History of Journalism Group Project (85 points)
Working in assigned groups, you will research and create Power
Point Presentations about periods of “significant social,
economic and technological change” (13 Kovach). During these
periods news goes through “momentous transitions” (Kovach) and
some feel as though we are in one of these periods of transitions
now.
The objective of this project is for you examine how these
transitions worked in that past in order to better understand the
present, and also to be able to project how the news might be
covered in the near future. Each group will be assigned a
specific time period.
Working in groups of three (or four), each will research and
present information on one of the following seven periods:
1830’s - 1860’s
Telegraph, cheaper printing methods, population growth leads to
dramatic increase in newspapers. Include Civil War coverage of
the 1860’s.
Important Papers: New York Sun, New York Herald, New York
Tribune, New York Times. Beginning of Associated Press
People: Benjamin Day, James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley
1880’s
Telephone, typewriter, typesetter, engraving and drops in the
price of paper combine with huge influx of immigrants to create
powerful newspaper industry. Yellow Journalism.
Important Papers: New York World & Sunday World, New York
Journal, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor
People: Joseph Pulitzer, Morrill Goddard, William Randolph
Hearst, Adolph S. Ochs
1920’s – 40’s
Movies (newsreels), radio, and culture of gossip give rise to
newspaper chains.
Important Papers: Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard. Associated
Press reorganized and becomes cooperative.
Consolidations led to fewer newspapers but higher readership.
Morning and Evening editions.
People: E.W. Scripps, Louella Parsons, Edward R. Murrow (radio),
H.V. Katelborn (radio)
1950’s
Television and the Cold War
News Networks: CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS
People: Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Edward R.
Murrow
1980’s & 1990’s
Satellites, Cable Television news stations, and improvements in
digital technology create a revolution in mass communications.
Newspapers & Networks: CNN, AOL, MSNBC, USA Today, e-mail and the
Internet.
People: Ted Turner, Allen Neuharth, Rupert Murdoch
Present
Media mergers (convergence), Online news, weblogs, digital photojournalism, Political bias
Internet & Broadcast News Outlets: Google News, CNN, MSNBC, Fox
News
People: Bill O’Reilly, Matt Drudge, Anderson Cooper
Future
Cell phones, broadband, podcasting and videocasting,
participatory journalism, RSS, personalization of news
This will be a brief research project.
Your project will be presented to the class and
then published on my website.
To get started:
1. Divide up the work. If you are not in the Present or
Future Group, do this in the following way:
a. One person in your group should be responsible for
gathering information and visuals on social, economic,
and technological change during your assigned time
period.
b. One person should be responsible for gathering
information and visuals on the important people of
your time period. Find short biographies that focus
on their importance to the news industry.
c. One person should be responsible for finding visuals
and information on the major newspapers and news
events of your time period. You should be able to show
the class how newspapers and the news changed during
your time period. Present a news article (or audio or
video file) covering one of the major news events.
Focus on innovations in presenting and telling news
stories and how the look of the news changed.
2. In the Present and Future Groups, each person should be
responsible for one of the topics listed in the
description.
Some important information resources:
www.biography.com – can be a resource for people.
ProQuest (through the IMC’s electronic resources) – contains
newspaper articles from all over the country from the past 20
years.
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decades.html – provides social and
cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
http://www.nytco.com/company-timeline-2001.html – The history of
the New York Times with lots of visuals.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/1980s.shtml - A capsule history
of online news and information systems. Good for groups doing
the 1980’s and future of journalism
http://www.otr.com/news.html – contains brief biographies of
important radio broadcasters with links to radio clips.
http://web.missouri.edu/%7Esmga48/ - short history of technology
and broadcasting 1920-1990.
http://www.museum.tv/home.php - a nice resource from the Museum
of Broadcast Communications. Contains a video clip on the 10th
anniversary of FoxNews along with information on broadcast and
Network news in the Encyclopedia of Television section.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/murrow_e.html –
A brief companion site to a PBS program on Edward R. Murrow with
links to other sites.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/seeitnow/seeitnow.htm The site contains historical information about “See it Now” from
the Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC), as well as “Hear it
Now,” Murrow’s previous radio show with Fred Friendly. It
explores his attitude towards early television and his opening
line of the TV program when it began: “This is an old team trying
to learn a new trade.”
The Present:
http://www.journalism.org – a good site for an analysis of the
news media in the present. They put out a report each year
(starting in 2004 on The State of the Media.
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2006/index.asp They also have
shorter more focused pieces on a variety of topics here:
http://www.journalism.org/node/1760 (Blogging and Online
Journalism), and http://www.journalism.org/node/353 (Media
Mergers) among others.
Future of Journalism Articles:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1062631458.php – A panel of
journalists share their thoughts on where Web journalism has
been, and where it's likely to go.
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=14501 - The
Web and the Future of Writing from The Poynter Institute for
Journalists
http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index.html - an article
on “Abandoning the News” and new forms of journalism that might
emerge.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/blog-welch.asp – nice concise
study of the impact of blogging on journalism.
http://www.journalism.org/node/2390- a discussion of the future
of cell phones and journalism
http://bayosphere.com/blog/dan_gillmor/20050923/grassroots_medias
_potential_better_journalism_and_democracy - a discussion about
the future of “participatory journalism from a leading advocate.
Resources for Visuals of the News:
1830-1880s – Demonstrate what newspapers looked like and how they
covered major stories through the Historical New York Times
offered through the IMC’s electronic databases or go to
http://www.nytco.com/company-timeline-2001.html.
1920s-1940s – Play a radio news report or newsreel to demonstrate
how news was presented differently through these mediums.
Edward R. Murrow radio reports from 1939 and the Forties:
http://www.otr.com/murrow.shtml
1950s – Play a short video from a network news program.
http://mbc.dcms.ihost.com/mbc/ams a clip from Murrow’s See It Now
http://mbc.dcms.ihost.com/mbc/ams Documentary clips on the effect
of television news
1980s & 90s http://www.triotv.com/feeding_the_beast/explore/index.html - this
site contains video clips from Feeding the Beast: The 24-Hour
News Revolution that illustrates the changes during the 1980s &
1990s.
http://www.museum.tv/home.php - Contains a video clip on the 10th
anniversary of FoxNews.
Present – Compare a news article or video to a blog on the same
topic. Popular news blogs include: The Buzzmachine
(http://buzzmachine.com/), Little Green Footballs
(http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/), The Huffington
Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/), and the Daily Koz
(http://www.dailykos.com/).
Future - http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/ - EPIC 2014 – a short
video presentation created by the Museum of Media History in
which projects where trends in the media may take us in the near
future.
Each section of your presentation should open with a brief overview of
that particular aspect of the time period. This information should be
summarized in such a way that key words and phrases are part of your
visual presentation, but the bulk of the information is presented
verbally from group members.
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Requirements:
Each group’s presentation should contain at least four different
sources (three different biographies on biography.com counts as
one source).
Each member of the group should create and present two different
slides.
Each Power Point Slide should highlight the important points of
each aspect on journalism in the time period.
Each slide should incorporate visuals to aid in the understanding
of the text.
Each group’s presentation should include at least three
hyperlinks to sites with more extensive information.
Each group should present a discussion question about the
transformation of news during their time period to the class that
can’t be answered easily by the information presented.
GRADING:
You will be graded individually on your section of the Power
Point, but the presentation, and the way pieces fit together,
will be a group grade.
Content of Section (Individual):
Briefly provides an overview
Includes all major points
Emphasizes relationship to Journalism
Contains at least one hyperlink to an article from the time
period or more extensive information
 Lists Sources Used
__/30
Visual/Audio of Section (Individual)
 Clearly Labeled, Easy to Read, and Well Designed
 Pictures enhance content and serve as a point of entry
 Includes a visual or audio representation of how the news was
presented differently
__/25
Presentation (Group)
 Content is clearly explained
 Elaborates on Key Points Presented
 Transitions from one Section and Group member to another
 Emphasizes the Relationship and Impact of one section on
another
 Presents a discussion question which requires a thoughtful
response.
__/30
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