Juan Monroy — Media Technologies: Mass Print

Steam Power
- industrial revolution, end of 18th century
- machine production replaces manual labor
- Luddite workers rebelled against steam engine, 1811
Mass Production
- increase in production speed
- increase in production scale
- decrease in production cost
- economies of scale
Steam Powered press
- Friedrich Koenig, 1814
- increase in speed
  - hand press: 250 pages per hour
  - steam press: 1100 pages per hour
- less physical labor
- production costs decrease
- growth of mass circulation: hundreds of thousands for large city newspapers
- potential for advertising support
The Penny Press
- lower production costs
- mass circulation
- dual-revenue:
  - circulation revenue
  - advertising support
- started in the United States, 1830s
- comes to Britain and Europe, 1850s
News for the Common Reader
- before steam: about 5–6 cents each
- after steam: dropped to about a penny
- served broad public tastes
- moved away from partisanship to attract more readers
- short descriptions of events, crimes, and scandals
- first-person accounts
- “inverted pyramid” style with key information at the beginning of the article
The New York Sun
- Benjamin Day
- 1833–1920
- provide the news of the day “at a price within the means of everyone"
  - local crime stories
  - newsboys
  - invented hoaxes
The New York Herald
- James Gordon Bennett
- 1835–1924
- successful due to crime reporting: robberies, rapes, murders
- reported on Wall Street, sports events, society affairs
- established bureaus in Washington, London, Paris
- leading paper during the Civil War
The New York Tribune
- Horace Greeley
- 1841–1967
- “trustworthy and moral” newspaper
- reformist agenda
  - women’s rights
  - labor unions
  - end of monopolies
  - hired Karl Marx as a foreign correspondent, 1851
  - supported the Union in the Civil War
  - merged with the New York Herald, 1924
The New York Times
- Henry Raymond
  - 1851–Present
  - neutrality as a point-of-view
  - attacked the corruption of Tammany Hall, 1870s
- bought by Adolph Ochs, 1896
  - “it won’t soil the breakfast cloth”
  - “All the News that’s Fit to Print”
  - known as the newspaper of record in the United States
The Penny Press in Britain
- penny papers developed late in the 1850s due to taxes
  - Manchester Observer
  - Manchester Guardian, 1821
- stamp tax reduced, 1836
- renegade “pauper press,” unstamped papers proliferated
- new papers emerged, Illustrated London News, 1840s
- stamp tax was viewed as a way to maintain respectability of the press
The Daily Telegraph
- Joseph M. Levy
- founded 1855
- emerged due to the end of newspaper taxes, 1850s
- resembled a penny paper
- sensational stories about crime, murder, curiosities
- teamed up with the New York Herald in the search for Dr. David Livingston, 1869
- published interview with German Kaiser Wilhelm II that contributed to tensions leading to World War I, 1908
- helped recruit code breakers during World War II, 1940
- became Europe’s first paper on the World Wide Web, 1994
The Pall Mall Gazette
- William Thomas Stead
- 1869–1923
- founded as a gentlemen’s newspaper
- new journalism with old Puritanism
- copied the lurid style of penny papers
  - crime headlines
  - crusades for reform
  - advocated for the abolition of prostitution
- watchdog role: “government by journalism"
- fell for pseudoscience: quack cures and spirit photography
- advocated idealist positions: a European Union and a High Court of Justice
The Press in France
- emerged during the 18th century
  - Enlightenment
  - French Revolution
- lived and died on government censorship rules
- penny papers: “press bon march”
  - La Presse
  - Le Sicle
- serialized fiction: roman-feuilleton
  - Balzac’s La Vieille Fille, 1836
  - Dumas’s Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1845)
- Emile Zola’s “J’accuse” the President in the Dreyfus Affair, 1898
The Progressive Era
- high-speed machine printing increased newspaper circulation
- public affairs journalism: muckraking, yellow journalism, crusading journalism, literary journalism
- main objectives of the press barons
  - promote the public good
  - attract readers and increase circulation
The New York World
- Joseph Pulitzer
- newspaper owner from St. Louis
- crusaded for the working man
- bought New York World, 1883
- crusades against corruption, slum housing, and racism
Nellie Bly
- “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” 1887
- Completes journey Around the World in 72 Days, 1889–1890
- Reports on Pullman Strike, 1894
The New York Journal
- William Randolph Hearst
- newspaper publisher from San Francisco, 1887
- sounded like a populist reformer but operated like corporate baron
- printed sensational stories, illustrations, and personality features to attract readers
- purchased New York Journal, 1895
Hearst’s Circulation War with Pulitzer’s World
- reduced the price to one penny
- wrote fake news stories
- plagiarized the competition
- imitated The World’s style
- raided the staff of World
- hired Richard Outcault, illustrator of The Yellow Kid
- breathlessly covered Spanish-American War and the invasion of Cuba, 1898
EW Scripps and Newspaper Chains
- Edward Wyllis Scripps
  - Detroit Tribune and Advertiser, 1872
  - Penny Press, Cleveland, 1878
- chain of “penny press” newspapers, by 1926
  - twenty-seven newspapers
  - United Press news syndicate, 1907
- supporter of science
The Daily Mail
- Alfred Harmsworth, 1896
- tabloid publisher
  - “can fish speak?”
  - “do dogs commit murder?”
- circulation of 400,000
- backed the Boer War in South Africa, 1899–1902
- started The Daily Mirror, 1903, a newspaper for women
- bought The Times, 1908
- published stunts and promotions to attract readers
Lippmann’s Four Stages of the Press
- Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, 1922
  - Authoritarian
  - Partisan
  - Commercial
  - Organized Intelligence
- valued the commercial (“penny”) press because it freed the masses from tyranny and political partisanship
- foresaw that the press would evolve to organized intelligence
  - computers in the late 20th century
  - one-to-one and many-to-many communications
  - deterioration of consensus