Journalism at UMD

The Constitution of Community and the UMD Statesman

The professional media can be said to participate in two, complementary processes that place it in a relationship to the community they serve. The media reflect their community in the stories they tell and the photos they print. The media help constitute their community by reflecting our interests and demonstrating the interconnectedness of the readers’ political, economic and social needs. The UMD Statesman participates in those processes, and this edition of the Public Editor will attempt to analyze the Statesman in those terms.

It is my fear that the Statesman fails to fully reflect their community in this issue (in terms of race and gender, among other facets of the community). It is my contention that the Statesman could do more to select stories of direct interest to the reader, drawing students, faculty, staff and citizens into a larger sense of community.

If I seem harshly critical of our student media, it’s because the Statesman is a quality product, one that approaches the quality of professional media. Therefore, the Statesman can be analyzed with the same critical tools that faculty in the Department of Writing Studies bring to all media.

Does the Community See Itself in the Photojournalism?

The first and most obvious ways that a newspaper reflects its community is through the photographs printed in its pages. Photojournalists, after all, can’t “invent” subjects of photos – so their photos must “reflect” their community, at least partially.

This issue of the UMD Statesman is fairly balanced in the representation of gender in photographs. The total number of men and women depicted is fairly evenly split.

There is some variance, however, when we look at who is the center of focus of the photograph. Women are often pictured in clusters or groups, largely as sports teams (see pages 24 & 28.). Only two photos depict women as the central actor, and it just isn’t pretty. One is depicted in the act of failing to get a parking spot (p. 3); the other is (more actively) “driving past two Moorhead State Dragon defenders” (p 28). In contrast, men are depicted as protesters, lecturers on trapping, printmakers, fishermen, athletes, fans, and “Average Guys.”

UMD’s student body includes 5,822 men and 5,490 women. As constituted by the photojournalists at the Statesman, though, it seems that those 5,490 community members are more likely to be the audience for the other 5, 822.

(Roughly 10% of UMD students self-identify as Hispanic, African American, American Indian, and Asian American, or as international students. In this issue of the Statesman, those diverse students are represented as athletes and performers. [See cover page picture of Soulja Boy and photos of sports on pages 24 & 28.] Clearly, the diverse body of students at UMD is made up of more than these roles, but the Statesman doesn’t depict students in that light in this issue.)

Does the Community See Itself in the Other Visual Communication

Women are vastly over-represented, however, in other visual communication in the Statesman: the cartoons and the advertisements. In both cases, the women are on display. The cartoon depicts women on display at a fashion show (pg. 12).

The advertising is rich with images of women similarly on display. For example, we have the model on display for Plato’s Closet (pg. 7), or wearing UMD gear (pg. 14). Also, women are depicted using products (e.g. the DTA advertisement on pg. 20). Most significantly, a woman is branded with a UPC on page 19.

There are 5,490 members of your community of readers who are depicted largely as the “Vanna White” — women on display. The advertisements do nothing to counter the impressions left by the photography: The women of UMD are objects, not actors!

You can’t control, in the broad sense, the strategies for visual communication used by your advertisers. You can, however, control for whether the rest of the paper represents its readers in more authentic ways – in its photojournalism and in the contents of the stories.

Does the Community See its Interests in the Content of the Paper?

Pages two and three represent the spectrum of university student interests: curriculum, fees, parking and protesting. The “Variety” section has a similar, broad-based appeal. I believe these stories show that the Statesman staff can find the pulse, and I applaud them for it.

By page eight, however, we are discussing what level of perfume is courteous and the Academy Awards. The editorial calls for the fixing of potholes. The opinion writer vehemently calls for mildness and compromise. Halfway through the issue, it seems, the Statesman drifts into anecdote and gossip. Every newspaper has a place for stories on the lighter side. But they must be carefully selected with the role of the newspaper in the community in mind.

Why it Matters: Newspapers Construct their Community

Newspapers are major forces for constructing communities. They do this on a major, national scale: the fact that USA Today is available every morning, everywhere in the United States, is an important factor in defining American life. (The same is true of syndicated material in local newspapers: our daily dose of Doonesbury and Peanuts has become part of the ritual of American life; Dear Abby serves as a conversation-starter from Alaska to Hawaii to Florida.¹ ) But newspapers build communities, more importantly, on a local level.

People develop a sense of membership in a community if they believe that the community matters to them and they matter to the community.² By page 8, the community depicted in the Statesman doesn’t matter to me. Rihanna (the subject of “Hollywood and Vine”) could have been an opportunity to address services for victims of relationship or domestic violence in Duluth; instead, Rihanna sits inside a fishbowl. I watch her through the glass, but draw no connection to community through her story. Similarly, Kyle Degoey’s opinions about award winners could have appeared in any newspaper across the country.

The editorial section shows no connection between UMD and the larger communities that surround our world. By all means, call for a repaving of the roads – but do so with a sense of the complexities that face the city. Insisting that Canal Park is always shiny is naïve; the decisions the city faces are not so simple as paving Canal Park or paving the rest of the city. Such argument effaces the real budget crisis that the city faces. It reinforces, unfortunately, the image that the university community is oblivious to the larger community in which it resides.

The UMD Statesman should be the tool that shows students that they matter to the University community, and that the University community matters to the student. The UMD Statesman should show the larger, Duluth community that we can matter to them – and that we understand that they matter to us. This, as much as uncovering truth and selling advertisements, is the central role of media in society.

Newspapers serve no more important function in our society than demonstrating the interconnectedness of our lives in a way that prepares us to take civic, professional and political action.

As I complete this essay as Public Editor, I invite the Statesman staff to consider what community they are depicting in their stories and photographs. Do they reflect the richness of the University community? And do they demonstrate the interconnected lives and interests of the members of that community in the stories and editorials on their pages?

Final Note

I’d like to thank the Staff of the Statesman for letting me serve as the Public Editor for the week. The Statesman is a real asset to the campus, and the students enrolled in the Journalism Minor and the Writing Studies Major (with an emphasis in Journalism) exemplify, in my mind, two important kinds of media professional. First, they have the skills to produce modern media at a polished, professional level. Second, they have the critical skills to reflect on the impact they have: shaping and defining the communities in which they live.

-David Beard

1. Benedict Anderson writes about the ways that newspapers define nations in Imagined Communities.

2.McMillan and Chavis talk about the contours of “sense of community” in “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory.” Journal of Community Psychology. Not every group of media consumers constitutes a community. I am one of millions of Americans who watch the Office every week, but that community of millions doesn’t matter to my life, and I do not matter to those millions of other Office fans. We have no sense of community.