Title: History of American Journalism
1History of Journalism
in America
Mrs. Renee Robinson Journalism I
2Quest For News
- People have always had a desire to know the news.
- News was carried by bards and messengers.
- In the Middle Ages, gossip and news was exchanged
during annual fairs.
3First Newspapers
- By 59 B.C., the Romans had hand-copied news
sheets called Acta Diurna (Daily Acts) that was
posted about the city.
4Cranking It Up
- Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press
(using moveable type) in the 15th century. This
process enabled mass production of newspapers.
5The Gazetta
- To obtain a copy of the earliest newspapers
printed in 1566, a citizen paid a small gold coin
called a gazetta.
6The Good Times
- When William Caxton set up the first British
press, the throne (King Edward IV) approved
newspapers because the paper brought culture to
the country in the form of literature.
7A Sense of Humor
- The press began criticizing and angering the
monarchy. They made political cartoons like
Humpty Dumpty and Hector Protector.
8Was That a Joke?
- Everyone but the monarchy was laughing. The Crown
began requiring a license to print and weekly
inspections of London printing presses. In 1557,
the Star Chamber arrested and hanged William
Carter for supporting Catholics. Queen Mary was
on the throne.
9History of American Journalism
- Newspapers have not always been the
sophisticated, full-color extravaganzas we know
today. American journalism had its humble
beginnings in the Colonial period with the
publication of Benjamin Harris Publick
Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, which
was shut down after its one and only issue on
Sept. 26, 1690.
10- This newspaper was printed on three sheets of
stationery-size paper and the fourth page was
left blank so that readers could add their own
news before passing it on to someone else.
11- Unfortunately, the essays which this paper
contained did not please the authorities, and
Harris had not bought the required license, so
the paper was shut down after just one issue.
12- The first continuously published American
newspaper did not come along for 14 more years.
The Boston News-Letter premiered on April 24,
1704. The publisher was John Campbell. The paper
originally appeared on a single page, printed on
both sides and issued weekly.
13- In the early years of its publication the
News-Letter was filled mostly with news from
London journals detailing the intrigues of
English politics, and a variety of events
concerning the European wars. The rest of the
newspaper was filled with items listing ship
arrivals, deaths, sermons, political
appointments, fires, accidents and the like.
14- One of the most sensational stories published
when the News-Letter was the only newspaper in
the colonies was the the account of how
Blackbeard the pirate was killed in hand-to-hand
combat on the deck of a sloop that had engaged
his ship in battle.
15- On view here is the May 14, 1761 issue of the
News-Letter. The front page is displayed in its
entirety. As was the custom then, the front page
was devoted to events overseas. This issue
contains news from London, a speech by the King
to the House of Commons, and various accounts
from Westminster and Whitehall
16- Also displayed from this issue is an ad from
the back page for a Scheme of a Lottery. The
lottery was created to sell 6000 tickets at 2
each to raise funds to pave the highway in
Charlestown from the Ferry to the Neck. Of the
12,000 to be raised, according to the ad,
10,800 is earmarked for prizes and 1200 for
paving the highway.
17- Perhaps the most famous name in early
American journalism is that of Peter Zenger.
Publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, Zenger
was accused and tried for libel against the
colonial British government in 1735. In this
picture, Zenger is arrested and his printing
press is burned by Colonial authorities.
18- Zenger was found innocent and it was that one
verdict that paved the way for a free and
independent press in America. The Zenger case
established that truth is a defense against a
libel charge. For the first time it was
considered proper for the press to question and
criticize the government. This is a pillar of a
free press in the United States and any country
that is free. Journalists have to be able to
question the actions of the government in order
to make them accountable.
19Free Press
- Even though the Bill of Rights guarantees Freedom
of the Press, the right has always been under
attack by the government and other forces. - The Freedom of the Press right must be constantly
guarded.
20- All that is needed for newspapers to become
a mass medium is a good idea and a cheaper way to
mass produce papers. Along comes Benjamin Day in
1833. Day opened the New York Sun and created the
Penny Press. -
21- Newspapers of the day cost about 10 cents
each . . . too expensive for the masses. But
there was a large literate audience out there.
Day took advantage of the fact that he could
print thousands of papers inexpensively and sold
the papers for a penny each.
22- He also changed the content of newspapers to
make it more sensational and more popular to the
lower class. He hired boys to hawk the newspapers
on street corners. It was the Penny Press that
also began using advertising as a way to bring
readers information, but advertising also helped
by paying for the printing and distribution of
newspapers.
23- Cheap newspapers sold to the workers were a
hit. His idea was huge success and newspapers
crossed that line that made them truly mass
media. Others were quick to follow his lead. They
became so powerful that they were called Lords of
the Press.
24Getting the Scoop
- The New York Sun (It Shines For All) appeared
in 1833. It was sensational, vulgar, and
entertaining. It was the first penny press
newspaper. - In 1841, Horace Greeley founded the New York
Tribune. It had more substance than the Sun. - The scoop (beating the competition) developed.
25- The Civil War era brought some new
technology to the publishing industry.
Photography became a popular addition to
newspapers. Matthew Brady set up a camera on the
battlefields and photographed the soldiers at
war. One of his photographs appears above.
26- An invention that helped speed news along was
the telegraph. Reporters were able to send
encoded news back to their papers as it was
happening.
27- Abraham Lincoln became the first president to
direct armies in the field directly from the
White House.
28Three Other Factors Improve Publishing Speed
- Steamship
- Telegraph
- Rotary press
29- During the darkest days of the terrible war
Lincoln would pace back and forth in the
telegraph office awaiting news of the fate of the
nation that would emerge from the new telegraph
invention.
30- Because the telegraph wires kept going down
on a regular basis, sometimes the story that a
reporter was trying to send got cut off before it
was finished.
31- To alleviate this situation, reporters
developed the inverted pyramid form of writing,
putting the most important facts at the beginning
of the story.
32- This way, the most important part of the
story would most likely reach the newspaper, and
if anything got cut off, it would be the lesser
important details of what happened.
33Increasing Speed
- Other methods and inventions that increased the
speed of transmitting news include
correspon-dents, the steamship, carrier pigeons,
the Pony Express, the railroad.
34More, Better, Faster
- Cooperative newsgathering companies, like the
Associated Press speeded the process. - A transatlantic cable was laid, linking America
to Europe. - Monthly magazines were founded.
- New type designs, color printing, and engraving
made it possible to use photographs.
35- As newspapers began to compete more and more
with one another to increase circulation and
obtain more advertising revenue, a different type
of journalism was developed by publishers Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. -
36- In the mid-1890s, Pulitzer (in the New York
World) and Hearst (in the San Francisco Examiner
and later the New York Morning Journal)
transformed newspapers with sensational and
scandalous news coverage, the use of drawings and
the inclusion of more features such as comic
strips.
37- After Pulitzer began publishing color comic
sections that included a strip entitled "The
Yellow Kid" (left) in early 1896, this type of
paper was labeled "yellow journalism."
38- Drawn by R.F. Outcault, the popular (if
now-unfunny) strip became a prize in the struggle
between Pulitzer and Hearst in the New York
newspaper wars.
39- Outcault moved the strip to Hearst's papers
after nine months, where it competed with a
Pulitzer-sponsored version of itself.
40- Yellow Kid cartoonist Richard Outcault
41- One of the most popular reporters of the
Yellow Journalism era was a woman named Elizabeth
Cochrane who wrote under the name Nellie Bly.
She wrote with anger and compassion. She wrote to
expose the many wrongs that developed in
nineteenth century cities after the industrial
boom. Most of her reporting was on women.
42- She directed her articles to upper class
women to open their eyes and hearts to their
impoverished, hungry, hopeless sisters. She felt
very strongly that women and their issues were
not represented in newspapers or any where else.
43- She wanted people to know different womens
plights and understand why some became fallen
women." She hoped that by reading her articles
other women would want to help their sisters. She
wanted people to realize the unfairness that
women were afforded at the turn of the century.
44- She got a job on the Pittsburgh Dispatch
when she wrote a furious letter complaining about
an editorial that claimed that women were good
for little but housework. She covered social
questions such as divorce, slum life, and
conditions in Mexico for the paper.
45- In 1887 she moved to Joseph Pulitzer's New
York World, for which she exposed the conditions
in which the insane lived by pretending to be mad
and getting herself committed to the asylum on
Blackwell's Island. She also investigated
sweat-shops tenements, the world of petty crime
and Corps de Ballet by the same methods.
46- The high point in Blyes life, however was
the round-the-world trip, which she made in 72
days, 6 hours,11 minutes and 14 seconds. Joseph
Pulitzer sent a special train to meet her return
to San Francisco, and she was greeted by
fireworks, gun salutes, brass bands and parade on
Broadway.
47- In 1895 Nellie Bly married a millionaire,
Robert Seaman, 50 years older than herself, and
retired. She lost most of his money after he died
and in 1919 tried unsuccessfully to make a
comeback. She died in 1920.
48- After William Randolph Hearst moved to New
York, he and Joseph Pulitzer competed for readers
by making their papers more and more sensational.
49- In 1895, Hearst purchased the New York
Morning Journal and entered into a head-to-head
circulation war with his former mentor, Joseph
Pulitzer, owner of the New York World.
50- To increase circulation both started to
include articles about the Cuban Insurrection.
Many stories in both newspaper greatly
exaggerated their claims to make the stories more
sensational.
51- Both Hearst and Pulitzer published images of
Spanish troops placing Cubans into concentration
camps where they were suffered and died from
disease and hunger.
52- The American public purchased more newspapers
because of the sensational writing, and this
strongly encouraged Hearst and Pulitzers
newspapers to write more sensationalized stories.
53- Some of the most sensationalized articles
concerned Butcher Weyler and his
reconcentration policies, and the Cuban
Insurrection.
54- Circulation continued to soar as the Journal
reported that an American civilian was imprisoned
without a trial and stating that no American was
safe in Cuba as long as Weyler was in charge.
55- Another major story that enraged the American
public was written by one of Hearst's reporters,
Richard Harding Davis, who came upon the story
while on his way back from Cuba.
56- The reporter learned of the story of Senorita
Clemencia Arango. Arango was forced out of Cuba
for helping the rebels, and was supposedly
strip-searched by Spanish detectives.
57- This angered the Victorian ideals of the
American public even though the story was found
to be in error and that a woman searched Arango
and not Spanish male detectives.
58- This cartoon made fun of the way Hearst and
Pulitzer were each claiming to own the story
about the Spanish-American War.
59Lasting Legacy
- One of the biggest accomplishments of the
muckraking movement was the investigation and
legislation that created the Food and Drug Act of
1906
60High Times to Low Times
- There were more newspapers on the market in 1910
than any other time in history. - The numbers decreased afterward, due to
competition, mergers, the cost of operation, and
the electronic media.
61A Picture Says
- Photojournalism developed along with newspaper
technology. The large-format Life magazine, Time,
and Look magazines were known for their visual
images. They set the standard for photography and
photojournalism. Most of the photography
magazines folded because they couldnt compete
with the images on television.
62As the U.S. population in the latter half of the
20th century has shifted from cities to suburbs,
and with the growth in competition from other
media, many large city newspapers have had to
cease publication, merge with their competitors,
or be taken over by a chain of newspaper
publishers such as the Gannett Company or
Knight-Ridder Inc.
63In 1982, using satellite transmission and color
presses, the Gannett chain established a new
national newspaper, USA Today, published and
circulated throughout the United States, Europe,
and Asia. Gannett was the largest newspaper
chain in 1985, owning 88 dailies.
64The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and
USA Today are read all over the country small
towns and rural districts usually have daily or
weekly local papers made up largely of syndicated
matter, with a page or two of local news and
editorials. These local papers are frequently
influential political organs.
65Since the invention of the telegraph, which
enormously facilitated the rapid gathering of
news, the great news agencies, such as Reuters in
England, Agence France-Presse in France, and
Associated Press and United Press International
in the United States, have sold their services to
newspapers and to their associate members.
66Improvements in photocomposition and in printing
(especially the web offset press), have enhanced
the quality of print and made possible the
publication of huge editions at great speed.
Modern newspapers are supported primarily by the
sale of advertising space. Computer technology
has also had an enormous impact on the production
of news and newspapers.
67By the 1990s this technology had also affected
the nature of newspapers, as the first
independent online daily appeared on the
Internet. By the decade's end some 700 papers
had Web sites, some of which carried news
gathered by their own staffs, and papers
regularly scooped themselves by publishing
electronically before the print edition appeared.