McNelly’s model of news fl ow, 1959A B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWsistible cultural spread that radio, television
and film made possible throughout the world,
turning it into a global village. Radio he called
the Tribal Drum, photography was the Brothel-
without-walls, TV the Timid Giant, the motor
car the Mechanical Bride.
Perhaps McLuhan’s most valuable analysis is
to be found in his examination of the impact of
printing on civilization in Th e Gutenberg Galaxy:
Th e Making of Typographic Man (Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1962). See hot media, cold media.
★McNelly’s model of news flow, 1959 An
improvement upon white’s gatekeeper
model, 1950. In ‘Intermediary communicators
in the international news’ in Journalism Quar-
terly, 36 (1959), J.T. McNelly identifi es several
intermediary stages through which a news
item passes from event to presentation in mass
communication form. The author follows the
progress of a newsworthy event (E) taken up by
a foreign correspondent (CI) and then passed
through several agencies where the report of Ebe looked at in relation to agenda-setting
models. See topic guides under communica-
tion models; communication theory.
McLuhanism Th e archpriest of media analysis
in the late 1960s was the Canadian professor,
Marshall McLuhan (1911–80), creator of the
Centre for Media Studies in Toronto. His head-
line-catching assertions and prophesies about
the eff ect of the new media, particularly TV, on
society as we know it were aided and abetted by
inspired phrase-making. Described by Northrop
Fry as a ‘manic depressive roller-coaster of
Publicity’, McLuhan foretold the annihilation of
the printed word by the electronic media, yet his
books sold (and were read) in thousands.
Th e most quoted McLuhanism is his phrase,
the medium is the message, used as the heading of
Chapter 1 in Understanding the Media (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1964; Routledge, 2002). McLuhan
was convinced that with electronic transmission,
especially TV, content was everywhere swamped
by process. Equally he was concerned at the irre-
McNelly’s model of intermediary communicators in news fl ow, showing news passing diff erent ‘gate-
keepers’ (after McNelly, 1959)Keys to symbols in diagram:
E = Newsworthy event
C 1 = Foreign agency correspondent
C 2 = Regional bureau editor
C 3 = Agency central bureau or deskman
C 4 = National or regional home bureau editor
C 5 = Telegraph editor or radio or TV news
editor
S, S^1 , S^2 , etc. = The report in a succession of
altered (shortened) forms
R = Receiver
R 1 , R 2 , etc. = Family members, friends, associates,
etc.
S – R = Story as modifi ed by word-of-mouth
transmission
Dotted line = Feedback