5. Introduce a notable early (post-Independence) newspaper.
There is one notable post-Independence paper:
Pennsylvania Evening Post, which began publishing in Philadelphia on May 30, 1783, is considered to be the first daily newspaper to be printed in the newly independent America. During its inception, many other papers sprung up all over the country. It was the first paper to be printed daily, thus enabling readers to receive more exposure to the news.
6. Present information on sedition.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 called into question the freedom of the press. The Sedition Act provided that a person could be fined or imprisoned for publishing false or malicious statements about the president or Congress. The Federalists, who supported the law, used it to imprison editors who opposed their policies. However, the Federalists did not invoke the same law against editors who attacked Democratic-Republican policies, such as those of Thomas Jefferson. Reaction against this repressive law helped Jefferson win the presidency in 1800 before it expired in 1801.
7. Present definition of a penny press.
The term penny press is derived from the selling of early American newspapers for one penny. The penny press owes much of its success to the invention of the cylinder press, which printed newspapers quickly and cheaply.
8. Introduce early penny press era newspapers.
There are several notable papers belonging to the penny press era:
New York Sun which was founded in 1833 by Benjamin Day, who filled his paper with reports of local crime and violence, human-interest stories, and entertainment pieces and sold it for one penny. This event marked the creation of the penny press, which dominated American journalism throughout the rest of the 19th century. The paper was revolutionary because its distribution depended on street sales rather than subscription. It was also very popular within the working class community who before then were somewhat disenfranchised. Day was also responsible for fusing business with the paper. His inclusion of news related stories and the use of advertising, as a means to accumulate revenue was unheard of before then.
New York Morning Herald published by James Gordon Bennett in 1835 was quite similar to the New York Sun although it sold for two cents.
New York Tribune founded in 1841 by publisher Horace Greeley was influential because of its unprecedented weekly circulation of more than 200,000 subscribers. Greeley presided over the new paper for nearly 31 years and during that time opposed slavery, employed Karl Marx as a columnist, and Jane Grey Swisshelm as the first woman to cover Congress in 1850.
New York Times, which is considered the most professional newspaper in the world, was founded in 1851 when Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, two staffers at the New York Tribune, decided to start their own newspaper. Raymond and Jones wanted to produce a newspaper that reported the news objectively, without resorting to the sensationalism that characterized the journalism of that era. The new paper, the New York Daily Times, quickly became a success. The word Daily was dropped in 1857. In 1891 Jones died and the quality of the paper declined rapidly. The paper was hurt further by an economic depression in the early 1890s and headed toward bankruptcy. In 1896 Adolph Ochs, editor and publisher of a small newspaper in Chattanooga, Tennessee, took over as publisher of the Times. In 1900 he gained control of a majority of the company’s stock. Ochs developed the Times into one of the world’s foremost newspapers. Today the company is owned and run by Ochs’s descendants. Its reputation was based more on the thoroughness of its reporting than on its editorials or positions on issues.
9. Present information on the influence of new technology on early newspapers.
The invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse in 1837 dramatically improved the speed and reliability of news reporting. Newspapers became the major customers of the telegraph companies. The high cost of telegraph transmissions led to the formation of telegraph wire services, which distributed stories to many different papers.
The telegraph was prominently used during the Civil War and is responsible for the birth of the inverted pyramid style of reporting.
10. Introduces several examples of wire services.
There are several examples of wires services used in both yesterday and today’s media:
Associated Press (AP), now one of the world’s leading wire services, was founded as a cooperative venture by New York newspapers in 1848. The telegraph enabled newspapers to fill their pages with news that happened the previous day in cities located hundreds, then thousands, of miles away. With the successful completion of a transatlantic cable in 1866, American newspapers could print news from Europe with similar speed.
Reuters
United Press International (UPI)
11. Present definition of yellow journalism.
The term yellow journalism refers to an unethical, irresponsible brand of journalism given to hoaxes, altered photographs, screaming headlines, ‘scoops,’ frauds, and endless promotions of the newspapers themselves. As newspapers competed with one another to increase circulation, publishers sought new methods to attract readers. Publishers Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal began using drawings and comic strips to enliven their newspapers. They also transformed their papers with coverage of scandalous events and sensational stories. These tactics proved successful immediately, and a number of other papers followed suit. Journalists and writers labeled papers that relied on sensational stories or comic strips to attract readers, yellow journalism, after the popular Hearst comic strip ‘The Yellow Kid.’
12. Present examples of yellow journalism.
The following are several examples of yellow journalism (past and present):
Elizabeth Cockrane (AKA Nellie Bly) was known for her exploits and stunts where she would engage in outlandish activities to obtain news stories.
William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal was instrumental in sending the U.S. to war with Spain in the late 1890s. His now famous quote, “...you furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” is evidence of how Hearst often manipulated public opinion by inventing stories or be sensationalizing them for profit.
The National Inquirer, Star, and Weekly World News are several examples of tabloids that have continued to carry on the traits of yellow journalism. With stories following the exploits of characters such as Bat Boy, glaringly hyped headlines, and computer altered photos, these papers are the 21st century’s equivalent to the papers published by Hearst and Pulitzer.
13. Discuss papers in the early 1900s.
The development of the first Linotype machine in the mid-1880s sped up typesetting by making possible the automatic casting of entire lines of type. The regular use of photographs in newspapers, which began in 1897, also broadened readership. Improvements to the rotary press drove newspaper circulation in large cities into the hundreds of thousands. By 1900 daily newspapers in the United States numbered 2,326. Most large cities had several papers each, and many smaller cities had at least two newspapers.
14. Discuss the emergance of the magazine/periodical in America.
Periodicals had seen immense popularity in both Europe and America through much of the 17th and 18th centuries. However, improvements in illustration and printing techniques during the 19th century resulted in lower production costs and introduced a new era of mass circulation, especially in the United States. Federal laws were passed providing inexpensive mailing rates. Increasingly, also, magazine publishers relied on revenue from the advertising their publications carried. The number, variety, and readership of attractively designed periodicals grew enormously. Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1850; later Harper's Magazine) led the revolution, with serialized fiction by popular English authors and many woodcut illustrations. Rival illustrated monthlies soon followed—among them, Scribner's Monthly (begun in 1870), afterward issued as the Century (1881-1930), and Scribner's Magazine (1887-1939). Of the unillustrated periodicals, the leading examples—both still being published—were the literary magazine The Atlantic (formerly The Atlantic Monthly, 1857), edited by eminent writers and critics, including William Dean Howells; and the political magazine The Nation (1865).
15. Present definition of muckraking.
Muckraking is a term used to refer to the exposing of a scandal, or to seek out and publicize misconduct by prominent people. It originated in the early 1900s as the country moved into a period of social consciousness. The early muckrakers crusaded against social ills and injustice and championed the causes of the average citizen. Early periodicals were excellent forums for this new social ideology.
16. Present examples of muckraking/muckrakers of the early 20th century.
The following is a list of several examples of muckraking:
Upton Sinclair, author of the controversial novel The Jungle is which the horrors of the meat packing industry were exposed, was in part responsible for the proposal and eventual adoption of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Ida Tarbell, writer for McClure’s magazine was known for writing scathing attacks on the big business tycoons and some scholars have claimed that her articles may have played a role in the proposal and adoption of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
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