The Print Media - 6

Newspapers

Historical
Perspective - II

The Beginning of Mass

Communication In

The United States

By 1835, the United States was making newspaper history. Newspapers had freed themselves from government control, and there were more newspapers and newspaper readers than in any other country.

It also helped that because of intense competition, the cost of some newspapers had come down to as low as one-cent a copy. Although this seems like a very low price, we have to remember that this was almost 170 years ago when everything was comparatively cheap.

By this time advertisers had been attracted to newspapers, and young boys were hawking newspapers on street corners. At about this point in history the average citizen was reading two or more newspapers a day. This era, commonly called the era of "The Penny Press," is considered my many historians as the beginning of mass communication in the United States.

The modern beat system of news coverage, where a reporter regularly covers specific sources, such as the police station or city council, was also developed during this period.

Many of the present-day newspapers got their start during this time, including The Chicago Tribune in 1847, and The New York Times in 1851.

Among the newspapers to also appear in the mid-1800s were several that served minority interests. Most notable was Freedom's Journal, a black paper serving the interests of, in the worlds of the masthead, "the colored American." This was the first of more than 40 black newspapers to appear.

When the Cherokee Indians were evicted from their home in Georgia, they started the Cherokee Advocate in their new settlement in Oklahoma. Another Cherokee publication to appear at about the same time was the Cherokee Phoenix, which was written in both Cherokee and English.

The Associated Press Founded

By 1848, the newspapers were trying to cover a wide range of events  --  even events in Europe. Newspaper couldn't afford to send reporters everywhere, so a system of sharing news was worked out. One reporter would cover an event and then share the story with other papers. This cooperative evolved into the Associated Press (AP), now the world's largest newsgathering organization.

Associated Press Statistics

(You may recall from an earlier module that when radio would eventually arrive on the scene there would be a major battle between the AP and newspapers on the one hand, and radio stations on the other.)

 The Effect of the Civil War

The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) quickly stretched the boundaries of newsgathering. Before this time newsgathering had been a bit amateurish and disorganized. However, the public's intense interest in the progress of the war pushed journalism to new levels of efficiency.

War reporting introduced the inverted pyramid style of writing news. Reports from the battlefield often had to be sent by telegraph, which was not totally reliable in those days.  

Since a report could be interrupted before the transmission was complete, or the story might have to be cut down because of financial and space considerations, reporters started the story with the most important developments and facts. These facts were expanded on as the story was developed. (Note illustration on the right.) Thus, the story could be cut without losing the most important facts.

The inverted pyramid style has also become know as the who, what, when, why, and how approach to writing, where each of these questions is answered in the first sentence of the news story. Although this style has continued to this day for writing hard news in newspapers, broadcast writing uses a different style.

The Beginning of Photojournalism

By this time, still film cameras had been invented, although a method of reproducing photos in print was a few years off. Instead, line drawings were made from battlefield photos. The effect was similar to what you see in many of the illustrations in today's Wall Street Journal.

Matthew Brady was the most famous Civil War photographer. His photos brought the horrors of war home to readers. Military leaders on both sides took it on themselves to try to censor and limit battlefield news coverage.

By the late 1800s, a halftone process for reproducing newspaper photographs from photographic prints had been invented. This introduced photojournalism and further spurred interest in newspapers. The history of photography is covered in a bit more detail in another module.

The 1800s marked the beginning of many mainstream daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, which published Volume 1, Number 1, on Sunday, December 4, 1888. The four-page paper featured about an equal number of columns of advertising and news. According to one ad, men's business suits were selling for $16 (marked down from $20).

The Era of the Newspaper Baron

As newspapers became more successful in the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspaper tycoons such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer (of Pulitzer Prize fame) built empires. Although supposedly fiction, the film, Citizen Kane, which we discussed in another module, is widely believed to document Hearst's life  --  so much so that Hearst used his considerable influence to try to (somewhat unsuccessfully) get it banned.

Competition between newspapers became intense and ushered in the era of yellow journalism. Although yellow journalism generally connotes an era of sensationalism, where crime, social scandals, and sex are used to sell papers, the term actually refers to a comic strip  --  one of the first to appear in any newspaper. The comic strip appeared in Pulitzer's New York World newspaper and included a character called the Yellow Kid, printed in yellow ink. Thus, the term yellow journalism.

During this time, Hearst in particular blatantly used his papers to promote his own causes and to viciously attack his enemies.

He was even accused of starting a war to sell newspapers by pushing for U.S. involvement in what turned out to be the Spanish-American War. Hearst sent a reporter to the front to cover the rumored war. When the reporter cabled back that there was no war in progress and that he was ready to come home, Hearst reportedly wired back, "Please remain. You supply the pictures, and I'll supply the war."

After Hearst regularly published a steady stream of vitriolic editorializing against President William McKinley, the President was assassinated. Today, we don't have such vitriolic editorializing in our mainstream newspapers, but some radio talk show hosts generate audiences using the same approach.

The yellow journalism era was followed by the era of Jazz Journalism. This started in 1920, when Hearst and Pulitzer extended yellow journalism into tabloid journalism with an emphasis on sex, violence, murder, and celebrity affairs.

Tabloid newspapers, which are still very much present today, are generally half the size of a normal newspaper, or about 11 by 14 inches.

Popular ads of the day were for soaps (see photo on left), and various creams, ointments and tonics that would supposedly cure about anything.

Papers such as the New York Daily News used screaming headlines, large photos, and short, punchy text to lure readers. It was a New York Daily News reporter that strapped a miniature camera to his leg and secretly took the notorious front-page picture of Ruth Snyder, as she was being electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in 1928.

The original tabloids put a heavy emphasis on blood and gore. However, when supermarket sales became a major outlet, this was replaced by more acceptable fare: "tearjerker" stories, celebrity gossip, psychic tales, religious anecdotes, and various bizarre accounts.

The Era of Responsible Journalism

After the era of jazz journalism (where the content of news and sensationalist fiction frequently overlapped), many people were ready for more accurate and responsible news reporting.

A man by the name of Alolph Ochs believed that a newspaper didn't have to resort to sensational crime, sex, and gore to sell papers. Ochs purchased the New York Times and told readers that his paper wouldn't "soil the breakfast cloth."

It was an idea that was long overdue, especially with middle and upper class readers. Some other New York papers followed, and the era of "responsible journalism" ensued.

Even so, Hearst and Pulitzer kept their focus on "the working class," and tended to stick the concepts of jazz journalism  --  concepts that are still "alive and well" in today's supermarket tabloids.

Radio and TV Impact Newspaper Circulation

By the 1960s, radio and TV news had cut into the circulation of newspapers. Although most people turned first to the broadcast media for fast-breaking news, many relied on newspapers to fill in needed details  --  just as they do today. (The text of a typical radio or TV newscast wouldn't even fill one page of an eight or nine column

TV also changed readership patterns.

Before TV, most people picked up their afternoon newspaper in the evenings after work. Now they turned on TV news at this time and preferred to read a morning newspaper over breakfast. Consequently, the afternoon newspapers, which had long been popular, lost favor. One of the causalities was the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Once the nation's largest afternoon daily, the Herald Examiner ceased publication on November 2, 1989.

By this time, most of the mainstream press had moved away from the excesses of yellow journalism and jazz journalism into an era of responsible journalism. The nation's larger newspapers  --  particularly The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal  --  enjoyed wide respect. The public at that time also had an almost unquestioned loyalty to the nation and its leaders. This unquestioned loyalty then took two major hits: the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal.

The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers were top-secret (classified) documents detailing the decisions and policies behind the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1965-1973).

First, a bit of background.

During the Vietnam War between three and four million Vietnamese on both sides were killed, and more than 58,000 Americans lost their lives. For years this war saturated each night's TV news. The Pentagon Papers brought to light the political and military thinking behind the war  --  including some decisions and justifications that in retrospect are rather questionable.

The government knew that bringing this information to light would undermine the public's confidence in their government  --  and, as it turned out, they were right.

Before the war was over, a large percentage of Americans at home and serving in Vietnam had turned against the war. And since this module is about newspapers, we should mention that an estimated 250 underground antiwar newspapers were published by active-duty soldiers and distributed in coffeehouses.

Opposition to the war started on college campuses and was fostered by campus newspapers. Since the general public was originally behind the war, a major "generational rift" resulted, with many young people being arrested and even in one case killed for protesting the war. Since most of them were engaged in legal demonstrations, most were released from jail within a short time, but the government's point had been made.

However, as questions about the war continued to surface and the toll of dead and wounded mounted, antiwar sentiments finally spread to a significant percentage of the U.S. population.

The U.S. news media, which originally had an almost unquestioned allegiance to the war effort, started reporting the major differences in what they were being told by the U.S. military and the Washington administration, and what they were finding out on their own. The public discovered that more accurate information was often being reported by the foreign media.

Feeling that the public had a right to know what went on behind the scenes of the war, The New York Times announced that they were going to publish the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, who helped write this exhaustive, top-secret study for the government, had leaked the papers to the Times. His efforts to get these papers to the New York Times, and the government's efforts to find and stop him, represented a vicious cat and mouse game for many weeks.

Ellsberg was finally able to get the papers to a reporter, but he was subsequently arrested for treason, which could have carried the death penalty. Fortunately for him, the government had resorted to illegal and highly questionable activities to catch him, and when this came out during the trial, the judge through out the charges.

Even so, the Nixon administration moved to block publication and successfully won temporary injunctions against the New York Times, and later, the Washington Post, which by this time had also planned to publish the papers.

But, on June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that stopping publication amounted to “prior restraint,” which violated First Amendment protections.

Both the New York Times and The Washington Post then published Pentagon Papers. While this was a victory for freedom of the press, the revelations undermined the public's confidence in the government and leadership.

But, another major jolt was on the horizon.

The Watergate Scandal

Having learned from the Vietnam experience, the press now questioned the credibility of government briefings and press releases.

In 1973, two reporters for the Washington Post faced down major threats and engaged in some tenacious investigative journalism to bring to light the corrupt dealings of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

The story of the Watergate Scandal and reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is documented in the Academy Award-winning film, All the President's Men. (The film is well worth renting from you local video store for both its educational and dramatic values.)

While the investigative journalism behind this story further bolstered the credibility of newspapers (not to mention inspiring a generation of investigative journalists), it further undermined public confidence in government.

The general mistrust between the government and the press that emerged during these times continued until the terrorist attacks on the East Coast of the United States in 2001.

Patriotism and the Press

For at least two years following the 9-11 (Sept.11, 2001) terrorist attacks on the East Coast of the United States, patriotism soared.  The public and the press was highly supportive of the administration.

Later, the press would be criticized for not questioning the central justification for launching the Iraq war, which was the presence of weapons of mass destruction. None were found. In a rare admission, The New York Times, considered the nation's most influential newspaper, even accepted some of the blame.

But, in the wave of patriotism that followed 9/11, few wanted to be branded "unpatriotic" by questioning the administration. By 2006, this had started to change, and with the initial exception of FOX news, the media started questioning the administration's decisions on the Iraq war. It was learned that information on some of the questionable justification for the war had been available; it was simply not brought to the public's attention. The media was then criticized for not doing its job as a "watchdog" of the government. 

In the next module we'll look at world newspapers.

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