Comm455/History of Journalism

When people think of muckraking, what comes to mind is that term coined by President Teddy Roosevelt.  This term has to do with an individual who “rakes the muck” or exposes corruption going on to the public.  There were many muckrakers, the majority of them male until reporter Nellie Bly introduced herself to the muckraking industry. Early […]

Before Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. Before newspapers, pamphlets and gazettes there was only one way to get the news. Word-of-mouth. For over 102,000 years word-of-mouth has been used to transfer the latest news from one person to the next across vast regions.  Stories of Pheidippides and Israel Bissell show us how far people went to spread the news.  […]

Demosthenes, the Greek orator (and quote-machine), wrote in the First Philippic that Athenians were obsessed with news by word of mouth. “Thus we all go about framing our several tales,” he said. Almost 150 years earlier, this obsession was on display for all to see. The courier/messenger Pheidippides ran from the Greek city Marathon to […]

The Chinese are credited with many inventions that helped change the world. Their “four great inventions” had enormous impacts throughout history.  Two of those great inventions had direct impacts on the dissemination of news. China’s first major contribution to news, however, was not an invention.  It was the domestication of the horse circa 3500 B.C. […]

The first database, in recorded history, or what we think of as a database, according to Mitchell Stevens, author of  “The History of News,” was written on clay tablets (as seen below) in cuneiform (symbolic script) around 2500 B.C. in Mesopotamia (present day Syria).  Recorded on these tablets were state documents, property ownership listings, agricultural data, school manuscripts, and literary […]

Before OJ, before cable news, before the advent of tabloids and even before the Lindbergh kidnapping, there was the murder of Helen Jewett in 1836. Jewett was an upscale prostitute in New York City until her brutal murder in the early hours of April 10. The next day, New York’s best-selling Sun newspaper published the first account of the crime, including all of […]

At first, Joseph Pulitzer did not have to worry much about competing with other newspapers. He purchased the “New York World” in 1883 and things were going well. Under Pulitzer, the “World” had circulation grow from 15,000 to 600,000. However, things started to change in 1895. William Randolph Hearst purchased the “New York Journal” and wasted […]

The Stationers’ Company is a Livery Company that resides in London.  It was originated back in 1403 with control over the publishing industries and  in charge of enforcing copyright regulations of all books in England, except those printed by Oxford and Cambridge universities. Book authors could not be part of the guild and therefore they […]

“We wish to plead our own cause” was the statement that began Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American newspaper which began in 1827.  The paper was edited by Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm who was the first African-American to graduate from college in the United States.  Not only was this pioneer paper circulated in 11 […]

The history of war reporting is one that can be easily identified by the relationship it has developed between the news and the people seeking that news. War was a contributing factor to the development of preliterate systems of news travel as characterized in Mitchell Stephens book “A History of News”. War reporting grew in […]

England made a lot of contributions to journalism though The Stationer’s Company and press control was probably not a welcome contribution. Formed in about 1538, this guild helped the English government enforce the licensing of all printed works. The guild was formed out of the Brotherhood of Manuscript Producers and the Brotherhood of the Craft of […]