A Trail of ChallengesNewspapers have survived many challenges over the years. But can they survive the Internet? It's getting harder to tell with the loss of newspaper jobs and closings of more and more papers (and even the end of the newspaper war in Northwest Arkansas). As far back as Roman times, newspapers existed. The Acta Diurna provided the Senate's actions of the day on a tablet posted on a wall after each meeting. Newspapers like the ones currently in use first appeared in the 17th century when British booksellers imported Corantos from Holland in 1620 to give the British public Continental news about the Thirty Years War. The forerunner of the daily newspaper, diurnals provided daily accounts of local news, like the political power struggle between Parliament and the King. When the monarchy triumphed, it gave monopoly publication rights to the Oxford Gazette, i.e. the official voice of the crown. By 1690, Boston bookseller/coffeehouse owner Benjamin Harris printed a broadsheet called Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick (see p. 90); it lasted one edition because Harris criticized authorities and didn't have a license. By 1721, only one of three Boston papers published without British consent: James Franklin's New England Courant, known for "scandalous libels" (that got Franklin jailed) and a publishing ban (which Franklin circumvented by establishing brother Benjamin as editor). Three years after Ben Franklin moved to Philadelphia, the Courant folded. In 1729, Franklin took over a failing newspaper, renaming it the Pennsylvania Gazette. He held an official printing contract, but was not afraid to criticize those in authority. Franklin's financial independence (from his bookstore and advertising) allowed him editorial independence. A few years later, John Peter Zenger faced seditious libel charges for criticizing the New York colony's royal governor in New York's Weekly Journal (see pg. 91). The law said if the words were printed, they could be considered libelous; Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued for truth as a defense against libel. The jury agreed, freeing Zenger and letting Great Britain know that Colonists would not accept control of the press. A New TrailAfter gaining Independence from England, the Congress convened under the new Constitution in 1790, adopting the Bill of Rights, which contains the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.They didn't hold to those ideals very well; eight years later Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made illegal writing, publishing or printing "any false scandalous and malicious writing" about the president, Congress or the federal government. However, they were not renewed when Congress reconsidered them in 1800. Growing literacy among workpeople led to the penny press, a 1-cent newspaper first appearing in 1833 as The New York Sun (see p. 92). Publisher Benjamin Day attracted readership through stories about public safety, entertainment and human interest (much like today); he "sold" that readership to advertisers eager to hawk their wares. James Gordon Bennett's New York Morning Herald pioneered the correspondent system with reporters filing stories through the telegraph from Washington, D.C. and other major American cities as well as abroad. The first wire service began in 1848 when the New York newspapers pooled efforts to collect news from foreign ships, leading to the creation of the New York Associated Press eight years later With the creation of Associated Press (1900), United Press (1907) and International News Service (1909):
DiversityThose typically excluded from the social, cultural and political mainstream soon understood the value of a mass newspaper. Whereas now anyone with computer access can get their ideas to a public, back then only those with the money for a press had freedom of the press. However, that distinction had no color.The first African-American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, published in 1827; twenty years later, Frederick Douglass' North Star used the masthead slogan "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren" while becoming the most influential African-American newspaper before the Civil War. The Chicago Defender, the first black newspaper with commercial success, earned a nationwide circulation of more than 230,000. It urged southern blacks to move north by contrasting stories of Southern lynchings with northern African American success stories. Early Native American newspapers included the Cherokee Pheonix in Georgia (est. 1828) and the Cherokee Rose Bud in Oklahoma (est. 1848). Current Native American newspapers include the Ogala Sioux Lakota Times, the Shoshone-Bannock's Sho-Ban News, the Cherokee Observer, the Navajo Times and the News from Indian Country. Yellow JournalismThe beginnings of your daily news fare can be traced back to the late 19th century when Joseph Pulitzer owned the New York World and William Randolph Hearst owned the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Morning Journal. Pulitzer built circulation through sensationalistic news coverage, extensive illustration and promotional stunts like an around-the-world balloon flight.Historians claim Hearst used Pulitzer's methods to start the Spanish-American war that the papers could cover (see p. 94). Yellow journalism covered sensational sex, crime and disaster news using giant headlines and lots of drawings depicting the events. More than a century later, you can see the same things "sell." However, the industry now recognizes the highest-quality journalism with Pulitzer Prize for Excellence.
As previously noted, newspapers started consolidating in the 1920s. Between World War II and 1970, newspaper circulation increased but people spent less time with it as radio and television fought for their attention. Pass-along extended a daily's reach to 124 million people (down from 132 million two years ago) and a weekly's reach to 200 million. Now the Internet vies for more time among other reasons people aren't reading the newspapers (Figure 4.1, p.97). The Road Currently TakenNewspapers continue to diversify to attract readership. You can typically find one of the current types of newspapers:
Concentration, Conglomeration, Hypercommercialism, Convergence In 1923, 502 American cities counted on news from two competing dailies; now the number stands at 20. Congress tried reversing the trend in 1970 with the Newspaper Preservation Act that allowed joint operating agreements, in some ways like that proposed in Northwest Arkansas. This follows the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat merging in the early 1990s. Yet a loss of editorial diversity concerns those with the long-held belief between a free press and its readers:
Conglomeration leads to increased pressures to turn a profit. Led by USA Today, many papers sell ad space on their front pages in a form of hypercommercialism. Some affix removable stickers on their front pages; others permit pet obituaries next to human obituaries. Where once the editorial and advertising missions differed, now they increasingly blur the lines (see p. 103). Does this bother you? Can democracy survive without newspapers? (see box pp. 104-105). Ben Bagdikian claims newspapers are crucial to civic life as they inform the public about everyday affairs. Though the public does not always trust media, it still supports the idea of media as a government "watch-dog." The industry-funded Readership Institute claims localization provided by newspapers cannot be replaced and advised papers to improve content in two important ways:
Media convergence describes the erosion of traditional distinctions among media, e.g. newspapers and television stations share information or have employees cross-train, shared staffs write both the print and online versions of copy, or reporters tape the interview to provide online audio for the Web story. Online newspapers give readers more information with greater speed. Some newspaper Web sites even encourage community publishing, blogging and digital daily delivery. People will read their news online, but how will newspapers earn income? One model espoused by Walter Hussman rejects giving away free content, and earned Hussman an award for Publisher of the Year from Editor & Publisher. Moguls like Rupert Murdoch seem destined to follow Hussman's plan. Yet so much news can be accessed for free from other sites; is this viable long-term? Another model claims public funding and private philanthropy provide the answer. With younger readers going elsewhere for their information (Figure 4.3, p. 110), newspapers must decide whether to give people what they "need" or what they "want" (see picture, p. 109), i.e. should they peddle "soft" news instead of "hard" news to attract readers? Media Literacy Story Placement Newspaper readers determine the importance of a story depending on its placement, i.e. articles at the top of the page with the bigger headlines and photographs typically are more important than those "below the fold" with smaller headlines and no photograph. This is similar to broadcast news stories where "top" news stories lead a broadcast. Through this practice, newspapers (and broadcast media) produce agenda-setting, i.e. they may not tell you what to think, but they definitely tell you what to think about (see p. 112). We see this in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's decision to always run stories about state-sanctioned executions on page 3B. Be aware of national agenda-setting, i.e. different publications will contain the same news, especially on a slow news day (see Sitton's graduation papers).  Parody
Parody doesn't only occur in magazines such as the Jerry Falwell incident in Hustler. Sometimes people mock, poke fun or comment on current happenings through spoofs, e.g. "news" sites like The Onion, The Spoof and The Specious Report. In other instances, the parody seems just like recognized media outlets, e.g the spoof of the New York Times included both a printed version (right) and a Web version. Claiming responsibility for the Times spoof, the Yes Men struck again in 2009 with a spoof of the New York Post. The post had the spoofers arrested, which led to chiding from the Times and others. A day later the Post said it was "flattered." Is it legal? Since a parody typically makes use of another creative work, copyright issues arise that are often fought through claims of fair use. So how do you know they're not real? In the case of the fake New York Times in November 2008, the publication date (July 4, 2009) gave a clue to readers. You can also match the news presented in the parody to other recognized outlets to see if the news is the same since news outlets typically have the same national news items, e.g. the spoofed Times front page that came through many e-mails prior to the 2008 election could be cross-referenced against other national publications to see Sarah Palin had not killed Bullwinkle, even if readers didn't immediately consider the image fake from the lack of additional stories on the front page.  Images and articles used here under Educational Fair Use. Notes originally produced to accompany Stanley Baran's "Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture." 6th ed. If you don't understand something in this Web note, please e-mail Dr. Sitton.
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