Jessica Birthisel | Oct. 21, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Doctoral student Li Shi participated as a translator for a newspaper while in China looking at how globalization affects professionalization in media. She presented her research Wednesday. |
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“Globalization is indeed one of the major themes that keeps appearing,” said Li Shi, but the articles focused primarily on advertising and television, not news media.
It was this hole, the lack of research on news production in China, that sparked Li Shi’s latest research. She shared this work as part of the School of Journalism’s Research Colloquium series Wednesday with a presentation entitled “Globalization as Professionalization: A participant-observation study at a Shanghai metropolitan newspaper.”
As Li Shi explained, news media production has become a last area of control for the Chinese government. For this reason, she became interested in how, if at all, Chinese news was being globalized and if it is, how this globalization influenced Chinese news practitioners.
To study this, Li Shi observed a Shanghai newsroom and a northern China workshop for a month earlier this year when Shanghai hosted the World Expo, a global event that’s often used to showcase a country’s international influence and prominence.
“I went in to see how local media responds to a global media event,” Li Shi said. As a participant-observer, she worked as a translator for the staff and was made to feel like a member of the newspaper team.
Part of the newspaper’s response to the global event was using foreign consultants to help manage the paper’s coverage. Li Shi spent most of her time at the paper’s visual center, which was responsible for photos, photo editing and design, and was considered somewhat subordinate to the paper’s news center.
Though the intention was for the French photo editor to manage the paper’s coverage, the reality was that he ended up primarily critiquing the work after the fact, sometimes holding mass critique sessions in front of hundreds of people at a time.
Part of this globalized presence in the newsroom resulted in new kinds of professionalization for the young staff which, Li Shi said, varied widely by education, gender and international travel experience.
This professionalization came in several forms, Li Shi observed, including skills such as basic cropping, layout and production skills; ethics, such as discussions of photo manipulation, staging photos and intellectual property; and reflection on the presence of foreign consultants at the paper, critical readings of Western photograph practices or staff communication.
She observed impediments to the professionalization of the staff. First was commercialization of the newspaper. As she demonstrated with several examples, it was not uncommon to see a full-page ad on the front page of the paper.
“This is the reality of China,” said Li Shi. She also mentioned the practice of mixing editorial content with public relations and advertising.
Management was another stumbling block toward professionalization, said Li Shi, as she observed disorganization, low morale and problematic correspondence between staff members during her month there.
“There was no horizontal communication,” said Li Shi, meaning designers didn’t talk to photographers who didn’t talk to writers. “It was only top down.”
Finally, government restraints were a hindrance to professionalization, though Li Shi doubts the severity of this claim.
“I argue it is more imagined than real,” she said of the practices.
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Li Shi observed commercialization, communication issues and ethics problems during her time with the newspaper. |
Doctoral student Emily Ehmer attended the talk because she was interested in Li Shi’s work and her experience of returning to her home country for the purposes of immersed, participatory research.
“She could have approached the project by interviewing people directly, but instead, she decided to just melt into the group of photographers, photo editors and designers,” said Ehmer. “And because of that approach, she became a part of the collaborative team. Her story about the struggles of how this young creative team was learning how to become professionals was fascinating.”
The Research Colloquium continues Nov. 3 with guest Andrea Wiley, a professor in the anthropology department.
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