Ch2.media.industrial.age

Brief lectures in

Media History

Chapter TwoIndustrial media

(5 of 15)

TopicsSteam power and printing The penny press – starts in NY

◦business model spreads worldwide ◦mass circulation = profitable advertising

Progressive era press ◦Better presses, photos, more circulation ◦Crusading press, science service ◦Yellow press, tabloids ◦Pulitzer, Scripps, Hearst

Steam power @ London Times 1814

Done in secrecy

No layoffs

Avoids Luddite rebellion

1,400 pages / hour Both sides

Compared to 250 pages / hour on old hand press More circulation means more revenue

Ends dependence on political parties

New business model for the media lasts until the 21st century

Treadwell press 1822

Women often had a role in printing and typesetting, especially in family-run printing companies. This double action press was an early improvement over the hand-pulled wooden presses.

Penny press -- new business model NY newspapers were first in 1830s

◦Sun, Herald, Tribune, Times London newspapers – tax lifted 1855

◦Daily Telegraph, Pall Mall Gazette Paris newspapers, serialized fiction

◦Le Figaro, La Presse ◦Alexandre Dumas, Honore Balzac

German papers revolution 1848 -- Bonner Zeitung, Carl Schurz ◦Penny Press - Berliner Tageblatt

(Scherlism)

New York penny press Starts with Benjamin Day’s Sun

◦Published out of desperation, sold on street corners

◦Concerned with daily lives, police court, murders, controversies Politicians and “great questions” were secondary

News items snarky, unprofessional: SUDDEN DEATH—Ann McDonough, of Washington Street, attempted

to drink a pint of rum on a wager, on Wednesday afternoon last. Before it was half swallowed Ann was a corpse. Served her right!

Sun remembered for “moon hoax” and “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”

Moon Hoax NY Sun 1835

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.

-- Francis P. Church, NY Sun, 1897

Note: Just before Christmas 2011, a Chicago news anchor advised parents to stop lying and to tell their children that “there is no Santa Claus.” She was back on the air the next day, apologizing for her horrible mistake, and quoting Francis P. Church. http://bit.ly/KMRtfk

NY Herald – 1835 Daily mix of robberies, rapes and murders

J.G. Bennett hired reporters, set up news bureaus, emphasized sensational news and not opinion

Was widely hated …

A “foul mass of positive obscenity.” -- Charles Dickens

His only chance of dying an upright man “will be that of hanging perpendicularly from a rope.” -- Benjamin Day

James Gordon Bennett

NY Tribune – 1841Disliked Bennett, hoped to make a more trustworthy and moral newspaper

Promoted women’s rights, labor unions, national parks, westward expansion, and the end of monopolies

Helped Abraham Lincoln run for president

Famous quote: “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”

“I am sure (the redwoods of California) will be more prized and treasured a thousand years hence than now, should they, by extreme care and caution, be preserved so long.” – 1860

Horace Greeley

New York Times – 1851

National “paper of record”

Shunned Bennett’s sensationalism and Greeley’s moral crusades

Attacked corrupt Tammany Hall political machine in the early 1870s

Adolph Ochs, a Southern publisher, bought The Times in 1896 and coined thepaper’s slogan:

“All the news that’s fit to print.”Henry Raymond

Freedom’s Journal, 1827 first “White and black must fall or

flourish together.” Frederick Douglass, 1847, North Star

Altogether, 2,700 African American newspapers published in 19th and 20th centuries ◦ Most did not survive for more

than a decade Major daily papers

Pittsburgh Courier Chicago Defender

Ebony Magazine 1940s

African American Press

Frederick Douglass Publisher, North Star

London Daily Telegraph - 1855

Founded by Joseph M Levyafter newspaper tax lifted

Modeled after NY Herald

Featured articles about crime, murder and curiosities

Partnered with NY Herald to sponsor expedition to find Dr. Livingston in East Africa “I said: ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, with a kind, cordial smile, lifting his cap slightly … and we both grasped hands.” – Henry Morton Stanley, NY Herald and London Daily Telegraph, 1871

Journalist Henry Morton Stanley was reputed to be a cruel racist who regularly beat and shot the Africans who worked for him on his expeditions.

Stanley’s raw racism is not well hidden in this photo.

Pall Mall Gazette 1880s

William T. Stead

Exposed prostitution in London using sensationalistic methods

Featured crime and scandal mixed with crusades for slum reform and expansion of the British empire

Promoted “government by journalism” • Press would have its own leaders in

Parliament with the power to inspectall government departments.

• Journalistic “major generals” would serve as public opinion pollsters and “interrogators of democracy.”

Penny Press in France Held back by taxes and

censorship Paris newspapers – Le Figaro, La

PresseInnovated with serialization of

popular novels such as Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Christo

Dreyfus affair 1898 – J’Accuse by Emile Zola in L’aurore

Emile Zola

German Penny Press “A German daily is the slowest and saddest and

dreariest of the inventions of man … Our own (US) dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him” -- Mark Twain

March Revolution of 1848 advocated freedom of the press and Constitutional government

Bonner Zeitung - revolutionary Carl Schurz Schurz fled to US, set up German-language St.

Louis newspaper Sold it to Joseph Pulitzer who shared Schurz’

democratic ideals and founded Post-Dispatch In 1870s, NY Herald editors work with August

Scherl to create German tabloids

Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911) Hungarian immigrant who fought with Union cavalry in Civil War

Worked with Carl Schurz in St. Louis, influenced by European revolution of 1848

Established St. Louis Post – Dispatch 1872, then New York World newspaper in 1882

Crusaded against corruption, racism and slum housing

Enlisted readers in effort to build Statue of Liberty pedestal

Kept US from war with England in 1894, but pressured US into war with Spain 1898

Endowed Pulitzer Prize in his will

Pulitzer was popularly seen as something of a nag in his day, rather than a great hero of the press.

Here (on right) he is trying to get Uncle Sam to intervene in the Boer War in South Africa (c. 1900).

Pulitzer exposed bribery over the Panama Canal, and when threatened by Teddy Roosevelt with a libel suit, said:

“The World cannot be muzzled.”

Nelly Bly Pulitzer’s most

famous reporter Went “Around the

World” in 72 daysBeat the 80 day

record in the Jules Verne novel

Also went under-cover in a madhouse and investigated women’s issues

Park Row – World, Trib, Times

Newsies strike Pulitzer, Hearst

Newsboy strike July 1899

Shut down Brooklyn Bridge

Independent contractor status

Higher pay, better conditions

1908 photo by Lewis Hine, famous child labor crusader

Associated Press

• Wire service news aggregator / formed in 1846 • By 1866 works with Western Union monopoly • By 1910 Congress issues 48 committee reports and proposes 96 bills on AP and Western Union monopoly • Cartoon (above) from The Masses pictures AP poisoning the well of news • Competition from Scripps’ United Press and Hearst’s International News Service

E.W. Scripps(1854-1926)

Set up first major newspaper chain using penny press tactics in Michigan, Ohio and across the Midwest.

Created United Press wire service 1907 to compete with AP

Although barely educated, but he understood the significance ofscience in the 20th century

Established Scripps OceanographicInstitution and the Science News Service.

“The way to make democracysafe is to make it more scientific.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951)

A study in contrasts -- A huge man with a tiny voice – Parodied in Citizen Kane

Populist reformer who championed labor unions early in his career but fought them bitterly when they organized his papers.

Used his inherited millions to get started in publishing and then attacked monopolies under the motto of “truth, justice and public service.”

A war hawk in Cuba in the 1890s but a pacifist in Europe in the 1930s due to pro-German sentiments

Used newspapers ruthlessly for scandal, political influence. Grossly unfair to Annie Oakley, Fatty Arbuckle and many others.

Hearst owned 28 major newspapers in the 1920s with a circulation of 20 million

Hearst’s yellow press

Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe)

Can fish speak? Do dogs commit murder? How many people cross London Bridge each day? How much gold is in the Bank of England?

“Struck gold” with Daily Mail in 1896 – also founded Daily Mirror, purchased London Times

Like Pulitzer and Hearst, Harmsworth backed a small war—the Boer War in South Africa

Popular stunts but tepid reporting compared to US British libel laws favored plaintiffs

Made a Lord in 1918 for help in WWI effort