Comm455/History of Journalism

“Asking who is a journalist is the wrong question, because journalism can be produced by anyone” –The American Press Institute This quote epitomizes the changing role of a journalist over the course of history. Today, a journalist is anyone who commits an act of journalism. This is quite different than the definition of a journalist  in […]

With the recent progression of the Occupy movement, the concept of citizen journalism has become increasingly more interesting to me. This interest, in part, is derived from the recent media attention focusing on police brutality (primarily pepper-spraying) at the Occupy protests. The most recently highlighted attack occurred at the University of California, Davis. Video of […]

Watchdogs. Honest. Gatekeepers. Objective. We have a lot of different words to describe journalist, but some how “trustworthy” never seems to be one of them. It seems the integrity of journalist has been questioned by the public for longer then many of us might realize — since 1648 (at least). In twenty first century journalism […]

Once denied the right to learn to read because he was told he “should know nothing but to obey his master, to do as he is told to do,” Frederick Douglass did well to become one of the greatest journalists in American history. Douglass was born a slave in Maryland and separated from his mother as […]