About
Introduction
A saxophone player onstage in a smoky nightclub has his eyes tightly closed as notes come screaming out of the horn’s bell. His music riff disposes of elementary scales and attempts a world where bending and shaping sounds crack new creative bounds. Alongside the soloist stands a trumpet player mumbling to himself words like “yeah”, “uhhh” and “urhh” seemingly following along in the story being crafted by the saxophone. These two musicians are speaking. What are they saying? How is it they completely understand one another?
Jazz is perhaps the most notable example of the unspoken world of a musical dialogue but this language is spoken all over the world and in every musical genre. For seven years I have hosted a newsmagazine talk radio program at WIDR FM in Kalamazoo. The question that sparks the most diverse answers is when I ask musicians to address this parallel language, what it means and how it works.
Using the tools of qualitative research, I propose to examine this language asking the questions: What is the language of music? And what is a musical conversation?
Journalism and Communication Theory
To explore this qualitative examination journalistically, I created this multi-media website. Matt Thompson, a researcher at Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, suggested that contemporary journalism is not sharing with news consumers three out of four elements of how journalism is committed. Thompson suggested journalists are leaving out long standing facts, how journalists know what they know, and the things we (journalists) don’t know.
The experiment using this online multi-media model attempts to commit journalism addressing these potential shortfalls to strengthen transparency and offer a window into how my conclusions are reached.
The journalistic aim of this online multi-media platform is to engage in a conversation with society utilizing the power of web 2.0 tools built on widely available platforms. The greatest aspect of the blog format, as chosen for this project, is the ability of people interested in this subject to add their comments and link content to each portion of the project as it grows.
This online model also encourages the use of social media technologies like Facebook and Twitter to share the content and foster a greater conversation and interaction. Additionally this project attempts to support the link economy as the next-generation model supporting transparency and moving content around the web.
The overall aim of this project is an attempt to add to the ongoing conversation underway concerning journalism in a new media Internet era. The subject of this site is the language of music and the content was created to add more context and depth to understanding how musicians communicate.
However, this model could just as easily be the home for other important issues society faces. Thus, exploring conversations could be a site where journalists report stories on crime, education, infrastructure etc. in their city while engaging the issues in a multi-media web 2.0 platform.
A news organization could have several of these issue platforms incorporating a community of content creators in a professional-amateur concept that encourages participation from the community partnering with professional journalists as illustrated by the Off the Bus project.
Methodology
Using the tools of qualitative research, I propose to examine this language asking the questions: What is the language of music? And what is a musical conversation?
To this end, I have employed two qualitative methods and combined them together as a hybrid model to achieve a greater understanding of the nuance that the project’s objective entails. First, employing the Observer-as-Participant method, I attended the practice session of three musical groups. To collect data, I used a small high definition Mino video camera to record the facial and body expressions of the musicians.
Additionally, I recorded the practice session using a digital audio workstation on my laptop computer with an M-Audio mixing station and AKG Perception 120 microphones. Both my video and microphone digital recording technologies were set up in the practice room in a neutral way so that over time they would be forgettable by the musicians.
Researcher Thomas Lindlof notes (p. 149) that one criticism of Observer-as-Participant is that the role can fall short of the criteria for interpretive social science because of the short duration the researcher has with the subjects (musicians in my case). To avoid this problem I have employed the in-depth interviewing qualitative method to compliment the Observer-as-Participant method.
During my in-depth interviews with the musicians, I played back the video that had just been recorded and asked them to view the video and describe the musical language they themselves just participated in. My goal was to utilize the musician’s own words to better support my conclusions.
My Background
During my academic studies at Michigan State University, I have also worked full-time as a freelance reporter for United Press International covering defense procurement and other security industry related stories. Additionally, I cover emerging security threats around the world including terrorism and militant aggression. Additionally as mentioned above, I host a current affairs newsmagazine radio show at 89.1 WIDR FM called the Nonchalant Café Hour, which broadcasts live in Kalamazoo, MI on Fridays at 12 p.m. Additionally, I recently began working as a political correspondent for PBS Medishift.
Places my reporting has been featured include United Press International, The Washington Times, EJ Magazine, The Kalamazoo Gazette, Music Revue Magazine, Middle East Times, The Great Lakes Echo, PBS MediaShift and the Capital News Service. Additionally, I am a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Prior to attending Michigan State, I also worked as the news director at the WKMI/ WRKR/WKFR radio station cluster. In this position I also worked as the morning news anchor and Southwest Michigan-based reporter for the Michigan Talk Network which broadcasts through the state’s major markets.
Throughout my graduate program at Michigan State I have conducted research during the course of class studies that has covered areas including news media bias, news media framing, censorship during war, urban revitalization, renewable energy and climate change.
