A Half-View of the Press

...The driving force behind this transformation, Schudson maintains, was a changing society America was becoming more democratic as an ambitious middle class both availed itself of, and enlarged upon, the opportunities offered by a developing nation In politics, for instance, the early electoral system was supplanted by revised laws class which he sees as a demonstration of his thesis that journalism reflects society This is frequently true But it overlooks how the political inclinations of owners and writers have shaped newspapers as well...

...Discovering the News is a worthwhile book because it raises important issues By tracing how objectivity came to be the press' goal, Schudson shows that it has not been the only one In the process, he prompts the reader to wonder whether it is a practicable, or even a worthy goal...

...How, then, did objectivity come to be the Fourth Estate's primary concern9 That is the question asked, and partly answered, in this book by Michael Schudson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago The decisive change, the author finds, occurred in the early 1830s, when penny papers appeared in New York and quickly spread to other cities The new low cost meant not only wider circulation but more advertising dollars Unlike their older competitors, penny papers sold advertising to whomever would pay, rejected open partisanship, and reported on politics, crime, society, and business-what we commonly think of as news...

...Ellen Jewett, a classy young prostitute, had been gruesomely axed to death Bennett instantly fingered a young man of social position-remarkably handsome, very well and highly connected " He went on to describe the victim's beauty, intelligence and fall from honor at the hands of another youth who worked in a bank His message was unmistakable upper class predators-first they seduce, then they murder The suspected killer was exonerated, but not before Bennett's reporting had caused a mighty stir and a demand for this kind of story that the Herald could not keep pace with Bennett, in short, did not just found a paper that mirrored its age He was an innovative, opinionated editor whose accomplishments paved the way toward sensationalism and the envy of wealth...

...Bennett was born in a small village north of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1795, and as a young man he came into contact with the politically democratic ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment After rejecting his Catholic upbringing and its Protestant alternative, he emigrated to America, held several newspaper jobs, and failed in an attempt to launch a paper dedicated "to the great cause of Jackson and Democracy ". But the failure had its value, for Bennett applied the lessons of that misadventure to the Herald's founding Its first issue repudiated the support of any party or candidate, "from President on down " Bennett's politics had not changed-they had merely taken a broader form, touching the antiauthoritarian, antirich sentiment that to this day molds American journalism His handling of an 1836 murder is a good example of how he worked...

...The dichotomy between informational and yellow journalism was eclipsed by the Great War, whose scale, butchery and murky origins confused the entire press At the same time, the intellectual currents of the age -specifically the contributions of Nietzsche and Freud-were undermining the belief in the value of empirical inquiry "People came to see even the findings of fact as interested, even rationality itself as a front for interest or will or prejudice ". Newspapers reacted to this popular skepticism by introducing bylines to acknowledge the writer's involvement, by encouraging specialization to cope with the claims of ever-growing public relations mills, and by offering interpretive reporting to help readers understand an increasingly incomprehensible world These innovations amounted to a new approach to objectivity Whereas previously newspapers were primarily concerned with presenting undigested facts, now they sought to balance the competing views of interested parties Objectivity was elevated to the status of an ideology Walter Lippman, its most distinguished journalistic advocate, wrote that, "as our minds become more deeply aware of their own subjectivism we find a zest in the objective method that is not otherwise there ". That is how matters stood for 40 years, until the '60s brought yet another era of change The press began asking itself if objectivity was possible at all Schudson provides two reasons for its introspection the government's expanding news management, and the adversary culture-a phenomenon by no means, in his view, confined in appeal to a political minority Journalism responded with magazines such as Rolling Stone, where the emphasis was "not a safe story but one finely crafted and forceful in its emotional impact," and with what became known as investigative reporting Although Schudson finds the continuing effects of the '60s impressive, he concludes that there is no threat to objectivity as the ideal of America's newspapers...

...A Half-View of the Press Discovering the News: A Social History of America's Newspapers By Michael Schudson Basic 228 pp $10 95 Reviewed by Seth Cropsey Reporter/researcher, "Fortune" that abolished property qualifications for voting and resulted in the subsequent rise of professionally administered political parties "The penny papers," says Schudson, "expressed and built the culture of a democratic market society These papers were spokesmen for egalitarian ideals in politics, economic life, and social life through their organization of sales, their solicitation of advertising, their emphasis on news, their catering to large audiences, their decreasing concern with the editorial ". The interest in news led, by the late 19th century, to journalism's emerging as something of a profession-whose purpose was to get the facts (First among the fact-gatherers was the conservative New York Times, which presented political and business information in an orderly flow ) According to Schudson, the preoccupation with facts was equally an expression of the social reality "A democratic age," he writes, "wanted a democratic vision and empirical inquiry fit most comfortably " Of course, democracy can also encourage a pandering to the people Hence, what is known as "yellow" journalism sprang up alongside the more respectable kind The New York World, a chief practitioner, attracted readers-particularly immigrants-with splashy headlines, cartoons, illustrations, and elementary prose...

...Schudson's contention that the press is a reflection of society seems especially problematic today when it is not at all clear-to me at least-that out newspapers speak for the citizenry of this nation Moreover, he has not persuaded me that in the '60s the adversary culture dominated But most important of all, a full account of the evolution of American journalism would tell us not only how society has affected our newspapers but how our newspapers have affected society Discovering the News does not discover enough...

...TODAY, every reputable American newspaper strives to be objective But it was not always so In post-colonial America, dailies were underwritten by political parties and espoused their views Subscriptions were expensive, the papers were only a page or two long, and the limited space was filled with either commercial data or political vituperation...

...Nevertheless, the book does have one very serious shortcoming Written as a social history of American newspapers, it too often sounds like a social history of America An illustration is Schudson's treatment of James Gordon Bennett, the 19th-century pioneer in penny papers and founder of the New York Herald Schudson calls special attention to Bennett's "money article," a precursor of the modern business story What strikes him about it is its popularity with the growing middle...