Today, both the way a story is told and how long the viewer's attention can be held are often as important as the story itself. This study shows how online media sets new standards for narrative and continues some print traditions. This study focuses on the dialogue between print and online media. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of this dialogue through story length, readability, shovelware and story packaging shows the numerous effects the Internet has had on news media content.

Since abolition, women have used the media to bring attention to causes and injustices in society. Issues faced by these women are some of the same issues faced by women in public relations today and possibly the future. This paper is the history of the women of pre-professional public relations in relation to their use of the media to bring about change and communicate with an audience. It also discusses the evolution of the public relations profession as it pertains to the parallel issues that the women of the first wave faced in relation to the second wave, or professional era. The paper will then synthesize these two eras in public relations and discuss the future of women in the profession as seen by researchers and women practicing at this time.

Advertising, which is an important sales tool for brands to the masses, may produce lasting impressions of a company and its products. These impressions rely on a consistent message over time to maintain a brand's image. This study examines how Ralph Lauren's advertising images have changed from a country club lifestyle image to urban/hip. In addition, the study examines the increased use of nudity and sexual imagery in Lauren's advertising. The findings were obtained by content analyzing all Ralph Lauren advertisements appearing in Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine from 1980 to 2000 (N=283). The study finds that Ralph Lauren lifestyle images have become more urban/hip, and that Lauren's advertising is utilizing more nudity, sexual interaction, and homoerotic imagery. By examining Ralph Lauren's shifting brand image via its advertising, this study contributes to a greater understanding of the connection between advertising and a company's brand image.

Through historical and content analyses of war coverage, this study qualitatively addresses emotional quality, use of sources, and implied use of technology to better understand the tension between Vietnam and Afghanistan war correspondents and their military counterparts. Early American democracy aspired to give total freedom to its people. But the American military, in its quest to uphold the ideas of democracy, has often challenged the freedom of press clause set forth by the United States Constitution. Since the Vietnam era, the relationship between the military and the media has been plagued by questions of censorship, assertions of falsehood, and threats to national security. But it is the technological advancements in both reporting and combat techniques that have caused a disappearance of the nostalgic war coverage that American correspondents once prospered from. The possibility of returning to journalists' vision of unrestricted press access is all but lost due to such advancements.

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.

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 focuses on the amount of coverage given by four major tabloid newspapers-Demos, Zambeze, Savana and Domingo-to the candidates of the major political parties Renamo and Frelimo, during the 2004 presidential race. The number of stories of both parties in those newspapers were counted and calculated by chi-square to determine how much one party was covered than the other identifying signs of balance or bias. The research showed that there was a significant result of 42 percent of likelihood that stories in the four newspapers would either be about Frelimo or Renamo. However, the study also revealed that Frelimo was the party covered most often by Demos, Zambeze and Savana while Renamo was covered most often by Domingo.

Condemned prisoners in Texas and most other states are given an opportunity to make a final statement in the last moments before death. An anecdotal review by the author of this study over the last 15 years indicates that condemned prisoners use the opportunity for a variety of purposes. They ask forgiveness, explain themselves, lash out at accusers, rail at the system, read poems, say goodbyes to friends and family, praise God, curse fate - and assert their innocence with their last breaths. The final words also are typically heard by a select group of witnesses, which may include a prisoner's family and friends, victim's relatives, and one or more journalists. What the public knows about a particular condemned person's statement largely depends on what the journalists who witness the executions chose to include in their accounts of executions, the accuracy of their notes, and the completeness of the statements that are recorded on departments of correction websites or records. This paper will examine, through rhetorical and content analyses, the final words of the 355 prisoners who were executed in Texas between 1976 and 2005, identify those who made unequivocal claims of innocence in their final statements, and analyze news …

The problem of this study was to determine how well the public information office of the Dallas Police Department performed in three public relations areas: staff consultation, employee communication, and press relations. Interviews were conducted with the command staff of the Dallas Police Department and with nine mass media representatives who had regular contact with both the police department and the public information office. Their answers were compared with public relations principles taken from literature in both the general public relations and the police public relations fields to see if the public information office was succeeding or failing in performing its staff-consultation, employee-communication, and press-relations functions.

This study determined attitudes held by metropolitan city editors in Texas toward current journalism instruction in colleges and universities. An open-ended questionnaire was mailed to city editors of newspapers in Texas with circulation over 50,000.

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 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 the subject-matter content and source of photographs at three small-city and three metropolitan Texas newspapers. An analysis was conducted over a fourteen-day period at six daily newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Houston Chronicle, The Sherman Democrat, The Paris News, and The Midland Reporter-Telegram.

Content analysis of The Dallas Morning News focuses on sources, bylines, photographs, and main characters to determine the quantity and quality of portrayals of women. The study included front pages and main local news pages during one week each from 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. Change was charted by year for both sexes. In 1950, few representations of women were included and many were stereotypical. Some stereotyping persisted in 1990, and men outnumbered women more than 3 to 1 as story sources, nearly 3 to 1 in front-page bylines, more than 2 to 1 in photographs, and more than 2 to 1 as main characters. Women still lag behind men, despite feminists' efforts to improve coverage.

This study compared the public relations efforts in three Dallas retirement facilities against suggested standards of professional public relations practitioners to determine which standards each facility utilized. Externally, all three facilities related to the community in an "above average" way, as indicated by their utilization of the twenty-two suggested standards. Internally, two facilities related to residents and staff in a "superior" way, and one facility related in an "average way," as indicated by their utilization of the twenty-two suggested external standards and twenty suggested internal standards. The conclusions drawn from this study are that retirement facility administrators, in general, are not fully aware of the internal and external public relations strategies that could benefit them within the community and with residents.

This study was designed to determine whether black journalists who work at black newspapers in Texas felt the Civil Rights movement had affected their industry. Although black newspapers lost an exclusive market for talent that now must be shared with majority-owned newspapers, this report concludes that the operation of black newspapers virtually was unaffected by the Civil Rights movement. It is recommended that this research serve as a starting point for a continuing examination of black newspapers. It would be particularly beneficial if more information could be gathered from people who have worked at now-defunct black newspapers.

A content analysis was conducted to determine the amount and type of causal explanation included in coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. The data were analyzed to determine whether causal explanations were primarily societal or individual/situational. The primary purpose was to examine whether the press has altered its reporting techniques since the Kerner Commission report criticized the narrow, descriptive-based reporting of the 1960s riots. Study results indicate riot coverage was predominantly descriptive and similar in content to that detailed by the Kerner Commission. The most frequently cited cause was the triggering event, the Rodney King acquittal verdict.

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.

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.

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.

This study is a content analysis of the coverage in Time, Newsweek, and U. S. News & World Report on Spiro Agnew from August 13 to October 22, 1973, and is concerned with the use of leaks as determined by analyzing the levels of attribution and the attitudes of the magazines toward leaks. All three magazines used approximately equivalent amounts of material from concealed sources. Time and Newsweek defended the use of leaks; U. S. News & World Report attacked their use. The perils inherent in using information from concealed sources make it necessary to consult as many sources as feasible when following a controversial story.

This problem's investigation deals with gauging the artistic influence, if any, pioneer editorial cartoonist John Knott had on his successors, Ficklen and McClanahan. Information was gathered through interviews and the pages of the Dallas Morning News. Organization is as follows: introduction, biography and art of Knott, biography and art of Ficklen, biography and art of McClanahan, summary and conclusion. The study found minimal artistic influence by Knott on the cartoons of Ficklen and McClanahan. Compared to Knott, Ficklen and McClanahan had different art backgrounds, cartoon styles, personal and political beliefs. Knott's successors admired different artists, drew during a different editorial page emphasis and had more freedom in cartoon selection than Knott did. Neither Ficklen nor McClanahan listed Knott as an artistic influence.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine whether there has been a change in attitude of newspaper editors toward privacy matters. The study examines a 1976 survey of editors on some specific situations involving privacy and compares that survey with one done for this paper in the spring of 1983. The study also seeks to determine whether such factors as circulation size, type of readership and political philosophy have any influence on privacy decisions made by editors. The study shows that there has been a change in attitudes. A chi square test showed that the comparison of the two surveys was significant at .01. Figures gathered to determine influences on privacy decisions were scattered among many categories and too small to be statistically significant.

The study examined China's conduct of its most important overseas propaganda activities in the United States during World War II. The findings showed that the main characteristics of China's propaganda in the United States in the war years included, (a) official propaganda in the United States was operated by the Chinese News Service and its branch offices in several cities; (b) unofficial propaganda involved work by both Americans and Chinese, among them, missionaries, newspapermen, and businessmen who tried to help China for different reasons; (c) both China lobby and Red China lobby, changed people's image about China, either the Nationalists or the Communists; and (d) propaganda toward the overseas Chinese in the United States was to collect donations and stir up patriotism.