I would like to share some insights from that cultural analysis in this paper. On one level, it is a fairly simple, straightforward comparison between print and broadcast journalism. But on another level, it is a naturalistic, qualitative analysis of two different cultures, two different social realities. My essay is phenomenological in approach, based not on scientific knowledge, but on the common-sense knowledge one acquires from membership in a culture. My claims are subjective and textual, rather than objective and measurable.

It is an approach that is reflected in the writing of many noted scholars. Walter Lippmann, in "The World Outside and the Pictures in our Heads," offers "a look at the mass media from inside," and in doing so, reveals an insightful, eidetic understanding of the mediated nature of the human condition, what he characterizes as "the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of action" (265, 275). Robert Park, in "The Natural History of the Newspaper," provides a rich, cultural perspective on the development of a mass medium of communication, one that provides a distinctive ring of authenticity; as Edward Shils points out in his essay, Park spent much of his life as a newspaper reporter, a career that "left him dissatisfied" (124). The naturalistic approach is one Margarette Mead adopted for her study of "primitive societies," and it is an approach which James Carey claims in "Overcoming Resistance to Cultural Studies," "offers the real advantage of abandoning an outmoded philosophy of science (maybe even getting rid of the philosophy of science altogether)" (33).

I'll offer my thoughts in much the same way I offered them to the students today, organized along points of difference between the two cultures of print and broadcast journalists. My specific focus is on the practical, "nuts and bolts" differences between how the two types of journalists do their jobs. My arguments come less from careful, systematic observation of communication, and more from thoughtful, realistic communication of my observations.

Eye vs. Ear. The product of print journalism is primarily directed at the eyes of the audience, while the product of broadcast journalism is primarily directed at the ears. One reads a news story in the paper, but one hears a news story on radio and television. Print copy is written for the eye, broadcast copy is written for the ear. This is not to say that eyes aren't important to broadcast journalists; for television news the visual element is very important--but not for journalistic reasons. The visual element in television news plays an important supportive role, but most of the story is carried in the audio, the news script that is read aloud. Consider this: Why do you think there is a "mute" button on a remote control gizmo? It's there so that you can turn off most of the communication "flow" from the television by turning off the sound; imagine how ineffective it would be at stoppling this "flow" if it instead blacked out the picture and left the sound on. Not only would it not have the same effect, it would have less effect on muting the message.

The print culture is essentially a visual one, the broadcast culture, an oral one. Marshall McLuhan pointed this out over twenty-five years ago, yet I'm not sure if we have fully explored what this difference means. From my experience with both cultures, I have noticed this difference in the craft, the artistic side of journalism. In the print journalism culture, value is placed on the tight, strong lead, the well-edited story, the aesthetically pleasing layout. But read a typical newspaper story out loud, and it often sounds artificial, formal, quite un-conversational. I have a radio at home that picks up SCA (subsidiary communication authorization) broadcasts, and every now and then I listen to the newspaper read on the reading service for the blind. While I can follow along, the experience I get from listening to the paper read out loud is very different from hearing the news on radio or television; even though I am receiving the information by way of my ears, I find it very difficult not to "see" the words in my head as they are read out loud.

Broadcasters, on the other hand, tend to place value on the conversational lead, the easy-to-listen-to narrative, the informal, natural voice. Broadcast news copy is more like a transcript of talk than a composition of prose. When I've taken students on field trips to TV stations, I try to let them feel what it's like to read from a teleprompter. It's a good way to show them how difficult it can be to make the "jump" from reading words out loud to putting conversational life into news copy. But this is a skill--the ability to transform the written word into naturally sounding talk that appeals to the ears of the audience--that is highly valued in both radio and television journalism. The visual element of television news, on the other hand, is often raw and matter-of-fact. The emphasis is on visuals that "move the story along" rather than tell the story. Stock footage, talking heads, bits and pieces of visual images often selected for sensual rather than artistic appeal--to a large extent this is the stuff that forms the video mosaic designed to keep the eye mildly entertained while the ear is hard at work.

Time vs. Space. Print journalism is bounded by space; broadcast journalism is bounded by time. A newspaper story fills columns of type, while the broadcast story fills seconds of air time. The cultural differences produced as a result of these two contrasting demands are significant. A newspaper reporter might take pride in the number of column inches filled and the point size of a by-line. A television reporter seeks the "prime-time" positions and minutes of "on-camera" exposure. Space is in some ways a more flexible parameter: on a lean news day, a newspaper can print fewer pages, but a broadcast news program must stretch the news available to fill the allotted time. And while a newspaper deadline may be firm, it lacks some of the unequivocal nature of a scheduled time for a live broadcast: the demarcation between news preparation and broadcast performance is unmistakable. To a print journalist, a lead is the opening paragraph of a story, a unit of space in a column of type; to a broadcast journalist, a lead is the first story of a newscast, a point in time.

This difference is also revealed in the style of journalistic writing. Print news is almost always written in the past tense, describing events that have already happened, that have already established some conceptual space. Broadcast news is usually written in the present tense, describing situations in the present, as they are unfolding now, before they have much of a chance to become reified in spatial terms. Broadcast journalists often pride themselves on presenting the news as it happens, of allowing the audience to be eyewitnesses to news events, while print journalists boast of providing their readers with a more in-depth perspective of the news (note the spatial terms "depth" and "perspective.") Broadcasters show concern for their audience's time by keeping stories short, by following a sequential format, and adhering to a strict schedule. Newspapers show concern for their audience's space by keeping similar stories in the same sections, by using conventions of indexing and layout to assist in finding desired content, and by providing the top news stories in a consistent place, the front page.

Dissemination vs. Narration. The newspaper story often follows a specific, time-honored formula for dissemination of information: the inverted pyramid. Here the most important details of a story are presented first, with less important detail following. This allows an editor to "cut from the bottom" of a story to make it fit the space available, and allows a reader to scan the lead paragraphs of stories for a quick summary of the news. The purpose of the inverted pyramid is information dissemination, of getting as many of the "objective facts" of the story into as little space as possible. When I was a reporter at my college newspaper, my editor would stress the importance of getting as many of the "5 Ws and an H" questions answered in the lead sentence. The emphasis was on cutting through to the "facts of the matter," trying to build as direct and unencumbered a link as possible between the reader and the information.

There may be some exceptions to this journalistic style: USA Today was mentioned in the meeting as a paper which does not always follow this format--it was also identified as the newspaper with a style most like that of broadcast journalism. Broadcast news is less concerned with information dissemination than it is with presenting information in narrative form. A print news story is not so much a narrative as it is a strategic structural arrangement of information; a broadcast news story is really a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Instead of an inverted pyramid, broadcast news is often written in what I call the diamond style. Here the story opens more gradually, with a short, conversational lead sentence. As the story progresses, the who, what, when, where, why and how unfold in a timely manner, reflecting the coherent whole rather than the constituent parts of a story. The bulk of the "facts" of the story are contained in the body of the story, not in the first paragraph as in a print story. If a story needs to be edited to make it shorter, the tendency is to pull content from the middle, rather than cutting from the bottom. A broadcast story will often end with a summarizing sentence, where the story is brought to a logically satisfying conclusion. Some people criticize broadcast news for presenting entertaining "fluff," but the entertainment value is less attributable to the editorial content than the style of news presentation. Instead of the systematic, almost scientific manner of information dissemination refined by print journalists, broadcasters prefer a more naturalistic, narrative approach, an interpretive, textual performance. In some respects this difference is analogous to the contrast between quantitative research of attributes in aggregates and qualitative research of the individual in a situation.