Historical Outline of American Journalism

Produced by James Shuman and Ed Galdrikian

I. Colonial Newspapers

1. Colonial pre-newspaper communication
   1. Word-of-mouth
   2. Letters from England
   3. Newspapers from England
   4. Broadsides
      
2. First Colonial Newspaper
   1. Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick
   2. Published by Ben Harris on September 25, 1690
   3. Lasted one issue because content disturbed Governor of Massachusetts
      
3. First Continuous Newspaper
   1. Boston News-Letter
   2. Published by John Campbell - first issue, April 24, 1704
   3. Published by authority of the governor of the colony
      
4. John Peter Zenger
   1. Published the New York Weekly Journal, starting in 1734
   2. Charged with libel for printing news that disturbed the Governor of New York
   3. Trial was held in 1735; defense was that Zenger printed the truth; Zenger was acquitted
      
5. Characteristics of Colonial Newspapers
   1. Four pages, printed with worn type
   2. Page size about half of modern newspapers
   3. No headlines as we know them today (small type, usually all caps)
   4. Usually no more than 200 copies printed an hour
   5. Editorials and news mixed in same story
   6. Advertising was small, comparable to today's classified section
   7. Considered a luxury- only 5 percent of the families bought a newspaper in 1765
      
6. Sources of News
   1. Mainly from Europe by ships which crossed the Atlantic in 4 to 8 weeks
   2. News was published in America about two months after it was published in London
   3. Some of the news came from captains of ships
   4. Some news came from letters from England
      
7. Types of News
   1. War and politics
   2. Local and intercolonial news
   3. Piracy, fires, counterfeiting, robberies, etc.
   4. Maritime News
   5. Weather, but no forecasts
   6. Obituaries
   7. Religion
   8. Little or no sports

II. American Revolutionary War Newspapers

1. Stamp Act - 1765
   1. Tax on all legal documents, official papers, books, and newspapers
   2. Many newspapers published as handbills to evade the tax
   3. Some newspapers suspended temporarily
   4. Act repealed in 1766
      
2. Format
   1. Larger pages
   2. More illustrations
   3. More columns
      
3. Coverage of War News
   1. No reporters on the battlefields
   2. Coverage through arrival of private letters
   3. Stories from other newspapers
      
4. Nature of News
   1. Struggle against taxes and duties
   2. Revolutionary War (secondary news)
   3. Accidents, fires, storms, epidemics, and crime<
   4. Larger headlines
      
5. Editorials
   1. Either in the lead or in paragraphs following a news story
   2. Italicized in New York Journal

III. Party Press

1. First American newspapers
   1. Pennsylvania Evening Post - Benjamin Towne, May 30, 1783
   2. Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser - John Dunlap, September 21, 1785
   3. New York Daily Advertiser - 1785
   4. Reason for daily newspapers
      1. to provide businessmen with up-to-the minute news of sailing vessels
      2. to provide latest political news and thought
         
2. Gazette of the United States
   1. Federalist newspaper first appearing on April 15, 1789
   2. Published by John Fenno
   3. Received written contributions from Alexander Hamilton and John Adams
   4. Continued until 1818
      
3. National Gazette
   1. Republican (Democrat) newspaper founded October 31, 1791
   2. Published by Philip Freneau
   3. Attacked Hamilton and Adams
   4. Continued until 1793
      
4. Freedom of the Press
   1. Nine of the 13 state constitutions guaranteed freedom of the press
   2. Freedom guaranteed nationally through the First Amendment of U.S. Constitution
      
5. Editorials
   1. First appeared in separate column in 1793 in the American Minerva published by Noah Webster
   2. In 1800, the Philadelphia Aurora used its second page for editorials
      
6. Contents
   1. European news (two months old)
   2. News from other papers
   3. News of George Washington's death
      1. Washington died on Saturday night, December 14, 1799
      2. First news appeared in the daily Alexandria (Virginia) Times the following Monday
      3. News appeared in the weekly Virginia Sentinel on Wednesday
      4. News appeared in the Philadelphia Aurora on Thursday
      5. News reached New York newspapers exactly one week after his death
      6. News reached Boston 11 days after his death
         
7. Subscription Rates
   1. $6 to $10 a year for dailies
   2. $2 to $3 a year for weeklies
   3. Country papers traded for corn, wheat, linen, sugar, etc.
      
8. War of 1812 Coverage
   1. Domestic news became more important than foreign news
   2. News arrived by mail, through messages from officers to friends at home, by newspapers which received news first
   3. James Bradford became first war correspondent by enlisting in Andrew Jackson's army in New Orleans
   4. News of Jackson's victory in New Orleans reached New York a month after the event
      
9. Nature of Newspapers in the early 1800s
   1. Four pages, but enlarged to 6 or 7 wide columns
      1. Page 1 - three-fourths advertising; remainder, political essay
      2. Page 2 - foreign and domestic news with letters to the editor
      3. Page 3 - editorial column, local items, and advertising
      4. Page 4 - advertising
         
   2. Headlines more lively than in previous period
      1. "ALMOST INCREDIBLE VICTORY!" - defeat of British in New Orleans
      2. "GLORIOUS TRIUMPH" - Double column
         
   3. The Star-Spangled Banner was first published in a Baltimore paper a few hours after Francis Scott Key wrote it

IV. Penny Press

1. Industrial Revolution
   1. Mechanical advancements provided cheaper printing methods and larger quantity
   2. Population growth caused increase in the number of newspapers
   3. Three times as many newspapers in the United States in 1833 as in England or France (larger proportion by 1860)
      
2. First Penny Newspapers
   1. New York Morning Post - January 1, 1833, Dr. H. D. Shepard
      1. First appeared at 2 cents, then 1 cent
      2. Lasted only two and one half weeks
         
   2. New York Sun - September 3, 1833, Benjamin Day
      1. Four pages, small, three wide columns
      2. Emphasized local, human interest, and sensational events
      3. Popular feature: police-court reports
      4. In August, 1835, the Sun published the "moon hoax"
         
   3. New York Herald - May 6, 1835, James Gordon Bennett
      1. Contained financial news
      2. Built up a murder trial to great interest
      3. Started society columns
      4. Established a European correspondent, set up a Washington bureau, placed his own correspondents in leading American cities, bought a small fleet of boats to meet ships before they entered New York harbors
      5. Carried crime stories, scandals
      
      
3. Other Popular Newspapers
   1. New York Tribune - April 10, 1841, Horace Greeley
      1. Weekly Tribune, started by Greeley in 1841 and distributed throughout U.S., was more successful
      2. Outstanding newspaper staff
      3. Denounced publishing of police reports, advertisements, and news of the theater
      4. Politics
         1. Fought slavery
         2. Wanted to improve conditions of the poor and unemployed
         3. Attacked the slum conditions of New York
         4. Opposed capital punishment
         5. Favored prohibition of alcohol
         6. Advocated westward expansion ("Go west, young man; go west!")
            
      5. Greeley nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860
      6. Greeley ran for the nomination of president in 1872, was humiliated, and died soon after
         
   2. New York Times - September 18, 1851, Henry J. Raymond
      1. Four pages, 6 wide columns, contained foreign and local news
      2. Times always kept good manners
      3. Wrote accounts of stories in full
         
4. Changes in News Concepts
   1. Increase of local or hometown news
   2. Great emphasis on sensational news
      
5. Faster Communication
   1. Steamships
   2. Railroads
   3. Telegraph
      
6. Associated Press
   1. Started in May, 1848
   2. Six newspapers including the Sun, Herald, Tribune, then Times

V. Civil War Coverage

1. Thoroughly Covered by Eye-witness Correspondents
   1. New York papers (Times, Tribune, World) gave a third of their columns to coverage of the war
   2. Telegraph lines speeded the news from the correspondents to the newspapers
   3. Much rumor in the news; headlines sometimes read:
      1. IMPORTANT- IF TRUE
      2. RUMORS AND SPECULATIONS
         
2. News Style
   1. Stories printed in full without being summarized
   2. Dispatches were likely to be printed chronologically, the oldest news at the head of the column
   3. Following the story, list of soldiers killed, wounded, and missing, in small type
   4. War maps were used
   5. Eventually, the lead of the story contained most essential elements, with balance of story sent in inverted pyramid style, due to frequent cutting of telegraph cables
      
3. War Correspondents
   1. Correspondents were known as "specials"
   2. 150 "specials" served northern papers (Herald used the most "specials")
      
4. Censorship
   1. No organized censorship of the news
   2. Confederate generals constantly tried to get northern papers to obtain information
   3. Newspapers regularly printed news of troop movements, war plans, etc.

VI. Yellow Journalism

1. Pre-Yellow Journalism Days
   1. Sunday editions, in 1870s same as dailies
   2. Joseph Pulitzer, upon coming to New York, made the Sunday World a 20-page paper
      1. Attractive news stories (some sensationalism)
      2. Stories easy to read and illustrated
      3. As circulation rose, so did the number of pages (to 48)
      4. Morrill Goddard, editor of the Sunday World, called the father of the American Sunday paper
      5. Some items were comic drawings, popular songs, sports, society, news for children
         
2. Inventions and Technological Developments
   1. Telephone – 1875
   2. Typewriter – 1876
   3. Typesetter (Linotype) – 1886
   4. Engraving (half-tone) – 1894
      
3. Joseph Pulitzer
   1. Reporter on Westliche Post in St. Louis
   2. Entered politics and fought graft<
   3. Bought St. Louis Dispatch in 1878 at a sheriff's sale for $2,500, and combined it with the Post three days later; the paper became famous as a leader in crusades
      1. Cleaning and repairing streets
      2. Fighting lotteries
      3. Combatting gambling
      4. Battling tax-dodgers
         
   4. Pulitzer bought the New York World in 1882
      1. News policy: colorful, unusual, significant (main), serious (excellent), sometimes sensational
      2. Crusades and stunts: collection of a fund to build the Statue of Liberty pedestal. "Nellie Bly" (Elizabeth Cochran) went to an insane asylum (faking insanity), and wrote an exposé. She later went around the world in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 4 seconds (in contrast to Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days). Pulitzer crusaded against New York Central, Standard Oil Co., Bell Telephone Co. He also provided free ice and coal and staffed 35 doctors to furnish medical service to the needy
      3. Editorial page: this was Pulitzer's favorite page; a spokesman for liberal ideas, he backed Cleveland in 1884
      4. Size: started at 8 pages at 2 cents and grew to 16 pages in a few years
      5. Illustrations: led all other papers, showed scenes of crimes (X marked the spot), many two-column drawings and photos, some larger; one-column photos rare
      6. Promotion: coupons and voting contests
         
4. William Randolph Hearst
   1. Put in charge of his father's (Senator George Hearst) newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, in 1885, remaking it in the image of the New York World
   2. Bought the New York Journal November 7, 1895 for $180,000 cash; paper had once belonged to Albert Pulitzer, Joseph's brother
      1. Hired best journalists at any cost
      2. Used many illustrations, emphasized crime, disaster, scandal reporting
      3. Pulitzer lowered price to 1 cent; Hearst followed
         
   3. Public menace
      1. World and Journal banned in many families; subscriptions cancelled
      2. More sensational news appeared
         
   4. In 1897, Hearst bought a New York paper to get the Associated Press franchise
      
   5. News coverage
      1. Dedication of Grant's Tomb (in color)
      2. Sports events around the country
      3. Sent Mark Twain to cover the Jubilee Celebration of Queen Victoria
      4. Sent two expeditions to the Klondike, where gold had been discovered
      5. Ran a special train from Washington, D.C., after McKinley's inauguration, with artists drawing while on the train, to beat the other papers with pictures; train broke a speed record
      6. Detective business: a headless, armless, legless body, wrapped in oilcloth, had been found in the river; Hearst built a story each day by reporting the finding of each part of the body
         
5. Competition Between Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World
   1. Heaviest competition through Sunday editions
   2. Hearst hired entire staff of the World, then the best in the newspaper business; Pulitzer hired them back; Hearst raised his price, and in 24 hours, had rehired them
   3. Sunday World published an 8-page comic section in color; Hearst began a similar section, advertised as "eight pages of iridescent polychromous effulgence that makes the rainbow look like lead pipe" which outdid the Sunday World
      
6. Richard F. Outcault's drawing, Yellow Kid
   1. Outcault drew for the Sunday World, then for the Journal
   2. George B. Luks took over the comic panel for the World, giving New Yorkers two Yellow Kids
   3. Term "Yellow Journalism" stems from the yellow color printed on the kid's clothing
      
7. Characteristics of Yellow Journalism
   1. Scare headlines: excessively large type, in red or black, screaming excitement
   2. Lavish use of pictures - some without significance, some faked
   3. Fraudulent stories - faked interviews and stories, misleading headlines, pseudo-science
   4. Sunday supplement - color comics and sensational articles
   5. Sympathy with the underdog - campaigns against abuses suffered by the common people
      
8. War with Spain
   1. Spanish-American War is said to have come about because of the newspaper circulation war between Hearst and Pulitzer
   2. Sensational descriptions sent by correspondents to papers in New York of Cubans in concentration camps
   3. Lurid pictures of killings of mothers and babies, and imprisonment in filthy and fever-ridden stockades (many of the pictures drawn from rumors)
   4. Cuban atrocity stories proved good for high circulation of the World and the Journal
   5. Against Yellow Journalism
      1. New York Times, Adolph S. Ochs, publisher, 1896–1935
         1. "All the News That's Fit to Print"
         2. "It Does Not Soil the Breakfast Cloth"
         3. News service improved, Sunday supplement, Saturday book review section, Monday financial review
            
      2. Christian Science Monitor, 1908, Mary Baker Eddy, publisher
         1. Foreign news, art, music, literature
         2. Stayed away from crime and disaster
            
9. Pulitzer Policy Change - 1901
   1. Emphasized the World's responsibility to the public both as a crusader and an accurate reporter
   2. Death in 1911
      1. Established Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York
      2. Established 8 annual Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism, beginning in 1917

VII. Newspaper Chains

1. Hearst: Albany Times-Union, Baltimore News-Post, Boston Record-American, Detroit Times, Los Angeles Examiner, Los Angeles Herald-Express, San Francisco Examiner, Milwaukee Sentinel, San Antonio Light, New York Journal-American, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, New York Mirror, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
   1. By the end of 1922, Hearst owned 20 dailies and 11 Sunday papers
   2. Hearst also owned 6 magazines, Kings Features Syndicate, Hearst Metronome News, motion picture company
      
2. Scripps-Howard: Fort Worth Press, Evansville Press, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Pittsburgh Press, Columbus Citizen, El Paso Herald-Post, Washington News, New York World-Telegram and Sun, Albuquerque Tribune, Houston Press, San Francisco News-Call-Bulletin, Indianapolis Times, Memphis Press-Scimitar, Cincinnati Post, Birmingham Post-Herald

VIII. Newspaper Press Associations

1. Associated Press Reorganized in 1900
   1. Newspapers are members and they share (cooperative)
   2. Largest of the associations
      
2. United Press International
   1. Combined in 1957 from United Press (Scripps-Howard) and International News Service (Hearst, 1909)
   2. No member newspapers; news sold on contract basis

IX. Newspaper Consolidations

1. Advertisers found it cheaper to buy space in one paper than in two
2. Economy of combining a morning and an evening paper
3. High cost of publishing forced many newspapers out (often bought out by larger papers in same city)
4. Because of consolidations, fewer newspapers but higher overall readership (More than 2,200 dailies in 1900; just over 1,700 daily newspapers today); readership has increased because of education and growth in population

X. Television Journalism

1. Many people use television as their primary source of news
   1. Faster means of conveying the news
   2. Satellites bring news - picture and sound - into the homes from around the world
   3. More graphics are used to convey meaning
   4. Networks and local stations have increased news coverage
   5. Cable News Network and others have 24-hour news available
      
2. Newspapers have become more graphic; more colorful, more complete in coverage in order to compete effectively

XI. Desktop Publishing

1. Development of Personal Computers put keyboard and monitor on every desktop
   1. Reporters could enter type directly into a central storage unit
   2. Designers could plan pages electronically
   3. Rise of software, lower prices made stand-alone units attractive
   4. Non-journalists were able to prepare newsletters, etc.
   5. Professionals, students learned to assume a greater role in production
      
2. Development of laser printers improved quality of computer output
   1. No need to accept dot-matrix reproduction
   2. DPI increases from 300 to 600 to 120 to 2400 eliminates need for professional output
      
3. Improvements in scanners, photocopiers
   
4. Increased use of modems, on-line resources

Officers:

President
Sarah Nichols

Past President
Don Bott

Treasurer
Randy Hamm

State Regional Director
Lynn McDaniel