Journalism means writing for

newspapers or magazines. It is the

communication of information
through writing in periodicals and
newspapers. The people have an
inborn desire to know what’s novel
or new. This curiosity is satisfied by
the journalists through their writing
in the newspapers and journals on
current affairs and news.

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Journalism is the occupation of reporting, writing,
editing, photographing or broadcasting news or of
conducting any news organization as a business.

The word “Journalism” is derived from the word

“journal” which means a daily register or a diary –
a book containing each day’s business or
transactions. This includes newspapers no matter
whether they are published daily or weekly. It also
means a magazine to whatever section of the
audience it caters to.

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In the modern age,
thee press is called
the “Fourth Estate”. It
enjoys a very
important place in
society and plays a
very vital role in a
democracy.

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• At its heart, journalism is storytelling. So,
when you think about it, journalism has been
occurring as long as humans have been
communicating and sharing stories.

• But, anyone who’s ever played the

“telephone game” or “gossip game” knows
about the problems with oral story telling…

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…it’s not very accurate

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Then: letters and ballads
People realized it was a
good idea to write down
stories to ensure their
legacy and accuracy.

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 Writing has been invented
independently in the Near
East, China and
Mesoamerica . The
cuneiform script, created in
Mesopotamia , present-day
Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was first.
It is also the
only writing system which
can be traced to its earliest
prehistoric origin.
Cuneiform
sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/

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The mass media started
evolving as early as 3300 B.C.,
when the Egyptians perfected
the hieroglyphics. This writing
system was based on symbols.
Later in 1500 B.C., the
Semites devised the alphabets
with consonants. It was around
800 B.C. that the vowels were
introduced into the alphabet by
the Greeks.
entertainism.com/history-of-mass-media

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The Acta Diurna ("Daily Events") was the first news type
of publication. The daily gazette dated from 59 BC and
was attributed in origin to Julius Caesar. Handwritten
copies were posted in prominent places in Rome and in
the provinces with the clear intention of feeding the
populace official information. Additionally, the typical Acta
Diurna contained news of gladiatorial contests,
astrological omens, notable marriages, births and deaths,
public appointments, and trials and executions. Such
reading matter presaged the future popularity of such
newspaper fillers as horoscopes, the obituary column
and the sports pages.

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The Acta Diurna (World’s first newspaper appeared in 131 B.C.)

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In Germany, around
1440, goldsmith
Johannes Gutenberg
invented the
printing press, which
started the Printing
Revolution.
scarc.library.oregonstate.edu › incunabula › Gutenberg

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“Mass media” born…

The opportunity for wider dissemination of news

came with the invention of printing by Gutenberg in
the 1450s. Soon after the development of printing,
sheets carrying news (broadsides and pamphlets)
made their appearance, along with books, in
particular the Bible…

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 Magazines, which had
started in the 17th century as
learned journals, began to
feature opinion-forming
articles on current affairs,
such as those in the Tatler
(1709–11) and the Spectator
(1711–12). Appearing in
the 1830s were cheap mass-
circulation magazines aimed
at a wider and less well-
educated public, as well as
illustrated and women’s
magazines. The cost

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Characteristics of early papers
Censored:
Not timely: Making Short: Paper was
Printers were only
papers was slow and costly -- newspapers
allowed to publish
laborious process. By had only 3 pages, and
newspapers if they
the time printers a blank back page for
were licensed by
printed news, it was the owner to in fresh
the British
months old news or gossip
government

Offered a mix: Papers contained No distinction was made and

business announcements, news from between facts, opinions,
Europe, gossip, stories copied from criticism, hearsay
other newspapers

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In China during the Tang dynasty, a court circular
called a bao, or “report,” was issued to government
officials. This gazette appeared in various forms
and under various names more or less continually
to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The first
regularly published newspapers appeared in
German cities and in Antwerp about 1609. The first
English newspaper, the Weekly Newes, was
published in 1622. One of the first daily
newspapers, The Daily Courant, appeared in 1702.

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But, the first newspapers (in the sense of a recurring
publication) did not appear in Europe until almost the
17th century:

• Mercurius Gallobelgicus (Cologne, 1592) was the

worlds first periodical, issued (in Latin) semiannually and
distributed at book fairs.

• The Oxford Gazette (1665) was the first regularly

published newspaper, begun while the English court was
at Oxford to avoid the plague in London. When the court
returned to London, the Gazette came with it.

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Cuneiform Mercurius Gallobelgicus

The Oxford Gazette

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Press freedom was always under attack

In 1735 the New York Weekly Journal called the governor

of New York a monkey John Peter Zenger was charged
with “seditious libel” and stood trial - he was found
innocent

This set the precedent that newspapers should be

able to criticize the government without fear of
punishment

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Speaking out was dangerous

• 16-year-old Ben Franklin worked for brother James at

the New England Courant in Boston

• In 1722, James was jailed for mocking local officials in

his paper, and young Ben had to take over

• James criticized religious leaders in later years and was

banned from publishing

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Press freedom was always under attack

In 1735 the New York Weekly Journal called the governor

of New York a monkey John Peter Zenger was charged
with “seditious libel” and stood trial - he was found
innocent

This set the precedent that newspapers should be

able to criticize the government without fear of
punishment

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“Yellow Journalism”

• By the end of 19th century, newspapers were the

nation’s main source of information
• As huge newspaper empires grew, so did
competition and circulation wars
• “Yellow journalism” used sensationalism as a way
to increase readership: loud headlines on sin, sex,
rumors, even fake stories.

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“Yellow Journalism”

It began when one publisher . . .

•Joseph Pulitzer owned the St.
Louis Post Dispatch, and took
over the New York World in 1883
•He was a crusader for hard
news, but liked to present it with
sensationalism
•At first, he demanded accuracy
from his reporters
Founder of Pulitzer Prize and
Columbia University School
of Journalism

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. . . challenged another. . .

William Randolph Hearst,

owner of the San Francisco
Examiner, bought New York
Journal in 1895

He loved politics and hoped to

run for president William
Randolph Hearst

Taking on Pulitzer as a rival,

his paper emphasized crime,
sex, scandals, and violence

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The battle raged over comic strips
Pulitzer was the first publisher to
run comic strips in his paper

He and Hearst fought over the

“Hogan’s Alley” comic strip, printed
in yellow ink, by James Outcalt.

The term “yellow journalism” came

to mean any sensational, inaccurate
reporting

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It continued over “stunt journalism”

•Both publishers used publicity stunts to build

readership:
•Pulitzer sent “Nellie Bly” up in a hot-air balloon
•She also pretended to be out of her mind in order to
Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, investigate conditions in a
k a “Nellie Bly” insane asylums

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. . And may have even caused a war: Hearst (Citizen
Kane) offered the public rewards for news tips

He waged campaigns to solve crimes the police

couldn’t

By exaggerating news about events in Cuba, Hearst

and Pulitzer may have caused the Spanish-American
War in 1898

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The cost of large-scale news gathering led to the
formation of news agencies, organizations that sold
their international journalistic reporting to many
different individual newspapers and magazines. The
invention of the telegraph and then radio and television
brought about a great increase in the speed and
timeliness of journalistic activity and, at the same time,
provided massive new outlets and audiences for their
electronically distributed products. In the late 20th
century, satellites and later the Internet were used for the
long-distance transmission of journalistic information.

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Journalism in the 20th century was marked by a growing
sense of professionalism. There were four important
factors in this trend: (1) the increasing organization of
working journalists, (2) specialized education for
journalism, (3) a growing literature dealing with the
history, problems, and techniques of mass
communication, and (4) an increasing sense of social
responsibility on the part of journalists.

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An organization of journalists began as early as 1883,
with the foundation of England’s chartered Institute of
Journalists. Like the American Newspaper Guild,
organized in 1933, and the Fédération Nationale de la
Presse Française, the institute functioned as both a trade
union and a professional organization.

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The first university course in journalism was given at the
University of Missouri (Columbia) in 1879–84. In 1912 Columbia
University in New York City established the first graduate
program in journalism, endowed by a grant from the New York
City editor and publisher Joseph Pulitzer. It was recognized that
the growing complexity of news reporting and newspaper
operation required a great deal of specialized training. Editors
also found that in-depth reporting of special types of news, such
as political affairs, business, economics, and science, often
demanded reporters with education in these areas. The advent of
motion pictures, radio, and television as news media called for an
ever-increasing battery of new skills and techniques in gathering
and presenting the news. By the 1950s, courses in journalism or
communications were commonly offered in colleges.

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The literature of the subject—which in 1900 was
limited to two textbooks, a few collections of
lectures and essays, and a small number of
histories and biographies—became copious and
varied by the late 20th century. It ranged from
histories of journalism to texts for reporters and
photographers and books of conviction and debate
by journalists on journalistic capabilities, methods,
and ethics.

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Concern for social responsibility in journalism was largely
a product of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The earliest
newspapers and journals were generally violently
partisan in politics and considered that the fulfillment of
their social responsibility lay in proselytizing their own
party’s position and denouncing that of the opposition. As
the reading public grew, however, the newspapers grew
in size and wealth and became increasingly independent.
Newspapers began to mount their own popular and
sensational “crusades” in order to increase their
circulation. The culmination of this trend was the
competition between two New York City papers, the
World and the Journal, in the 1890s .
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The sense of social responsibility made notable growth
as a result of specialized education and widespread
discussion of press responsibilities in books and
periodicals and at the meetings of the associations. Such
reports as that of the Royal Commission on the Press
(1949) in Great Britain and the less extensive A Free and
Responsible Press (1947) by an unofficial Commission
on the Freedom of the Press in the United States did
much to stimulate self-examination on the part of
practicing journalists.

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By the late 20th century, studies showed that
journalists as a group were generally idealistic
about their role in bringing the facts to the public in
an impartial manner. Various societies of
journalists issued statements of ethics, of which
that of the American Society of Newspaper Editors
is perhaps best known.

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Although the core of journalism has always been the
news, the latter word has acquired so many secondary
meanings that the term “hard news” gained currency to
distinguish items of definite news value from others of
marginal significance. This was largely a consequence of
the advent of radio and television reporting, which
brought news bulletins to the public with a speed that the
press could not hope to match. To hold their audience,
newspapers provided increasing quantities of interpretive
material—articles on the background of the news,
personality sketches, and columns of timely comment by
writers skilled in presenting opinion in readable form.

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By the mid-1960s most newspapers, particularly
evening and Sunday editions, were relying heavily
on magazine techniques, except for their content
of “hard news,” where the traditional rule of
objectivity still applied. Newsmagazines in much of
their reporting were blending news with editorial
comment.

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The 20th century saw a renewal of the strictures and
limitations imposed upon the press by governments. In
countries with communist governments, the press was
owned by the state, and journalists and editors were
government employees. Under such a system, the prime
function of the press to report the news was combined
with the duty to uphold and support the national ideology
and the declared goals of the state. This led to a situation
in which the positive achievements of communist states
were stressed by the media, while their failings were
underreported or ignored. This rigorous censorship
pervaded journalism in communist countries.

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In noncommunist developing countries, the press
enjoyed varying degrees of freedom, ranging from the
discreet and occasional use of self-censorship on matters
embarrassing to the home government to a strict and
omnipresent censorship akin to that of communist
countries. The press enjoyed the maximum amount of
freedom in most English-speaking countries and in the
countries of western Europe.

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Whereas traditional journalism originated during a time when
information was scarce and thus highly in demand, 21st-century
journalism faced an information-saturated market in which news
had been, to some degree, devalued by its overabundance.
Advances such as satellite and digital technology and the
Internet made information more plentiful and accessible and
thereby stiffened journalistic competition. To meet increasing
consumer demand for up-to-the-minute and highly detailed
reporting, media outlets developed alternative channels of
dissemination, such as online distribution, electronic mailings,
and direct interaction with the public via forums, blogs, user-
generated content, and social media sites such as Facebook and
Twitter.

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In the second decade of the 21st century, social media platforms
in particular facilitated the spread of politically oriented “fake
news,” a kind of disinformation produced by for-profit Web sites
posing as legitimate news organizations and designed to attract
(and mislead) certain readers by exploiting entrenched partisan
biases. During the campaign for the U.S. presidential election
of 2016 and after his election as president in that year, Donald J.
Trump regularly used the term “fake news” to disparage news
reports, including by established and reputable media
organizations, that contained negative information about him.

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References:

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

www.universalclass.com › articles › writing
www.britannica.com › topic › journalism
www.slideshare.net › cubreporters › journalism-history

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