Note 2 Comm and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast

Part 2: Hot Metal to Hotmail: The (Recent) History of Mass Comm
. historical account+ social context
5. From Guntenberg to Global News: A Brief History of the Print Media
Print Culture
. It is not until the invention of moveable type and the printing press that comm media became independent of their site of production.
. Modern mass comm is the liberation of the comm form from its place of creation.
. In the early years of the mass circulation print media: the separation between readers were more likely to e along political lines ---> newspapers and other periodicals: more partisan, propagandistic, overtly proselytising
. The changes in culture of the mass print media: agitational party press---> capitalist conglomerates mirrors and documents the trajectory of the 18th- and 19th- century revolutionary bourgeoisie---> the moribund and corrosive edifice of capitalism today
Gutenberg
. 1452: 200 copies Gutenberg Bible
. Immediate cultural effects: 1. encouraged literacy 2. disseminated ideas more rapidly 3. fostered greater standardisation of texts 4. intellectual and political order ---> 1517, Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther's rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church. characteristics of newspaper: diversity of content+ periodicity of appearance
. 1566, first prototypical newspapers were published in Basel in Switzerland
Journalism and the Age of Revolution
. Father of modern journalism: Daniel Defoe
. freedom of the press
. Kevin Williams: the history of journalism and the news media can only be fully appreciated if one takes into account 'the contervailing pulls on the mass media' exercised by public opinion on one hand and 'powerful institutions in society' on the other.
Typography, Telegraphy, Telephony, and Photography Converge to Make 'News'
. 4 classification of type: serif 衬线体 sans serif 无衬线体，灯芯体 script or manusrcipt, display
. Typefonts are grouped in families: one typeface has different forms--->bold, italics, extended, condensed
. The convergence of pringting+electric telegraph+photograph---> give rise to mass circulation newspaper in the late 19th century +railway
Print Journalism in 19th-century Australia
. The colonial newspaper were divided politically and tended to attract men who had political ambitions.
. Australia: lack of professionalism ( irregular entry, lack of formal training, professional standards, strong newspaper craft unions, paternalistic proprietors and editors....), respectability
Up to a Point, Lord Copper: Media Magnatism(sic)
. The rise of the popular press in the late 19th century brought with it the beginning of a long and dishonourable tradition of media proprietors interfering in and influencing politics.
. UK:
Daily Express: Alfred Pearson, 1900, strongly supported Joseph Chamberlain's policies on free trade
Daily Mail: Lord Northcliffe(Alfred Harmsworth), advocated conscription at the outbreak of WWI
Lord Rothermere(Harold Harmsworth), media magnate Lord Copper
. Machiavellian Lord Beaverbrook: purchased the Daily Express in 1916, founded the Sunday Express in 1921, acquired the Evening Standard in 1929
a campaigning proprietor: the weight of media-led public opinion could change public policy
. William Randolph Hearst: New Your Journal, lead-up the Spanish American War in the late 1890s---> Hearst's jingoism -----> Charles Foster Kane (1941) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
The Brass Check
. Upton Sinclair's study of American journalism,1920, The Brass Check ---> shift towards monopoly and oligopoly求过于供，寡头主义: crisis in American journalism
---> in essence: a struggle between Sinclair (progressive 'muckraking' journalism that championed the cause of the downtrodden against the rise of monopoly capitalism) vs. Joseph Pulitzer/ Randolp Hearst ( salacious, bawdy, entertaining and less newsworthy 'yellow' journalism)
. dialectic: excessive commercialism vs. tradition of muckrakers and progressive journalists --->'professional' journalism (---> reporter's training became based on the creed of objectivity and on the ideology of pluralism and within the unchallenged context of a free market for ideas)
. physical, economic, cultural, and political closeness that produced radical reporters. They had to rely on personal observation and face-to face interviews.
. Distance between reporters and their sources increased because of thechnologies development: newsgathering became much more about the transfer of information from similarly equipped centers of influence/ national newspaper chains reduced influence of purely 'local' papers
. Technologies ===> decisive social shift: reporters no longer part of the audience they reported for / much more closely aligned to the interests they worked for and share the worldview of the proprietor
. The Brass Check: the bias in the modern press became pro-business and anti-labour
. 4 types of control over journalism: 1. ownership of the papers 2. ownership of the owners 3. advertising subsidies 4. direct bribery
Katherine Graham and the Washington Post
. Watergate scandal engulfed Richard Nixon in 1973
. Graham's conception of propretorship: support editors in the professional judgements they make
.Rupert Murdoch: an interventionist proprietor encouraging an editorial group-think across his empire
Citizen Murdoch
. principal: however massive a paper's circulation was, the aim should be to make as large as a return on your investment as possible
.Murdoch: Australia---> London---> America---> secured a foothold in the lucrative Chinese media market
. Murdoch: 1980s, took on the powerful British union movement: Fleet Street---> dockland, Wapping
. Turned around declining profitablility in the British newspaper industry by embracing new technology and downsizing his workforce of journalists and printers
. News Corporation
The End of Fleet Street: Industrial Processes Win Over Craft
. 1986: Fleet Street---> Wapping (full support of them PM Margaret Thatcher)
. Wapping plant: the first newspaper office in the world to be fully computerised
. Changed working conditions---> develop a competitive ideology/ entrench a feeling of distrust among the journalists/ destroy collegiality in the newsroom
. Enlist the support of conservative British PM Margaret Thatcher in his battle with the unions
The Computer Revolution in Newspaper Production
. Trend: introduction of computing power to replace journalists, typesetters, and printers.
The Future of Newspapers: Circulation and Credibility
. 1. newspaper in competition with broadcasting and the Internet
. advertising revenue is under threat---> migrate to Web / globally newspaper circulation is in steady decline/ diversity suffers/ shed staff, squeeze staff number/ greater competition for eyeballs
. Broadsheet: A2 size/ upmarket form
. Tabloid (Compact): A3 size/ downmarket form/ journalistic practices: beat-ups , sensationalist reporting, photographs of semi-naked women/ poor-quality journalism
. 2. Credibility/ Believability
. credibility: independent journalism, free of conflicts of interest, publishing fearlessly in the public interest... ===> 'compact' format was a natural progression
. readers will always migrate to trusted sources of information wherever that is/ media available 24/7, not just on the lawn at dawn
. demise of paper vs. paperbound books
. Killer Application: A computer application that revolutionises the use of the computer system and renders redundant (kills off) previous applications. Spreadsheets and word processing were the original killer applications; Internet browsers and search egines are another examples.