Journalistic Discourse Community
Investigating a Journalistic Discourse Community
When you walk into a newsroom of journalists, you will see people reading, discussing, and writing the news. Journalists from all around the world, mostly the United States, join in Long Beach, California, where they collaborate to gather and publish information in the Gazette Newspapers, forming a professional discourse community. A discourse community is a group of individuals unified by common interests or goals and who have methods for communicating ways to achieve those goals. In “The Concept of Discourse Community,” educator and researcher John Swales states that "a discourse community consists of a group of people who link up in order to pursue objectives" (Swales 471). The Gazette journalists are united with the purpose of providing reliable, comprehensive, and relevant news to the Long Beach community. Understanding the way this discourse community works can help a person join or assimilate himself into it.
The primary goal of the discourse community is to tell the truth. They must be loyal to their citizens. Two journalists and authors, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, write, "Since news is the material that people use to learn and think about the world beyond themselves, the most important quality is that it be useable and reliable" (Kovach and Rosenstiel). The Gazette journalists aim to make their newspaper an honest and objective community resource for information and entertainment. They cover a wide range of topics, such as events, government, business, education and neighborhood issues. They often attempt to expose problems that need to be paid attention to. Information which may offend or humiliate a person gets checked especially carefully. Writers will get their articles checked by others for accuracy, grammar, and spelling. Stories must contain no false statements and must keep to the newspaper 's general style.
When conducting interviews, journalists aim to pay close attention to detail.
When you walk into a newsroom of journalists, you will see people reading, discussing, and writing the news. Journalists from all around the world, mostly the United States, join in Long Beach, California, where they collaborate to gather and publish information in the Gazette Newspapers, forming a professional discourse community. A discourse community is a group of individuals unified by common interests or goals and who have methods for communicating ways to achieve those goals. In “The Concept of Discourse Community,” educator and researcher John Swales states that "a discourse community consists of a group of people who link up in order to pursue objectives" (Swales 471). The Gazette journalists are united with the purpose of providing reliable, comprehensive, and relevant news to the Long Beach community. Understanding the way this discourse community works can help a person join or assimilate himself into it.
The primary goal of the discourse community is to tell the truth. They must be loyal to their citizens. Two journalists and authors, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, write, "Since news is the material that people use to learn and think about the world beyond themselves, the most important quality is that it be useable and reliable" (Kovach and Rosenstiel). The Gazette journalists aim to make their newspaper an honest and objective community resource for information and entertainment. They cover a wide range of topics, such as events, government, business, education and neighborhood issues. They often attempt to expose problems that need to be paid attention to. Information which may offend or humiliate a person gets checked especially carefully. Writers will get their articles checked by others for accuracy, grammar, and spelling. Stories must contain no false statements and must keep to the newspaper 's general style.
When conducting interviews, journalists aim to pay close attention to detail.
Cited: Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?” Journal of Education. 171.1 (1989): 18-25. Print. Goldberg, Jan. Careers in Journalism. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies. 2005. Print. Kovach, Bill and Rosenstiel, Tom. (2001) Elements of Journalism. New York. Crown Publishers