LOCAL PROF EXPLORES

Bookshelf: TV news wardrobe, hair and voice norms explored in “Performing the News”

By Sam Stall, quillmag.com

For decades, TV and radio journalists had to master a very specialized form of performance art. Men and women wore rigid, carefully proscribed wardrobes; styled their hair in certain acceptable ways; and (perhaps most importantly) spoke with a generic-sounding Midwestern accent. This template was canonized mostly by industry consultants, enforced by station managers and acceded to by generations of reporters and anchors who, for the most part, acquiesced to the idea that the way to attract a big broadcast audience was to present oneself in the most mainstream and inoffensive of ways.

In his new book, Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality (Rutgers University Press) Elia Powers, associate professor in Towson University’s Department of Mass Communication, charts how this came about, and how everything from America’s ever-diversifying demographics to new media — such as podcasts — are slowly taking it apart. “Radio and television journalists have long been expected to sound and look a certain way,” Powers said. “This book argues that it’s time for television and radio to look and sound more like America.”

Did you ever have to “perform the news?”

When I was younger, FINISH READING HERE

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