Doctoral Dissertation Research: Working on Deadline: A Study of the Careers of Reporters and Editors at U. S. Daily Newspapers

这个项目的目标是确定哪些因素会影响一个强大但很少被研究的美国工人群体的职业成功或失败：报纸记者。本研究将检验人力资本、社会资本/网络和赛事流动性理论对职业发展影响的社会学理论。社会资本/网络（一个人认识的人）和人力资本（一个人知道什么和能做什么）的影响与早期的成功影响后来的地位和早期的失败为职业设置了较低的上限的发现相结合。假设新闻工作者的人力资本、社会资本/网络和职业成就策略将在很大程度上决定其第一份工作的质量。该工作的质量将有助于人力资本和社会资本的进一步积累或消散，这反过来又会影响下一份工作的质量，等等。还有一种假设是，早期的职业成功会影响记者职业生涯后期的工作质量。这项研究将考察人力资本、社交网络、职业成就策略和赛事流动性对女性和男性、有色人种记者和白人同事的作用有何不同。数据将从具有代表性的美国记者和编辑样本中收集，这些记者和编辑将通过一项创新的网络调查，询问他们的职业经历和背景。这项研究将把传统的记忆提示纳入一种新的形式，并评估冗长的网络调查是否适用于精通电脑和互联网的人群。本研究是回顾性的，但它将提供机会跟踪参与者及其未来的职业生涯，从而为进一步的研究提供丰富的纵向数据。这项研究至少有三个更广泛的影响。首先，关于多样性问题，这项研究将有助于解释为什么新闻编辑室在几十年的多样性努力之后，仍然明显是白人和男性。考虑到这种同质化对复杂世界新闻报道的影响，这一点尤为重要。其次，从方法论的角度来看，本项目研究了网络调查如何以更广泛和更深入的方式使用，包括使用更长的工具和收集回顾性数据，特别是社交网络数据。最后，这项研究将注意力转向了人们是如何进入新闻编辑室并在编辑室获得晋升的，这一点得到的研究关注远远少于新闻本身。记者有能力告诉我们什么是重要的，如何看待它，进而告诉我们什么是不重要的。然而，我们对掌管新闻的人知之甚少，这表明我们需要更好地了解记者和新闻职业。这项研究将解决这一需求。

SES-0726712Maria KrysanShawn NeiforfUniveristy of Illinois ChicagoThe goal of this project is to determine which factors influence career success or failure for a powerful but rarely studied group of American workers: newspaper journalists. The study will test several sociological theories about influences on career progression, namely, human capital, social capital/networks and tournament mobility theories. The influence of social capital/networks (who one knows) and human capital (what one knows and can do) is coupled with the finding that early success influences later status and that early failure sets a lower ceiling on a caree. It is hypothesized that a journalist's human capital, social capital/network and job-attainment strategy will largely determine the quality of his or her first job. The quality of that job will contribute to the further accrual or dissipation of human capital and social capital, which in turn will influence the quality of the next job, and so on. It also is hypothesized that early career success will influence the quality of jobs later in the journalist's career. The study will examine how human capital, social networks, job-attainment strategies and tournament mobility may function differently for women than for men and for journalists of color than for their white colleagues. Data will be collected from a representative sample of U.S. reporters and editors who will be asked about their career histories and backgrounds through an innovative Web-based survey. The study will incorporate traditional memory prompts into a new format and assess whether lengthy Web surveys can work with populations that are computer and Internet savvy. The present study is retrospective, but it will provide the opportunity to follow the participants and their careers into the future, thereby providing rich longitudinal data for further examination. There are at least three broader impacts of this study. First, with regard to issues of diversity, this study will help explain why newsrooms remain remarkably white and male, even after decades of diversity efforts. This is especially important in light of the implications of such homogeneity for news coverage of a complex world. Second, from a methodological standpoint, this project examines how Web surveys may be used in broader and deeper ways, including using a longer instrument and collecting retrospective data, particularly social-network data. Finally, this study turns attention to how people are hired into and advance in newsrooms, which gets far less research attention than the news itself. Journalists have the power to tell us what is important and how to think about it and, by extension, what is not important. Yet little is known about the people in charge of news, suggesting that we need a much better understanding of journalists and journalism careers. This study will address that need.