Overheads for Week 3 (updated 10-10-06)
Consequences of enhanced communication technologies:, continued
Frontier Press/Penney Press
Washington Hand Press (in hallway)
Penney Press: 1833 -- New York Sun
Commercial venture without government subsidy
Per copy sales (one penney), not expensive subscriptions
Dramatic stories, not political polemics
Aimed as mass audience, not specialized readers
Limited but growing advertising, beginning with patent medicines
Viewed as precursor of modern journalism by some historians and
disputed by others.
Press as an advocate of reform: Increased access to marketplace of
ideas?
1. Women's suffrage.
Abigail Scott Duniway, New Northwest, 1884-1912 in Oregon
(But Harvey Scott Oregonian, raises question about comparative
access to the marketplace of ideas.)
Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution
2. Abolition movement, using new presses
Freedom's Journal, 1827, Russwurm and Cornish, first
black-owned newspaper.
William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator
Frederick Douglass, The North Star
Were government, social reactions to abolitionist press an
indicator of limits of freedom of expression in pre-Civil War
U.S.?
Black press after Reconstruction: Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
Memphis Free Press
Diversity of views in mainstream (Memphis) press?
Coverage of lynchings
Credibility of non-mainstream journalists
Origins of 'objectivity' in reporting
Economics of Communication
Transition: 1791-1901: Political/Commercial support
Underlying changes in the post-Civil War Economy:
Manufacturing of branded consumer products
National/local changs in transportation (distribution)
Urbanization/City Center retailing to middle class
Marketing/department store advertising in newspapers
Changes in Communication
First 'Mass' Media:
Urban daily newspapers
National consumer magazines
Catalogs