Summary Of The Article By Tom Engelhardt

Clay Shirky who wrote Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (1993) argues that society doesn’t need newspapers society needs journalism to save society. Shirky supports this argument by giving a historical background to the problems newspapers face and how the problems have developed over time and the solutions society has came up with. The blogger concludes that in order for journalism to go farther new models must be created in place of past molds. Shirky directs this blog toward the current and future generations in attempt to motivate new models and methods of journalism.

In chapter one, Wattenberg discusses the declining trends of Americans who regularly read newspapers between the 1960’s and present day. This can be attributed the aging patterns among generations who frequently read newspapers as well as with the use of technology rising. Reading the newspaper is a habit that either is or is not developed by the time one reaches voting age. With this, newspapers have become an older generation’s primary source of information, however, are still the best source for political matters. Younger generations tend to be more computer literate and have grown up with television and media more accessible to them than the previous generation. These trends not only reflect in American culture, but in other countries

He believes that the capitalist colonization of the digital world has led to this collapse of professional-quality journalism as a result of the further commercialization of journalism. In recent years, investigative journalism has been declining and media companies have shifted away from it and settled for repeating prepackaged messages. It is difficult for real journalism to exist when its revenue is based on advertisement. McChesney argues that journalism should be considers as public goods and that we should create non-commercial forms of journalism and non-profit media. One of the “darkest episodes of American journalism history” was the invasion of Iraq based on the U.S. administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These claims went unchallenged by the media because of the lack of investigative journalism, McChesney believes. Furthermore, he ends with bold proposals to reform journalism and the entire media. He proposes a strict regulation of advertising and limitations on ownership of broadcast media and expansion of nonprofit and publicly supported journalism. I agree with McChesney about the decline of quality journalism and I believe reforms to media must happen. However, I am uncertain how this would be possible with all the control these wealthy corporations, and their partners, have over the media. It will need a huge

The second part to the forth part (p.153-158) separately discusses three periods of American journalism: colonial period, the early 19 century, the late 19century and the early 20 century. In these three periods, objective was emerged in different form. Such as the business neutrality in colonial American journalism, the stenographic fairness phenomena in 19th century American journalism and occupational journalism culture in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These phenomenons are more or less belonging to objective practice. They can be regard as the objective soil of American journalism. However, these objective practices still did not develop into the objective norm. After such long period development, the American journalism stepping into fact-centered and news-centered era, but it does not develop the objective norm. American journalists gradually identify themselves as an occupational group.

Joseph Pulitzer’s immediate impact on the journalistic community supports the notion that he was the creator. He was the first of the two publishers to begin to transform the way in which news was delivered and also the first to pioneer a new brand of lurid content that was included within dailies. In fact, long before Hearst even arrived in New York; Pulitzer was already cementing himself within print media as a rising figure on the journalistic scene (Streitmatter, 2011). After

He starts going into the tv channels we watch, “Fifteen years ago, cable channels like TLC…, Bravo, and the History channel...promised to add texture and and information to the blighted tv landscape. Now these networks run shows about marrying people based on how well they kiss”. These are great examples on how tv channels that are now seen as “trash tv” at one point used to be educational and informative. Another example he used was, “...newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn’t want to hear. We’ve responded by not buying newspapers anymore”. He’s pointing out to the audience that the newspapers know what they’re doing reporting information the reader needs to know and even award winning for doing their job well but as society declines intellectually so does the popularity of informative newspapers.

In his article “A Farewell to Journalism?: Time for a rethinking,” media critic Robert McChesney focuses on the idea that professional journalism in America has been in a major decline—and if a solution is not agreed upon to save it, our democracy itself will be in peril. More specifically, McChesney attempts to convey the idea that government intervention is imperative in order to salvage professional journalism as a whole and save democracy in America. He argues that government intervention in the form of subsidization and nationalization of the media is required; he writes, “The future of journalism left to the market will likely approach what education would be like if all public subsidies were removed…. It would be a nightmare for any credible democratic or humane society…” (McChesney 619-620). It is apparent that McChesney believes that in order to have a functional democracy, a robust Fourth Estate must also be present. Throughout the article, McChesney defends his claim and warrant through credible research and analysis—yet he falls short at critical points, especially when he assumes transferability between European and American policies, attempts to quantify freedom, and fails to realize the true relationship between the free-press and the government. These discrepancies within the flawed research that he presents render his argument for a national media system unsuccessful.

In my view, the most significant time period in the development of literary journalism is the 1960’s through early 1980’s; also known as the period of New Journalism. The innovative journalistic style is a combination of fact and fiction writing. The literary journalists of this time period wrote about real-life situations using vivid descriptions and literary devices such as, characterization, scene setting, and dialogue. They wrote longer and more complex pieces similar to novels, consisting of more than one larger truth. The journalists pursued sources in the same manner as a conventional journalist; however, they would spend months, or even years gathering the facts. The narrative form plus the truth made the writing strong, allowing the

As well, make an educated choice in which can impact any other decisions and for the future. In the article, “The Relationship between Journalist and Politicians”, by Media Helping Media, it explains how Journalism maybe seen as being harsh or crucial to make a functioning for a healthy and fair society for the audience. “The journalist should be exploring and covering the issues that most concern their readers” (Brewer, para 3). Journalism is a major impact to politics and society, due to having people portraying the story that is published for them to read or look at a particular photo. The future of journalism and politics can impact for the future generations. In the second article by the Huffington Post “The Abundant Riches of American Political Journalism”, explains how political journalism is going downhill. However, journalism helps people to be informed of politics and what politicians have to say about a certain subject. “Political journalism remains reliant on a narrow range of pre-approved authoritative sources who mainly represent their own or their institution's self-interest.” (Nielsen, para. 9). Journalism have their own options and choices, they just want more of an audience to make a decision for politics. Today’s society and the future have journalism and politics is what makes it easy for people to make a choice for a certain situation when it comes to

Before the rise of the New Media Age or Digital revolution our sources for news and current events came from print media. Technology has revolutionized the world of journalism yet previous medias such as print, have produced a multitude of exaggerated stories. In Billy Rays’ early film Shattered Glass, the events surrounding pre-digital age journalism is perfectly shown throughout the film.

In the film “Page One: Inside The New York Times” it mainly talks about that people have changed the way they receive information. People are relying more towards digital media to receive their daily news around the world. Most people do not question everything that is posted on the web. Carr wrote an article called “Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted” that mainly focuses on journalism and activisms. He describes that an activist is a person who just wants to seek information and fight for a certain cause. While a journalist is a person who wants to seek the truth in depth and deliver the truth to the entire world.

The book “Creation of the Media, by Paul Starr,” informs us of the events throughout the history of Journalism. Starr lays out his beliefs as to how the media has become what it is now, from the creation of early newspaper all the way to broadcasting. Starr emphasizes the impact that the post office has had on journalistic outlets over the years, and how it has changed America’s culture. I agree with Starr in the respect that the evolution of the post office has helped mold the communication values of American’s commutation culture throughout the years.

This research has been conducted due to the fact that some researchers have claimed that “journalism is dying” whilst others have argued that “journalism is not dying but is simply evolving” (Blatchford: 2014). This has been a much contested debate triggered by the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources i.e. newspapers, television and radio together with the technological advances of the internet and social media (Cub Reporters: 2010). This has raised many questions and firstly, this dissertation will assess whether the rise of social media has led to the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources. Secondly, this paper will look at what the advantages and disadvantages of using social media as a news distributor are for professional journalists and the general public. Lastly, this study aims to investigate

It is without a doubt that the Globalisation of the media has increased our access to information about people and events around the world. However, during the process it has also shifted issues on what should or should not be in the public domain due to media ownership led by Western media corporations. The media shape is reconstructing itself, forming a singular global body playing an essential part in our democracy socially, politically, economically and culturally. Due to this, the effects of globalisation towards Journalism have become very debatable to whether it is benefiting the practice of journalism or hindering it. During the course of this essay, it will explore the affect globalisation has on the media (especially journalism), the affect of media ownership and how new technologies have influenced journalism.

As Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentsiel write, “The purpose of journalism is not just to report but to create community. This involves creating channels, forums, and alliances, and helping connect people who are working on problems.” (Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. “Independence”.) Independence, open-mindedness, truth, and loyalty to readers and community are all the heart of true journalism.