RECOMMENDED BOOKS, ARTICLES
AND WEB SITES
Updated: 8-2013
Alphabetized List -- Journalists in Television
TELEVISION
Alley, Robert S. and Irby B. Brown, Love Is All Around: The Making of the Mary Tyler Moore Show (a Delta Book published by Dell Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., New York, 1989, 235 pages paperback). The same authors also wrote Murphy Brown: Anatomy of a Sitcom (Dell, 1990, 304 pages). Each book discusses the making of the television programs "from original idea to script, casting and pilot." Plot summaries included.
Brooks, Tim and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present, Seventh Edition, completely revised and updated, Ballantine Books, New York, 1999, 1392 pages. This is a comprehensive book covering all the prime time network television programs including ones featuring journalists.
Daniel Douglass K., Lou Grant: The Making of TV's Top Newspaper Drama (Syracuse University Press, 1996) explores the history of the medium's most-respected journalism series and how it depicted the profession. It contains an overview of journalism dramas up to the debut of Lou Grant as well as a synopsis of each of the 114 episodes that aired from 1977-1982.
McMane, Aralynn Ann Abare, "Hello, Handsome, Get Me Rewrite: Toward an Understanding of the Portrayal of the Female Journalist in Film and on Television." 1991.
Meehan, Diana,Ladies of the Evening: Women Characters of Prime-Time Television, The Scarecrow Press, 1983, 192 pages.
Ragovin, Ashley, N Is for News: The Image of the Journalist on Sesame Street, The IJPC Journal, Volume 2, Fall 2010, pp. 34-85. This article examines the children’s television show Sesame Street, and how its portrayal of news potentially affects children’s perception of the news media. Specifically, the research focuses on the “News Flash,” a recurring segment that mimics the format of adult television news. Based upon a viewing of every “News Flash” segment since the show’s inception, the skits were compared to the vast array of common stereotypes of the journalist in popular culture, primarily film and television. This article demonstrates how such stereotypes of the TV reporter and general conventions of television news are communicated to a large audience of young viewers through its unique format, why Sesame Street is an exception to the general rule of pop culture’s negative portrayal of the media, and what the implications of these images and messages are for the program’s young audience.
Ryan, Joal, "Lou Grant Made Me Do It (How Hollywood Portrayals of Reporters Affect Budding Journalists," American Journalism Review, November 1996, Volume 18, Number 9, Page 13. Sympathetic portrayals of journalists in motion pictures such as All the President's Men and on television series such as Lou Grant often inspire budding reporters to seek careers in journalism. Although Hollywood's depictions of the profession may not be realistic, they do not necessarily lead to disillusionment later on. Three journalists describe the way such portrayals influenced their career choices and how they have successfully adapted their glamorous expectations to the real world of journalism.
Steiner, Linda, Jing Guo, Raymond McCaffrey and Paul Hills, The Wire an Repair of the Journalistic Paradigm, Journalism 2013 14:703; The last season of The Wire drew particular attention from journalists given its setting at a fictional version of the Baltimore Sun, where show creator David Smon once worked. The concept of paradigm repair was used here to explain journalists' responses to The Wire. Our qualitative analysis of articles from 44 newspapers, as well as radio transcripts, dealing with the 2008 season shows that a fictional challenge can precipitate vigorous efforts by journalists to restore their reputation after what they regard as an attack on their professional identity and credibility. The [real] Baltimore Sun and other papers where Simon's journalistic nemeses worked were the most likely to call SImon vindictive and obsessed and to use this to marginalize his stinging critique of corporatized newsrooms.
Wulf Helskens, Maxine De, Frederik Dhaenes, Sarah Van Leuven, Repackaged sob sisters and outsiders within: reading the female and minority journalists on The Bold Type and the Morning Show, April 3, 2023, Feminist Media Studies. Female and minority journalists in fiction movies and series are underrepresented and often framed as emotional, unstable, inexperienced, and unprofessional. These representations reiterate and preserve existing inequalities in Western newsrooms in which female and minority journalists face many obstacles ranging from the glass ceiling to a gender pay gap. However, these representations also have the potential to subvert and challenge existing structures and imagine more inclusive newsrooms. Therefore, this study proposes a qualitative textual analysis of the representation of female journalists in the American fiction series’ The Morning Show (AppleTV+, 2019) and The Bold Type (Freeform, 2017). Using a feminist media studies and intersectional perspective, it unpacks how the gendered power dynamics in newsrooms are represented in the series’ narratives. We find that The Bold Type represents an idealistic version of an inclusive work environment aimed at creating equal opportunities among journalists while at the same time embedding this in broader patriarchal structures that restrict this representation. The Morning Show claims a more critical approach by representing a pessimistic and dysfunctional newsroom and including an explicit critique of the power relations that disadvantage female minority journalists. This work was supported by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen [FWO.3F0.2021.0021.01].
Wulf Helskens, Maxine De, Sarah Van Leuven and Fredrik Dhaenens, ‘Fast-paced,’ ‘snakey’ and ‘commercial’: How American student audiences make sense of representations of journalism in fictional television series, Journalism, 2023, Vol. 0 (0) pp. 1-18. This study set out to understand how student audiences make sense of fictional rep- resentations of journalism in television series. To do so, we conducted five, focus groups with American students. First, participants expressed a need for more diversity in representations of journalism in terms of narratives and characters as they see fiction as a complementary source of information on the profession. They relied on non-fictional reference media, normative journalistic discourses, and if applicable, experiences with working in (school) newsrooms to make sense of these representations. Second, they discussed how public opinion on journalism is influenced by fiction and consequently fear that one-sided and stereotypical representations of journalism contribute to increasing the already low levels of mistrust in U.S. news media. This fear was also found to be gendered as the participants expressed concerns about the stereotypical representation of female and minority journalists as “bitchy” and “promiscuous.” This manuscript puts forward journalism fiction as a metajournalistic discourse in which non-fictional and fictional journalism blur in confounding ways.