Comm455/History of Journalism

We live in a culture where the latest episode of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” pulls in more ratings than the Republican National Convention during  the 2012 presidential election. The latest TLC phenomenon, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” is a prime example of how sensationalized news is undermining the foundation of ethical journalism. “Here Comes Honey […]

Sensationalism in the United States began with the creation of The Penny Press. Like the name suggests, penny press papers cost one penny per paper. This made news accessible to the lower class for the first time. It didn’t take long for journalists to realize that this new “penny-audience” was not interested in the same kind […]

For everyone who has ever found themselves using TweetDeck, it is easy to draw parallels between sensationalism and Twitter. For example, when the report of a possible gunman at Virginia Tech hit the Twitterverse in August, sensationalist posts flooded newsfeeds throughout the duration of the day. This caused the incident to be the topic of […]

In 1937, an announcer for WLS Chicago — Herbert Morrison — was in Lakehurst, NJ to cover the arrival of the Hindenburg airship. It had just completed its first year of service and had successfully returned from Europe. American Airlines hired the Hindenburg to shuttle passengers from Lakehurst to Newark for connecting airplane flights. It was when they were trying […]

Traditionally, newspapers primarily contained information about war, crime and other hard news relevant to the community it was distributed in. So, when did sensationalism and yellow journalism come into play? This video explains.

View “Amanda Knox vs. the media” on Storify

The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby boy became a media sensation, quite possibly leading to the poorest outcome of all.

I will never forget being eight years old, on a long road trip across the desert from Texas to Arizona, seeing billboard signs for “The Thing?” After every mile passed, the signs became more frequent – we were 100 miles away, then 75 and then 50. With each billboard, my curiosity grew; so too did […]

The media frenzy brought about by the recent Casey Anthony trial is nothing new. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was caught in the same sort of sensationalist scandal over 90 years ago.

Mitchell Stephens wrote in his book ‘A History of News,’ that “Murders and their victims surrender all rights to privacy,” he goes on to quote John McEnroe a former tennis star that claimed that, “Being a celebrity is like I am being raped.” If murders and victims surrender all their rights to privacy and being […]

A stroll by the checkout lane in any average American supermarket reveals a depository of sensationalist tabloids. Tabloids such as the National Enquirer, Globe, and the Star, are all examples of magazines that rely on sensationalism to sell copies. Although the modern-era tabloids date back to the American Daily News in 1919, many people might […]

When we discuss press freedom in our History of Journalism class, we usually center our discussions on government restrictions on publications throughout history. These governments would target newspapers which blasted authoritative figures, examples being kings and the Catholic Church. Today, the press has various high-impact public figures to blast, and restrictions (at least in the […]