Time Machine Assignment
21st Century Media
Goal: To gain a deeper understanding of how journalism has changed, and stayed the same,
over the years.
Deadline: 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010
Length: 800-1,000 words, plus a brief oral presentation of what you found.
How to turn in: your discussion section professor will tell you how he or she prefers to receive
the assignment.
What to do: By the end of the quarter, we will be discussing not only where media are today
but also where they might be going. To ensure that your thoughts are grounded in what we
have known historically about media availability and use, our class will go back in a “time
machine” to study journalism in previous decades.
Your discussion section professor will assign each of you a decade between 1920 and 2000
(more than one student will be assigned to a decade but this is an individual task). You should
then research what journalism you would have consumed and why if you were “transported”
back to that decade. Assume that even in this previous time, you were the successful and smart
college student you are now.
Some questions you should consider:
1. What kinds of media were available in your decade?
2. Who were some of the biggest and most influential journalism outlets during your
decade (newspaper, magazine, television, radio, and/or online)?
3. Were there any particular journalists of that era who would have appealed to you?
4. What were the journalism norms of your decade? Objective or crusading? Sensational
or even handed?
5. How fragmented was the journalism audience during this era? Did most people
consume the same news products, or were there audience niches that you might have
belonged to?
6. What was the current technology that aided or inhibited the delivery of news? Were
there any recent technology developments that were changing news distribution?
7. Were there any government resources supporting news delivery or regulations
restricting news delivery at the time? Were they the subject of active debate?
8. What provided the economic support for the collection and delivery of news?
9. Were there changes in the economic or social lives of citizens that made them more or
less interested in news?
Organization:
I can think of two ways you might want to organize your paper:
1. An essay that outlines in third-person narrative fashion the state of media during your
decade.
2. A day-in-the-life narrative of your media consumption. For example, someone writing
about this decade might begin: “I woke up to the sound of National Public Radio’s
‘Morning Edition’ on my clock radio. I continued to listen to NPR while I switched on my
laptop and started surfing the Web. I went to the New York Times site to look at the
national and international headlines and to read my favorite columnist, Maureen Dowd.
I always enjoy the snarky yet informed perspective she has about the Obama
administration.
“Of course, I also checked out TMZ and Perez Hilton. …”
You can have some fun with this narrative style, but we expect the same depth of
research as you would do for a more traditional essay.
Research Resources:
To do this assignment well, you will need to conduct library research as well as finding
information online. Many journalism textbooks contain good historical overviews. One of the
most thorough is The Press and America by Emery and Emery, but there are others. Once you
gain some basic knowledge about the decade, you can dive deeper into research about specific
publications and journalists through books and articles. The Northwestern library’s Web site
has an excellent database of journals about history and journalism. Type in a few relevant
keywords, and you can likely find many helpful articles. You must use at least three different
sources. No more than two of those may be on the Internet. At least one of the sources must be
a primary document that is an example of journalism from your decade.
Expectations:
1.
2.
3.
4.
You will thoroughly research the decade (citations will be evidence of this)
You will be historically accurate
You will write clearly and edit carefully
You will cite all references (footnotes or endnotes are fine)
Doing an excellent job on all four elements will earn you an A, three a B, two a C, and one a
D. Failure to deliver the assignment by the deadline, Oct. 7, 2010, will earn you an F.
You should be prepared to discuss your findings in your discussion section on Oct. 7, 2010.