The latest issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication (Vol. 33, No. 2) includes several research articles of interest to the journalism community, including:

“Parachute Journalism” in Haiti: Media Sourcing in the 2003-2004 Political Crisis by Isabel Macdonald, York University
Abstract: The Canadian media’s reliance on parachute and wire agency journalists during the lead-up to the 2004 coup d’état in Haiti exemplified the trends associated with recent cuts to foreign news. A content analysis of the Globe and Mail, plus interviews with journalists, reveal that the deadline pressures and hotel journalism associated with these trends contributed, in the absence of coherent official messages on the Haiti crisis, to journalists’ reliance on sources from a U.S. and Canadian government–supported political movement spearheaded by Haiti’s business and media elite that sought to overthrow the democratically elected Haitian government.

The Framing of Climate Change in Canadian, American, and International Newspapers: A Media Propaganda Model Analysis by Jennifer Ellen Good, Brock University
Abstract: As a news story topic, climate change has potential narrative elements that include the oil industry and the earth’s climatic balance. With the world’s leading scientists now insisting that the story should be shifting from whether
climate change is happening to “What are we going to do about it?” this article offers a critical comparative analysis of how American, Canadian, and international newspapers are framing this key issue. Based on Herman and Chomsky’s (1988) media propaganda model, the findings indicate that while newspapers in the United States might be avoiding the issue, all three “regions” show a hesitancy to frame climate change with either extreme weather consequences or oil reduction solutions.

Sui Generis: Tobacco Sponsorship Advertising and Canadian Campus Newspapers by Daniel J. Robinson, University of Western Ontario
Abstract: This article examines tobacco sponsorship advertising in 18 college and university newspapers in Canada from 2002 to 2004. It documents the financial value of tobacco advertising in the year before the federal ban on this form of advertising, which began in October 2003. Tobacco spending formed nearly half of these newspapers’ national advertising revenues. The paper examines advertising revenue and publishing output in the year following the ad ban. While national ad revenue fell 28% in 2003-04, this did not adversely affect newspaper operations: the newspapers published 1.4% more pages—and more issues—in 2003-04 than in the previous year. In accounting for this anomalous finding, the paper discusses the sui generis nature of campus newspapers, which embody elements of commercial and non-profit media, while remaining an under-researched and under-theorized area of communication studies.

Gaps in Canadian Media Research: CMRC Findings by Philip Savage, McMaster University
Abstract: In-depth interviews conducted with leading Canadian mass media and new media managers, communication policy practitioners, and scholarly and professional media researchers reveal significant gaps in current Canadian media research. There are foreign sources but almost no Canadian contemporary sources for ongoing research in the following five broad areas: 1) Media usage; 2) Media ownership; 3) New media forms; 4) Media diversity; and 5) Media policy. These results were reported to the Canadian Media Research Consortium (CMRC) in 2007 and will shape its funding orientation and, perhaps, the direction for future Canadian media research more broadly.

Note: Full articles are available by subscription.