Comm455/History of Journalism

David Graham Phillips was a prominent muckraking journalist and novelist in the late 19th and early 20th century. Following the success of his first novel, The Great God Success, he was able to continue his career in fiction writing and begin work as a free lance journalist. Throughout this portion of his career, Phillips built a […]

“The growing professionalism of the press and newspapermen in news coverage and the quality of writing (featuring talented writers). Writers were professionals and worked and live by their pens fulltime.” Journalists living by their pens is certainly an image that has faded with time. Now, it is more like journalists live by their smartphones, waiting […]

  The murder of Helen Jewett in 1836 gave way to a template for crime reporting which endures to the present day. And the gruesome crime would have been forgotten if it wasn’t for the evolution of American newspapers.   At the time, most newspapers thrived on information that consisted of stories about commerce and […]

A broadside was one of the first forms of widespread printed news. Broadsides are basically one-page sheets of news that often also contained some sort of picture or illustration to depict the message of the article. Most broadsides were set up so that the top part was a “woodcut or copper engraving” of an important, often historical, […]

Feminism has earned a bad rep over the years, and sensationalism in advertising has not helped. Although we would like to believe that we have achieved gender equality, our past and our present prove otherwise. Look at this 1950s ad. Clearly the focal point is not the projector. “Far from natural looking, [her breasts] jut […]