journalism

“Culture Matters More than We Think”: Eric Weiner / A Profile

EPIC Profiles Series by TAMARA HALE, Effective UI EPIC2016 Keynote Speaker Eric Weiner is a veteran foreign correspondent and New York Times best selling author. In an interconnected, technology-driven world, does culture still matter? Can there really be “best practices” to be drawn from the vast range of human experiences? These are some of the questions driving Eric Weiner’s influential writing and thinking. I spoke with Eric about his career trajectory and the inspiration he has drawn from the discipline of anthropology. His award-winning journalism and critically acclaimed books, The Geography of Bliss, Man Seeks God and The Geography of Genius all use cross-cultural and historical comparison as a strategy to make key concepts intriguing for the general public. After writing his first two books, explains Eric, “I realized that I’ve really been engaging in amateur cultural anthropology.... I believe that culture matters more than we think.” Eric’s interest in culture, his deep appreciation for cultural differences...

The Media Landscape under Threat: Navigating the Need for Change by Applying an Anthropological Approach

MARIA EITZINGER Danish School of Media and Journalism and University of Copenhagen While newspaper subscriptions are plummeting and advertising revenues move from content providers to search engines, media houses struggle to adapt and to build new capabilities in order to adapt to emerging consumer practices. Drawing on an on-going research with regional media houses and with news-consuming young families with kids in the countryside of Denmark, I investigate the perception of local media within the broader spectrum of news consumption. How is the term ‘news’ understood? How does materiality play into this understanding? And how is the newspaper production reproducing contested meanings of “news”?...