Journal Will Examine Press, Politics

The interplay between the press and politics will be the subject of a new journal to be published under the auspices of the Kennedy School's Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, University officials announced recently.

The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics will be co-edited by Pippa Norris, associate director of research and lecturer at the Kennedy School, and by Marvin Kalb, Murrow professor of press, politics and public policy and director of the Shorenstein Barone Center.

"In my view, today there is no politics without the press, and we must find a way of understanding the intersection of press and politics," Kalb said. "This intersection will be [the journal's] focus."

The journal will be published four times each year from the MIT Press and is tentatively scheduled to debut in the spring of 1996, according to Norris.

"In our first issue, we are planning to have a number of articles on American elections, Philippine elections, and Italian politics," Norris said.

The intention of the journal, Norris said, is to "bridge the gap between academic research and the world of publishing."

She said the publication will be "much more interdisciplinary than existing journals," as well as "much more international."

Kalb said that he hopes the journal will fill a void in political coverage.

"If [the journal] is to have any value, it will have value in that it breaks new ground in exploring the intersection between press and politics," Kalb said.

The journal has been in the works for several years, but it is just this year that the necessary funding and personnel became available, Kalb said.

Kalb and Norris have created an editorial board to oversee the magazine which is comprised of "journalists, scholars and some ex-politicians," according to Kalb.

National Public Radio commentator Daniel Shorr, one member of the journal's editorial board said he hopes the journal will contrast American and foreign experiences.

"I would like to see a kind of long stand-off-and-look approach to the way in which foreign affairs intersects with American interests and prejudices," he said of the journal's future.

Unlike his editors-in-chief, Shorr did not see the journal as an international publication with a large potential audience.

"It is clearly not meant for the masses," Shorr said, "but for educators, policy makers--an audience like most Harvard publications of this sort."

Professor of Government Morris P. Fiorina Jr. and Associate Professor of Government Michael G. Hagen are also members of the editorial board.

The journal's editorial board includes professors from several American and foreign universities, as well as CNN's Bernard Shaw and former ambassador Hushang Ansary.