The goal of this article is to provide a theoretical and historical context and argument for the necessity of studying college newsworkers. The author examines feminist disability and cyber theories to articulate the need to understand the cultural context of technology within a society that constructs unrealistic and damaging limits for what constitutes “able” bodies and workers. The author situates this project within American journalistic work culture, which she refers to as RSI work culture because cultural factors are implicated as causes of occupational injuries such as repetitive strain injuries.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Altschull, J. Herbert
. 1997. Boundaries of journalistic autonomy. In Social meanings of news, edited by D. Berkowitz, 259-268. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2.
Balka, Ellen
. 1995. Technology as a factor in women's occupational stress: The case of telephone operators. In Invisible: Issues in women's occupational health, edited by K. Messing, B. Neis, and L. Dumais, 75-103. Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Gynergy Books.
3.
Balsamo, Anne
. 1996. Technologies of the gendered body: Reading cyborg women. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
4.
Brennen, Bonnie
. 1995. Cultural discourse of journalists: The material conditions of newsroom labor. In Newsworkers, edited by H. Hardt and B. Brennen, 75-109. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
5.
Bureau of National Affairs
. 1991. Cumulative trauma disorders in the workplace: Costs, prevention, and progress. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs.
6.
Burkitt, Janet
. 1996. Warning: Journalism may be hazardous to your health. The Working Press, 20September, 2.
7.
Cook, Betsy B.
, Stephen R. Banks, and Brad Thompson. 1995. The relationship of copy desk leader behaviors to job stress, hardiness and health factors in copy editors. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, DC, August.
8.
Crary, Jonathan
, and Sanford Kwinter. 1992. Incorporations: Zone 6. New York: Zone.
9.
Dorfman, Ron
. 1985. The median is in the message. The Quill73 (2): 24-26.
10.
Emery, M.
, and E. Emery. 1992. The press and America: An interpretive history of the mass media. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
11.
Ewen, Stuart
. 1988. All consuming images. New York: Basic Books.
12.
Faucett, Julie
, and David Rempel. 1994. VDT-related musculoskeletal symptoms: Interactions between work posture and psychosocial work factors. American Journal of Industrial Medicine26:597-612.
13.
Foreman, Gene
, and Lil Swanson. 1995. Newspapers can do something about RSI. ASNE Bulletin, April, 5-9.
14.
Foucault, Michel
. 1995. Discipline and punish. 2d ed.New York: Vintage.
15.
Hamilton, Sheryl
. 1996. The cyborg, 10 years later: The not-so-surprising half life of the Cyborg Manifesto. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Chicago, May.
16.
Haraway, Donna
. 1989. A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. In Coming to terms, edited by E. Weed, 173-204. New York: Routledge.
17.
Hardt, Hanno
. 1990. Newsworkers, technology, and journalism history. Critical Studies in Mass Communication7:346-365.
18.
Hardt, Hanno
. 1995. Without the rank and file: Journalism history, media workers, and problems of representation. In Newsworkers, edited by H. Hardt and B. Brennen, 1-29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
19.
Hardt, Hanno
. 1998. Among the media: Journalism education in a commercial culture. Remarks made to the Qualitative Studies Division at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Baltimore, Maryland, August.
20.
Hardt, Hanno
, and Bonnie Brennen, eds. 1995. Newsworkers: Towards a history of the rank and file. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
21.
Hartsock, Nancy
. 1983. The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Discovering reality, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, 283-310. Dordrecht: Reidel.
22.
Hembree, Diana
, and Ricardo Sandoval. 1991. RSI has become the nation's leading work-related illness. How are reporters and editors coping with it?Columbia Journalism Review30(2): 41-46.
23.
Jacobus, Mary
, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds. 1990. Body/politics: Women and the discourses of science. New York: Routledge.
24.
Jackson, Nancy Beth
. 1992. Potential physical disabilities in computerized journalism education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Montreal, August.
25.
Lafky, Sue
. 1993. The theory and practice of educating ideologically unreliable journalists. Journalism Educator48 (2): 17-25.
26.
Larson, M. S.
1977. The rise of professionalism: A sociological analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
27.
Mairs, Nancy
. 1996. Waist-high in the world. Boston: Beacon Press.
28.
Marston, Catherine L.
1997. Hand-ling media research on disability: Toward including a feminist “exile” perspective on theory and practice. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, August.
29.
Martin, Emily
. 1992. The woman in the body: A cultural analysis of reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
30.
Martin, Emily
. 1994. Flexible bodies: Tracking immunity in American culture from the days of polio to the age of AIDS. Boston: Beacon Press.
31.
Mendels, Pamela
. 1999. Children and keyboards: Too many bad fits [News service wire]. The New York Times, 17January.
32.
Menzies, Heather
. 1996. Whose brave new world? The information highway and the new economy. Toronto: Between the Lines.
33.
Messing, Karen, Barbara Neis
, and Lucie Dumais. 1995. Introduction. In Invisible: Issues in women's occupational health, edited by K. Messing, B. Neis, and L. Dumais, ix-xv. Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Gynergy Books.
34.
Mitchell, David T.
, and Sharon L. Snyder. 1997. Introduction: Disability studies and the double bind of representation. In The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability, edited by D. Mitchell and S. Snyder, 1-31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
35.
National Research Council
. 1998. Protecting youth at work: Health, safety, and development of working children and adolescents in the United States. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
36.
Nelson, Jill
. 1993. Volunteer slavery. New York: Penguin Books.
37.
Oppenheimer, Todd
. 1997. The computer delusion. The Atlantic Monthly280 (1): 45-62.
38.
Ortner, Sherry
. 1974. Is female to male as nature is to culture? In Woman, culture and society, edited by M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, 67-88. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
39.
OSHA scales back repetitive stress injury regulations
. 1995. Iowa City Press-Citizen, 13June, A3.
40.
Pascarelli, Emil
, and Deborah Quilter. 1994. Repetitive strain injury: A computer user's guide. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
41.
Rimer, Sara
. 1997. New, reviled college subject: Computer-linked injury. The New York Times, 9February, Y10.
42.
Robertson, Nan
. 1992. The girls in the balcony. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
43.
Rosa, Roger R.
, and Michael J. Colligan. 1997. Plain language about shiftwork. Cincinnati: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
44.
Salcetti, Marianne
. 1995. The emergence of the reporter: Mechanization and the devaluation of editorial workers. In Newsworkers, edited by H. Hardt and B. Brennen, 48-74. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
45.
Schor, Juliet B.
1992. The overworked American. New York: Basic Books.
46.
Scott, Joan
. 1989. Commentary: Cyborgian socialists? In Coming to terms, edited by E. Weed, 215-17. New York: Routledge.
47.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky
. 1990. Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
48.
Shapiro, Joseph P.
1994. No pity: People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement. New York: Times Books.
49.
Smith, Carol
, and Carolyn Stewart Dyer. 1992. Taking stock, placing orders: A historiographic essay on the business history of the newspaper. Journalism Monographs132.
50.
Smythe, Ted Curtis
. 1992. The reporter, 1880-1900: Working conditions and their influence on the news. In Media voices: An historical perspective, edited by Jean Folkerts, 214-231. New York: Macmillan.
51.
Solomon, William S.
1995. The site of newsroom labor: The division of editorial practices. In Newsworkers, edited by H. Hardt and B. Brennen, 110-134. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
52.
Terry, Jennifer
, and Jacqueline Urla, eds. 1995. Deviant bodies: Critical perspectives on difference in science and popular culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
53.
Thompson, Brad
, Jan Fernback, and Don Heider. 1993. Family feud: A case study of job stress and coping mechanisms among newspaper copy editors. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Kansas City, Missouri, August.
54.
Thomson, Rosemarie
. 1997. Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
55.
Weaver, David H.
, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit. 1996. The American journalist in the 1990s: U.S. news people at the end of an era. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
56.
Wendell, Susan
. 1989. Toward a feminist theory of disability. Hypatia4 (2): 104-124.
57.
Wendell, Susan
. 1996. The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability. New York: Routledge.
58.
Wolkomir, R.1994. When the work you do ends up costing you an arm and a leg. Smithsonian25 (2): 90-101.
59.
Zang, Barbara
. 1991. The national press and carpal tunnel syndrome: A significant silence in occupational health coverage. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Boston, August.
