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Turf wars?

Rhetorical struggle over `prepared' letters to the editor

Ohio University, USA, reader{at}ohio.edu

The study analyzes professional disagreements over the value of `prepared' letters to the editor, or pre-written letters that supporters of advocacy campaigns can sign and submit to newspapers as their own opinions. Journalists derisively call such letters `astroturf' and disdain the `fake grass-roots' nature of such letters; advocates suggest such `sample letters' help more people to get involved in public discourse. Through an open-ended textual analysis of texts from both camps, the author finds a rhetorical struggle between the two groups that forms a hegemonic concordance through which letters-to-the-editor forums are seen more as battlefields to be defended or conquered than as sites for consensus-seeking debate, which in the end feeds or reflects the hostile and monopolistic nature of modern public discourse.

Key Words: concordance ,journalism ethics ,newspapers ,public relations • public-relations ethics

Journalism, Vol. 9, No. 5, 606-623 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1464884908094161


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