Media Today, 4th Edition
Chapter Recaps and Study Guide
Chapter 8: The Newspaper Industry
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
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Describe key developments in U.S. newspaper history.
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Explain the production, distribution, and exhibition processes of various types of
newspapers.
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Recognize and discuss the challenges faced by the newspaper industry today and
some approaches to dealing with them.
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Describe the ways that newspapers have begun to reach out to audiences through
digital technologies, on the internet and elsewhere.

Apply your media literacy skills to evaluate the newspaper industry and its impact
on your everyday life.
The development of the newspaper:
 Newspapers are defined as printed products created on a regular basis (weekly or
daily) and released in multiple copies.
 The development of the newspaper is closely associated with the invention of
movable type and Gutenberg’s printing press of the mid-1400s.
 European monarchies attempted by several means to control and censor what
early newspapers published.
 Regular newspapers appeared in the British American colonies in the 1600s.
 Rise of the adversarial press.
o The trials of printers James Franklin and John Peter Zenger signaled the
emergence in North America of an adversarial press (a press that had the
ability to argue with government).
o The Zenger case was especially important in advancing the adversarial
press, because it introduced the defense of “truth” in a seditious libel case.
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Newspapers and political power after the American Revolution.
o Newspapers played an important role in the Revolution, and nine of the
original thirteen states protected the press from government interference.
o The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1791) stated that
“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press.”
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Newspapers in post-revolutionary America.
o Most were small, family operated businesses with limited circulations in
larger cities.
o Many were aligned with political parties.
o Most people didn’t read them, because of illiteracy and price.
o Financing was based primarily on subscription.
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Newspapers became mass media.
o The Hoe steam-powered cylinder press made large print runs possible, so
the unit price dropped to one cent.
o Literacy among the working class increased.
o The New York Sun appears in 1833 and becomes the first mass medium in
the U.S.; the Sun encouraged the development of other similar papers,
called penny papers (or the penny press) because of the one cent unit
price.
o Vastly increased circulation characterized the penny papers.
o Changing approaches to the news.
 The new penny papers were financed by advertising.
 The new penny papers redefined news by actually gathering
factual stories and by providing various sections that appealed to
different kinds of readers.
 The new penny press introduced the byline, the dateline, and the
headline to newspapers, as well as the inverted pyramid style of
organizing stories.
o Organizing the news process.
 The changes in content required the development of complex
organizations to run newspapers, and interaction with other
organizations like the Western Union telegraph company and the
Associated Press, founded in 1849 as a cooperative news gathering
company.
 Objectivity, in the sense that today’s journalists use the term, did
not characterize the mid-1800s press.
o A revolution in newspaper publishing (late nineteenth century).
 A readership revolution.
 Industrialization, urbanization, the rise of literacy among
the working class, and efficient large-scale distribution
made it possible for newspapers to develop advertising as
the basis of the financing.
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The need to reach large numbers of readers encouraged
competitors to make newspapers visually attractive and to
include photos.
o Print journalism in the early twentieth century.
 The industry significantly expanded and became more
organizationally complex, adding extensive departments of
advertising and circulation and providing increased variety in
content..
 Heavy competition encouraged a form of sensationalism called
yellow journalism, a term reflecting keen competition between
Hearst and Pulitzer to gain control of a comic strip called The
Yellow Kid; sensationalism was a major component in the
reporting of the Spanish–American War in the late nineteenth
century and the explosion that destroyed the battleship Main in
Havana Harbor.
 Public concern over yellow journalism encouraged the industry to
professionalize, signaled by the establishment of the first
journalism school at the University of Missouri and the graduate
school of journalism at Columbia University.
 The industry consolidated into newspaper chains, companies that
owned papers throughout the country.
 The tabloid form emerged in the big cities and was associated
with the youth culture of the 1920s; the tabloids were easy to read
on public transportation, emphasized photos, and were described as
jazz journalism.
o Newspaper industry woes.
 Advertising, sales, and jobs all declined in the industry during the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
 Radio and television caused the number of dailies to decline; the
readership also declined.
 The World Wide Web competes with newspapers for advertising.
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An overview of the newspaper industry.
o The industry is divided into the publication of dailies and weeklies.
 Daily circulation has moved downward, caused by free newspapers
like Metro and the emergence of the internet’s online news sites
and cable TV channels.
 The daily newspaper chains are increasingly viewed as less
profitable because of competition from other media;
investors are frustrated over downward or static trends in
profitability.
 Several major chains have recently been sold.
 Weekly circulation has been less threatened by the newer media;
the weeklies tend to carve out specialized audiences.
 They include so-called alternative weeklies targeting young,
urban audiences, and shoppers aimed at particular neighborhoods.
o Newspapers are seeking audience niches in an attempt to specialize.
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Financing the newspaper business.
o Retail ads serve local businesses and are the most lucrative.
o Classified ads are short announcements for products or services and the
are the second most lucrative.
o National ads come from large companies not located in the local area; cooperative ads are co-sponsored by a national company and a local retail
outlet.
o Freestanding inserts (FSIs) advertise particular products and services;
they’re added to the newspaper and distributed with it.
o Advertisers base their ad decisions on cost per thousand (CPM), the
amount of money they have pay a media outlet to reach one thousand
people one time; they’re always looking for an efficient (meaning low)
CPM. This is why circulation figures are so important.
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Advertising challenges facing newspapers.
o The National Newspaper Network (NNN) makes it possible for an
advertiser to place an ad in any newspaper anywhere in the U.S.
o Some advertisers are following their targets to the internet, encouraging
some newspapers to set up their websites that provide a variety of
services.
o Online activities are bringing in a small percentage of revenue, but the
percentage is steadily growing.
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Circulation challenges facing newspapers.
o The number of readers typically shrinks when the number of newspapers
in an area declines.
o The decline in young readership may eventually result in a decline in older
readers as young people age.
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Production in the newspaper industry.
o The publisher is in charge of a newspaper’s operation, and policies are
implemented by the editor and managing editor.
o The advertising–editorial ratio determines the daily news hole.
o Reporters include general assignment reporters, beat reporters, and
freelancers; news reports also come from wire services, including the
Associated Press, and from syndicates, companies that sell a variety of
newspaper content.
o Reporters work on a deadline, the time that their stories must be
submitted; copyeditors check and edit the submitted stories; some
reporters also write online blogs and submit stories to online versions of
their newspapers.
o Pagination is the ability to display and compose completed pages, with
pictures and graphics on screen; the digital technology allows editors to
submit images to plates in the printing operation.
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Distribution and the newspaper industry.
o Newspaper firms, especially dailies, are typically involved in distributing
their own products.
o The most basic question they confront has to do with the geographic area
in which they will market the paper, a decision based on the location of
consumers that major advertisers want to reach, the location of present and
future printing plants, competing newspapers, and consumer loyalty to the
paper.
o Newspapers have developed alternative distribution and marketing tactics
that include buying newspapers in fringe areas.
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A critical view of marketing and distribution in the newspaper industry.
o Media critics say that decisions to emphasize certain areas and not others
can affect the makeup of the newspapers themselves, as publishers
encourage editors to develop features and pursue news of interest to the
target audience.
o Major dailies have been concentrating their circulation efforts on the
suburbs as opposed to the core cities that used to be their audience base.
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Exhibition in the newspaper industry.
o The exhibition point of a newspaper will depend on the type of paper.
o Circulation executives for paid weeklies and dailies prefer the exhibition
point to be their readers’ homes or places of work, as opposed to a
newsstand, because of the guarantee of subscription.
o A key issue in the newspaper industry is finding ways to get people to read
newspapers at a time when news and entertainment are available from so
many electronic sources.
o Because newspaper circulation has declined, it’s difficult for papers to
reach total market coverage (TMC); direct mail firms and marriage
mail outlets have attempted to take advantage by sending ads directly to
homes.
o Some newspapers have started their own direct mail activities and
shoppers; some have told advertisers that ads lose credibility when they
are associated with shoppers.
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A key industry issue: building readership.
o Building print readership.
 Newspapers are trying to make their layouts more attractive and
colorful, similar to USA Today.
 Newspapers are trying to design special sections to attract crucial
audiences.
 Newspapers are emphasizing localism to increase readership.
o Building digital newspapers.
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Newspapers are developing online versions in order to generate
repeat users and to generate enough revenue from the digital
version to make up for losses on the print side.
The digital version needs to be constantly updated; users can
download stories, an example of podcasting, or use RSS feeds or
mobile feeds.
As on the print side, digital versions stress localism.
Some newspapers have purchased other media properties that
enlarge their audiences.
Media literacy and the newspaper industry.
o Newspapers are in a period of transition as they attempt to adapt to the
digital age.
o The future delivery system may be online or, more probably, a
combination of online and print.
o Some observers predict the demise of print newspapers, but the medium’s
history would suggest adaptation and change rather than demise.
o How the newspaper adapts will help determine the nature of the news flow
through our society.