Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Rich Cameron
  www.rcameron.com/journalism/100/online/2-lect-sociallyresponsible.html

Introduction

By the 1890s most of the mainstream press in this country was undergoing a change that later would be socially responsible press. While that description might be challenged by more modern standards, much of the press certainly cleaned up its act by segregating news and opinion in their papers. News was found on news pages and opinion on labeled opinion pages. If opinion stories --such as analysis stories-- appeared on news pages, they were at least labeled as such.

Newspapers adopted a more modern and easy to read design. More photos were used --because advances in technology made it easier to run quality photos-- and fewer "deck" headlines were used. You may have seen older papers that had a main headline that covered the main gist of the story. A slightly smaller deck headline was under the main headline and covered a secondary point in the story. A third deck covered a tertiary point of the story, etc. By the time you got through all the decks you had essentially read they story. This practice was discontinued, though the trend in newspapers today is to to include more secondary decks. This is done because of the demand on the reader's time and the newspaper's attempts to draw the reader into the story by giving multiple interest points.

 

Lords of the Press

The popularity and growth of the press in earlier eras placed a lot of power in the hands of publishers. But by the 1890s the power that a paper wielded laid less and less in the hands of one person. While newspapers remained powerful forces in society, fewer "Lords of the Press" existed. This was the title sometimes conferred on extremely powerful publishers.

Modern day equivalents of Lords of the Press might be people like Ted Turner, who founded several cable TV outlets, including CNN. Or one might look at Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who also owns Fox TV Network and other media outlets around the world.

 

Reading Assignment

You should be reading Chapter Two in your textbook to get more information about newspapers.

Exercise

What is meant by "Lords of the Press?"

Note that when submitting the answer start the subject line with:

J100x-L -- YourLastName -- Social