduction in news time caused changes in the content of a television newscast.

The problem of this study was an audience analysis of Dallas' weekly underground newspaper Iconoclast. A readership survey was mailed to 200 randomly selected subscribers to Iconoclast. Data were taken from the ninety useable questionnaires of those returned. The study is organized into four chapters. Chapter I discusses problems, procedures, introductory material and recent and related studies. Chapter II is a history of Iconoclast. Chapter III is an analysis of data. Chapter IV presents summary, conclusions, and recommendations. The data revealed the typical subscriber as having a mean age of 28.7, some college education, and higher than $10,000 yearly income. He obtains both exclusive and supplementary information from Iconoclast, and considers it an important but biased news source.

With her Book Club, talk show host Oprah Winfrey has used the relatively new technology of television to revive literature. Despite the odds against her--selecting hard-to-read, quirky books by generally unknown authors--Winfrey has successfully created women's spaces for the 1990s, not so different from the American women's social clubs from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the French salons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This study will show how Oprah's Book Club allows readers, especially women, to use the psychological processes of transference and transactional reading by using fictional literature from the Book Club to discuss sensitive areas of their lives.

This study looks at thirty of the largest Newspaper in the Classroom (NIC) programs being operated in the United States. The researcher employed the questionnaire survey method to achieve quantitative and qualitative results.

This study was concerned with determining the amount of exposure high school students have to mass media and their attitudes toward news. The purposes of this study were to find how much time high school students devote to newspapers, radio, television, and magazines for entertainment and information, to discover which publications or channels students are most interested in and why; to find out specifically what young people read, listen to, and watch; to discover how most of them get their news information; and to determine positive and negative feelings toward media news.

This study of Sepia magazine was researched as a historical project in order to trace the progress of a twenty-five-year-old Negro publication begun as a sensational news sheet and expanded to a pictoral, entertaining magazine aimed at the middle-class black.

The once private traditional written diary is shifting to an electronic storytelling tradition. Online diaries or weblogs are a growing phenomenon that scholars have ignored until recently. This qualitative project uses narrative and rhetorical analysis to focus on storytelling themes in weblogs, rituals in storytelling and the similarities and differences from traditional written diaries. In this study, 30 weblogs were chosen from three web domains: livejournal.com, blogger.com and diarest.net. The findings show that weblogs are filled with rich storytelling that emulates many qualities of traditional diaries. In general, weblogs authors are communicating stories online to an interactive mass audience and forming new rituals in a new electronic forum.

This study examined the public relations practices-- the concept, structure, functions, goals and objectives, procedures, and standards of performance--at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. The study concluded that the public relations practices provide an effective, well-organized, well-planned and well-executed program based on formal goals and objectives, definite philosophy and purpose, and criteria for measurement of effectiveness. Although the program has a good sense of direction, it lacks focus, largely because of the mingling of public relations and fund-raising responsibilities in some staff positions and a lack of separate standards of performance for each staff member. Recommendations to strengthen the program include separate and distinct public relations and fund-raising responsibilities in each staff position and standards of performance for each staff member.

The problem undertaken in this study was an attempt to discover the image Texas Baptists have of their eight colleges and universities, and to recommend steps to ensure a positive image. The two methods used to determine the image was a questionnaire distributed through a weekly newsmagazine, the Baptist Standard, and telephone interviews. From the study it was concluded that Texas Baptists have a positive image of their eight colleges and universities and rely on the Baptist Standard for their information. The major strength of the eight colleges and universities is the spiritual emphasis, and the major weakness is the high cost of attending a private college or university.

Economic retrenchment, social shifts, and technological changes endanger journalism's democratic role. Journalism education faces parallel threats. I review the state of journalism and education, linking the crisis to society's loss of story, framed philosophically by the Dewey-critical theory split over journalism and power. I explore the potential for renewing journalism and education with Carey's ritual model and Postman's restoration of storytelling. I then summarize existing major academic programs and suggest a new interdisciplinary curriculum for environmental journalism, a specialty well suited to experimental, democracy-centered education. The curriculum uses as pedagogy active and conversational learning and reflection. A graduate introductory course is detailed, followed by additional suggested classes that could form the basis of a graduate certificate program or, with further expansion, a graduate degree concentration.

This study was conducted to detail the history of The Arlington Citizen-Journal newspaper and its editors and the effect of an active newspaper on the orderly growth of a town. The Arlington Citizen-Journal evolved from a merger of two Arlington weekly newspapers, The Arlington Journal and The Arlington Citizen, which for more than fifty years reported Arlington happenings. The study includes historical information about the city, its people, and its institutions, and direct quotations of both editorial comment and news reports of Arlington events and people. It was found that throughout the years of Arlington's rapid growth, The Citizen-Journal was a vital force behind its citizens.

Data obtained through interviews with eleven directors of school public information directors and four university chairmen in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex indicated that they are generally satisfied with public relations education being housed in the journalism department, with course format, and with undergraduate study and specialization; and that they are dissatisfied with practitioner-educator relationships. Some of their recommendations included that graduatelevel study be offered more often, and that more emphasis be placed in the curriculum on specific areas of public relations, the social sciences, and the news-editing side of communications studies.

This study examined the organization, goals and scope of the public relations activity of the First National Bank of Fort Worth, Texas. The study's purpose was to examine the public relations function, department structure, process by which goals and policies are determined, the bank's practice of public relations and the process by which effectiveness is evaluated. The bank satisfactorily met several criteria for public relations effectiveness, but the staff was hampered by a lack of formal goals, philosophy or measurement criteria. The study found the bank's senior management to have a passive attitude toward public relations and to discern it ultimately as a marketing or sales promotion tool. The study recommended establishing formal goals, policies and evaluation criteria.

The problem of this study was to describe the operation and organization of Francophone Baptist Publications and to learn the publication needs of missionary personnel in the six countries served by the organization. Information for the study was gathered from Baptist history books, minutes from organizational meetings, questionnaires, and personal interviews with office and missionary personnel. The study revealed that although 47 per cent of those receiving questionnaires responded, only 28 per cent knew the materials and the organization sufficiently to evaluate them. This led to the conclusion that a lack of communication between the center and the missionaries exists and that the center should keep the market informed of materials available. The responses indicated that the present publications priorities do not reflect the real needs of the missionary personnel.

The purposes of this study were (1) to identify the reasons for and the processes of underground communication in Russia since the seventeenth century and (2) to utilize the information to interpret the clandestine media's significance. The study concluded: (1) underground media have evolved because Russian governments have oppressed free speech; (2) dissidents have shared similarities in the methods of illicit communications; (3) whereas the earlier clandestine press tended to be either literary or political, today's samizdat is a synthesis of many varieties of dissent; (4) underground media have reflected the unique characteristics of Russian journalism; and (5) the Chronicle of Current Events is unparalleled as a news journal in the history of Russian dissent.

This study evaluates the influence of The Oak Cliff Tribune under the leadership of Ray Zauber, from late 1946 to August, 1978. The study shows the contributions of The Oak Cliff Tribune for the area, its influence within the community and with community leaders, and determines what gives the paper its particular character. The study traces the history and development of the newspaper in four periods, 1903-1946, 1946-1959, 1959-1969, and 1969-1978; and concludes that The Oak Cliff Tribune has had a great effect on the development of Oak Cliff. The sources of data for this study include community leaders, current and former employees of The Oak Cliff Tribune, Ray Zauber, and the newspaper itself.

This study explains the development of DALLAS magazine from its beginnings and changes in sixty-three years in content and format, departments, staff, and editorial policy. The study shows how DALLAS developed, reflecting the history of the City of Dallas' economic and business growth, and the Chamber of Commerce viewpoints since 1922. Concluding, the study reveals that the magazine projected the Dallas Chamber's viewpoints, that the magazine reported only positive images of the City of Dallas and its economy, that the magazine chronicled the changes in journalistic writing and graphic arts technology, that the magazine's audience remained the business leaders of the community, and that staff members progressively became better qualified for their positions.

This study examines the organization, function, and role of public relations in Neiman-Marcus Fortnights. Fortnight is an annual October extravaganza combining cultural and community education with merchandising. Information was gathered by interviews with three people associated with Fortnight public relations. The public relations department follows general goals in planning Fortnight public relations activities. Audiences are not restricted. Public relations responsibilities are publicity, press relations, guest relations, community relations, and special events. Evaluations are made with respect to public relations activities of the previous Fortnight. Though public relations is of secondary importance to merchandising, the effectiveness of Fortnight activities would be improved with established objectives, specific audiences, and a formal means of evaluation.

Changes of ownership, a seeming lack of interest in history, several deaths, and a fire prompted this study into the history of The Weatherford Democrat. Data for the thesis came from back issues of The Democrat, Ayer Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, letters from former publishers, and personal observations and experiences of the writer, who worked on the paper 14 years. All but about a dozen years of the back issues are available. The thesis is written in chronological order, dating from the beginning in 1895 to 1967, when the Donrey Media Group gained control, ending local ownership. The Democrat is the survivor of more than 20 newspaper ventures in the city and is still the principal county paper.

The purposes of this study were to determine the characteristics of the subscribers to the local community newspaper, to determine what the subscribers read most and what they read the least in the local publication, and to determine the role of the small newspaper within the metropolitan area.

This study was designed to test whether Japanese natives who retained traditional Japanese value orientations and who resided in the Dallas, Texas area would have unfavorable attitude toward the concept of comparative television advertising. Data were collected from 104 respondents of varying sex, age, education, occupation, length of stay in the United Sates, intention of settling in the United States, and television viewing horse. All null hypotheses were accepted, indicting that cultural influence among Japanese natives in the Dallas area did not result fin unfavorable attitude toward comparative advertising despite the fact that in Japan, the name of names in advertising is counter to basic Japanese culture and tradition.

Media sociologists have produced much research on the systems of production of media content. Photojournalism, however, largely has been ignored in these studies. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of work routines and photojournalism practices at three newspapers. The study explored the extent to which routines and practices are affected by professional norms and values and organizational needs and beliefs. The study also explored how these factors influence the content and aesthetic qualities of newspaper photographs. Findings suggest that photo editors and photojournalists operate under many of the same constraints as other media workers. The findings also show that photojournalists are socialized to newspapers. expectations by fellow photographers and photo editors. To gauge professional accomplishments, photojournalists rely on peers, professional organizations and competitions.