Ok, so this might be a boing post compared to past and future, but this is an essay I wrote for my journalism history class. The assignment was to compare a reporter from the progressive era to modern trends in journalism. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this, so I thought I'd post it for scholarly reasons -lol- :
The press gives us more than just facts about politics, business, technology, events and the like. In the way that it is presented and the angle a reporter takes shifts and shapes our views on a particular subject. Also, the selectivity that goes into news, what to emphasize and what to leave out, is the extent of our knowledge of current affairs. Thus is why news is such a debated topic and why it runs the lives of those who create it, tell it, and sell it. Quite frankly, the media controls the minds of America. As quoted by Will Irwin in “The American Newspaper,” “We need it, we crave it; this nerve of the modern world transmits thought and impulse from the brain of humanity to its muscle; the complex organism of modern society could no more move without it than a man could move without filaments and ganglia” (Irwin, 1911).
It was this journalist, Irwin, who was assigned to write a series on American newspapers by Collier’s magazine in 1911. In a time where muckraking was a popular trend in journalism, Irwin attacked the project with a force that has little comparison today. In his series, titled “The American Newspaper,” Irwin exposes the flaws in American Journalism. He claims that newspapers are the second most powerful source of influence behind religion. He also explores how news is defined and questioned and suggested ethics of reporting. Severely degrading the sensationalism movement which Hearst and Pulitzer so effortlessly expanded, Irwin points out that “trashy stories sold” (Folkerts, Teeter, Caudill, 2009, pg.293). Irwin saw the power that the media had, and he attacked it with full force, examining the flaws in the reporting styles and ethics of the time.
One point that Irwin makes clear is that “The power of the press is greater than ever before” (Irwin, 1991). This statement could not rain truer in today’s society. A massive shift is happening in modern journalism and media that harmoniously line up with the period in which Irwin is appealing to.
However, today the ethics of journalism is more questioned with the Internet, blogging, television, magazines, and other media forms that are actually thriving in contrast to newspapers. The sensationalistic appeal that was created back then is related to the intellectual junk that clutters our televisions in the forms of low class “news” reporting and reality TV. It’s surprising to know how many teenagers, our generation’s future political, business, and scientific leaders, can give us a recap of last week’s I Love New York but are completely clueless to the status of our country’s position in the Middle East. Going to the homepage of MSNB.com, one can find stories about marijuana busts and crime rates. However, this is the news that attracts readers. What is this to say about our society? Twenty years from now what knowledge will the generation have filled in their heads? These are the questions that Irwin discussed almost a hundred years ago.
Another trend in journalism is the rise of the Internet and blogging. Blogs create a medium for reporters to shed light on issues in their perspective without referring to common journalistic guidelines and ethics. This can create a problem however, when the audience reads the blogs and are left with a biased position on the article that the author shared, a lot of times quite unintentionally. Irwin also explores the separation between editorial and news, claiming that news reporting should be the dominant force of media. Back in the early 1900s and late 1800s, a wave of less area focus journalism prevailed. With the increase in technology needed to transfer information, news was less local and generally tended to be more statewide or even national. Today, the same concept is emerging globally. With the expanse of knowledge that is ready available to us via the Internet, why bother reading about it in a local newspaper a week later?
It simply amazes me that a person could predict the future of journalism one hundred years in advance. This topic has really made me consider the ways in which journalism is heading. I became enthralled in this paper, writing it in no time at all as I dived into the concepts it allowed me to explore. Blogging, however, is one aspect of the trends that intrigued me. I never noticed how often I rely on them for information, or how the information I put out in my own personal blog can be perceived. The media really does control the minds of the future generation. This is troublesome to think about because looking at what is fed through to their minds is scary.
alanaholland@live.com
