Blog #7

·       What are the limitations of a press that serves only partisan interests? Why did the earliest papers appeal mainly to more privileged readers?

Newspapers had two general types: political or commercial. The Partisan Press was a pushed plan of the particular political group that subsidized the paper. The commercial press served business leaders, who were interested in economic issues. The partisan press gave us the editorial pages, while the early commercial press was the forerunner of the business section. Between the early 1700s and the early 1800s, even the largest of these papers rarely reached a circulation of fifteen hundred. Readership was primarily confined to educated or wealthy men who controlled local politics and commerce.

·       How did newspapers emerge as a mass medium during the penny press era?

Newspapers had emerged as a mass medium during the penny press era. In the 1830s, the Industrial Revolution made possible the replacement of expensive handmade paper with cheaper machine-made paper. The rise of the middle class spurred the growth of literacy, setting the stage for a more popular and inclusive press. Steam-powered presses replacing mechanical presses were the breakthroughs in technology, and it permitted publishers to produce as many as four thousand newspapers an hour, which lowered the cost of newspapers. Penny papers soon began competing with six-cent papers. Subscriptions remained the preferred sales tool of many penny papers; they began relying increasingly on daily street sales of individual copies.

·       What are the two main features of yellow journalism?

Yellow Journalism emphasized profitable papers that carried exciting human-interest stories, crime news, large headlines, and more readable copy in the late 1800s. There were two main features of yellow journalism. The first one was the overly dramatic or sensational stories about crimes, celebrities, disasters, scandals and intrigue. The second one, and sometimes forgotten, was the legacy and roots that the yellow press provided for investigative journalism: news reports that hunt out and expose corruption, particularly in business and government. The reporting increasingly became a crusading force for common people, with the press assuming a watchdog role on their behalf.

·       What major challenges does new technology pose to the newspaper industry?

There were major challenges that new technology pose to the newspaper industry. Publishers and journalists today face worrisome issues, such as the decline in newspaper readership and the failure of many papers to attract younger readers. During the Great Depression, the decline in daily newspaper readership began with the rise of radio. From the late 1960s and 1970s, another circulation crisis occurred with the rise in network television viewing and greater competition from the suburban weeklies. Also with an increasing number of women working full-time outside the home, newspapers could no longer consistently count on one of their core readership groups. U.S. newspaper circulation dropped again, this time by more than 25 percent throughout the first decade of the 2000s.

·       What is the current state of citizen journalism?

Citizen journalism has led to the combination of the online new surge and traditional newsroom cutbacks. Citizen journalism refers to people-activist amateurs and concerned citizens, not professional journalists-who use the Internet and blogs to disseminate news and information. With steep declines in newsroom staffs, many professional news media organizations like CNN’s iReport and many regional newspapers are increasingly trying to corral citizen journalists as an inexpensive way to make up for journalists lost to newsroom “downsizing.”

·       What are the challenges that new online news sites face?

A study in 2008, The Institute for Interactive Journalism reported that more than one thousand community-based Web sites were in operation, posting citizen stories about local government, police, and city development. This represented twice the number of community sites from a year earlier. The study found that a number of these sites individually revealed some impressive work, the funding and resources to provide these services at the same level of full news operations, day-in and day-out, do not exist, at least as of now. Many sites that were not very transparent about funding and daily operations, and policies no more likely to encourage citizen postings than traditional commercial news media sites. While many of these sites do not yet have the resources to provide the kind of regional news coverage that local newspapers once provided, there is still a lot of hope for community journalism moving forward. These sites provide an outlet for people to voice their stories and opinions.

·       What is a newspaper's role in a democracy?

Newspaper’s plays a major role in a democracy. Newspapers have played the leading role in sustaining democracy and championing freedom. Newspapers have fought heroic battles in places that had little tolerance for differing points of view. From 1992 through August 2012, 962 reporters from around the world were killed while doing their jobs according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Our nation is dependent on journalists who are willing to do this very dangerous reporting in order to keep us informed about what is going on around the world. Aside from the physical danger, newsroom cutbacks, and the closing of foreign bureaus, a number of smaller concerns remain as we consider the future of newspapers. For example, some charge that newspapers have become so formulaic in their design and reporting styles that they may actually discourage new approaches to telling stories and reporting news. A criticism is that in many one-newspaper cities, only issues and events of interest to middle and upper middle class readers are covered, resulting in the underreporting of the experiences and events that affect poorer and working class citizens. Also given the rise of newspaper chains, the likelihood of including new opinions, ideas and information in mainstream daily papers may be diminishing. Chain ownership tends to discourage watch-dog journalism and the crusading traditions of newspapers.

·       What role did magazines play in social reform at the turn of the twentieth century?

The role that magazines played in social reform at the turn of the twentieth century was that there was better distribution and lower costs had attracted readers, but to maintain sales, magazines had to change content as well. One way to maintain circulation was printing the fiction and essays of the best writers of the day. The rise in magazine circulation coincided with rapid social changes in America. Hundreds of thousands of Americans moved from the country to the city in search of industrial jobs, millions of new immigrants also poured in. The nations that journalists had long written about had grown increasingly complex by the turn of the century. Many newspaper reporters became dissatisfied with the simplistic and conventional style of newspaper journalism and turned to magazines, where they were able to write at greater length and in greater depth about broader issues, they wrote about such topics as corruption in big business and government, urban problems faced by immigrants, labor conflicts and race relations.

·       What are the advantages of magazines moving to digital formats?

Some of the advantages of magazines moving to digital formats is that the Internet has become a place where print magazines like Time and Entertainment Weekly can extend their reach, where some magazines like FHM and Elle Girl can survive when their print version ends, or where online magazines like Salon, Slate, and Wonderwall can exist exclusively. Since the costs of paper, printing, and postage, creating magazine companion Web sites is a popular method for expanding the reach of consumer magazines. For example, like Wired magazine has a print circulation of about 830,000. The Web also gives magazines unlimited space, which is at a premium in their printed versions, and the opportunity to do things that print can’t do. Many online magazines now include blogs, original video and audio podcasts, social networks, games, virtual fitting rooms, and other interactive components that could never work in print. Other magazines offer printable coupons on their sites or like Redbook and GQ, offer “snap” advertising coupons, in which the reader snaps a photo of a designated image in the print edition with his or her cell phone and sends the photo to the magazine for a coupon or promotional sample.

·       What triggered the move toward magazine specialization?

What triggered the move toward magazine specialization was the general trend away from mass market publications and toward specialty magazines coincided with radio’s move to specialized formats in the 1950s. Including the rise of television, magazines ultimately reacted the same way radio and movies did, they adapted. Radio had developed formats for older and younger audiences, for rock fans and classical fans. Filmmakers, at the movies, focused on more adult subject matter that was off-limits to television’s image as a family medium. Magazines traded their mass audience for smaller, discrete audiences that could be guaranteed to advertisers. Magazines are now divided by advertiser type, consumer magazines, which carry a host of general consumer products and services for various occupational groups and farm magazines, which contain ads for agricultural products and farming lifestyles.

·       How does advertising affect what gets published in the editorial side of magazines?

Advertising affects what gets published in the editorial side of magazines from the advertising and sales department of a magazine secures, clients, arranges promotions, and places ads. Just like radio stations, network television stations, and basic cable television stations, consumer magazines are heavily reliant on advertising revenue. The more successful the magazine, the more it can charge for advertisement space. Magazines provide their advertisers with rate cards, which indicate how much they charge for a certain amount of advertising space on a page. The traditional display ad has been the staple of magazine advertising for more than a century. As magazines move to table, editions, the options for ad formats has grown immensely. Advertisers and companies have canceled ads when a magazine featured an unflattering or critical article about a company or an industry; this practice has put enormous pressure on editors not to offend advertisers.