Comm455/History of Journalism

By: Jessica Farley As Christian Bale once demonstrated in the cult classic “Newsies,” being a paper boy is not a job to be taken lightly. For years, the paperboy has been a symbol of hard work, youthful determination, and American values. However, in today’s world of Kindles and Twitter, the paperboy is rapidly becoming nothing […]

Since Johannes Gutenberg’s Printing Press—invented around 1436—prints of all kinds have been massively produced. Following this invention, the newspaper was able to spread the news in the form of printed paper. The time in between Gutenberg’s Printing Press and our modern society of blogging, tweeting and online publications has come to be known as the […]

William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), dropped out of Harvard in his senior year and took control of one of his father’s business interests: the San Francisco Examiner. Eventually Hearst would go shopping for a paper in New York City, and purchased the New York Journal in 1895. Turn of the century New York was a battlefield […]

Let me take you back to a time when news was not instantaneous. When news was spread by paperboys on street corners and families would learn of the happenings of the world from a piece of paper in the morning and a television set at night. Life in the 1960’s in America, during the height […]

How was the first US newspaper, Publick Occurences similar to modern day blogging? Josh Landis and Mitch Butler explain how with the decline of newspapers, blogging has rejuvenated colonial journalism principles in which everyone has a voice.

Old news vs. New news. The decline of the newspaper industry is imminent. With a decline in circulation and an increasing number of online newspapers, the paper newspaper that we are accustomed to is on the path to extinction. If this video doesn’t foreshadow it’s demise then I don’t know what does.  

Since we took our first test last class, I decided I’d do a wrap-up of all the ethnic press events from our timeline.

It’s almost hard to believe The New York Times was founded as a penny paper in 1851. But then again, it’s not surprising. Of course a newspaper of such prestige was a part of the revolutionary penny press era. The penny press made significant contributions to the newspaper industry. While the penny press is known […]

The “wall” just moved a little further again. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently revealed that he is planning to start a daily digital newspaper exclusively for tablet devices like the iPad. WWD.com reported that the new “newspaper” will be called The Daily and is expected to cost about a dollar a week or four bucks […]

There are four types of opinion pieces in newspapers: Editorials– The written opinion of an editor, an editorial board, or of the political leanings of the entire organization Cartoons– Illustrations that appear in the paper poking fun at current events, often expresses the opinion of the artist Columns– A regularly printed series of articles of […]

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 […]