Beyond Deadlines and Head Counts

Revision with unchanged content. Journalists perpetually struggle with allegations of bias. As with all media, newspapers are scrutinized for their coverage - scrutiny that intensifies during election cycles. Scholarship devoted to coverage of politics has examined ways the media fail to cover politics fairly. These analyses, however, dominantly focus on news stories and coverage as a whole - that is, the entire newspaper instead of its components. Research suggests that photos and headlines resonate most with readers. This book addresses these elements as tandem creators of meaning, and rhetorical criticism offers a fresh avenue for the study of their meaning. Recent scholarship explores visual and verbal representation of public affairs. Michael Osborn's theories of visual depiction and metaphorical analysis in political discourse offers a lens through which to view coverage. His approach offers scholars and working journalists a fresh means by which to reconceive the analytical and practical aspects of journalism. Using The (Raleigh) News & Observer as a case study, this book looks at how the study of rhetoric may shed light on newspapers' political coverage and public criticism thereof.