Category: Journalism

The Gonzo journalism style, a journalism style that sees the journalist go against the common expectations of objectivity and write himself as a part of the story. The style was popularized by the famous journalist, Hunter S Thompson, who, other than creating the movement, was also known for writing a number of novels, some of which have been adapted onto the big screen.

The name Hunter S Thompson evokes the memories of a man who was not afraid to live, who spent his life leaving a lasting legacy that has defined generations. He is known for publishing several popular articles for a number of publications, ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times.

Hunter S Thompson Biography

Born on the 18th of July, 1937 as Hunter Stockton Thompson, he was the first of three boys born to parents Jack Robert Thompson and Virginia Ray Davison in Louisville, Kentucky.

He lost his father to myasthenia gravis when he was 14 years of age and was raised by his mother until he became an adult. As a child growing up, Hunter S Thompson showed a knack for writing and was also a big fan of sports. While he pursued his love for writing, he never pursued his passion for sports other than being a spectator.

For his education, he attended Atherton High School and Louisville Male High School, graduating from the latter. Following the completion of his high school years, he joined the US Air Force and completed his service in November 1957.

He began his career as a journalist after, working as a sports editor for The Command Courier. Over the course of his career as a journalist, he worked for other media outlets like The Middletown Daily Record. He wrote his first novel, Hell’s Angels while he worked for The Nation.

Other than a career as a journalist and an author, Hunter S Thompson also ran for political office, as Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. He ran a wild campaign that saw him lost narrowly to a consolidated union of Democrats and Republicans in the county.

He was also a photographer, albeit an amateur one and some of his works have been featured in art galleries. He has also had some of his pictures published in a book, Gonzo: Photographs by Hunter S. Thompson.

While he was alive, Hunter S Thompson received a number of accolades and recognition, such as being named Kentucky Colonel by the Governor of Kentucky and being named the greatest comic writer of the 20th century by Tom Wolfe. Other recognition of his influence and legacy came during his funeral which had important personalities such as Senator John Kerry, Charlie Rose, Sean Penn and many others in attendance.

Hunter S Thompson was a prolific writer when he was alive and he was able to write a total of sixteen books over the course of his lifetime. His published books include major titles like The Rum Diary, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Curse of Lono and a few more.

As for movies, a number of his works have been adapted to screen, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary, where he was played by Johnny Depp, who is also a great friend of his. Others include Where the Buffalo Roam, where he was played by Bill Murray.

As an actor, Hunter S Thompson himself appeared in The Crazy Never Die and the show, Nash Bridges.

Hunter S Thompson, during his life, was a big advocate for gun rights and the fourth amendment as a whole and so, it came as no surprise that the weapon he loved the most, ended up taking his life.

On the 20th of February, 2005, at the age of 67, he died from a gunshot wound to the head, effectively committing suicide in his home, Owl Farm at Woody Creek, Colorado.

Before he died, Hunter S Thompson left a suicide note for his wife and he was survived by a wife, Anita Bejmuk and a lone child, his son, Juan.

He was buried after a private funeral on the 20th of August, with his body cremated and his ashes fired out of a cannon. His funeral, which included other extravagant and eccentric features true to his persona, cost $3 million.

With the increased development in digital age such as the widely use of mobile phones, the phenomena of news publication also changed, basically from print-only to either online-only or both. In the following four journal studies, it will demonstrate the adaption of news work through the changes, like readers favourable news factors published online, the affects to journalists and editors to the change of journalism, the transform to absolute online-only news and the effect on local commercial news. Buhl, F., Günthe, E., & Quandt, T. (2019). Bad News Travels Fastest: A Computational Approach to Predictors of Immediacy in Digital Journalism Ecosystems. Digital Journalism, 7(7), 910–931. Florian, Elisabeth and Thorsten, who are from the Department of Communication in University of Muenster, have developed an ecosystem perspective to examine the prevalence of immediacy in digital news work. The diffusion processes of 95 news events within 28 online news sites in Germany, published between June 2013 and March 2014 have been studied to test whether different event attributes and the time of the day would affect the diffusion rate in digital news work. By pooling the first report of every particular events, the authors have calculated the time lag between the earliest coverage from other news sites and also used the time stamp of the first released online news article of an event to record whether the diffusion was emerged from daytime (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) or at night-time (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) to compare the speed of diffusion. According to the result of the study, the authors concluded that among the ten news factors, seven factors have made no difference in the initial phase of digital diffusion processes, while factors related to prominence and damage experienced a positively accelerating rate of digital diffusion after the first report. Surprisingly, the last factor, reach, got a reverse dynamic which means that events affecting a smaller group in society would experience a faster accumulation at the beginning of diffusion processes of the first report. Lastly, this paper also illustrated that there was a steady increase of diffusion during daytime and slower rise at night-time. However, the rise would continue to increase and even exceeds the rate of daytime after 10 hours.

This paper effectively brings out that negative news does travels faster compared to other news attributes which is relevant to its topic. It also provides a lot of data and table to strengthen the results. However, as this research only included news from 28 news sites, thus it may limit the reliability. Westlund, O. (2013). MOBILE NEWS A review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 6–26. Oscar, Professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University, examined the importance of mobiles in nowadays society so as leading to a widely increase of mobile news, from news alert by SMS or MSM to mobile news sites. In this paper, he has applied many literature reviews and research reports to discuss the changing of legacy news media into mobile news and the formative and contemporary development of news media. By implying some of the cases of other news sites like Goteborgs-Posten, Expressen and The Guardian, Oscar discussed the phenomenon of arising of mobile journalists and citizen journalism as well as the highlighting some important areas of future digital journalism. Throughout the paper, Oscar stated the emerging practices of using mobile for reporting news, which generated the exist of mobile journalists, meaning that they can edit and publish through mobile technology. Citizen journalism allows citizen to also report immediate news due to the advance in mobile, enabling two-way communication.

A model of journalism also been presented, discussing four approaches, human-led customisation to technology-led customisation and human-led repurposing to technology-led repurposing, meaning the change of news media publishing activities, from manually editing by human to involving the use of technology for customising and purposing the ways to access the news. Lastly, the author emphasised that although mobile devices are rapidly developing, it shown that legacy news media are also mobilising to make sure that journalism are able to adapt the transforming speed. This paper had greatly reviewed the changing of news journalism in the age of mobile media by Oscar, who is specialising in journalism and media studies which helped to increase the authenticity of the study. However, unlike the previous study by Florian, Elisabeth and Thorsten which included data and research from a particular place, it only contained different literature reviews to support his view, therefore it may lower the reliability. Thurman, N., & Myllylahti, M. (2009). TAKING THE PAPER OUT OF NEWS A case study of Taloussanomat, Europe’s first online-only newspaper. Journalism Studies, 10(5), 691–708. Neil and Merja, graduated from School of Journalism, City University, in this paper illustrated a case study of a Finnish financial daily Talossanomat, in which it turned from print version publication to online version publication, becoming the first online-only newspaper in Europe. By taking both a one-week formal and informal interview with editors and journalists at Talossanomat, the authors analysed the loss-and-revenue comparison before and after, the working conditions of the journalists, the adaptions of the change and the problem of redundancies. The aim of this paper is to use this particular example to point the situation of online-only news publication, whether it is advantageous or inauspicious.

The study with the editors and journalists concluded that this change has brought to a 75 percent fall of income due to the loss print-advertising and subscription revenue, however, the CEO the cost savings is still greater than the loss. Importantly, although online- only news seems more convenient to the readers due to the advance in mobile technology, the became a concern to editors and journalists. It had led to a redundancy from 52 to 31 editors and many of them are dissatisfied to online medium as they news republished are mainly stories from news agencies instead of original reporting. The authors covered that even the move to online-only can increased visitors, it still need to be innovated and adapted more intelligently to compete with those who had retained a printed version. Comparing with the above two studies, this paper is gaining more accuracy as despite just doing information research, the authors did interviews with the journalists and even the CEO to collect current-experiencing information. Also, the focus of the paper was just one news company which means that data could be more specific and valid, however, it also brought a drawback that it cannot completely represent the exact situation of other online-only news company. Hess, K. (2013). BREAKING BOUNDARIES Recasting the “local” newspaper as “geo-social” news in a digital landscape. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 48–63. Kristy, from School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, illustrated in this paper the reconceptualisation of the role of “local” newspaper into “geo-social” news due to the shift of newspapers into both print and online versions. By referring to ten commercial newsrooms in the United Kingdom, Oregon, Canada and Australia which have a strong connection to a specific geographic area, Kristy explained the operation of them and argued the need of the shift to “geo-social”.

The paper used a lot of direct quotes from interviews to clearly explain the role of “space of flows” and “sense of place” so as to emphasis the importance of the concept of “geo-social” news as well as the changing nature of audience in this digital age. The author stated that is it appropriate to adapt a shift towards “geo-social” because it can help readers to connect with local events or people which catch their interests. “Community newspaper” were produced to serve people who lives together within a geographical space with a clear local-first emphasis on news, however, some of them also attracted large media operations thus “hyper-local” emerged. The role of “space of flows” means the transmission of the flows of information, showing how community newspaper maintained an influential position in social flows to global news. While for “sense of place”, it assumed that in “geo-social” news, it was not necessary that reader should be reside within the “place” but can be the one who once been or lived there. Overall, the development of digital age, small newspaper should serve well by mastheads that can act as a representative to the geographic identity and a reconceptualision was needed with the increase in information flows. Comparatively speaking among these four researches, the last one was not so much focused on talking the increase publish of online newspaper, instead it brings out the influence of online world to the local commercial newspaper. Also, reliability was limited as the research method of this paper was mainly the evolution of local newspaper with some direct quotes from interviewees and it was published in 2012, so timeliness was affected compared to the above three.

Newspapers owned by African Americans caused conversations for the truth and equal opportunity. On Monday, March 16, 2020 the one hundred ninety-third anniversary of the Black Press of America was commemorated and still continues to be irrefutable worldwide. This was generated by The Freedom’s Journal, the first newspaper for African Americans, distributed by John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish.

Russwurm and Cornish publicized the newspaper’s inaugural issue with the first page containing the words, “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us” on March 16, 1827. The newspaper contained stories about the fight to abolish slavery, hangings and murders, and social inequality. The newspaper also notified African Americans of global news. Biographies pertaining to African American men and women, school opportunities, job prospects, and housing openings were highlighted in the newspaper. Karen Carter Richards, Chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), believes that it is utterly important to under the role the Black Press plays in broadcasting and documenting our history.

What is the NNPA? The NNPA is the nationwide trade organization signifying American’s Black Press. According to Richards, Black Press Week will be postponed due to the Coronavirus. From the start, Black Press has suffered in order to publish and nothing will stop the publication of the newspaper. Hampton believed the Freedom’s journal deserved all the credit for the founding of over two hundred African American retained newspapers across the world. The newspaper even now is telling the stories which Freedom’s Journal sponsored. Stories such as political rights for all races, voting rights for all races, and the great accomplishments of African Americans that other ordinary newspapers wouldn’t publish. Hampton believes the creators and publishing supervisor would be proud to know NNPA deferred Black Press Week for the well-being and protection of attendees foremost, notwithstanding how much the value of Black Press means, shows that the leadership is great.

The publisher of the Houston Defender Network and previous chair of the NNPA, Sonny Messiah Jiles believes the rescheduling of Black Press Week is the right step to take because it concurs with the international reaction to the coronavirus. The birthday of the Black Press is a aide-mémoire for the influences permanently linked with its bravery, perseverance, and achievements. Frederick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Ida. B. Wells, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, and Dr. Carlton Goodlett, previous NNPA Chairmen were some of those many influences. The North Star was established by Douglass who cultivated it into the most powerful African American newspaper printed through the Antebellum age. He also aided the escape of salves to the North using the Underground Railroad. The North Star condemned slavery fighting for the freedom of women and other subjugated groups with a motto of, “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color; God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.”

The Black Press continues, as of today where they can, to spread across the ocean to build unions with the increasing number of websites and distinct publications that involve Africa daily from on the continent, Perry stated. The eldest black business in America, the Black Press, had owners raise awareness of chattel slavery during the nineteenth century, Jim cCrow laws and lynching, the great northern migration, the Civil Rights Movement, the conversion of the printing press to the digital age and electronic communication. The result of the Plessy vs. Ferguson was African American publications to support African American rights and protest the many wrongs done to African Americans. Nowadays, the Black Press remains fighting local and worldwide issues, as well as the coronavirus and its effects on everyone but primarily African Americans. NNPA President stated that this is an important story pertaining to the past of the Black Press of America that has steadily been the freedom fighting voice for the Africans in America and across the world for one hundred ninety-three years with pause or falsified information.

Stacy M. Brown is the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Newswire Senior Correspondent. My textbook readings did shed light on African American Newspapers on pages 228, 233, 343, 360, and 361. History is used by the author because African Americans Newspaper were used to gain awareness, freedom, jobs, and housing opportunities. Primary source isn’t given. I learned that African American lives still do matter and just like newspapers were significant back then, they still are significant not, in fact, they are even more significant now.

National Careers Service website describe newspaper journalists as those who investigate and write on broad range of subjects, from reporting on international and local news to politics, business, science, sports, arts and culture.

Low motivation negatively impact work performance, which threatens an organisation’s ability to remain competitive in the market (Küng, 2008). Given fluctuating public attitudes and expectation on newspapers today, steady stream of creative content is more crucial than ever. Readers no longer look simply for the news, but expect their need for insights into controversial stories and prominent features on important and relevant issues to be fulfilled daily (Saarikoski, 2011).

Newspaper journalists are creative people producing creative work. Their job requires pursuing stories “complex” and “ill-defined” on outset, employing “novel, useful solutions” to gather information, often which are time-consuming, and take on “uncertainty” when stories not lead to much (Mumford et al.,2002). Managers, in contrast, are driven by print deadlines, wow-factor stories and logistics with newspaper production. Their diverging tasks cause friction when managers not sufficiently support their creative subordinates, such as tight deadlines incompatible to the stories’ development; pushing journalists to rush and submit underdeveloped work. Creative people are perfectionists; compelling them to produce sub-standard work is demotivating (Goffee and Jones, 2009).

Print circulation in Britain is declining, while digital subscription has yet to offset the losses. Consequently, newspapers have cut down on their print space, giving rise to over-saturated market and job redundancies (Saarikoshi, 2011). Journalism is highly competitive, filled with intelligent professionals adverse to economic risks (Gibbon, 1998). With stories fighting for content space and reduced choice on story freedom, this lowers motivation.

Analysis

McClelland’s (1961) proposed theory on needs explains motivations of newspaper journalists well (McClelland, 2010). He describes three innate motivators; needs for achievement (nAch), affiliation (nAff) and power (nPow). He states when such need is strong, the person is motivated to behave in a way until that need is satisfied. Journalists characteristically find fulfilment with their project/cause, showing high nAch. nAff is attained through positive work culture (Mumford et al., 2002), and nPow is found through the level of colleague’s respect they gain (Goffee et al, 2009).

Conflict can still arise from these needs when incompatible deadlines are imposed. Journalists could refuse to submit their story, if they consider the work subpar. Manager’s uncompromising stance on deadlines can create negative work culture; diminishing journalist’s nAff to the organisation. If by submission journalists perceive damage to their reputation from their colleagues, they are discouraged from adhering to the deadline, demonstrating nPow. Hence, generating positive work environment, considering the autonomous nature of stories pursued, exchanging updates and honest feedbacks to adjust deadlines, are all crucial to re-motivate journalists (Tsourvakas, Veglis and Zotos.,2004; 91.3% wants to work without supervision, 82.5% required positive work environment, 94.4% indicated their colleagues’ opinions strongly motivating).

Regardless, there are also criticisms surrounding this theory (Gibson et al., 2000). Interpretations of individual’s subconscious needs are more art than science; nAch is subjective and cannot be quantified accurately; and research is needed to ascertain whether these needs prevail throughout the career.

Locke’s theory on goal-setting states conscious goals and intentions determine behaviour; making goal an object of action to be accomplished (Locke, 1968). Under right conditions, goal-setting can be the most useful technique to motivate journalists. The following are practical suggestions for maximising motivation, commitment, productivity and task performance;

• Specific goals; employees perform at higher levels when goals are specific. Journalists respond better to requests for alternative insights on controversial issues, which are quantifiable, rather than demands for unmeasurable “better” stories (Locke and Latham, 2002).
• Difficult but attainable goals; too easily attained goals do not increase performance or motivation. Journalists have high self-efficacy and pride in attaining the “unattainable”, e.g exclusive interviews, first to report, etc, as they are more intrinsically motivated by their work (Pink, 2018).
• Accepted goals; simply assigning goals to journalists do not encourage commitment, if opinions differ. Journalists are more goal-committed, if they participate at its setting, voicing out unreasonable to acceptable targets; particularly true for those with high self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997).

Feedback is crucial as it increases journalist’s performance, measures their level of output and determines adjustments needed for improvement, especially when associated with career progression opportunities (Tsourvakas et al., 2004).

Goals set for performance evaluation are more effective, if goal performance is evaluated on how they are attained. Again, linked to job rewards generate higher motivation (Tsourvakas et al., 2004).

Reasonable deadlines improve the rate on goal achievement. Although, work quality can suffer from uncompromising tight deadlines, with reasonable deadlines, they serve as time-control mechanisms which increase goal motivation.

Objectives on learning, not performance; journalists respond better to learning objectives, which encourage mastery over challenges, than simple attainment of set tasks. This is consistent with their creative nature for proactively solving problems, exploring ideas and adapting to changes (Luthans, 2011).

Goal-setting is not without limits however. It is difficult to sustain, it only works well with simple jobs for monetary rewards, but not for complex jobs such as journalism, where performance is not as easily measurable and financial rewards not the end-goal (Tsourvakas et al., 2004). Superficial goals can cultivate unethical behaviour; individuals could intentionally set lower goals to look good for promotion purposes, whilst pushing for unattainable goals towards their competition, highlighting competitor’s short-comings. Managers may use this to increase unnecessary control; generally abhorred by journalists (Saarikoski, 2011). Goal accomplishment itself could be an obsession, where other important job aspects are neglected consequently (Gibson et al.,2000).

Conclusion

There is no single solution for motivation improvement. Every organisation contends with their very unique set of issues, factors and culture; what worked for one may not necessarily work for others. However, broadly summarised; clear and honest communication, sharing information freely, acknowledging all achievements, giving due praise and reward equally, trusting journalists to widely work autonomously and never seeking micromanage their work, can all help to improve work motivation. A further list on motivating journalists can be found in Appendix 1.