Transcript History of Newspaper Journalism

History of Newspaper
Journalism
An Introduction
Cave
drawings
could be
considered
the first
newspapers,
but they
never had
much
chance for
mass
circulation.
German blacksmith
and inventor
Johannes Gutenberg
devised the first
printing press
around
1450. One
of his first
projects was
publishing
a Bible.
Weekly newspapers
started appearing in
most European
countries in the 17th
Century, but operated
under strict government
control. By mid-century,
a movement in England
was arguing for press
freedom.
The first Englishlanguage daily
was the Courant,
published on
March 11, 1702.
It consisted of
just one page and
lasted until 1735.
In 1690, book
publisher Benjamin
Harris distributed
the first multi-page
newspaper in the
American colonies.
Because it criticized
the British
government, it was
closed after one
issue.
Fourteen years later, the Boston NewsLetter began publishing and became
the first to survive in the colonies.
Supported by the British and writing
mostly about foreign issues, the paper
survived until 1776.
Benjamin Franklin, 23,
purchased the
Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729, turning it
into the most popular paper in the
colonies. He had previous worked for his
brother’s paper in Boston.
In 1734, John Peter Zenger, publisher of the
Weekly Journal of New York, was arrested
and charged with seditious libel for printing
critical statements about the British
governor of the colonies.
His lawyer argued that
the court’s refusal to
accept the truth as a
defense proved that the
system was unjust and
Zenger was innocent.
The jury agreed.
The Zenger
case was
the basis for
the First
Amendment
of the Bill of
Rights,
which
guarantees
freedom of
the press.
Two inventions during the 19th century
drastically changed newspaper
journalism: photography in the 1830s
and expand use of the telegraph in the
1850s.
Newspapers thrived during the
19th century because of the
interest in the divisive issue of
slavery and the resulting Civil
War. Because of telegraph
communication and
photographs,
newspapers could
report on the war
in ways never
seen before.
Horace Greeley founded the New
York Tribune in 1841
and it became the most
influential paper of the
era. As editor and
publisher, Greeley
shaped public opinion
on many issues, was
a leading anti-slavery
spokesman and an advocate for
the western expansion of the U.S.
In 1851, Henry
Jarvis Raymond
and George Jones
founded the
New-York Daily
Times. Six years
later it was renamed
the New York Times. Adolph Ochs
purchased the paper in 1896 (his heirs
still run the paper) and it quickly
became one of the leading papers in
the country, a position it still holds.
At age 25, journalist
Joseph Pulitzer bought
the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch in 1872
and a few years later
the New York World.
By writing extensively
about corrupt government
officials, his papers became the
most popular in their cities.
In Pulitzer’s will he established a
fund to offer yearly prizes to the
best American journalists and
newspapers. The awards, the most
prestigious in
journalism, have
been given out by
the Columbia
University’s School
of Journalism since
1917.
The primary rival of
Pulitzer was William
Randolph Hearst, one of
the richest men in the
country, who ran the
New York Journal.
Eventually, he owned
about 25 papers across
the country, forming the
first newspaper chain. Based in San
Francisco, he also built Hearst Castle
along the California coast.
The circulation war
between the two
papers escalated
when both started
writing sensational,
exaggerated stories
about crime and
politics to attract
readers. It became
known as “yellow
journalism” (after a popular cartoon) and hit
its peak when Hearst tried to gain popular
support for U.S. involvement in a war with
Cuba.
While the primary focus of journalism
in the late 19th Century was New York
City, newspapers were flourishing
everywhere. One of the first major
newspapers in California was
established in San Jose in 1851
(still publishing
as the MercuryNews today). In
1881, the Los
Angeles Daily
Times was
founded.
Gen. Harrison Gray Otis took over the
L.A. paper a year later and soon
renamed it the Los Angeles Times. It
soon became the dominant paper of
Southern California, expanding under
his son-in-law Harry Chandler.
Two late 19th
Century inventions
changed the way
newsrooms
operated:
the telephone and
the typewriter became
the most important
tools of the modern
journalist.
Newspapers
faced their first
major
challenges in
the 1920s with
the widespread
popularity of
radio and movie
newsreels.
During the 1930s
and ‘40s,
newspapers and
reporters were
often the subject
of movies. “Citizen Kane,” considered
by most film historians as the greatest
American movie, was about a
egotistical newspaper publisher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p
WamUmlKY0A&feature=related
Radio and newspapers shared the
spotlight during the coverage of World
War II, but soon after the war
television began pushing aside the “old
media.”
One of the early
stars of television
news was Edward R.
Murrow, a radio
reporter during
WWII, who turned
CBS into the TV’s
most respected news departments.
Following in his footsteps at CBS was
longtime news anchor Walter Cronkite
and the network’s “60 Minutes.”
By 1963, the
number of U.S.
cities that had
two or more daily
newspapers was
55 compared to almost 700 in
1909. In the 1960s, large
companies created newspaper
chains by buying up dozens of
papers across the country.
Otis Chandler took over
as publisher of the Los
Angeles Times in 1960
and quickly turned a
mediocre paper into one
of the top newspapers in the
country. Chandler hired the best
journalists and eliminated the
paper’s rightwing bias. The
Chandler family sold the paper to
the Tribune Company in 2000.
Newspaper journalism received a boost in
popularity and prestige in the wake of the
Washington Post’s investigation
of the Watergate burglary. Stories by Bob
Woodward
and Carl
Bernstein led
to the
resignation of
President Nixon.
Journalism
schools saw a
huge increase
in enrollment.
Circulation of U.S.
newspapers declines
from 62.3 million in
1990 to 55.8 in 2000.
While newspapers
emphasized features and analysis
stories in the 1980s and ‘90s to
attract new and younger readers,
the expansion of cable TV took ad
revenue and readers away.
Newspapers
realized too
late that allowing
Internet sites
to reuse its
stories would
damage both
revenues and
readership. With a new generation
expecting to get news for free and
instantaneously on the Internet,
newspapers began a slow decline at
the turn of the century.
While newspapers have eliminated
over 100,000 jobs since 2007,
opportunities for writers and reporters
continue to grow as the desire for
information and
commentary has never
been stronger. But it
becomes less and less
clear as to who is a
journalist and who is
just someone with a
web site.
Cartoon by Ted Rall
Sources used for this power point
presentation.
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Ushistory.com
Answers.com
Pulitzer.com
Poynter.com
Pbs.org
Latimes.com
Journalism.org
Encyclopedia.com
Google.com
History.journalism.ku.edu
Ablongman.com