Ch 7

Reformers in the late 19th century formed their own media in response to the rise in commercialism in the newspapers and formed the National Reform Press Association. The commercial media carried sensationalistic stories which increased circulation and advertising revenues. This replaced the alternative media. However, reform efforts achieved the passage of the Newspaper Publicity Act of 1912, which required the news media to list owners and to distinguish paid advertising from news. Mainstream press held off additional reforms under the First Amendment and developing professional standards for journalistic objectivity.

The Radio Act of 1927 encouraged commercialization of radio, but labor, educational, and religious organizations formed a coalition to protest it. But they were unsuccessful because the commercial radio industry had superior financial resources and programming that was often more popular with listeners. The Communications Act of 1934 was an additional victory for commercial radio.

Commercial radio developed a doctrine of cooperation with educational media. Commercial radio stations provided limited fundings and air time for the programming. Government funding began in 1962; the federal government created the Corporation for PublicRadio and a few years later the National Public Radio. They responded to calls for programming diversity that had emerged from the civil rights movement.

In the current society, media has turned into social media which includes Facebook, twitter, and instagram as well as others. This transformation has helped to change the landscape of media into instant updates and breaking news is broken even faster.

In recent years, the national media outlets have been able to reduce the impact that local media outlets have by being able to take them over and syndicate the broadcasts throughout the nation. The powerful media outlets are able to take over these smaller companies due to money and sponsorship ability. This includes radio, television and newspaper outlets.

A good example of this is Z100 syndicating their morning show in multiple other states.

Its broadcast from New York and reaches audiences in Miami, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

This past August, important news worthy news like the man who murdered his wife and posted the pictures on Facebook in South Florida, was quickly overshadowed by……

This week, the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian proposal overshadowed this heartfelt story out of our backyard…

The story about Kanye and Kim’s proposal on E!New’s twitter received 634 retweets and 218 favorites in 5 hours

Kim’s twitter after she declared the proposal had 902 retweet’s and 87 favorites in 16 minutes!!!

After 24 hours on WSVN-TV’s twitter for the police officer helping the family had only 3 retweets and 1 favorite.

In conclusion, this chapter discussed the media and their role in localism, we discussed the history of the media from the radio to the television and now the role that social media is able to play in the local media.