Offers a clarification of the original uses of the word "stereotype" and argues that the current failure to account for evaluative and historical aspects of stereotypes has diluted the usefulness of the concept for critics and teachers. (MS)

Reports responses of professional journalists to a questionnaire that asked how high school journalism classes had influenced their decisions to enter newspaper careers. (DF)

Defines pornography, the aspect of sexuality which evokes most attention from the media, and discusses findings of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and of psychologists who have recently found that exposure to a portrayal where violence and sex are coupled does increase subsequent aggression toward a female. (MBR)

Concludes that although the new rhetoric may serve as a reminder that communication studies are more than simple effects research, the ferment produced by a highly politicized debate--if it successfully masquerades as scholarly controversy--can become intellectually self-limiting and sterile. (PD)

Outlines five types of studies that seem most significant and discusses problems of and proposals for future news media research. (PD)

Reports that between World War II and the Viet Nam era, leftist journalist Carleton Beals found it hard to get his writings condemning Central American dictators published in the United States. (FL)

Summarizes studies in the field of media and aging within six categories: media-use behavior and demographic characteristics of the aging audience; related media content; effects on individual's responses to aging; social consequences of the interrelationship between media and aging; structure and function of media organizations; and strategies…

An interview with Edwin Emery, journalism professor and co-author of the widely used textbook "The Press and America," in which he discusses his book, historians and historical schools that influenced his work, and areas of journalism and mass communication history that need to be researched and expanded upon today. (GT)

Describes the characteristics associated with the left and right hemispheres of the brain and relates the rise of phonetic literacy and logic to left hemisphere dominance and the viewing of television to right hemisphere dominance. (JMF)

Notes that media scholars often resist the use of the evolutionary paradigm. Discusses two problems: an overly simplistic view of evolutionary models; and a distrust of ideological implications. Develops an evolutionary model proposing that gender differences in the consumption of sexually explicit media is, in part, the result of inherited…

Reviews critically the dominant discourse on science and the media. Finds that the dominant concern has conceptual and methodological problems. Argues that the dominant discourse has promoted a science coverage dutiful to scientific interests and has inhibited a truly critical appraisal of popular science communication. (RS)

Presents the reflections of a designer of visual interfaces for online public access catalogs regarding the importance of a historical perspective for design practices. Topics discussed include cognitive psychology research; conventions for organizing information; and the ongoing process of changes in media. (LRW)

Comments on the attempt to construct a coherent intellectual viewpoint to span the disparate projects of interpersonal and mass communication research. Considers how the discipline of communication can construct functional representations of itself despite diversity. (SR)

Discusses the lack of academic legitimacy enjoyed by mass media research in Europe, in particular. Attributes the problem in part to the specialism of the discipline and to the normative dimension of European research. (SR)

Comments on some recent debates in audience studies. Argues that much active audience theory is in fact premised on a heavily negotiated reading (if not a misreading) of some of the earlier work that is often invoked as its theoretical basis. (SR)