Notes: Kovach and Rosenstiel. the Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect

This was a reading by two journalists on what the industry ought to become because they felt that the industry needed to reevaluate who they were and what they stood for. They set out 9 mission statement values that they felt journalism should abide by. They talk about how great the American democracy is for its freedom of speech. They also recognize that in this system the media has attracted much criticism. On page 17 they state that, “the primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self governing.” One of the pressing problems with journalism they feel is its connection to corporate interests, it is implied that that may cause conflict with their role to be a “watchdog.” They then go over a brief history of the press from its start in the pubs of England to the important 1971 Supreme Court ruling protecting the New York Times. They talk about the theory of gate keepers and how the media determines what the public should know and what is not important. They believe in their Theory of the Interlocking Public and how the American people are engaged and interested in the media, just not all on the same topic. They believe that new technology, globalization, and conglomerations are fundamentally changing journalism.
Michael Schudson. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers Chapter One
This article focused on the emergence on the penny press and the start of the American newspapers in the 1820s and the 1830s. Schudson puts a lot of emphasis on the ideas of the Jacksonian democracy in his history of the newspapers. At one point, newspapers were little more than a mouthpiece for certain political parties or focused on one issue. However, when the penny press came around, they started to focus more on the business aspect of the newspaper by reporting on things that a large group of people would actually be interested in reading. They also cited as one of the main reasons that the newspapers formed was because many people were leaving their farms to move to the city. They also cite technology, literacy, and the natural history as reasons for the rise of the press.