Comm455/History of Journalism

Freedom of the press is a base principle in our society. However, this freedom was challenged by the government until 1931 when the case of Near v. Minnesota proved that prior restraint (censorship on expression before the expression actually takes place) is unconstitutional. The Saturday Press was created and run by an anti-Semitic man, Jay M. Near, […]

When the word “viral” is used today, we tend to think of a popular Youtube video before we think about the kind of infectious contagion that such videos derived this title from.  Most of the time, viral videos are exercises in the extreme, whether it’s an extremely cute dog or an extremely annoying music video, […]

By: Jessica Farley An election year means a multitude of things for the masses: less than personable campaigners pestering you during your lunch breaks, an overflowing influx of “politically active” celebrities, red and blue cardboard signs peppering the side of the highway, and in recent years, the demand for unbiased media coverage. It seems that, […]

I enjoyed the history of the Albany Evening Journal, solely because of its transformation from a party newspaper to a proponent for the Civil War.   Thurlow Weed started the production of the “Albany Evening Journal” in New York as a medium to promote the Anti-Masonic Party, the first single-issue “third” party in the United States, […]

Sensationalism in the United States began with the creation of The Penny Press. Like the name suggests, penny press papers cost one penny per paper. This made news accessible to the lower class for the first time. It didn’t take long for journalists to realize that this new “penny-audience” was not interested in the same kind […]

Are you a story teller, or a story writer? While some would argue they possess both qualities, this is one instance in which we know the chicken(spoken word) came before the egg(written word). Stories, whether hard or soft, were first heard. They were heard, and then told, and eventually written. Today we use Greg’s Shorthand. Introduced […]

Having a Black president has reawakened the ethnic press. While in past presidencies, politics weren’t very prominent in Black publications, the reign of President Obama has had African-American media outlets clamoring to report first on his every move. The president noticed back in 2010, right in the middle of his term that he needed to […]