MA: Myth & Narrative
Myth and meaning in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend: an analysis of narrative journalism
MA Research (Minor Thesis completed 2003)
This is a study of the narrative journalism in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Saturday magazine supplement, Good Weekend. I argue for a broadly cultural model of journalism. Theories of narrative and myth provide a structural framework in which to analyse the journalism produced byGood Weekend. I argue that Good Weekend feature stories can be read against a series of six myths and that this engagement with culturally resonant storylines contributes to a magazine identity that is congruent with both its editorial and marketing imperatives. The study aims to contribute to research on magazine journalism in general and weekend newspaper magazines in particular both of which have been under represented topics in journalism studies.The study also aims to contribute to the theory on myth as a heuristic device in journalism studies. Although there have been a number of studies on news and myth there have been surprisingly few on myth and narrative journalism. It is also the contention of this study that much of the work on journalism and myth has been poorly formulated and that this area of journalism studies needs to be more rigorously theorised.
The study analyses the features of the Good Weekend against a typology of six mythic types: The quest; the new world/other world; home; the family drama; the alchemist; and the trickster.
Download: Theory chapter on myth (pdf)
Download: Case Study 1: The young prince’s nightmare: a myth of family drama (pdf)
Papers Journalism and Myth
O’Donnell, M., 2003, “Preposterous Trickster: myth, news, the law and John Marsden,” Media Arts Law Review 2003/4
ABSTRACT Recent scholarship has explored the mythical function of news reporting. A diverse set of studies has shown that when news takes mythic shape it can perform both a community-building cultural role and/or a boundary-setting ideological role. This article looks at theories of myth and the way it functions in both journalism and law. This mythical understanding is contrasted with the widely held views of journalism and law as truth-seeking and fact-based institutions. The public identity of any plaintiff in a defamation case will necessarily come under challenge. The adversarial system necessitates the construction of competing tales of who that person is and how he or she customarily behaves. This process seems to have been exacerbated in the case of Sydney solicitor John Marsden, the longest running defamation case in Australian legal history. Powerful archetypal patterns shaped the telling of the Marsden story, which takes it well beyond the realm of the controversial and into the realm of the mythical. Mythical images of hero, villain, martyr and initiate are identified as operating in the Marsden trial and its reporting. But the image of the mercurial Trickster is identified as a key myth in understanding the Marsden story.
O’Donnell, M., 2004, “Going to the chapel media narratives of same sex marriage,” Pacific Journalism Review, 10(1).
ABSTRACT: The public discourse about marriage oscillates between a story of the ideal and a story of the everyday. A range of symbolic references or myths are mobilised in media stories about marriage, this is particularly evident in the polarised debate around same-sex marriage. The article identifies and explores three of the myths that underlie the rhetoric in same-sex marriage stories: 1) the evolution/revolution myth; 2) the apocalypse myth and 3) the myth of the child. It also argues that the production of such stories has effects on the realm of “intimate citizenship” (Plummer 1995) and that it is through this contested storytelling that new identities and their attendant rights become possible.