A BRIEF HISTORY OF

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF JOURNALISM

origins

• Fourth Estate refers to role played by news media in democracy

• Freedom of Press was formally recognized in Bill of Rights of 1689

• key role in French Revolution and formally recognized in Britain in 1803

penny press: early 19th Century

• newspapers sold for a penny, making them accessible to everyone

• tried to attract larger audiences with advertising rather than subscriptions

new york herald: 1835

• this paper added features that are now staples in modern journalism, including:

• financial page

• editorial commentary

• public-affairs reporting

Associated Press

• first wire service

• 1848, 6 New York publishers got together to form the Associated Press

• lead to increased objectivity and high speed communication of the telegraph

• objectivity is a journalistic principle that says journalists should be impartial

• gathered info from various

MINORITY NEWSPAPERS

• through the nineteenth century there were a number of minority or ethnic newspapers (there are many today too)

• Frederick Douglass ran the North Star, Mary Shadd Cary ran the Provincial Freeman out of Windsor and was the first woman to edit a weekly paper

PULITZER VS. HEARST: THE CIRCULATION WARS

• PULITZER: ran the St. Louis Dispatch and the Evening Post and created the New York Post (NY World) in 1883

• built an empire using sensational reporting, dramatic and compelling stories and “crusades”

• in 1904 he shifted to public service journalism and investigative reporting

Pulitzer and yellow

journalismFirst to put colour into comics and the comic strip which was most famous for the Yellow Kid (think 19th C South Park) gave rise to the term Yellow Journalism: a style of journalism in which stories were sensationalized and often partly or wholly made up for dramatic effect

William Randolph Hearst

• took over the San Francisco Examiner in 1887 at 23 and acquired New York Morning Journal in 1895 and the Evening Journal

• Over time he acquired Boston American, Chicago Examiner, Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar

• criticized by many (including Orson Welles in Citizen Kane) for his sensationalized news,

• credited with starting the Spanish-American War

muckrakers

• a group of journalists in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who investigated business and political corruption

rise of electronic journalism

• Golden age of newspapers declined with the advent of radio

• news could be immediate and “free”

• even more decline with TV in the 50s

Edward R. Murrow

• set the standard for journalism in the 1950s with hard hitting news

• his commentary was watched by many and had great influence

• He said of television: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, and yes, it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is nothing but wires and lights in a box.”

foundations of modern journalism

• the Hutchins Commission published a landmark report titled A Free and Responsible Press, critiquing the state of press in the US

• it was argued that the public has a right to information that affects it and the press has a responsibility to present that information

• result: new and revamped schools of journalism

• separation between editorial and business operations