Chapter 8 Reaction
The opening story in this chapter was truly remarkable. Elizabeth "Pink" Cochrane wanted to be a journalist at a time where women could only do so under a pen name, which of course had to be a man's names. She got a job at Pittsburgh; however she took a risk and traveled to NY. She was able to get another job on a trial basis at the world's biggest newspaper. During a time when women were undermined and biased against, she became the first detective journalist. She took huge risks, went "undercover" and wrote amazing, truthful and groundbreaking articles. Not only did she receive a full job, but she will forever go down in not only women's history, but newspaper history. It was a great way to start the chapter, and a very inspiring story.Not to mention, I enjoyed reading about Pulitzer. Most people have heard of the Pulitzer prize, and I knew that he owned a newspaper. However, I did not know that he was an immigrant, and that he took many steps in combining and creating his successful, eternally infamous paper.
I already knew some of the background of the first newspapers; I already knew about Benjamin Franklin and the Pennsylvania Gazette and about the penny press making newspapers available to all classes. However, I did learn about the different types of articles that can be written. Though I heard of terms like human-interest stories, I never heard of advocacy journalism, or literary journalism, or any of the other types.
The ending of the chapter was a bit depressing. With the war going on right now, sometimes it's heard that a reporter died every so often. As if that isn't sad enough, the statistics given in the book were very depressing. In less then a decade, almost 350 reporters died simply trying to do their jobs. Of that number, 264 were murdered. In 2001 alone, 118 journalists were jailed and 37 died.
It's interesting to notice how one-sided or biased newspapers can be. It's sad that newspapers, like many other things, continue to exist to earn money, rather than tell stories and facts. News papers "make sense of important events and watch over out center institutions".
Vocabulary :
1. partisan press: an early dominant style of American journalism distinguished by opinion newspapers, which generally argued one political point of view or pushed the plan of the particular party that subsidized the paper
2. penny papers: refers to newspapers that, because of technological innovations in printing, were able to drop their price to one cent beginning in the 1830s, thereby making papers affordable to working and emerging middle classes and enabling newspapers to become a genuine mass medium
3. human-interest stories: news accounts that focus on the trials and tribulations of the human condition, often featuring ordinary individuals facing extraordinary challenges
4. wire services: commercial organizations, such as the Associated Press, that share news stories and information by relaying them around the country and the world, originally via telegraph and now via satellite transmission
5. yellow journalism: a newspaper style or era that peaked in the 1890s, it emphasized high-interest stories, sensational crime news, large headlines, and serious reports that exposed corruption, particularly in business and government
6. objective journalism: a modern style of journalism that distinguishes factual reports from opinion columns; reporters strive to remain neutral toward the issue or event they cover, searching out competing points of view among the sources for a story
7. inverted-pyramid style: a style of journalism in which news reports begin with the most dramatic or news-worthy information - answering who, what, where, and when (and less frequently why or how) questions at the top of the story - and then tail off with less significant details
8. interpretive journalism: a type of journalism that involves analyzing and explaining key issues or events and placing them in a broader historical or social context
9. advocacy journalism: often associated with journalistic trend in the 1960s but actually part of a tradition that dates to the early days of the partisan press, this approach to journalism features the reporter actively promoting a particular cause of viewpoint
10. precision journalism: a type of journalism that attempts to push news reporting in the direction of science, maintaining that by applying rigorous social science methods, such as using poll surveys and questionnaires, journalism can better offer a valid portrait of social reality
11. literary journalism: news reports that adapt fictional storytelling techniques to nonfictional materials (sometimes called new journalism)
12. consensus-oriented journalism: found in small communities, newspapers that promote social and economic harmony by providing community calendars and meeting notices and carrying articles on local schools, social events, town government, property crimes, and zoning issues
13. conflict-oriented journalism: found in metropolitan areas, newspapers that define news primarily as events, issues, or experiences that deviate from social norms; journalists see their role as observers who monitor their city's institutions and problems
14. newshole: the space left over in a newspaper for news content after all the adds are placed
15. feature syndicates: commercial outlets or brokers that contract with newspapers to provide work from well-known political writers, editorial cartoonists, comic strip artists, and self-help columnists
16. joint operating agreement (JOA): in the newspaper industry, an economic arrangement, sanctioned by the government, that permits competing newspapers to operate separate editorial divisions while merging business and production operations
17: newspaper chains: large companies that own several papers throughout the country
16. joint operating agreement (JOA): in the newspaper industry, an economic arrangement, sanctioned by the government, that permits competing newspapers to operate separate editorial divisions while merging business and production operations
17: newspaper chains: large companies that own several papers throughout the country
posted by maggie @ 5:03 PM
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