Comm455/History of Journalism

Thomas Nelson Conrad of Fairfax Court House, Virginia was the third president of Virginia Tech. He played an active role in influencing Blacksburg as the location of choice for the new college, and was a Confederate spy during the American Civil War. And fashion saved his life. A troop of Union cavalry watched him enter […]

“What emerges from the 16th century is a reading public ready to invest in printed material from broadsheets to pamphlets to books that went beyond their trade or devotional lives.”   Over the 16th century, the publishing market was refined: news pamphlets recorded local news in addition to foreign sensationalized news, sensations were the stock […]

100 years ago, Lake County Independent was the local newspaper that predominantly covered news for Lake County, Illinois. In the early 1900’s, these newspapers were much simpler than today’s. Local news were really local. So much so that the sample of newspapers were only a few pages long, and it seems to talk about people […]

Patch.com is taking hyper-local journalism to another level. The cities lucky enough to have a Patch site have citizens that are much more informed about the stuff going on in their backyards. An artist from Fairfax City, Va. — for example — is on the verge of re-opening his art gallery after relocating due to […]

With high definition TV being the norm with popular television programs today, more and more local television stations are converting their local news in HD. All four major network stations in Washington are currently broadcasting their local newscasts in high def, but this trend only started 5 years ago, locally, when WUSA channel 9 went […]

The first thing that might come into mind when thinking about a newsroom is probably not transparency.  Given the competitive nature of the news, many news entities probably would not want others to know what stories they have in progress until they are reported. Steven Smith outlined an innovative way for news organizations to become […]

Many people read newspapers, either online or at their kitchen table, but a lot of people probably do not realize the work that goes into publishing the news read by thousands in a daily newspaper. Julie Starr, founder of AllAbouttheStory.com, published a slide presentation detailing how a modern newspaper newsroom works.  Some of the steps […]

Many journalism students are familiar with writing for print and online publications, such as Broadside and OnMason blogs, but there is another form of journalism that some might not be familiar with: writing for broadcast. Broadcast journalists include reporters that you see on the local news, but they also include big-name journalists like Brian Williams […]

The Washington Post circulates to over 793,000 Northern Virginia readers as of last year.  With numbers like these, area residents might not realize that there could be another newspaper in their community. There are numerous weekly community newspapers throughout the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.  Stop by Alexandria and pick up your copy of the […]