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Chapter 3 of a university course in media history by Prof. Bill Kovarik, based on the book Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2015).
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- 1. Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik Revolutions in Communication Chapter 3 – The press and the 20th century -- #7
- 2. Web site & textbook Textbook: 1st edition – 2011 2nd edition – 2016 http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com
- 3. Press in transition Early 20th century ◦ Publishers at the top of their games ◦ Technology mature, profits high ◦ Most towns had two papers 1970s – technology driven mergers ◦ Monopoly newspaper takes over 2000s – digital revolution ◦ Most newspapers in deep financial trouble ◦ Democratic experiment also in trouble
- 4. Overview Muckraking press World War I press Russian Communist revolution Indian non-violent revolution German Nazi revolution World War II press Civil Rights era Vietnam and Watergate era Literary & Gonzo journalism Environmental journalism End game for the printing revolution
- 5. State of the press 1911 • Will Irwin series Colliers Magazine • The press is “wonderfully able… (but) with real faults.” • “It is the mouthpiece of an older stock. It lags behind the thought of its times. . . • “To us of this younger generation, our daily press is speaking, for the most part, with a dead voice, because the supreme power resides in men of that older generation.” • Blamed Associated Press monopoly A familiar complaint Will Irwin’s ideas about newspapers are similar to those of many young writers today.
- 6. Muckrakers • Speech by Teddy Roosevelt April 14, 1906 • Seen as an attack on investigative press • Cites John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) • Man with the Muck Rake • He “fixes his eyes … only on that which is vile and debasing…” • “At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest-social, political, and industrial unrest. • “It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequality of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the individual and the nation. • Many journalists embraced the term
- 7. Who were the muckrakers? • Ida B. Wells Baker-Barnett (1862– 1931) • An African American editor of Free Speech newspaper in Memphis, TN, • Investigated the 1891 lynching of three innocent men at the hands of a white mob. • Newspaper was burned down – fled to New York • Became one of the most influential leaders in the early civil rights movement.
- 8. Who were the muckrakers? Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936) Noted for “The Shame of the Cities” 1904 series on municipal corruption for McClure’s Magazine. Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) “The Jungle,” a 1906 novel about the meat packing industry of Chicago Based on investigations by Sinclair for the Socialist magazine Appeal to Reason. Public uproar led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration.
- 9. Who were the muckrakers? Ida Tarbell (1857–1944) Exposed Standard Oil company’s rise to monopoly by corrupt business practices In a 1902 series in McClure’s Magazine. Encouraged antitrust law enforcementOther muckrakers: David Graham Phillips (1867–1911)—In “Treason of the Senate,” a 1906 series in Cosmopolitan exposed senators who had taken direct bribes Cecil Chesterton (1879–1918)— London’s New Witness, exposed stock fraud in the Marconi Scandal of 1912. French Le Matin also investigated. Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958)— “The Great American Fraud,” Collier’s Magazine in 1905, exposed patent medicine. (See Ch. 6 Advertising)
- 10. Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne Gazette) March 2, 1914
- 11. WWI and the press 1914 - Belgium Outside the station in the public square, the people of Louvain (Belgium) passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves . . . It was all like a scene upon the stage, unreal, inhuman. You felt it could not be true… Richard Harding Davis, 1914
- 12. WWI and the press 1914 - Belgium Allegations by British of German atrocities 1,200 refugees (not under oath) and no corroboration. Not one allegation later found true by a Belgian commission 1922. Bryce Commission report May 12, 1915 ◦ “That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages." ◦ “That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.”
- 13. German response German authorities in response to the Bryce Report published the White Book five days later. The book contained records where Belgians were guilty of atrocities committed on German soldiers. Kolnische Zeitung – This new official collection of despicable lies is intended to whip up people to join the army, improve England’s wretched military situation…
- 14. Phillip Gibbs, British correspondent Doubtless there were many atrocities, but I could never get evidence of any of them… No living babies had their hands cut off, or women their breasts. No Canadians (soldiers) were ever crucified, although it will be believed for all time.”
- 20. WWI and the press Censorship official on both sides Press wore army uniforms French and British newspapers often ran with empty spaces where stories were pulled by censors George Seldes interview with German Gen. Hindenburg was censored after war, contributing to Dolchstoßlegende myth that led to rise of Nazis
- 21. 1918: Photo of US troops celebrating in a German mess hall was censored because US troops could not be depicted drinking beer.
- 22. The Bolo Pasha affair • WWI German plot to buy French newspapers using money laundered by American banks. • Bolo Pasha bought Le Journal of Paris to advocate surrender to the Germans. • Linked to German spy Mata Hari, also briefly to William Randolph Hearst • Pasha was executed for treason by the French in 1917 The French WWI Bolo Pasha affair showed that manipulation of the press could be a tactic of warfare
- 23. Russian revolution ‘First step’ in the Russian Revolution of 1917 was to create a newspaper The mere task of writing and distributing Iskra (Spark) would create a network of agents Despite this, absolute censorship was the rule Execution of dissidents was commonplace Vladimir Lenin started a newspaper in order to start a revolution. But he was no friend of the free press.
- 24. Mysterious propaganda photo Ukraine, about 1925. Would journalists really set type on the back of a truck in the middle of a wheat field? Was it staged, or faked, or part of a serious effort to get journalists close to the people?
- 25. John Reed (1887 – 1920) American journalist who wrote passionately about the Russian revolution of 1917. “As we came out into the dark and gloomy day all around the grey horizon, factory whistles were blowing, a hoarse and nervous sound, full of foreboding. By tens of thousands, the working people poured out … and the humming slums belched out their dun and miserable hordes.” From Ten Days that Shook the World
- 27. Nazi revolution Germany 1920s - 1945 Took over all newspapers, wire services All journalists who resisted were killed Absolute censorship Nazi book burning, Opernplatz, Berlin, May 10, 1933. “A scene not witnessed since the Middle Ages, and a harbinger of disaster,” said correspondent William L.
- 28. WWII and the US press Furious debates on US home front Pre-war links between US and Nazi industries infuriated Americans Censorship by military on front lines ◦ But that didn’t stop news about incidents like Gen. Patton slapping shell-shocked soldiers Reconstruction of press in Germany & Japan was a top post-war priority
- 29. WWII correspondents “There is an agony in your heart and you almost feel ashamed to look at them. They are just guys from Broadway and Main Street, but you wouldn’t remember them.… If you could see them just once, just for an instant, you would know that no matter how hard people work back home, they are not keeping pace with these infantrymen.” -- Ernie Pyle“The God-Damned Infantry” was among Ernie Pyle’s best – remembered articles. A soldier’s writer, Pyle concentrated on the ordinary guys, not the generals and the grand strategies.
- 30. WWII correspondents “The liberation (of Dachau) was a frenzied scene … Inmates of the camp hugged and embraced the American troops, kissed the ground before them and carried them shoulder high around the place.” -- Marguerite Higgins, May, 1945 Only three years out of journalism school, Marguerite Higgins convinced editors at the Herald Tribune to send her to Europe in 1944. She also broke barriers for women reporters everywhere, convincing Gen. Douglas MacArthur to lift the ban on women correspondents in the Korean War in 1950.
- 31. Double V for African AmericansPittsburg Courier, Chicago Defender and others were main source of news for African Americans But wartime news of prejudice and rioting against blacks was suppressed by government In WWI, critical reporting even led to the conviction of one African American editor under the Sedition Act In WWII, settled on “Double V” -- Victory over fascism abroad, victory over racism at home Chicago Defender publisher John Sengstacke and an unidentified editor c. 1943
- 32. Hutchins Commission 1947 Truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning; Forum for the exchange of comment and criticism; Representative picture of the constituent groups in the society; Presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society; and Full access to the day’s intelligence.
- 33. One of the best moments in the history of the press Press became an agent of US reconciliation Framed issues as “Civil Rights” not “race war” Many incidents outraged public ◦ Killings of Emmett Till 1955, Medgar Evers 1963, Viola Liuzzo, many more ◦ Bombings of churches in Alabama and Georgia ◦ Selma, Alabama bridge attack by police caught on film changed the world A civil rights bombing was “… the harvest of defiance of the courts and the encouragement of citizens to defy law on the part of many Southern politicians.” -- Ralph McGill, Atlanta Journal & Constitution Civil Rights and the Press
- 35. Growing global press influence The suppression of US civil rights demonstrators was embarrassing to the US government Comparisons were made to Aparthied in South Africa and the Sharpville massacre of 1960 US Voting Rights Act of 1965 and federal support for civil rights was one result International press coverage was one of many essential conditions for change
- 36. Watergate 1972 – 74 Uncovered by two Washington Post reporters Found Watergate burglars searching Democratic national headquarters had links to Republicans in White House Investigated “dirty tricks” campaign, also money to pay operatives and burglars Resulted in resignation of President Richard Nixon and criminal convictions for seven members of administration. Money laundering, extortion, fraud, and tampering with election process were among the issues. Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Washington Post
- 37. Vietnam war coverage US press critical of war methods but generally supportive of war aims TV Networks generally kept gory footage off the air Public opinion against war stronger than press coverage Idea of press subverting war is akin to German “dolschtoss” myth Nevertheless, US conservatives still blame press for “losing the war”
- 38. Vietnam coverage was pro- war But not pro-war enough for some US “hawks” Reporters David Halberstam (NY Times), Malcolm Brown (AP) and Neil Sheehan (UPI) typified slightly critical attitude towards the war.
- 39. Literary Journalism In 1960s, newspaper & magazine feature writers broke the molds Used literary devices to make non- fiction read like a novel ◦ Dialogue, scene-by-scene construction, status detail, omniscient narration Writers included Tom Wolfe, Joan Dideon, John McPhee Example: The Right Stuff (about US space program) by Wolfe.
- 40. Gonzo Journalism First person participation Not objective Often used alcohol, drugs Hunter S. Thompson ◦ Fear and Loathing series ◦ Solace in excess like Great Gatsby ◦ Thompson agreed with Faulkner that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists have always known this.”
- 41. Environmental news Not a new phenomena – ◦ Water pollution was covered by Benjamin Franklin in 1730s Major new interest due to energy crisis, Earth Day, oil spills, nuclear disasters and climate change Specialized science writers emerge to handle complexities of coverage ◦ National Association of Science Writers, Society of Environmental Journalists
- 42. End game for the press? New technologies made printing more profitable in 1970s … Leading to consolidations and mergers … but Monopolies grew complacent Wall Street demanded even more profit (20-40%) Press was in a weak position to meet the digital revolution 2000 – 2015
- 44. Some say this is a ….
- 45. The usual bromides Book & newspaper publishing is dead We’re in a post-literate age ◦ Nobody reads (not true, actually) Emerging new publishing models ◦ Educational non-profit 501c3 Politico, Climate Central, Env Health News ◦ Subcompact publication Apple Newsstand, Amazon, Kindle ◦ Self-publishing and eBooks
- 47. New ideas: Taz.de Berlin daily newspaper & consumer co-op
- 48. Community media co-ops Video Co-ops Consumer Services Info Services B&C Co-op Digital Services Games Co-op Training Maintenance Storage Admin. News, bloggers, calendar, oral histories, publishing, translations Group purchasing – Coffee, books, bikes, etc. TEDx, interest group yearbooks (sports, music)Sharing, classes, competitions Scanning, transfers, Web services Business & employment co-op
- 49. New media investments Bill Gates (Microsoft) ◦ MSNBC (1996) / successful Steve Case (AOL) ◦ Merged w/ Time Warner (2000) / failure Jeff Bezos (Amazon) ◦ Washington Post, 2013 / jury still out Peter Omidyar (Ebay) ◦ First Look Media, Fall 2013 / Epic incompetence, aloof management
- 50. Review: People Will Irwin, Richard Harding Davis, Ida B. Wells, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Lincoln Steffens, Cecil Chesterton, Ida Tarell, David Graham Phillips, Upton Sinclair, Bolo Pasha, George Seldes, John Reed, Frederick Douglass, John H. Johnson, Ralph McGill, Homer Bigart, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, John Hershey
- 51. Review: Issues Minority media, muckrakers, press in WWI censorship, WWII, Double V, covering Vietnam, Civil Rights, Watergate, Hutchins Commission, Gonzo journalism, Literary journalism, Environmental & science coverage, end of the line for newspapers?
Notes de l'éditeur
- Publishers were at the top of their games at the beginning of the 20th century; the technology was mature and the competition was minimal. In the 1970s, following a series of mergers, most cities ended up with only one newspaper. And then, by the early 21st t century, a familiar story had played out: A profitable near-monopoly had underestimated the digital revolution and missed the curve in the road. US newspapers had lost their readers, their advertising and most of their stock value. The free press as an institution, created in the Enlightenment to guide the democratic experiment, was all but dead.
- In 1910, a young journalist named Will Irwin took off across the country in search of the American press. In a 14-part series published in Collier’s Magazine, Irwin concluded that the press was “wonderfully able, wonderfully efficient, and wonderfully powerful (but) with real faults.” Yellow journalism, especially the tendency of publishers like William Randolph Hearst to trump up news for personal or partisan reasons, counted as one of the faults. But to Irwin, the biggest fault was that the press did not speak to his generation: “It is the mouthpiece of an older stock. It lags behind the thought of its times. . . . To us of this younger generation, our daily press is speaking, for the most part, with a dead voice, because the supreme power resides in men of that older generation.” In Irwin’s view, the twentieth-century spirit of reform was to be found in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Collier’s Weekly, McClure’s Magazine and Munsey’s Magazine. While there had been a few exposes in newspapers, nothing matched the magazine revelations about child labor, slum housing, tainted meat, political graft, insurance fraud, narcotic medicines and the corrupt Standard Oil monopoly.
- The “muckrakers” got their name from a speech given by President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington DC on April 14, 1906. The speech instantly galvanized a national debate about the role of the press.
- Widely admired for their exposes of monopolies and corrupt public officials, the “muckrakers” were an eclectic group of writers, journalists and social reformers who led the Progressive reform movement of the early 1900s. They used investigative journalism (muckraking) to go beyond standard inquiries and uncover hidden problems.
- As they skirted French defenses to cross Belgium in August of 1914, German armies carried out carefully planned reprisals, executing civilians and burning entire towns to the ground. Among the witnesses to the atrocities were a remarkable group of American reporters, including Will Irwin and Richard Harding Davis. Because America was neutral, and had a large German population thought to be sympathetic to Germany, the reporters had been given permission to follow along. What they wrote, however, did anything but encourage sympathy.
- Even before war broke out, German newspapers were beating the drums of war. Here Germany and Austria are depicted as under assault from Russia and France. “Two years ago there was hesitation, but now it is said openly even in official military journals that Russia is arming itself for a war against Germany,” the Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne Gazette) warned its readers in a hair-raising article, “Russia and Germany,” published on March 2, 1914. The inflammatory article sparked alarm across Europe, fueling fears in Russia, France, and Britain that the German government was preparing its public for war.
- Among the witnesses to the atrocities were a remarkable group of American reporters, including Will Irwin and Richard Harding Davis. Because America was neutral, and had a large German population thought to be sympathetic to Germany, the reporters had been given permission to follow along. What they wrote, however, did anything but encourage sympathy.
- British war propaganda was vehement and outraged
- Austrian and German war propaganda was like something from a previous century
- Another German recruiting poster shows a German soldier looking up at the Kaiser, who is being led by the spirit of Germany.
- American war propaganda was not very subtle.
- The purpose of censorship was to prevent people at home from learning demoralizing information about defeats and difficult conditions. For example, the worst defeat in British history — the Battle of the Somme in 1916 — involved troop casualties numbering 600,000. Yet the battle was reported as a victory or kept out of the press altogether. One correspondent, William Beach Thomas of the Daily Mail, said later that he was “deeply ashamed” of the cover-up.
- This 1918 photo was banned by US censors because American soldiers were not permitted to be seen drinking alcohol, even though the just-captured German beer steins were all empty. Photo by US Army Signal Corps. Heavy handed censorship had more serious consequences, such as when censors edited out reports of German Field Marshall Paul Von Hindenburg’s admission that the American military changed the balance of forces in World War I. Later, the Nazis explained Germany’s defeat in WWI as a stab in the back from the home front. This “Dolchstoss” myth helped propel them to power in the 1930s, according to journalist George Seldes.
- . The Bolo Pasha affair was a wartime German plot to finance the purchase of French newspapers using millions of dollars funneled through American banks with the help of US publisher William Randolph Hearst. A German agent, Bolo Pasha, purchased a French newspaper, Le Journal, to deliberately advocate surrender to the Germans. The plot was discovered, in part by still-neutral American authorities, and the French executed Pasha for treason in 1917.
- The first step in the Russian Revolution, according to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was to create a newspaper, and Lenin created a paper called Iskra (Spark). Not only would it carry the communist message, but the act of working for a newspaper in itself would transform the revolutionaries.
- This scene of a “mobile newsroom” belonging to the newspaper “Kolhoznik” (agricultural cooperative) near Kiev was staged around 1925. The banner behind the typesetters reads: “Let us secure the financial basis for Socialist way of life.” The newspaper itself probably served to inform and to engage the workers, but the photo of journalists setting type on a truck in a wheat field is an example of staged events for Soviet communist propaganda. Farm Services Administration, Library of Congress.
- “Ten Days That Shook the World” — John Reed’s classic eyewitness account of the 1917 Russian Revolution won worldwide acclaim, and an introduction by Vladimir Lenin. Although Reed sympathized with the revolution, his aim was to tell the story as truthfully as possible. Naturally, this did not sit well with Soviet communists, and the book was banned by premier Joseph Stalin.
- Among many other accomplishments, Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi edited half a dozen newspapers during his long career as the leader for India’s independence movement. This photo by Margaret Bourke-White for Life Magazine is an example of visual logic and one of the great classics of 20th century photography. Since Gandhi often said he was just a symbol, Bourke-White put Gandhi’s symbol (the spinning wheel) in the foreground. © Life Magazine, 1946. Mahatma Gandhi used newspapers to campaign for India’s freedom from British colonialism in the 1900 – post WWII period. “The journal became for me a training in self-restraint...” Non-violence (Satyagraha) “would probably have been impossible without Indian Opinion,” he said. Gandhi pursued journalism as an aid to his mission in life: to teach by example
- It was a scene not witnessed since the Middle Ages: the flames engulfing tens of thousands of German books in May of 1933 seemed ominous harbingers of disaster to William L. Shirer, an Associated Press correspondent in Germany. The descent into barbarism began the moment that Nazi leaders decided that the arts, literature, the press, radio and films would exist only to serve the purpose of Nazi propaganda, he said. Following the Reich Press Law of October, 1933, the country’s 4,700 newspapers were either closed, confiscated or directly controlled by the Nazi party. Most notably, the Nazis closed Voissische Zeitung, a newspaper founded in 1704 and, at that moment in history, comparable to The Times of London or the New York Times.
- Censorship barely held down the cantankerous American press. A furious controversy raged on the home front over war preparedness and prewar conspiracies between American and German industries such as Standard Oil (Exxon) and I. G. Farben.
- Censorship was not as heavy handed in World War II as in other wars.
- Women also covered the war, as historians Maurine H. Beasley and Sheila J. Gibbons pointed out in Taking Their Place (Beasley and Gibbons, 1993). Among the best known was Marguerite Higgins (1920–1966), a writer for the New York Herald Tribune who witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in late April, 1945.
- Women also covered the war, as historians Maurine H. Beasley and Sheila J. Gibbons pointed out in Taking Their Place (Beasley and Gibbons, 1993). Among the best known was Marguerite Higgins (1920–1966), a writer for the New York Herald Tribune who witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in late April, 1945.
- After the war, a commission on ethics and the press was set up at the University of Chicago. The Hutchins Commission found that freedom of expression had been imperiled by accelerating technology and by arrogant and irresponsible publishers. The commission urged publishers to “regard themselves as common carriers of information and discussion” and recommended five major points that it said society was entitled to demand of its press.
- One of the finest moments in the history of the American press was its response to the civil rights movement that culminated in the 1950s and 60s. To understand that moment, however, it’s important to understand that civil rights advocates had a long history of pleading their own cause in their own press for a century and a half before the cause was appreciated. The mainstream press, like the country, was divided on the civil rights movement. Editors James J. Kilpatrick of the Richmond, Virginia, Times and Thomas Waring of the Charleston, South Carolina, Courier advocated “massive resistance” to integration and encouraged Southerners to fight for “states rights.” More temperate Southerner editors advised gradual change. These included Atlanta Journal editor Ralph McGill, Greenville, Mississippi, editor Hodding Carter, and Little Rock editor Harry Ashmore. Ralph McGill was especially known for crafting carefully balanced editorials to depict the civil rights movement as a sometimes uncomfortable but necessary and even inevitable process—a process that would help build a South that would be, he said, too busy and too generous to hate. After an Atlanta bombing, McGill wrote in a 1959 Pulitzer prize winning editorial: “This . . . is a harvest of defiance of the courts and the encouragement of citizens to defy law on the part of many Southern politicians.” McGill also urged journalists to cover the rising demands for equality as a struggle for “civil rights” — a term we take for granted today, but which at the time struck journalists as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, it was far better than the alternative term and self-fulfilling prophecy: “race war.”
- This is a photo showing the chaos at the Edmund Pettus Bridge March 7, 1965 – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches. Newspaper and television coverage of the incident was so powerful that it overwhelmed opposition to the Voting Rights Act, which was passed on Aug. 6.
- In the end, the success of the nonviolent civil rights movement was closely connected with the media’s ability to witness events. “If it hadn’t been for the media—the print media and the television—the civil rights movement would have been like a bird without wings, a choir without a song,” said civil rights leader John Lewis in 2005. Eventually, even conservative editors like Kilpatrick admitted that they had been wrong about civil rights, and the South changed. In witnessing the suffering of American civil rights demonstrators, the press came to be regarded with gratitude as an agent of national reconciliation. However, no reconciliation ever took place over Vietnam war or the Watergate political scandals.
- Concern about leaks to the press from inside the government led the Nixon administration to assemble a team of former CIA employees as “plumbers” who would fix the “leaks.” One of their assignments was to break into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate apartment and office building in Washington DC. When the burglars were arrested, two young Washington Post reporters—Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—investigated ties between the burglars and the White House. In the process, Woodward and Bernstein unraveled a web of illegal activities in the White House and the Justice Department, including extortion and bribery. This led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974 and criminal convictions for seven high-level members of his administration.
- The American experience in World War II informed, to a large extent, the US government’s lack of censorship of press coverage during the Vietnam war. Very few restrictions were imposed in Vietnam. In the early years, the press corps was skeptical about the war, but the reporters themselves saw skepticism as part of their responsibility. http://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/halberstam/coup.html
- US reporters became increasingly skeptical about the Vietnam war. David Halberstam initially believed that a US victory was needed to discourage “so-called wars of liberation” but eventually came to the conclusion that the war “was doomed,” and that the United States was “on the wrong side of history.” Neil Sheehan, a UPI reporter, saw the war as being lost on the ground long before it was lost in American public opinion, and wrote a retrospective book called “A Bright Shining Lie.” And studies of US media coverage showed that the news media tended to be neutral while public opinion was increasingly opposed to the war.
- The civil rights movement, the Watergate scandals and the anti-war movement all played against a backdrop of a changing society where conventions of all kinds were being challenged. One of the more important conventions of journalism was the idea of objectivity and the “inverted pyramid” form of writing. Magazine and newspaper writers took a different tact in the 1960s with the “literary journalism” movement.
- Especially controversial during this experimental era was what Rolling Stone writer Hunter S. Thompson called “gonzo” journalism. At best, the gonzo approach was a hilariously critical, first-person view of people twisted by political and social institutions. But at its worst, Thompson’s drug-crazed writing churned grimly through a mélange of psychotic episodes, and Thompson’s writing grew worse, not better, as he aged.
- For a complete slide show on the history of environmental journalism, see: http://www.slideshare.net/billkovarik/historyejpart-ikovarik?from_search=1
- Five and a half centuries after Johannas Gutenberg, the printing revolution seemed to have run its course. Between 2007 and 2014, US newspapers and magazines lost two-thirds of their traditional advertising income, one third of their circulation and three-quarters of their stock value. Over half of newspaper employees were laid off, and the job outlook for all journalists was a long-term decline. Many publications declared bankruptcy or moved to online-only publication.
- But that’s what the church said in 1518 ….
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/10/28/recent-trends-in-storytelling-and-new-business-models-for-publishers/ And great new media prospects like Line 9 from Toronto http://www.thestar.com/projects/pipeline_journey.html