April 25, 2025
Past – The History of American Newspapers
News media have been a cornerstone of American life for centuries. While not solely an American phenomenon, the growth of the press in early America played a key role in shaping the nation’s history. Papers like The Boston Gazette, Virginia Gazette, Pennsylvania Journal, and New York Journal were popular in the colonies before the Revolution. During the lead-up to the Revolution, many American papers spurred hostility towards the British. Paul Revere famously engraved an image of four coffins in the news coverage of the Boston Massacre. This and other famous depictions of this event helped spread the news to the other colonies beyond Massachusetts. (https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a45777/)
As we know now, the news coverage of the Boston Massacre was framed as an unprovoked act of British aggression, when in fact the British soldiers were surrounded by an angry and hostile mob. This exemplifies that biased reporting for a political end is nothing new to journalism in America. Also, it is a historical reminder that narratives that involve protest and the use of force should always be viewed critically. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Massacre)
The news media continued to play a critical role through the American Revolution and the creation of the U.S. Constitution. Most papers argued in favor of the creation of the new constitution, but there some had concerns about a strong federal government. Many of these concerns were addressed by including the Bill of Rights, which included freedoms for individuals as well as freedoms for non-governmental institutions that the federal government was barred from infringing upon. The Constitution set forth three branches of government, but thanks to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, news in America eventually began to be referred to as the fourth branch of government. (https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/popular-culture-and-ratification/american-newspapers/)
Newspapers of the early 19th century were generally targeted to a smaller audience with that audience’s bias in mind. Many newspapers had direct party affiliations and many received direct funding from political parties. Others were directly associated with other political and social causes. Throughout this time, as printing technology improved and as distribution became easier, many local newspapers sprang up to meet the ever-growing market of readers. (https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-introduction/)
One of the most prominent papers of this time was The Daily Ohio Statesman. Printed in Columbus, Ohio, as a Democratic party-aligned daily paper, it criticized the Union actions during the American Civil War. The paper also covered the economy and other political news through its pro-Democratic lens. Its main rival paper, The Daily Ohio State Journal, was a Republican party-aligned paper. This rivalry shows that news media of the past, as today, could be bifurcated along polarized political lines. (https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84028645/)
In the late 19th century, technology developed at a breakneck pace in all segments of industry, but none more than in print. Newspapers could be printed in much higher quantities and distributed across the entire country thanks to the advent of the telegraph. With this came a massive war for the eyes of the nation and the birth of Yellow Journalism. This form of journalism was biased like its predecessors but, unlike its predecessors, instead of presenting events through an ideological lens, Yellow Journalism bent and invented news stories in search of headlines that would sell.
The period of Yellow Journalism was characterized by the competition between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. Theirs was a competition of sensationalist writing and headlines as they jockeyed to control the mass circulation market. Their type of reporting spread to other papers as well and turned the news landscape over to hyperbole and slander. However, this period did not last long, as the public tired of this type of news and instead chose to support more hard, fact-based news coverage. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/yellow-journalism)
In the early 20th century, the rise of independent journalism, paired with the desire of readers for information on the growing country and world, led to the golden age of print journalism in America. The affiliation of newspapers with political parties and newspapers fell out of fashion, and national papers focused heavily on covering news from a more objective position, separating opinions from facts. Tabloids still sold papers on sensationalist headlines, but were relegated to secondary status and not considered real news. (https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/the_rise_of_the_fourth_estate_how_newspapers_became_informative_and_why_it_mattered.pdf)
The average American in the 20th century read the same paper or papers as their neighbors, giving them a common starting point when discussing the issues of the day. With quality journalism, this led to an open and fact-based discussion of events where, even if disagreement was found, it was found in the judgments of the individual readers, not in the reality of the situation. The newspaper was the source of polite public discussion in that it politely gave room for public discourse and dissent on opinion while providing agreement on fact. This common ground has been eroded between then and today.
As the 20th century progressed, print news was incredibly popular, but was met with increasing competition from radio, television, and eventually the internet. By the beginning of the 21st century, print journalism was secondary in reach to television news and online publications. This, coupled with the rise in political polarization in America, has led to a return of the bifurcation of news along party lines. Nevertheless, fundamentally the drivers of news media are much the same today as they were throughout American history.
The news has always been at the crossroads of American life. It exemplifies the virtues and vices of all segments of society. From business to sports and from economics to politics, news plays an active role, while also striving to record the moment and inform the masses. Organizations and journalists alike must balance their ethical principles against their bottom lines, but the audience drives the market. With those fundamentals in mind, there is cause for optimism about our current news landscape. Just like at the turn of the 20th century, more and more journalists and writers are “going independent” to meet the needs of our time. If the public wants better news coverage, the journalists are still out there, and only require connection with an audience that supports high-quality journalism.
Present – You and The Current Journalism Landscape
By Ruth McLatchie
How do you get your news in 2025?
People get their news in much different ways than they did a hundred years ago or even ten years ago. According to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau Service Annual Survey (SAS), the number of newspaper and periodical publishers dropped by about half between 2000 and 2020. On the other side of that drop is a sharp increase in consuming news from digital platforms, as reported by the Pew Research Center News Platform Fact Sheet of September 17, 2024. According to Pew, “A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 57% who say they do so often.”
Along with the increasing diversity of news platforms, both analog and digital, comes an increasing diversity of viewpoint (left-center-right) and reliability (independently verified facts). The resulting labels, whether self labels, media competition labels, or political labels, may result in consumer confusion. One person’s conservative might be another person’s liberal. Further adding to the confusion is digital decision-making that, rather than being driven by facts, is driven by predictive marketing algorithms, the explosion of which we are witnessing in social media.
Some companies have attempted to provide guidance for consumers by offering media bias charts. Two of the most well-known are the All Sides Media Bias Chart https://www.allsides.com/blog/check-out-version-101-allsides-media-bias-chart-updated-ratings-ap-guardian, which offers a left-center-right alignment and the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive?utm_source=adfontesmedia&utm_medium=website, which is in graph form and offers a left-center-right alignment on the x-axis with a reliability alignment on the y-axis of the graph.
The question is, can you trust these charts? The short answer is, it’s all relative. If you find a news provider you like on the chart, providers to the right of that are likely to be more conservative than you would like and providers to the left of that are likely to be more liberal than you would like. However, trust can also come from knowing the process by which the results are derived. According to Poynter.org, a media literacy organization, both All Sides and Ad Fontes use bias rating methodologies that inspire confidence because of their evidence-based rigor and transparency: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-methods and https://adfontesmedia.com/methodology/.
Being a well-informed news consumer may begin with understanding bias, but it doesn’t end there. Scientific American offers some tips for being a better news consumer regardless of your position on the ideological continuum:
- Avoid overdose. Find the amount of news consumption that informs you without sending you into an anxiety spin, and set boundaries for yourself.
- Assume the headline is not the whole story. Headlines are there for the express purpose of grabbing your attention. A balanced understanding of the story is usually only reached by reading the content.
- Be your own fact checker. You can fact check by direct query of the source, or when that is not feasible, by comparing facts from a variety of sources, or by using an application such as Snopes or FactCheck.org.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one media basket. The more sources you hear from, the more likely you are to get the big picture.
Experts in the psychology of relationships add one more tip: listen or read to understand, not simply to formulate your next debate point. Not only will it make you a good news consumer. It will also make you a good relative, friend or colleague.
Future – The Future Prospects of Journalism
By Ruth McLatchie
As the world moves in an increasingly digital direction, journalism’s importance will grow while at the same time facing greater problems, according to a recent report issued by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University and co-authored by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Meera Selva.
The authors identified five global trends about the future of journalism and its effect on society, paraphrased here:
- Although media organizations will still report the news, access to audiences will be increasingly controlled by technological platforms rather than media organizations.
- The transition to digital media will drive people to more and more diverse sources of information.
- In the digital world’s exponentially increasing competition for people’s attention, journalism often loses the battle, as well as losing public trust in some countries.
- The weakening of traditional business models for funding news may result in greater vulnerability to commercial and political influence.
- Despite and/or because of these trends, journalism is becoming more diverse, the quality of the best journalism is getting even better, and the news media are openly and broadly reporting on the most powerful societal influences.
The challenge for media organizations is to take advantage of future opportunities for more high quality journalism while finding creative, effective ways to address the potential pitfalls.
The Platform Pitfall
One way to address the pitfalls of corporate platforms is to use alternative public service and non-commercial platforms. In a Sage Journal article about media challenges in the age of digital platforms, author Thomas Poell of the University of Amsterdam identified challenges resulting from business decisions made by corporate ecosystems as well as challenges resulting from ever-fluctuating corporate content moderation policies. While Poell also identified alternative platforms as a challenge, he positioned them as the potential solutions to the first two problems. While public service and non-commercial alternative platforms will be increasingly vital to mitigating increasing corporate control over the cultural domain, they are also becoming increasingly difficult to develop and sustain because the corporations tend to control the infrastructure upon which all platforms rely, including alternative platforms. He suggested that the only way to protect the public interest in this matter may be policy and legal measures based on key public values.
The Attention Pitfall
These days, media organizations who care more about truth than clicks find themselves on a constant, frustrating, tightrope-walking exercise of securing and maintaining audience attention in a distracting digital environment without sacrificing ethical values. While these organizations likely should be well-versed in how to uphold ethical values, the thing that is new to them and everybody else is the business of securing and maintaining audience attention in a digital age. For this skill, they would do well to learn from digital marketing experts like Alain Lange Sr., who recommends in his blog Medium the power of interactive content such as quizzes and polls to draw participation and the power of user-generated content to foster community,
The Trust Pitfall
One of the most common complaints this author hears from people who have opted out of news media is that they don’t know who to trust, which breeds anxiety. Therefore, in order to protect their mental health, they have opted out of news media as completely as possible. The non-partisan Aspen Institute has outlined ways to rebuild trust in the media, and by extension, in democracy. See what they have to say here: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/ten-ways-to-rebuild-trust-in-media-and-democracy/
The Funding Pitfall
As traditional print advertising sources dry up, the news media are seeking creative ways to sustain the mission with conscience, that is, without accepting undue influence from commercial and political sources. Patrice Schneider, a former journalist currently serving as chief strategy officer of the Media Development Investment fund, offers advice on De-Risking Press Freedom in the Stanford Social Innovation Review https://ssir.org/about/overview. In his article, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/funding-independent-media#, Schneider lays out a recent case study in attempted takeover of a respected Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita by a state-controlled entity with a track record of quashing editorial independence. This case study provides the impetus for his recommendation of “The Third Way,” a recent funding and media ownership trend based on a coalition of charitable foundations, banks, and commercial and individual investors, all of whom value press freedom as integral to a healthy society.
What We’re Reading
Murder the Truth: Fear, The First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful – by David Enrich
David Enrich’s Murder the Truth is a cautionary tale about what can happen to freedom of speech when hubris and greed run rampant. Enrich, an award-winning journalist, editor, and author who has worked with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, manages to tell a riveting true story while probing deeply into legal procedural labyrinths. The centerpiece and through-line of the story is the 1964 landmark Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan, which was meant to protect free speech by preventing public figures from destroying media companies through libel lawsuits unless actual malice could be proven, and which is currently under attack.
And lest you jump to the conclusion that Murder the Truth is a garden-variety conspiracy theory sprung fully formed from the author’s mind, a full one third of the book is dedicated to Notes, which provide multiple sources and background information for the threads in the story. For every thread, Enrich either directly interviewed all relevant parties or attempted to do so with multiple requests.
If you have ever felt daunted by the fire hose of information about libel lawsuits being spewed by a multitude of sources, this book is the perfect balance of deep investigation with focus and organization of the information stream in a way that allows readers who are not legal professionals to process, understand, and decide what they think. If you have ever mistrusted the intentions of a writer, Enrich does not preach. He strives for fairness, and appears open to considering different points of view. He seeks and reports information from all sides with equal rigor. His bias (we all have them), which he clearly states in the opening, is to protect freedom of speech.
In this reviewer’s opinion, Murder the Truth is best read in small chunks to allow both absorption and respite from the sometimes shocking, frustrating, or disgusting facts that don’t always make it into the audio-visual media sound bites. If freedom of speech is important to you, this book is worth the time.
Reviewed by Ruth McLatchie
This Month In History
April 1, 1996 – The launch of The Columbus Dispatch website makes it one of the first newspapers in Ohio to go online, reflecting the shift from traditional print to digital news consumption. The move signaled a major shift in how Ohio newspapers reached their audiences, as digital platforms would eventually surpass print circulation.
April 6, 1917 – U.S. enters WWI, government creates Committee on Public Information (CPI) to control war messaging and influence public opinion. The CPI used newspapers, pamphlets, posters and films to promote support for the war effort. It marked the beginning of modern government communication strategies blending public relations, propaganda, and mass media.
April 18, 1906 – San Francisco Earthquake and Telegraphy – One of the first major disasters reported in near real-time through the telegraph and early journalism. Newspapers on the East Coast had detailed reports within hours, and relief efforts were coordinated more efficiently due to this rapid communication.
April 25, 1952 – The Cleveland Press publishes investigative reports on corruption in the local police department, showcasing the power of regional newspapers in holding public institutions accountable. This situation highlighted the importance of a free press in exposing corruption and advocating for transparency.
April 30, 1993 – World Wide Web made public domain – Opened the internet for news websites and online journalism. Soon after, newspapers began launching online editions and new digital-only news platforms emerged. This shift transformed how people accessed information, enabling 24/7 news cycles, user generated content, and alternative news sources.
Compiled by Elizabeth Frost and Volunteers
Coming Next Month: The Politics of Blame
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