Letters as indicators of community values: Two case studies of alternative magazines

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 823-840

  Reader, Bill ^a   Moist, Kevin ^b  

^a OHIO UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTIFACT; LEADERSHIP; MASS MEDIA; MEDIA ROLE; PUBLISHING; VIRTUAL REALITY;

EID: 64949106589     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900808500407     Document Type: Article

References (112)

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4. Myria Georgiou, "Diasporic Communities On-Line: A Bottom-Up Experience of Transnationalism" (paper presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA), http://www.allacademic.eom//meta/ p-mla-apa-research-citation/1/1/1/9/5/ pages111957/p111957-1.php (accessed May 12, 2008).
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6. Mario Diani, "Social Movement Networks Virtual and Real," Information, Communication & Society 3 (September 2000): 386-401.
7. Mohan Dutta-Bergman, "Community Participation and Internet Use after September 11: Complementarity in Channel Consumption," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (January 2006): 469-84;
8. Tamara Ginossar, "Exploring Participation in Cancer-Related Virtual Communities" (paper presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the International Communication Association, New York, NY), http: //www.allacademic.com//meta/p-mla-apa-research-citation/0/1/ 5/0/9/pages15091/p15091-1.php (accessed May 12, 2008).
9. Sorin Adam Matei, "A Sounding Board for the Self: Virtual Community as Ideology," Journal of Technical Writing & Communication 35 (4, 2005): 345-65.
10. Nicole R. Brown, "'Community' Metaphors Online: A Critical and Rhetorical Study Concerning Online Groups," Business Communication Quarterly 65 (June 2002): 92-100.
11. Christy Newman, "Healthy, Wealthy and Globalized? Reader Letters to Australian Men's Health Magazine," Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 19 (June 2005): 299-313;
12. Christy Newman, "Reader Letters to Women's Health Magazines," Feminist Media Studies 7 (June 2007): 155-70;
13. Sheila M. Webb, "The Narrative of Core Traditional Values in Reiman Magazines," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (winter 2006): 865-82;
14. Fernando P. Delgado, "When the Silenced Speak: The Textualization and Complications of Latina/o Identity," Western Journal of Communication 62 (fall 1998): 420-38.
15. Webb, "The Narrative of Core Traditional Values in Reiman Magazines."
16. There have been many studies of various collective aspects of "virtual community," particularly during the past decade. A particularly useful summary of that literature appears in Robin Goodfellow, "Virtuality and the Shaping of Educational Communities," Education, Communication & Informations 5 (July 2005): 113-29.
17. The concept of "imagined community" stems from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), which was focused on the construction of national identity, often via mass media, specifically novels and newspapers. Many scholars have adapted Anderson's theory to explore the manner by which members of sub-cultures engage in mediated community.
18. David Abrahamson, "Magazine Exceptionalism: The Concept, The Criteria, The Challenge," Journalism Studies 8 (4, 2007): 667-70.
19. Abrahamson, "Magazine Exceptionalism," 669.
20. Chris Atton, Alternative Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2002).
21. Ferdinand Tonnies, Community & Society (Gemeinshaft und Gesellschaft), ed. Charles P. Loomis (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1957), 33.
22. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, ed. Stanislav Andreski (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1969), 706.
23. William Hedgepeth and Dennis Stock, The Alternative: Communal Life in New America (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 18.
24. Andrew Feenberg and Maria Bakardjieva, "Virtual Community: No 'Killer Implication," New Media & Society 6 (1, 2004): 37-43.
25. Feenberg and Bakardjieva, "Virtual Community," 37.
26. Feenberg and Bakardjieva, "Virtual Community," 38.
27. Jenny Preece, Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2000).
28. Preece, Online Communities, 34.
29. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
30. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 33
31. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.
32. Tamara Vukov, "Imagining Communities through Immigration Policies: Governmental Regulation, Media Spectacles and the Affective Politics of National Borders," International Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (September 2003): 335-53.
33. Sandra Silberstein, "Teaching Culture: Imagined Communities And National Fantasies In The O.J. Simpson Case," Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 2 (January 2003): 319-30.
34. Webb, "The Narrative of Core Traditional Values in Reiman Magazines."
35. Webb, "The Narrative of Core Traditional Values in Reiman Magazines," 876.
36. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.
37. Cultural studies scholar James W. Carey, in his foundational work Communication as Culture, argued that such an approach to research "views human behavior - or, more accurately, human action - as a text. Our task is to construct a 'reading' of the text... is to interpret the interpretations." See James W. Carey, Communication as Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 60.
38. Atton, Alternative Media, 4.
39. Stephen Duncombe, Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (New York: Verso, 1997), 178.
40. Atton, Alternative Media, 23.
41. Atton, Alternative Media, 18.
42. Atton, Alternative Media, 81.
43. Carolyn Kitch, Pages From the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines, (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005): 4.
44. David P. Nord, Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001): 67.
45. Michael Bromley, "'Watching the Watchdogs?' The Role Of Readers' Letters In Calling The Press To Account," in Sex, Lies and Democracy, ed. Michael Bromley and Hugh Stephenson (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1998);
46. Emmett H. Buell Jr., "Eccentrics or Gladiators? People Who Write about Politics in Letters-to-the-Editor," Social Science Quarterly 56 (3, 1975): 440-49;
47. John Richardson and Bob Franklin, "Letters Of Intent: Election Campaigning and Orchestrated Public Debate in Newspapers' Letters to the Editor," Political Communication 21 (4, 2004): 459-78.
48. David Pritchard and Dan Berkowitz, "How Readers' Letters May Influence Editors and News Emphasis: A Content Analysis of 10 Newspapers, 1948-1978," Journalism Quarterly 68 (summer 1991): 388-95.
49. Jackie Hogan, "Letters to the Editor in the 'War On Terror': A Cross-National Study," Mass Communication & Society 9 (1, 2006): 63-83.
50. Heidi Frank, "Identity and Script Variation: Japanese Lesbian and Housewife Letters to the Editor," in Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, ed. Kathryn Campbell-Kimbler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J. Roberts, and Andrew Wong (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2002).
51. Anne Magnet and Didier Carnet, "Letters to the Editor, Still Vigorous after All These Years? A Presentation of the Discursive and Linguistic Features of the Genre," English for Specific Purposes 25 (2, 2006): 173-99.
52. Abrahamson, "Magazine Exceptionalism."
53. Bill Reader, "An Ethical 'Blind Spot': Problems of Anonymous Letters to the Editor," Journal of Mass Media Ethics 20 (1, 2005): 63-78.
54. Joseph Daniel, "Becoming One with Your Readers," Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management 22 (August 1993): 90;
55. Bruce Sheiman, "Deconstruct Errors of the Past: You Can Build Reader Loyalty by Making Tenacious Bad Habits Give Way to a More Reader-Focused Approach," Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management 24 (March 1995): 50-52.
56. Susan Herbst, "Assessing Public Opinion in the 1930s-1940s: Retrospective Views of Journalists," Journalism Quarterly 67 (winter 1990): 943-49.
57. Hal Davis and Galen Rarick, "Functions of Editorials and Letters to the Editor," Journalism Quarterly 41 (winter 1964): 102-09; Pritchard and Berkowitz, "How Readers' Letters May Influence Editors."
58. Sue Ryon, "Editor's Note," The Masthead 44 (winter 1992): 3-4;
59. Suraj Kapoor, "Most Papers Receive More Letters," The Masthead 47 (2, 1995): 18.
60. James Aucoin, "Does Newspaper Call-in Line Expand Public Conversation?" Newspaper Research Journal, 18 (summer/ fall 1997): 122-40;
61. Jock Lauterer, Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006);
62. David Shaw, "Readers Let Fly in Letters to the Editor," Los Angeles Times November 5, 1977,1, sec. 1, pp. 30-32A.
63. Suraj Kapoor,"Most Papers Receive More Letters," The Masthead 17 (spring 1995): 18-21; Reader, "An Ethical Blind Spot."
64. Brian Thornton, "Published Reaction When Murrow Battled McCarthy," Journalism History 29 (October 2003): 133-47.
65. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, "The Normative-Economic Justification for Public Discourse: Letters to the Editor as a 'Wide Open' Forum," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79 (spring 2002): 121-33.
66. Bill Reader, Guido Stempel, and Douglass Daniel, "Age, Wealth, Education Predict Letters to the Editor," Newspaper Research Journal 25 (autumn 2004): 55-66.
67. Sidney A. Forsythe, "An Exploratory Study of Letters to the Editor and Their Contributors," Public Opinion Quarterly 14 (1, 1950): 143-44;
68. H. Schuyler Foster Jr. and Carl J Friedrich, "Letters to the Editor as a Means of Measuring the Effectiveness of Propaganda," The American Political Science Review 31 (February 1937): 71-79;
69. David L. Grey and Trevor Brown, "Letters to the Editor: Hazy Reflections of Public Opinion," Journalism Quarterly 47 (autumn 1970): 450-56, 471;
70. David B. Hill, "Letter Opinion on ERA: A Test of the Newspaper Bias Hypothesis," Public Opinion Quarterly 45 (2, 1981): 384-92;
71. Ernest C. Hynds, "Editorial Page Editors Discuss Use of Letters," Newspaper Research Journal 13 (winter/spring 1991): 124-36; Forsythe, "An Exploratory Study of Letters to the Editor."
72. Atton, Alternative Media.
73. Douglas B. Ward, "The Geography of Ladies' Home Journal," Journalism History 34 (spring 2008): 2-14;
74. Newman, "Reader Letters to Women's Health Magazines"; Teun-yu Lau, "Audience Preference of Chinese Television: A Content Analysis of Letters to the Editor in Chinese Television Broadcasting Magazine, 1983-1986," Journal of Popular Culture 24 (spring 1991): 161-76
75. Cara A. Finnegan, "Recognizing Lincoln: Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (spring 2005): 31-57;
76. Brian Thornton, "Subterranean Days of Rage: How Magazine Letters to the Editor in 1952 Foretold a Generation of Revolution," American Journalism 24 (winter 2007): 59-88; Thornton, "Published Reaction When Murrow Battled McCarthy."
77. Bethan Benwell, "Male Gossip and Language Play in the Letters Pages of Men's Lifestyle Magazines," Journal of Popular Culture 34 (4, 2001): 19-33; Newman, "Reader Letters to Women's Health Magazines"; Newman, "Healthy, Wealthy, and Globalized?"
78. Delgado, "When the Silenced Speak."
79. Webb, "The Narrative of Core Traditional Values in Reiman Magazines."
80. Alan McKee, Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).
81. For Hall's description of the method, see "Introduction" by Stuart Hall in Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change, 1935-1965, ed. A.C.H. Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975).
82. i.e., Carey, Communication as Culture.
83. McKee, Textual Analysis, 118.
84. Lynn R. Miller, "Who and What We Are," retrieved October 9, 2006, fromwww.smallfarmersjournal.com/.docs/pg/about.html.
85. One goal of the study was to consider the formative years of the respective forums of these two magazines. The corpus of LTEs in the Shambhala Sun covers that magazine's lifespan as a color "glossy" publication, but the authors felt it necessary to go back to the first few years of the Small Farmer's Journal (which has not changed format in thirty-five-plus years) to note the emergence of its LTE-borne community.
86. Hall, "Introduction."
87. Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C. Taylor, Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 2d ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 232
88. Howard Wilson, untitled letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal 4 (fall 1977): 3.
89. Jenny Bryan, "Give 'em Heck," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, summer 2006, 19.
90. Barbara Salvatore-Klopping, "Nightmare and Hope," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, winter 2004, 10-12.
91. The use of "public sphere" here obviously refers to the concept of a space in which public discourse occurs, as explicated by Jürgen Habermans in his introduction to and throughout The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994).
92. Brian McNabney, "Pretty Little Magazine," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, spring 2006, 81.
93. Shawn Conway, "Sharing Good Fortune," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, spring 2004, 13-14.
94. Sue Shink, "Going on Forever," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, spring 2003, 9
95. Sue Staley, "Shenandoah Valley Threatened," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal 30, spring 2006, 86.
96. As one reviewer noted in comments on an earlier draft of this article, such sentiments were common in the farm press borne of the Progressive Movement at the turn of the twentieth century. But the authors' familiarity with the farm press of the late twentieth century onward leads them to state unequivocally that modern farm publications, both newspapers and magazines, are very sympathetic to corporate agribusiness, large government programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the farming practices endorsed by both.
97. Dale Frazier, "What I Got from Farming," letter to the editor, Small Farmer's Journal, fall 2004, 15.
98. Charles S. Prebish, Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999);
99. Richard Hughes Seager, Buddhism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
100. Cheryl Carter, "Comments on the Sun From Points Near and Far," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun 9, September 2000, 9.
101. Gunaratna Karma Dorje Sarika, "Solo Zen," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, July 2002, 10.
102. Carl Strasen, "Fewer Superstars, More Angst," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, January 2004, 9.
103. Frank Charlton, "A Little Less Gloss, Please," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, January 2004, 109.
104. Ilberto Ferrato, "Ads or Subtracts?" letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, July 2004, 10.
105. P. Reed, "Lots More Sex," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, November 1999, 17.
106. Rick Hovsepian, "and Sex," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, January 2000, 17-18.
107. Wendy DeSouza, "What's Right with Islam," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, September 2004, 7.
108. Chris Pothier, "Don't Dis Others," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, March 2004, 8.
109. Jack Gaioni, "Goes with Bush over Sun" letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, March 2005, 12.
110. Bill Murphy, "And Certainly Not America," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, September, 2004, 10.
111. Jeremy Bate, "On Loving It or Leaving It," letter to the editor, Shambhala Sun, November 2004, 8.
112. Feenberg and Bakardjieva, "Virtual Community," 39-40.