An examination of prize‐winning journalistic exposés uncovers the narrative strategies by which the innocence of victims, and the blame for their plight, are established
My objective with these few comments is to remind us of the inherent tension between what is ordinarily understood as professional knowledge and what most of us say we recognize as the importance of diversifying our curricula. My premise is that professionalism versus pluralism is an unfortunate but enduring dichotomy, deeply rooted in our culture and in our institutions of higher edu cation, and any effort to dislodge it will require a sustained and programmatic assault on prevailing assumptions about what professionals should know and how they should know it.I begin with a brief review of what diversity means as an epistemological claim and how that claim has been trivialized in our programs of journalism and mass communication. From there I move to a broader discussion of the contradictions between professionalism and diversity, arguing in effect that professionals typically operate with assumptions and attitudes that can be fairly described as ethnocentric. I conclude with reference to Donald Schon's (1983Schon's ( , 1987) study of the "reflective practitioner," which I use as an opportunity to suggest how students can be equipped (and how we can equip ourselves) to combat the indifference to difference that is, I believe, the inevitable by-prod uct of a professional education.
Ombudsmen's onw conception of role provides ambiguous ansnver as to whether they are press critics or public relations practilioners.The press ombudsman movement in the United States beganat least nominally --in I967 when Norman Isaacs, then executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journut, announced the appointment of John Herchenroeder, a former city editor, as the nation's first newspaper ombudsman.' lsaacs credits the idea to an article he had read a few weeks earlier by A.H. Raskin, I Hohenbcrg rcpons that in the mid-1920s Pulitzer's New York Worldnewspapers cmploved someone in an ombudsmanlike position. 'When anyone wrote. telephoned. or appeared in person to complain about the World newspapers. the caw immcdi8telv Was shunted to the gcntccl functionary in the small. little-noticed outer ofice' Thcrc sst "an elderly gentleman, quietly and conwnatively dressed. who received alkn with caquisitc counesv. He would lulen gravely. take notcs. and )ivc u s u r a n m thal 'somethinp would bc done'." Scc: John Hohenbcrg. A Crisir for rhr Amrriran R s (New York: Columbu University Press. 1978). p. 268. See alw: Cassandra Tale. 'What Do Ombudsmen Do?" Columhio Journalism Rrvrrn. MavIJune 1984. pp. 37-41. who mcntionsa'Bureauof Accuracv and Fair Play" that existed at the New York Worldas carlv as 1913.
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