Comm455/History of Journalism

You’re standing in line at the grocery store waiting to check out, go home, and eat dinner.  If you’re like me, you cannot help but scan the headlines and judge the celebrities featured on the weekly magazine covers that frame the checkout isle.  Why not skim through the pages of People, Us Weekly, or Time […]

Although the Carolina Panthers have started the season 0-2, their #1 overall pick is already living up to his legend. Cam Newton in two games has already thrown for over 850 yards. This has shattered rookie records and he is only the sixth player of any kind to throw for over 400 yards in two […]

The going rate is 20 dollars a gram for marijuana in the Mid Atlantic United States. What if I told you that in the early 1900s you could have held several ounces of the plant for pennies? That’s right folks. It’s a pot blog. However without starting a referendum on who has the right to […]

One of the most influential technological advances of the mid to late 19th century was the telegraph. The telegraph had the ability to drastically cut the travel time for news and other information. Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of Morse code, along with his assistant, Alfred Vail, created the first electrical telegraph. After several successful […]

You may recall a recent story about a UCLA student who decided to sneak his way into Libya to join the rebels in their fight for freedom. There, 21-year-old Chris Jeon learned how to fire a weapon for the first time before soon being told to leave by the rebels that once welcomed him due […]

The Terrorists could black out cities. They could launch nuclear missiles in their silos! They could…shut down Facebook? In recent months Americans have been seeing this story develop on national news shows in the thirty to forty five second increments the major networks give to the short frill pieces that we all seem to care […]

Manager John Schiffner sees me coming from his perch in the dugout and makes sure to put on his hat. His hair is a little disheveled today, and wouldn’t look very good on camera. Ten years ago this scenario would never have played out in the small town of Chatham, Massachusetts. Ten years ago the Cape Cod […]

The Roman empire was one of the most powerful ancient civilizations of all time. They also created the earliest form of a newspaper called the Acta. One might think this newspaper would be filled with great stories like gladiators or crime. Instead it was just a few short selections from the Senate each day. The […]

Few people could be considered visionaries of their time. Michael Stern Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, could be seen as one of these rare visionaries. In 1971, it was far fetched to imagine the progression of technology to its current levels. Yet, Michael Hart was able to see the continuous need for books and […]

In the late 1800’s, mostly cold hard facts were considered for news stories. At the turn of the century however, journalists were beginning to stray from objectivity. Finding the dirt of the story became more important than the where’s and they why’s. The word muckraker was first coined by Theodore Roosevelt, who was president during […]

Few things are as passionate, dangerous or consequential as a population’s will to overthrow its government. Even today, people are exercising their rights to speak up against oppressors by way of assembly through mass media. After all, what could go wrong with a little power of the press? In fact, history has also shown us that […]