Media Today by Turow Joseph

Author:Turow, Joseph
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

Along with these developments came the development of a newspaper industry. And here’s where theme 3 becomes relevant.

3 The newspaper as a medium of communication existed long before the existence of the book industry.

Figure 8.1 Timeline of the Newspaper Industry

As the timeline indicates, it wasn’t until the 19th century that American society witnessed the development of a newspaper industry—that is, a set of organizations that interact regularly to produce, distribute, and exhibit that journalistic product. Before the penny press, the entire process of writing the articles, printing the paper, and even delivering it to readers was typically carried out by a publisher, his family, and perhaps an assistant. Sometimes the post office helped with the delivery. But with the success of the penny press came the growth of a news organization, with reporters covering particular topics, editors checking their work before publication, and business departments devoted to increasing circulation and bringing in advertising.

Follow the timeline into the late 19th century, and you’ll see how big-city newspapers became big business as their circulations swelled and advertisers paid handsomely to reach their readers. The timeline shows how the newspaper industry expanded in circulation despite various challenges of the Depression of the 1930s and competition from television. A long-term decline in daily newspaper readership that began in the 1950s sped up in the 2000s, as younger consumers migrated to web-based news sources such as blogs and news collection (or aggregation) sites such as Google News, Apple’s news app, and Facebook’s news feature. Many advertisers followed those people to the web, and newspapers consequently lost advertising money as well.

And so we arrive at the present—to a newspaper industry with a long and generally profitable history undergoing a major transition. Influenced by the rise of digital technologies and convergence, the current developments will likely transform the newspaper industry for the 21st century as profoundly as the late 19th-century events noted in the timeline shaped great mass-circulation, advertising-dependent dailies for the 20th century. The changes are affecting some types of newspapers more immediately and dramatically than others. To grasp the ways in which convergence and the digital world are affecting newspapers’ production, distribution, and exhibition activities, it is first important to understand the types of papers that exist, the companies that run them, and the support they receive from advertisers. This will also make it clear that the newspaper industry today is quite varied, and it is important to get a sense of that variety before making generalizations about the future of “the newspaper.”

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