Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

The problem of obtaining legislation to protect the journalist from compulsion to reveal his news sources is reviewed in detail. In the United States refusal so to testify before administrators and legislators is recognized, but in only 12 states are newspapermen protected from demands of courts.

This study compares circulation of daily newspapers with the total United States population for the years 1929 to 1957, also with the population 20 years old and over. The relationship of circulation to increase in number of households and families for a similar period is also shown.

Studies of foreign correspondents, telegraph editors, readers and content have thrown light on several stages in the global news flow. The author suggests further research focusing upon the roles of the relatively unpublicized “gatekeepers” who operate on an international scale.

A study at the Department of Journalism, Indiana University, analyzes non-fiction article content of nine general magazines for three-month periods in 1947 and 1957, and traces changing preferences in subject matter, writing style and article length for individual magazines and the group.

Did Nicholas Biddle's bank use loans to bribe newspaper editors Duff Green of the United States Telegraph and James Watson Webb and Mordecai M. Noah of the New York Courier and Enquirer? The author, who teaches history at Pennsylvania State University, reviews the evidence and concludes “no.”

A week's study of the content of six small Michigan dailies, all using the same TTS news wire, showed that only eight stories were used by all six dailies, and that overall agreement on use of wire news was less than a third. Dr. Stempel is in the Department of Information Services, Central Michigan College.

Agreement on grades, low at first, increased during the semester among four instructors grading sets of news writing exercises. The author, research assistant professor at Michigan State University, suggests further studies of the problem by interested teachers of reporting classes.

An analysis of the press corps of Israel shows that its members are predominantly men who are “old-timers” in the country. The majority of Israeli journalists emigrated from Europe, 50% from Poland and Russia. Only 37% have had any kind of formal education above high school.

This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.

This report includes current research projects by staff members and doctoral candidates in schools and departments of journalism of the U.S.A., together with theses accepted from candidates for the master's degree in journalism. Professor Price is a member of the journalism faculty at the University of Oregon.

News for inclusion in this section … activities of schools and departments of journalism, staff appointments and changes, curricular developments and the like … should be sent to Professor Root, School of Journalism, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. Notes for the next issue should reach him by April 1.