Newspapers & the
Rise of Modern
Journalism
Colonial Newspapers

Sept. 25, 1690:
Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick,
by Boston printer Benjamin Harris.

Banned after one issue.
“Whereas some have lately presumed to Print and
Disperse a Pamphlet, Entitled, Publick Occurrences,
both Forreign and Domestick: Boston, Thursday,
Septemb. 25th, 1690. Without the least Privity and
Countenace of Authority. The Governour and Council
having had the perusal of said Pamphlet, and finding
that therein contained Reflections of a very high
nature: As also sundry doubtful and uncertain
Reports, do hereby manifest and declare their high
Resentment and Disallowance of said Pamphlet, and
Order that the same be Suppressed and called in;
strickly forbidden any person or persons for the future to
Set forth any thing in Print without License first obtained
from those that are or shall be appointed by the
Government to grant the same."
Colonial Newspapers
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New-York Weekly Journal (est. 1733, ed.
John Peter Zenger). Belonged to Popular
Party and criticized Royal Governor of New
York.
Zenger arrested in 1734, charged with
seditious libel.
Sympathetic jury rules in 1735 that
newspapers have a right to criticize public
officials, as long as report is true.
Colonial Newspapers

By 1765, about 30 newspapers in American
colonies

Two types:


Political/partisan press
Commercial press
Ben Franklin’s
Pennsylvania Gazette,
Jan. 2, 1750
Colonial Newspapers
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Read by relatively few political and mercantile
elites
About 6 cents each/$10-12 year subscription
Circulations 1000-2000 for most popular
1791: First Amendment
The Penny Press
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1830
1840
650 weeklies 65 dailies
1,141 weeklies 138 dailies
U.S. Population
• 1830
12.9 million (.9 million urban)
• 1840
17.1 million (1.5 million urban)
The Penny Press
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New York Sun (Sept. 3, 1833), ed. Benjamin Day
New York Herald (est. 1835), ed. James Gordon Bennett
New York Tribune (est. 1841), ed. Horace Greeley
New York Times (est. 1851) ed. Henry Raymond
The Penny Press
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Jacksonian Era
Universal white male suffrage
Nation expanding westward
Cheaper paper/steam-powered press
Higher literacy rates
Favored human interest stories
Developed beat reporting
Rise of classified ads (want ads)
Printed nearly every advertisement (patent
medicines, etc.)
The Penny Press
Big City Papers

Rise of consumer ethos

Sociological shift in U.S. population:
•
•
1880: 80% rural
1920: 80% urban
20% urban
20% rural
The Age of Yellow Journalism
Pulitzer, New York World,
1883
Hearst, New York Journal,
1895
The Age of Yellow Journalism
•Put in visuals, maps, pictures
•Sensational human interest stories
•LOTS of ads
•Rise of consumer ethos=Sociological
shift.
The Age of Yellow Journalism
The “Yellow Kid” cartoon by R.F. Outcault
R.F.
Outcault’s
work
Buster Brown by R.F. Outcault
The Age of Yellow Journalism
•
•
The Spanish-American War, 1898
U.S.S. Maine
The Age of Yellow Journalism
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The Spanish-American War, 1898
U.S.S. Maine
Hearst’s
New York
Journal,
after Feb.
15, 1898
explosion
of U.S.S.
Maine

Artist Frederic Remington telegrammed
Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba and
"There will be no war."

Hearst responded "Please remain. You
furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
Citizen Kane = Randolph Hearst
Referencing the Spanish American war
Referencing the Yellow Kid
=
“Pulitzer's audacity, and his historical
accomplishment, lay in trying to supply
it all -- high-minded editorials and
socially conscious crusades alongside
a gritty procession of headless corpses,
adulterous clergy, and circulationboosting stunts. He offered readers a
journalistic supermarket, not a Holiday
Inn.”
--Richard Norton Smith, CJR
The Advent of Modern Journalism

Ochs and the New York Times, 1896
“just the facts”
•
The idea of objectivity as a marketing tool

Style influenced by AP wire service (1848) and
Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Sec. of War
•
Since national and international newspapers
reflected a wide range of political orthodoxies, wire
service reporters and editors stayed neutral.
•
Also: the less words, the cheaper to transmit over
the wires.
The Inverted Pyramid
1) most important details - 5 Ws and H
2) key quotes, supporting evidence
3) supporting facts, more details
4) supporting quotes, more explanation
5) least important details
Cut from bottom up

Edward Stanton’s wire report of Lincoln’s
assassination, 1865:

“This evening, at about 9:30 P.M., at Ford’s Theater,
the President, while sitting in his private box with
Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Harris and Major Rathburn, was
shot by an assassin, who suddenly entered the box
and approached behind the President--The wound
is mortal.”
Interpretive Journalism
•
Objective style becomes standard by 1920s
•
Limits of objectivity begin to become apparent.
After WWI, some newspapers begin to explore
analytical function of news.
[Wider use of newspaper columns]
•
Press-Radio War. Newspapers angry at
broadcasters for reading their news.
[Development of broadcast commentary]
New Journalism (circa 1960s)
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Again, criticism of objective-style reporting
Advocacy Journalism
Precision Journalism
New Journalism (circa 1960s)
•
Literary Journalism
•
Roots in writers like
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
James Agee
Ernest Hemingway
A.J. Leibling
Lillian Ross
John Steinbeck
Contemporary Practioners: Hunter S. Thompson (gonzo
journalism), Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion. Later
John McPhee, Tracy Kidder.
•
Hunter S. Thompson
Joan Didion
Truman Capote
Tom Wolfe
Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (1973)
There is nothing in McGovern’s campaign, so far,
to suggest that he understands this kind of thing.
For all his integrity, he is still talking to the Politics
of the Past. He is still naïve enough to assume
that anybody who is honest and intelligent—with a
good voting record on “the issues”—is a natural
man for the White House.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail ‘72 (1973)
But this is stone bullshit. There are only two ways to
make it in big-time politics today: One is to come on
like a mean dinosaur, with a high-powered machine
that scares the shit out of your entrenched opposition
(like Daley or Nixon) . . . and the other is to tap the
massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young,
disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned
the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like
being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you
have to choose immediately between a Ford and a
Chevy.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
But Jane has heard nothing except that other
husbands, and not hers, are safe and accounted for.
And thus, on a sunny day in Florida, outside of the
Jacksonville Naval Air Station, in a little white cottage,
a veritable dream house, another beautiful young
woman was about to be apprised of the quid pro quo
of her husband's line of work, of the trade off, as one
might say, the subparagraphs of a contract written in
no visible form. Just as surely as if she had the entire
roster in front of her, Jane now realized that only two
men in the squadron were unaccounted for. One was
a pilot named Bud Jennings; the other was Pete. She
picked up the telephone and did something that was
much frowned on in a time of emergency. She called
the squadron office. The duty officer answered.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
"I want to speak to Lieutenant Conrad," said Jane. "This is Mrs.
Conrad."
"I'm sorry," the duty officer said—and then his voice cracked. "I'm
sorry . . . I . . ." He couldn't find the words! He was about to cry!
"I'm—that's—I mean . . . he can't come to the phone!"
He can't come to the phone!
"It's very important!" said Jane.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
"I'm sorry—it's impossible—" The duty officer could hardly get
the words out because he was so busy gulping back sobs.
Sobs! "He can't come to the phone." "Why not? Where is
he?"
"I'm sorry—" More sighs, wheezes, snuffling gasps. "I can't
tell you that. I—I have to hang up now!"
And the duty officer's voice disappeared in a great surf of
emotion and he hung up.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
The duty officer! The very sound of her voice was more than
he could take!
The world froze, congealed, in that moment. Jane could no
longer calculate the interval before the front doorbell would
ring and some competent long-faced figure would appear,
some Friend of Widows and Orphans, who would inform
her, officially, that Pete was dead.
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
This is a story about love and death in the golden land,
and begins with the country. The San Bernadino Valley
lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by San Bernadino
Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place; not the
coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the
soft westerlies off the Pacific, but a harsher California,
haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains,
devastated by the hot drop Santa Ana wind that comes
down the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines
through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the
nerves.
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
October is the bad month for the wind, the month when
breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up spontaneously.
There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a
scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and
prickly dread, wherever the wind blows.
Literary Journalism
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Differences from objective-style?
Strengths/weaknesses?
European Journalism

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Much more based on interpretation of “the facts”
Journalists are more respected: their opinions are
valued
Contemporary Journalism
Emphasis on “infotainment”
Consensus vs. Conflict in Newspapers
News Values
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Timeliness
Proximity
Prominence
Consequence
Human interest
Objectivity
Objectivity not a science, but a style of
reporting.
“Facts” are just not out there, but are
organized in a culturally meaningful practice.
Conventions of Objectivity
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Detached 3rd person point of view
Two sides to every story
Use of quotes/soundbites to create drama
Keep the story in the present
Conventions of Objectivity
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Detached 3rd person point of view
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This is a style, a storytelling strategy, but not
scientifically objective.
This style favors easily accessible, EXPERT sources
This style favors polls/surveys
This style favors stenography journalism
THE CASE OF RICHARD JEWELL
Conventions of Objectivity

Two sides to every story


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creates a false sense of totality
creates phony sense of debate...quotes from 2
different people set up as debate.
a narrative strategy to create conflict.
Conventions of Objectivity
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Use of quotes/soundbites to create drama
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Selection of best quotes/SOUNDBITES is not an
objective process.
Conventions of Objectivity

Keep the story in the present

This FORCES modern journalism to avoid
context.