Review of James Brian McPherson, Journalism at the End of the American Century, 1965 - Present (original) (raw)
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Reporting and the Transformations of the Journalistic Field: US News Media, 1890-2000
"How have journalistic ideals of public service arisen? To what extent do journalists live up to these ideals? Can we make any claims as to the social conditions, which this performance depends on? Using Bourdieu’s theory of fields of cultural production, this paper addresses these questions with evidence from the history of journalism in the United States. What is most distinctive about modern journalism is a specific practice: active newsgathering or reporting. This practice became common in the 1860s and 1870s with the emergence of journalism as a field with its own stakes, relatively independent from political advantage or literary merit. The power of field-specific capital to organise practices in the media has varied since then. The field consolidated in the era from 1890 to 1914, with newspapering expanding as an industry. In the interwar years, the boundary between PR and journalism became blurry and the institutional basis for active newsgathering declined. Under favorable economic and political conditions reporting practices, including local and investigative reporting, flourished between 1945 and1970 across media forms. In the past 40 years the importance of active news-gathering has declined. "
2015
This book began with somewhat amorphous and tentative thoughts on the workings of journalistic authority, by which the media assume the right to present authoritative versions of events. Journalistic authority was approached as a construct implicitly but identifiably located within the practices of American journalists. These pages have shown that journalistic authority is neither amorphous nor tentative. It exists in narrative, where journalists maintain it through the stories they tell. By varying who tells these stories, how they tell them, and what they do or do not tell, journalists enact their authority as a narrative craft, embodied in narrative forms. These narratives are then transported into collective memory, where they are used as models for understanding the authoritative role of the journalist and journalistic community. Specific narratives signal different boundaries of appropriate journalistic practice and help clarify the boundaries of cultural authority across time...
A history of the press ( and journalism ) : wondering through research paths
2018
This paper is a methodological reflection about historical research applied to the Communication field. It does not only focus on the historiographical perspective that has grown in the Communication field, but mainly on the inclusion of new approaches. For that purpose, this paper presents an analysis of doctoral thesis and master’s dissertations produced in the Communication field from 1990 to 2016 that have the history of the press/journalism as a central theme. The results indicate a shift of the paradigm in these analyses through the last decade. We notice a plural and dense approach and a different perspective towards history, as a flow between times, which is essential for a better understanding of the communicational processes. This paper also aims at presenting some methodological scenarios, which can be applied to studies that have the historical issue as its reflexive core. Keyworks: History of journalism. History of the press. Methodology. Communication. History.
Blessed be the critics of newspapers": journalistic criticism of journalism 1865-1930
This study examined journalistic press criticism between 1865 and 1930. It sought to understand how the first modern journalists conceived of their profession in a period of great transitions. As the study revealed, journalists writing about journalism between 1865 and 1930 discussed recurring themes such as commercialization, sensationalism, advertising, and ethics. They expressed ambivalence toward the rise of big business in their field and the consequences it could have on the quality of the work. In the process, journalists also defined journalism as a profession providing a public service or as a business aiming solely for circulation and profit. Definitions shifted depending on the period during which the journalists wrote. Criticism during the period under study often reflected the social and cultural trends journalists witnessed. During the postbellum era, it mirrored the belief in the American Dream of wealth, well-being, and democracy. In the 1890s, criticism focused on the downsides of commercialism, expressing the fears people felt toward the new corporate giants. During the progressive period, the writings of press critics revealed the pride they felt in the civic services journalism provided. But World War I brought an end to progressivism. During the 1920s, disillusioned journalists criticized "mediocre" journalism. Their frustration echoed that of the old generation of progressives. Underlying the journalists" criticism was also the perception they had of news. Excited about the democratic promise of this new concept, postbellum critics praised journalism more than they criticized it. During the 1890s, and despite the downsides of commercialism, journalists never lost hope because, for them, news democratized information. The progressive period seemed to confirm the democratic potentials of news, promoting pride among critics. But the v propaganda campaigns of World War I broke the spell, as critics realized that news was potentially susceptible to propaganda. The establishment of public relations as a profession based on the spinning of news during the 1920s further aggravated the problem. Journalists, who had kept their optimism throughout the previous fifty years, became concerned, in the 1920s, that many newspapers did not live up to the democratic promise of the press.
The handbook of journalism studies, 2008
The term journalism history is of relatively recent coinage, more recent than the term journalism, of course. But the discourse now called journalism history has a longer history, one that tracks the rise of news culture as a realm of first print culture and later media culture. As each new formation of news culture appeared, new genres of doing the history of news developed. Throughout this history of journalism history, the boundary separating it from other forms of media history has been porous and blurry. Since the 1970s, journalism history has been wrestling with an identity crisis, one that in many ways anticipates the broader crisis in the identity of journalism today.
300 Years of US Newspaper History -- International Encyclopedia of Media Studies
International Encyclopedia of Media Studies: Volume I: Media History, 2013
Newspapers emerged in colonial British North America in the early 1700s. By the time the first muskets were fired in the American revolt against King George III in 1775, a powerful new cultural imagining of the press's central role in the public debates of citizens and the functioning of modern democracy defined journalism. Newspapers were seen as essential to liberty, spreading information and opinion among "free-born citizens." Indeed, across three centuries this notion of the press's service to a broad deliberating public has permanently informed and justified the press's public mission, its political rhetoric, and its claims to special authority in the contentions of the democratic public sphere. From partisan journals to independent, professional dailies, from small struggling print shops to giant media conglomerates, from a few pages of cotton rag to today's electronic websites, a public ethic of service to democracy has informed the North American press's proudest moments and rationalized its worst practices.
Journalism, 2018
The institutional discourses of US journalism display both an ever-present sense of crisis and a persistent nostalgia for a mythic golden age when the news was better made and better respected by the public. This article examines discussions hosted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors between 1986 and 2000, what we call ‘the pre-Internet era’, as a site of discursive constitution and relative stability in the news industry. As various actors inside the news industry utilize both nostalgia and crisis as common representational strategies, these discourses circulate and propagate a sense-making regime that is both precise and flexible in its deployment, and thus, helps journalism cohere as a field. Specific discussions around the First Amendment, journalistic identities, and business issues all provide fertile ground for challenging and reaffirming journalism’s binding values, and reveal larger structures of power around who has the authority to both describe threats to journa...