The Media in Our Lives

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A & B Pictures: Studios commission or produce two types of films. A films are usually high budget films that studios expect to be box office hits. B films are low budget films that are basic money-makers. Studios invest little money in their production and marketing.
Absence of actual malice: A libel defense that means that a person must prove actual malice on the part of a reporter to win a libel suit.
Absolute ethics: A code of ethics that allows no deviation from its rules.
Accuracy: The reporting of information in context that allows people to understand and comprehend the truth.
Action film: A type of movie that emphasizes physical activities, such as car chases, fighting and explosions. Such films usually have simple plots and only limited development of the characters.
Action orientation: People depend on media to decide what to buy and how to act.
Adoptions: The decision of a school system to use a particular textbook.
Adversary role: Journalists should act as antagonists to politicians and businesses. They are representatives for their audience to counterbalance powerful economic and political interests.
Advertising market: This market involves selling the attention of readers, viewers, and listeners to advertisers. Business and other groups buy time or space in this market to influence what people buy or believe.
Advertising planning: All forms of advertising agency services including creative production, media buying, research services, and merchandising.
Advertorial: Combination of an advertisement and an editorial. Designed to look like an editorial but is actually a paid message.
Alien and Sedition Acts: Federalist laws passed in 1798 to restrict freedom of information.
Allocative control: Control over how money is spent by an organization.
AM: Stands for amplitude modulation, which is a way of attaching sound to radio waves. See modulators.
America Online (AOL): The online information service with the most subscribers in 1997.
Anthology: In the 1950s, a favorite television format, which consisted of stage plays remade for TV.
Antinomian ethics: The absence of an ethical code to guide decisions. Each case is evaluated on its own merits.
Apartheid: Strict racial segregation. Usually associated with South Africa's political system that was overthrown in the early 1990s.
Areas of dominant influence (ADI): Areas defined by the ratings company Arbitron for purposes of reporting listener data.
Art theater: Theater that shows films designed for their artistic quality rather than for their block-buster audience appeal. These films usually are produced by independent companies rather than by the big studios.
Association magazines: Magazines published by various associations to publicize their activities and communicate with their members.
Atex system: A centralized computer system used for word processing.
Atheoretical: Lacking a theoretical basis.
Audimeters: A meter for measuring audience demand for programs. Audimeters installed in homes record when a set is turned on, which channels it is tuned to, and for how long.
Audion: A three-electrode vacuum tube amplifier that was the basis of the electronic revolution that permitted the development of radio.
Audit: Checking the truthfulness of reader and viewer figures reported by a media company.
Awareness: In advertising, consumers must know that a product or service exists before they can decide to buy it.
Bias: A subconscious or intentional slant in reporting on a subject because of one's beliefs or prejudice on the issue. Such bias may or may not be obvious to the viewer or reader, who may have received incomplete or incorrect information.
Blacklist: A list of individuals compiled with the express purpose of forcing them out of their jobs. Used during the 1950s to label certain individuals as Communists and to force them out of the information and entertainment industries.
Blind booking: Marketing strategy common in the 1930s and 1940s that required theaters to book movies before they were produced.
Block booking: Declared illegal in the 1940s. The practice by movie studios of forcing a theater to book several movies as a package, rather than being able to choose them individually.
Bop: Jazz that developed during the 1940s as a reaction to big band swing music. Usually performed by small groups with fast tempos and conflicting rhythms. Also called be-bop.
Boutique agency: An advertising agency that specializes in creative services and restricts its activities to a few specialties.
Breaking stories: News stories that are continuing to develop as they are covered.
Breakout boxes: Shorter pieces of information, often direct quotes, that are connected to the larger story being covered. They are used to emphasize specific points and for design relief.
Broadside: Handbills, also called broadsheets, that were printed only on one side.
Broadside ballads: Songs and poems printed on single sheets of newsprint.
Brokering: The practice of buying space at a discount from publishers and selling it at a higher rate to advertisers.
Business ads: Ads designed to influence people's attitudes and behaviors toward the products and services a business sells, toward the business itself, or toward an idea that the business supports.
Camera obscura: Photography that dates to classic Greece. A completely dark room had a tiny hole in one wall that focused an upside-down, reversed left-to-right image on the opposite wall or a white screen.
Camera-ready copy: Collection of stories (copy), photographs and headlines that have been edited and placed on a large page. Ready to be photographed and made into a plate for printing.
Capital intensive: A production process that requires a large investment of money.
Capital investment: Start-up money. Funds spent for acquisition or improvement of equipment of technology.
Categorical imperative: In ethics this means that principles should be analyzed to see what principles could be applied universally—what is right for one is right for all.
CD-ROM: Compact diskette with read only memory. An electronic storage diskette with enough memory to support multi-media applications.
Censorship: Restricting access to information, deleting information from a story, or refusing to let a correspondent mail, broadcast, or otherwise transmit a story.
Channel: A way of transmitting a message from a person or group of people to a person or group of people, e.g., a telephone line or newspaper.
Channel noise: Interference in a communication channel, e.g., static on a radio.
Chapbooks: Cheaply printed paperback books produced during the 1700s.
Chartoon: A combination of a cartoon and a chart.
Chat groups: People who discuss a specific topic using computers for two-way communication at a specific time.
Checkbook journalism: Paying subjects or witnesses for information or interviews.
Chicano: A U.S. citizen of Mexican descent.
Cinerama: Trade name for process that produces wide-screen images.
Circulation: The number of copies sold by a newspaper during its production cycle (week or day).
City editor: An editor who manages the "city desk," which is the group of journalists who report and write about the city in which the newspaper is located.
Clear and present danger rule: Created by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at the close of the Schenck case in World War I. Holmes argued that to suppress material one must be able to argue that such material presented a clear and present danger to the country that the government had a right to prevent.
Coaxial cable: Cable that contains two conductors: a solid central core surrounded by a tubelike hollow one. Air or solid insulation separates the two. Electromagnetic energy, such as television transmission signals, travels between the two conductors.
Comics: Drawings that are provided primarily as entertainment for readers.
Commercial application: Viewing of prerecorded tapes and disks and the use of video by companies for training and communications.
Commercial appropriation: An invasion of privacy that involves putting someone in a commercial without getting permission.
Commercial stations: Stations in business primarily to make a profit.
Communication: Gathering, organizing, presenting, and disseminating information.
Communication software: Provides connections from one computer to another.
Compositor: The person who sets type and composes the plates from which a newspaper is printed.
Computer operating systems: These are the programs that tell the computer how to behave. DOS and Windows, produced by Microsoft, dominate the world market for operating systems. The MacIntosh operating system is second; it is used by about one tenth as many machines as the Microsoft systems.
Computer language: An intermediate programming language designed for programmers' convenience that is converted into machine language.
Conflict: A disagreement among people, i.e., difference in ideas or physical as in crime or war.
Conglomerate: A corporation formed by merging separate and diverse businesses under one ownership. The term usually means a media company is owned by a corporation with nonmedia businesses.
Consonance: The presentation of a consistent unified picture of the political world.
Consumer market: This market involves delivering information to readers, viewers, and listeners and the purpose varies from entertainment to persuasion to education.
Contingent effects: Effects that are influenced by contingent, or indirect variables, rather than just by direct impact of media contact.
Contracted services: These occur when an organization hires someone outside the organization to perform services instead of putting an employee on the payroll.
Controlled circulation: Technique of sending magazines free to individuals within an industry to increase identification with an organization.
Convergence: Coming together.
Coping information: Information that will help readers to live more efficiently and easily.
Copy-cat programming: When a network's new show pulls good ratings, other networks will quickly produce shows with similar plots or casts of characters. The process has three stages: invention, when new types of shows are developed; imitation, when similar shows are produced; and decline, when these types of programs decline in popularity.
Copyright: A law that protects authors, playwrights, composers, and others who construct original works and keeps others from reproducing work without permission.
Corporate downsizing: A term popularized during the 1990s used when a company laid off employees to lower their business costs.
CPM: Cost-per-thousand. A shortcut reference to how much it costs an advertiser to reach one thousand readers. M is the roman Numeral for 1000.
Creative production: All the steps in creating advertisements for various media.
Credibility: A measurement of how well a journalist or media organization is trusted. If a high percentage of the public perceives a journalist as truthful, that person has credibility.
Crier: A person who walked around the streets and "cried out" the news to the people. Preceded printed news.
Critical scholars: Those interested in the intersection of media and everyday life and often focus on the relationship of the media text to its audience.
Cultivation theory: Heavy television viewing influences people to adopt values, roles, and world views that are based on television.
Cultural theorists: Those that look at the symbolic meaning behind behavior.
Cumulation: The increasing effect of media across time.
Cumulative weekly audience: The total number of people who listen to radio during a given week in a given market.
Cyberspace: The concept of psychological space behind the computer screen.
Cybersurfing: Browsing through the Internet, the World Wide Web, or any online service
Databases: Software for recording statistics. Data can be sorted in categories and reports printed in various forms. Used by businesses who need to sort customers by zip code, for example.
Decision making: Collecting information to be able to select among options.
Dedicated technology: Piece of equipment dedicated to one purpose; early videotex equipment could be used only for receiving the videotex service, not to retrieve other information or for entertainment. Requirements for dedicated technology hamper development of services.
Defamation: To misconstrue facts or misrepresent a person in such a way as to lower the individual in the estimation of others.
Demand structure: This determines the nature of the aggregate demand for a product or service and involves three characteristics: audience similarity, the geographic nature of the market, and the available technology.
Democratic policy making: Regular users, not just telecommunications experts, should be involved with the design and policies of the new information infrastructure.
Demographics: The study of the characteristics of human populations and population segments. Also, characteristics of an audience for mass media based on age, gender, ethnic background, education, and income.
Desktop publishing: Writing, illustrating, and designing publications with a personal computer.
Diagonal communication: Communication between an organization's departments at different levels.
Diaries: A method of measuring audience viewing of a program that requires viewers to keep journals detailing what they are watching.
Differentiating the product: Getting the consumer to perceive a product as different in quality from other products.
Digital switching system: System that is computer operated and based on quantities represented electronically as digits.
Dime novel: Cheap, paperback fiction produced in the mid-nineteenth century.
Dime magazines: Magazines that cost 10 cents and appealed to a broad class of readers. These magazines were less expensive than the quality monthlies that preceded them.
Direct Internet provider: A company that provides access to the Internet.
Direct mail: Print advertisement that is delivered, usually by the postal service, directly to consumers. This includes catalogues and coupon packages.
Direct recording: All the parts of music are recorded together at the same time. The process has six steps: session preplanning; creating sound quality; consulting with musicians, recording session, selection of takes, and compiling the master tape.
Disaster: Natural calamities such as earthquakes or human-caused catastrophes such as an oil spill in the ocean.
Disclosing embarrassing facts: An invasion of privacy through the release of information a person would consider awkward.
Dissemination: Collecting information objectively and distributing it quickly to a large audience.
Distributors: Companies that help to get media content to viewers, readers, and listeners. In the movie, magazine, and recording industries, the term means getting the content from producers to wholesalers.
Diverse and competitive marketplace: An open and competitive marketplace among ideas, products, and information providers.
Diversion: Using information for entertainment and enjoyment, for example, reading a short story may make a person feel sad and/or happy.
Docudramas: Films or television programs that blur fact and fiction. Part documentary, part drama, theses programs often do not make clear what is factual and what has been added to make the store interesting and exciting.
Downlink: Transmitting an electronic signal from a satellite to a ground facility.
Downward communication: Managers communicating with employees that they supervise.
Dummy sheet: A sheet of paper that is used to design a page for the newspaper.
Economic actions: The exchange of goods, services, and money.
Economies of scale: The savings that result from large quantity production.
Editing: The joining of two pieces of film; this technique allows for moving images into different time sequences.
Effects research: This social science research concentrates on the impact the content has on people, either individually or in groups. The effects can be social, cultural, political, and economic.
Eight-track tape: A plastic cartridge that holds a continuous recording tape. Invented primarily for automobile play during the 1960s, its eight tracts allowed high quality stereo reproduction in an easy to handle cartridge.
Electronic mail: Written communication sent to one or more people with computers. Receivers of mail read it at their leisure.
Electrotyping: A metal plate used in letterpress printing, made by electroplating a lead or plastic mold of the page to be printed.
Empirical research: The systematic collection and analysis of data.
Entertainment software: Software that allows consumers access to a variety of media and activities online and from diskettes and CD-ROMS.
Entrepreneur: A person who assumes the risk of starting a business.
Equal time rule: In political elections, all candidates get equal time to air viewpoints.
Equitable workplaces: Training and guidance should be available for workers who have to upgrade their skills to deal with computers or who must find different work because computers replace some tasks.
Evidentiary privilege: Rule of law that allows journalists to withhold identification of confidential sources.
Executive privilege: The President's right to withhold information if disclosure might harm the executive branch's functions and decision-making processes.
External publics: In public relations, these people include consumers and voters, government organizations, interest groups, business organizations, and media.
Fair comment and criticism: A journalist is allowed to express opinion in the most offensive ways without committing libel. The statement must be presented as opinion and not fact.
Fair use: Use of a small portion of a copyrighted work by scholars, teachers, or reporters to further enlighten the public.
Fairness doctrine: A collection of rules that required stations to air opposing viewpoints concerning controversial issues.
False light: Invasion of privacy involving portraying or inferring something about someone that is not true.
Fast film: Generic term for film photographers use to stop "fast" action. Does not need long exposure to light to capture the photographic image.
Fax newspapers: Information delivered to readers by newspapers using fax machines.
Features: Stories that emphasize activities of people and do not involve "hard news events," such as crime and disasters.
Federal Communications Act of 1934: Provided the basis for federal telecommunication and television regulation until the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Federal Trade Commission: Government agency that enforces truth in advertising laws and regulates trade of goods across state and national borders.
Fiber optic cable system : A cable company that uses fiber optic cable to transmit programs. Fiber optic cable uses glass fibers and light to carry electronic information.
Fiction factory: Late nineteenth-century publishing of formulaic books, in which publishers dictated story lines.
File transfer protocol (FTP): A system of code procedures that enables transfer of text and other files across the Internet.
Film editing: The joining of two pieces of film; this technique allows for moving images into different time sequences.
Financial commitment model: Competition between newspapers and local TV news can affect the amount of money that is available to the newsrooms and the amount of space or time that is available to readers and viewers.
FM: Stands for frequency modulation, which is a way of attaching sound to radio waves. See modulators.
Focus groups: Groups of individuals representing different interests who are assembled to discuss a topic. A form of research used to get in-depth information, but not information that is representative of an entire audience.
Food and Drug Administration: Government agency charged with regulating foods and drugs. Created in response to patent medicine manufacturers who included drugs such as cocaine in over-the-counter medicines.
Frame: A term used to describe the mental image formed by a message. Television frames events when it shows violent action when the only violent action was among a few of 50,000 individuals attending an event.
Freedom to communicate: People must have the right to exchange ideas and contribute to discussion.
Full power: A station that reaches a large percentage of houses in its market and that must broadcast a schedule of programs.
Full service: Advertising agency that offers a client all of the five services needed by advertisers.
Functional integrity: The national information system must be reliable under all conditions. The system cannot become antiquated nor experience national failure because of heavy workloads, natural disasters, or other national economic priorities.
Gatekeeper: A person who controls the flow of information into and through the mass media.
Genre: A category of fiction distinguished by a definite form or style. The term is also used to categorize other forms of artistic endeavor such as film.
Gentlemen's club: Magazines produced in offices occupied by middle-aged white males. The atmosphere was similar to that of a gentleman's club.
Geographics: The physical location—state, region, or country—of potential buyers.
Geographic coverage: The market where the advertisements are placed and the advertised product is sold.
Golden Mean: This concept means moderation in life, and applied to ethics means operating somewhere between two extremes.
Halftone: A photographic process in which light and dark are represented by the number and density of dots. Halftones were first printed in newspapers in the 1880s.
Hard disk: Storage capacity built into a personal computer, in contrast to external drives for "soft" storage disks.
High fidelity: Reproduction of sound with minimal distortion.
High-definition television (HDTV): This technology produces a much sharper image than current TV sets by increasing the number of lines of electrons that hit the screen.
Hoax: An act or story intended to deceive; a tall tale; a practical joke or serious fraud.
Home page: The opening screen, or page, of a location on the World Wide Web.
Horatio Alger story: Began as a real story of how Horatio Alger worked his way up the social and economic ladder, but soon developed into a term to represent the glorification of individualism in American life.
Horizontal communication: Communication among employees at the same level of hierarchy in an organization.
Hot buttons: Timely topics that elicit an emotional reaction from the audience.
Household penetration: Term used to describe the percentage of houses in a market that a newspaper, cable channel, or other media form reaches. Newspaper personnel are concerned about declining household penetration.
Human interest: A news value that emphasizes personal details that intrigue readers, for example, a story about an 80-year-old bus driver called "Grandma" by the students.
Identity advertisements: Ads that affect behavior by connecting product with a good time or by getting people to identify with appealing characters.
Ideological influences: The shared values and beliefs that are found in a social system.
Illustrations: Pictures of people, things, or mental images.
Impact: A news value based on the number of people affected by an event or issue, or the degree of intensity to which individuals are affected by an event or issue.
Individual influences: The psychological makeup of the people creating the content of the media.
Industrial Revolution: The period during the late 1700s and 1800s when America and Europe moved from an agriculture-based economy to a manufacturing economy.
Influences on content: Social science research that involves the many factors that affect the creation of media content.
Infomercial: A media message that offers consumer information, usually an extended advertisement.
Information graphics: Devices that are used to illustrate numerical information, including tables, graphs, and charts.
Information services: Services that provide entertainment and information via telephone lines or through other technologies. Before 1996, telephone companies were prohibited from entering the information business. They now compete with cable companies and other service providers.
Information highway: The international network of cables and computers that support electronic communication through computers.
Information model: Pattern of behavior for disseminating information as news; incorporates values such as objectivity over partisanship.
Informational messages: Making the receiver aware of some event or issue that the sending organization considers important.
Infotainment: Combination of information and entertainment. Some critics today believe entertainment is considered more important than the level of information. This leads to sensationalism and news programs that contain little hard news and many consumer- and entertainment-oriented features.
Infotainment shows: Television programs that aim to inform and entertain viewers, but often the entertainment element is emphasized at the expense of the information.
Integrated: Combinations of media, for example, the incorporation of music into movies, television programming, and advertisements.
Interaction orientation: The influence on people of media in deciding how to behave toward other people.
Interactive: Interactive systems involve two-way communication. The information receivers act as senders and vice versa.
Interactive information sharing : Use of computers or broadcast technology to transmit information back and forth between individuals or between professional communicators and members of an audience.
Interactive video: A form of communication that integrated video and computers making it possible for viewers to influence the content of what they watch.
Interactivity: Mental and sensory participation. Used as a media term, it means actually having a physical interaction with a medium—ordering a movie via computer or typing in a response to a question.
Interest groups: Groups that attempt to influence politicians to achieve public policy decisions that favor the groups' interests.
Internal publics: In public relations the internal publics include employees, managers, trustees, and stockholders.
Internet: A linkage of hundreds of academic, government, and commercial computer sites created when the U.S. government saw the need for the framework for an emergency communication system. Computers are tied together through special high-speed telephone lines.
Interpretative role: Journalists investigate sources' claims and analyze and explain complex issues to their audience.
Interviews: A method of measuring audience demand for programs that involves personal or telephone interviews designed to inquire about watching habits.
Issue candidacies: Campaigns for political office that emphasize public issues rather than the candidates' images.
Joint operating agreement (JOA): An agreement that allows two newspapers in the same city to operate the business and production sides of a newspaper together in a fashion that would normally violate antitrust law.
Joint product: Serving two markets with the same production process.
Journalistic balance: Providing equal or nearly equal coverage of various points of view in a controversy.
Judeo-Christian ethic: The Golden Rule, "Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do unto You".
Jump music: Small band music that merged swing and electric blues during the late 1940s. Jump developed into rhythm and blues music.
Kilobyte: A measure of memory size equal to 1024 bytes.
Kinetoscope: A box-like mechanism used to view short films during the late 1800s. The viewer looked into an opening and watched film move past a light bulb.
Knowledge gap hypothesis: An argument that people with more education and higher incomes would acquire knowledge of public issues more quickly than would those with less education and income.
Laptop computer: A portable computer about the size of a thick notebook and weighing from five to seven pounds.
Legal standing: Right to sue.
Libel: Unjustified defamation of a person. Defamation, identification, publication, and negligence are the elements of libel.
Libertarianism: A philosophy that espouses absolute freedom of action and thought for the individual without the restrictions of society.
Limited speech: Speech that is not widely disseminated.
Linotype: A machine invented in the nineteenth century that allowed an entire line of type to be set on a single piece of metal; this made for ease of newspaper composition. Prior to this each letter had to be set separately.
Local advertisements: Ads for companies that serve a much smaller market, such as a city or metropolitan area.
Low-power broadcast stations: Stations that serve limited areas because the station's signal cannot reach long distances.
Magazine programming: Selling time to several advertisers to share the support of a single show.
Magic bullet: Metaphor for powerful media effects. The presumption was that media content hit a person and had a definite effect upon impact, as with a bullet. Therefore media content became magic content.
Market economy: An economy in which the interaction of supply and demand determines the prices of goods and services and the levels of production. In a nonmarket economy, government determines prices and production.
Market niche: Portion of the audience a particular magazine gains as subscribers or buyers.
Market segments: The target audience. The group of individuals a magazine selects to target as a readership group.
Marketplace of ideas: In this market, ideas compete for acceptance by society and its subgroups. The accepted ideas determine policy and societal norms.
Mass medium: A form of communication (radio, newspapers, television, etc.) used to reach a large number of people.
Mass advertising: Advertisements that aim to reach the largest number of people possible.
Mass communication: Communicating with a high proportion of the designated audience for a message.
Mechanical rights: The copyright holder is paid when the song is recorded.
Media buyers: Those that place the advertisements in media outlets.
Media markets: Major markets are markets defined by a metropolitan area and many media choices; outstate markets are those with some diversity that are removed from metropolitan areas, but are not rural; isolated markets include rural areas in which traditional media choices are exceedingly limited.
Media mix: Consumers use of a variety of types of media by individuals or advertisers, such as newspapers, television, and World Wide Web.
Media kit: A collection of information about a particular event or person, such as a recording release. The kit can include text, photographs, audiotapes, and even computer diskettes and CD-ROMs. A package of video and print news releases and other information to make it easy for reporters to follow up on a public relations generated event or issue.
Media sociology: Analysis of media as an institution of society and its relation to society as a whole.
Mediated communication: Communication that uses a channel to carry the message; not face-to-face communication.
Mercantile press: Early American newspapers that served businesses, shopkeepers, and tradesmen. These newspapers also contained political news.
Merchandise expert: Someone who oversees other forms of promotion besides advertising.
Microcomputer: A small computer using a microprocessor as its central processor.
Microprocessor: The chip that contains all the components in a CPU. The best known chip in the 1990s was the Intel.
Minicam: A small, light-weight electronic camera. It comes in a variety of formats, such as VHS, disc, and eight millimeter.
Minstrel: An entertainer, with blackened face, performing songs and music of African American origin.
Model: A diagram or picture that represents how something works. In communication, models are used to explain what happens in the creation, sending, and receiving of a message.
Modem: A device that allows a computer to receive data over telephone lines or cable.
Modulator: Device that modulates, or processes, the carrier wave so that its amplitude or frequency varies. Amplitude modulation (AM), is constant in frequency and varies the intensity, or amplitude, of the carrier wave. Frequency modulation (FM) is constant in amplitude and varies the frequency of the carrier wave.
Moral reasoning process: Processes that help communication professionals make ethical decisions from a principled basis rather than reacting intuitively.
Morality: The consistency of an action with a given code of ethics.
Muckraking magazines: Magazines that emerged in the 1890s and exposed corruption while trying to educate the public about reform.
Multimedia packaging: The production and release of recordings with other media products, which could include a video, movie, and concert tour.
Multitrack recording: Recording the various elements of the music—singer, rhythm, and lead instruments—at different times and combining them through an electronic process.
National advertisements: Ads for products and services that are available throughout the country.
Network: Computers that are connected by communication lines. The computers may be connected within a restricted geographic area, such as a laboratory in a mass communication program. This network is a local area network (LAN). The Internet networks millions of computers worldwide through telephone and fiber optic lines.
Network compensation: Money paid by the networks to the local stations for running network programming.
News council: A committee that reviews potentially unethical activities of news organizations.
News judgment: The application of news value to particular stories.
News magazines: Fifteen-to-twenty minute news segments put together to form hour-long electronic magazines such as 60 Minutes or Dateline. These programs combine soft features with hard-hitting investigative reporting.
Newsreel: Film depiction's of news events. Some were composed of real footage, others of dramatized events.
News service: Organizations that collect and distribute news and information to media outlets. Some professionals still use the term "wire services," even though the telegraph as a means of transmitting information to media organizations has not been used for decades.
News values: The standards that staff and news service reporters share for selecting what events and issues become news.
Niche publishers: These are smaller publishing houses that serve very narrowly defined markets.
Nickelodeon: Small store front functioning as a theater; popular about 1910. These preceded the grand movie palaces.
Noncommercial stations: Stations that are not operated for profit, for example, educational or public television.
Nonprofit organizations: Organizations that depend heavily on public relations because much of their support comes from public donations.
Novelty: A news value applied to stories that reflect the public's interest in the unusual and bizarre.
Objectively: Reporting facts without bias or prejudice, including a deliberate attempt to avoid interpretation.
Obscenity: Anything with a tendency to corrupt people whose minds might be open to immoral influences.
Obtrusive: An issue that an individual can experience directly, such as inflation.
Oligopoly: A business situation in which a few dominant companies control enough of the business that each one's actions will have a significant impact on actions of the others.
Ombudsman: A person within an organization who represents customers and investigates potentially unethical conduct of the organization and people within it.
On-air personalities: One of the attractions of radio and television has been the ability of listeners to identify with a personality who comes to them regularly. Whether a person who reads the news, announces music, or hosts a quiz show, the on-air personality gives a station a singular identity.
Online information services: Companies that provide searchable data bases via telephone line and modems for a fee.
Online newspapers: Newspaper content delivered via the Internet or other online services.
Open video system: A system that rents entire channels or time on channels to unaffiliated programmers without discrimination. Designed to provide access for those who don't own their own channels.
Opinion leader: Person within a community who has areas of expertise and pays more attention to information derived from mass media than do most citizens. Organizational influences: The work routines, social interaction, and ownership goals found in media organizations and in the organizations covered by media.
Package deals: A series of media tie-ins.
Packaging: Selling of content in a bundle. For example, cable systems sell channel packages; newspapers bundle sections targeted to certain socio-economic groups through zip code sorting.
Packet switching: Small envelopes, or packets, of information are sent along the Internet. This allows the Internet to send information without actually establishing an extended connection between two computers.
Pamphlet books: Books printed in the 1800s without hard covers to look like magazines. Publishers wanted to get cheaper mail rates given magazines.
Pan: To criticize heavily.
Panavision: System of lenses used in filming. It enables a film shot in one wide screen version (Cinemascope, for example) to be shown in a theater without the lenses for that type of projection.
Papyrus: A Mediterranean plant whose stem was used to make paper and other products, such as twine.
Paradigm: A set of assumptions about the nature of human behavior.
Pass-along rate: The total number of readers who read a magazine regularly, including those who read copies that were given, or passed along, to them.
Patent medicines: Packaged drugs that can be obtained without a prescription. Before the Food and Drug Administration was created, these drugs often contained large amounts of alcohol and sometimes opium.
Payola: Paying disc jockeys and radio stations to play certain songs so recording sales will increase.
Peoplemeter: A method of measuring audience demand for programs that involves having each member of a household being assigned a different number to press on a control when watching or changing shows.
Performing rights: The copyright holder is paid every time a song is performed.
Perks: Short for perquisite, or payment for something in addition to salary.
Persuasion: Causing people to change their beliefs or to act in certain ways.
Photo opportunity: A controlled appearance designed to present a person in their best light.
Pictographs: Also known as chartoon, a combination of a chart and a cartoon.
Pirating: Using material without securing appropriate copyright authorization.
Pluralist: A school of thought that espouses coexistence and cooperation among different elements of a power structure.
Political actions: Mass media provide information about politicians and the political process.
Political ads: Ads used to persuade voters to elect someone to political office or attempt to influence the public on legislative issues.
Political cartoons: Drawings that comment on political, social, and cultural events and the people who influence those events.
Political economy: The study of how political and economic systems influence each other.
Powerful effects theory: A theory that grew after World War II with a series of studies that examined the impact of propaganda and movies on children. The theory says media have strong impacts on individuals.
Powertrains: Microprocessors—the power behind computers.
Precedent: A legal decision that sets a standard for how subsequent cases are decided.
Premium two-page spread: An advertisements that spreads across two pages in the center of the issue.
Press pool: A small group of reporters who are selected to gather information and pass it on the larger group of press people. Used when the number of reporters gathering in one spot is problematic.
Press release: An announcement of some event, such as a recording release, sent to various news media outlets.
Price advertising: Advertising featuring special prices to attract customers to a store.
Principle of Utility: The belief that ethical decisions should be made on the basis of what provides the greatest good for the greatest number of human beings within society.
Prior restraint: Traditionally, the requirement that printers obtain permission from government to print material, and subject that material to possible censorship before printing. Also, government's prevention of publication.
Privacy: Individuals' privacy must be protected, and this is an increasing problem when vast amounts of personal information are gathered and transferred via computer networks.
Privacy laws: Laws that protect individuals from media abuse based on the belief that people are entitled to keep parts of their lives away from public scrutiny. Prodigy: An online information service.
Product placement: Showing products in movies as a way of advertising the product without viewers thinking of the presentation as advertising.
Profit margin: The cost of goods sold, minus that of goods that are returned, yield net sales. The net sales, minus the cost of the goods sold, is the gross profit. Gross profit is divided by net sales to get the profit margin, expressed as a ratio or percentage.
Profit-seeking organizations: Organizations whose goal it is to make a profit.
Progressive generation: Group of individuals in the early 1900s who championed political and social reform.
Prominence: A news value based on how notable or famous a person is.
Promotion: All the ways of gaining attention for a company, product, or service.
Propaganda: Efforts to influence and persuade the receivers of a mediated message.
Proximity: A news value based on the geographic location of an event. The more local the event, the more news value it has.
Psuedo-event: An event created solely for the purposes of public relations, to gain favorable notice.
Psychographics: The study of life styles, attitudes, and values.
Public figure: Someone who places herself or himself before the public through the media, or someone who is swept involuntarily into public controversy.
Public investment: The buying of stock in a company by the general public.
Public journalism: A distinctive and controversial effort to find ways to reconnect newspapers to their communities.
Public official: Someone who holds a position in government that affects public policy.
Public performance rights: The copyright holder is paid when an actual recording is played.
Public service ads: Ads that promote behaviors and attitudes that are beneficial to society and its members.
Publicist: Person who seeks publicity for another person, a product, or an event.
Pundit: An expert about a particular topic, a person consulted because of his or her wisdom.
Purpose of the ad: The type of influence the advertiser seeks to have over the customer.
Qualified privilege: Privilege developed to make happenings in government proceedings available to citizens.
Quality advertising: Advertising that strives to influence the buyer's impression of how good a product or service is.
Quality monthlies: Name given to staid political and literary monthly magazines popular in the mid-nineteenth century that set the tone for prestigious cultural values.
Quiz show: Show on which contestants appear to answer questions that show their knowledge of selected material.
Rack jobbers: A rack jobber handles sales of recordings in department and discount stores.
Radio Act of 1927: Law that governed the regulation of radio by government until the 1934 Communications Act.
Radio frequency: An electromagnetic wave frequency used in radio transmission.
Rap music: African American music with a rhythmic, repetitive beat and spoken lyrics. Gangsta rap reflects urban conditions and incorporates references to drugs, violence, and sex.
Rating: Percentage of all people in a market who listened to or watched a particular station during a time segment.
Rational thinking abilities: The cognitive processing of information by considering options based on conscious comparison of influencing factors.
Research: Collecting and analyzing data to answer specific questions. In advertising it means planning and conducting research about the effectiveness of advertising.
Right of privacy: An ethical and legal area of decision making. The right to be protected from unwarranted intrusion by the government, media, or other institutions or individuals.
Salience: How important an issue is to individuals.
Satire: Wit used to expose corruption of wickedness. Basis for political cartoons and comics.
Scarcity of the airwaves: Concept that because there are only limited airwaves, they must belong to the people and therefore be regulated by government, not owned by broadcasters.
Schema: Mental structures for explaining an individual's experiences and observations.
Scoop: Publishing the story of a new event before another news organization does.
Search engine: A software designed to search computer networks, such as the World Wide Web, for specific information.
Sedition: Inciting people to rebel against their government.
Seditious libel: Criticism of the government. In colonial times, criticism was considered libelous even if true.
Self-censorship: A media company's or individual's decision not to publish or broadcast particular content.
Self-understanding: People depend on media to learn about themselves and to grow as individuals.
Semantic noise: An interference with communication because of misunderstandings about the meaning of words or symbols.
Serialized: A book printed in parts in a magazine or newspaper over a certain period of time.
Share: Percentage of people with their radio or TV sets turned on who are listening to a particular station during a particular time period.
Situational ethics: A code of ethics that allows for variation in action, depending on the circumstances of a given situation.
Slander: Spoken defamation.
Social and cultural interaction: When people use or share information that defines, identifies, and maintains membership in a group. For example, sometimes people get information formally, through classes, other times information passes informally through conversations in discussions such as those held during fraternity and sorority rushes.
Social responsibility: As applied to freedom of the press, a philosophy that states that with freedom comes responsibility to the social good.
Social realism: Films that are critical of the social structure.
Social play: People depend on media to entertain them when they are with friends and family.
Social science theory: A set of related statements about people's behavior that have five uses; categorizing phenomena, predicting the future, explaining past events, sense of understanding of why behaviors occur, and providing the potential for influencing future behavior.
Social understanding: People depend on media to learn about the world and their community.
Socialization process: Process by which people learn acceptable behavior in a group. Applied to news organizations, it is the process by which reporters learn patterns of behavior through observing others and by learning to recognize the systems of rewards and punishments in a newsroom.
Solitary play: People depend on media to divert and entertain them when they are alone.
Sound bite: A short quotation used on radio or television to express an idea.
Specialized publishers: Publishing houses that produce a particular type of book, such as religious and children's books.
Spin doctor: A public relations specialist employed to put the most favorable interpretation on a politician's comments or activities or to minimize damage caused by charges against the politician.
Spot news: News that must be gotten "on the spot." News based on one-time events, such as an accident or crime.
Spots: Advertising time slots for a show that are sold by networks or stations to sponsors.
Spreadsheets: Software that allows for organization and tabulation of financial data. Commonly used in planning budgets.
Stand-up shot: Photographs of active people who appear to be news sources or reporters.
Stereotype: Process of creating metal plates with raised letters; used for printing before offset printing was developed.
Stereotyping: The use of a paper mat to make cylindrical molds for printing.
Stock: A term used to refer to types of paper. Also, shares of ownership in a company.
Stringer: A part-time or contract employee who works as a reporter on a story-by-story basis or on the basis of column inches.
Studio film rentals: Studios rent films they produce to distributors and/or theaters.
Sunshine laws: Laws requiring that meetings of federal or state administrative agencies be open to the public.
Superstation: Station that reaches hundreds of markets throughout the country by means of satellite distribution of a signal to cable systems.
Surveillance: Identifying important events and issues that affect a person's life.
Surveys: A form of research that asks people to respond to a collection of questions. Surveys are taken by phone, mail, and personal interviews.
Swing: Big band music played with a jazz rhythm that was popular during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Syncopated beat: In syncopated rhythm, the regular metrical accent shifts temporarily to stress a beat that is normally weak. Syncopation is important in African and African American musical traditions and is considered the root of most modern popular music.
Syndicates: Companies that contracts with a writer, cartoonist, or columnist to produce a certain number of products, such as stories, cartoons, and photographs, that the syndicate then sells to a number of media outlets.
Syndicated programming: Nationally produced programming that is supplied to stations through telephone lines and by satellite.
Take: One effort to record a piece of music, or video.
Talking head: Use of a person on television, usually as an expert. The visual consists of the individual's head and shoulders as he or she talks.
Targeted advertising: Advertisements that seek to reach a selected audience.
Targeted marketing: Trying to sell a product or service to a particular group of people, such as women between the ages of 25 and 39.
Task-oriented software: The programs that allow people to create text and images and to organize data.
Technological convergence: To blend technologies to deliver a message.
Telecommunications industry: Organizations that are involved in electronic media such as broadcast television, cable, radio, telephone, or the transmission of information over wires and with the use of satellites.
Television anthology: A favorite television format of the 1950s, which consisted of stage plays that were remade for TV.
Textbooks: Books used for elementary school, high school, and college classroom work.
Three Chinas: The term refers to China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Before the twentieth century, all three were classified by Europeans as China.
3-D: Film technique that produces 3-D images; required viewers to wear special glasses.
35 millimeter: Photographic film that has a frame exposure 35 millimeters in length. It is used for both still and moving pictures.
Tie-ins: The connection made when a magazine runs a story about a product that is being advertised in the magazine.
Timeliness: A news value based on how recent an event or issue is.
Toll broadcasting: The selling of time or advertising in radio.
Trade book: Most mass marketed books sold at bookstores or through book clubs. Excludes textbooks.
Trade press: Periodicals that target a specific industry. Broadcasting & Cable magazine, for example, targets the broadcast and cable industry and is an example of a trade magazine.
Traffic: Department that controls movement of programming through the day, logs what goes on the air, and supplies information for billing advertisers.
Transistor: A small electronic device containing a semiconductor. A key component of an integrated circuit. Paved the way for radio portability.
Two-step flow: A theory that suggested that mass media affects individuals indirectly as well as directly.
Ubiquity: The experiencing of media messages almost all of the time.
Universal access: Internet technology and training, and therefore information, should be affordable for all.
Unobtrusive: An issue that is beyond direct personal experience.
Uplink: Transmitting an electronic signal to a satellite for storage or further distribution.
Upward communication: Employees communicating with their supervisors.
Uses research: Social science research that concerns why and how people decide to use media content. Uses research studies audience decision making and use of media. User groups: Groups of people who share their interests by communicating through computers.
User-friendly: Software that is designed for use by individuals who are not familiar with complex computer languages.
V-chip: An electronic device in a television set that can block certain television programs.
Veil of ignorance: In ethical situations, this means that information is treated outside of social context, and power, wealth, and other social factors do not enhance one position over another. Justice emerges when social differentiation's are eliminated in the process of negotiation.
Vertical integration: The control of production from obtaining the raw materials to the distribution of the product. A system in which a single corporation controls production, distribution, and exhibition of movies. Declared illegal in the 1940s.
Videotex: Online services that provide words and graphics and sometimes allow for interactive capability.
Vital civic sectors: All individuals should have the ability to participate, not merely vote, in government by designing legislation and formulating policy.
Wave band: A section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some bands are used for communication.
Wholesalers: Companies that deliver products from a warehouse to dealers.
Wire editor: An editor assigned to edit the material that comes from wire services and news services.
World Wide Web: A network of computers that allows people to move easily from material stored on one computer to material stored on another.
World music: Generally used to refer to non-English speaking musicians singing in their native language. Usually applied to music originating in developing countries, including songs of protest.
WYSIWYG: Text on a computer monitor that corresponds exactly to the printout.
Zines: Inexpensive magazines produced with desktop publishing and usually distributed over the Internet.
Zoned sections: Sections of a newspaper, usually of a metropolitan daily, that are targeted to specific zones, usually zip-code areas. These sections provide news specific to the area and advertising targeted to the economic level of the particular audiences.
Zoning: Printing an edition of a newspaper for a specific geographic area (or zone) that has content aimed at that area, usually in a specific section of the paper.