newspaper

n.

1. A publication, usually issued daily or weekly, containing current news, editorials, feature articles, and usually advertising.
2. See newsprint.

Sidebar: Timeliness is of the essence in the newspaper business. Even 150 years ago, New York City publishers would have messengers waiting to meet ships coming from Europe. The messengers would grab the latest dispatches, newspapers, and even novels and race to the printing office. There, rows of compositors would be poised to work all night setting type so that the next afternoon's newspaper could contain European news only two weeks old or the first chapters of a novel published months ago. With the coming of the telegraph to the western parts of the U.S. in the mid-19th century, editors commonly kept one or two compositors late into the night ready to set stories that came in from the East by telegraph. The dots and dashes of the telegraph message, often consisting of just key words and phrases, were hastily transcribed by the telegrapher and given directly to the typesetters. Compositors were skilled enough to decipher the telegrapher's scribbles, compose full sentences while setting type (letter by letter) by hand, and complete the entire story by deadline. The Linotype machine, developed in the 1880s, combined the processes of composing text, casting type, and redistributing the type molds. By working a keyboard, the Linotype operator assembled molds, or matrices, of letters, numbers, or punctuation marks in sequence. The matrices were then mechanically held in place while molten type metal was forced into them, creating a line of type ("lin' o' type"). The individual matrices were automatically replaced in the machine's magazine for reuse. The Linotype increased the speed of a typesetter fourfold. This allowed editors to cut labor costs while getting all the latest news. The machine cost hundreds of compositors their jobs and added to the intensity and pace of the work. William S. Pretzer

Background

A newspaper is a printed periodical whose purpose is to deliver news and other information in an up-to-date, factual manner. Newspapers appear most commonly in daily editions, but may also be issued twice a day or weekly. While the content of a newspaper varies, it generally consists of a predetermined combination of news, opinion, and advertising. The editorial section is written by reporters and other journalists at the direction of editors and may also be compiled from wire service reports. The advertising content of a newspaper can be divided into two parts, classified and display. Classified ads are small, text-only items obtained via telephone and set into the format by the classified advertising representative. Display ads are obtained by sales representatives employed by the newspaper who actively solicit local businesses for this larger, more visually oriented ad space.

A newspaper is printed on thin paper made from a combination of recycled matter and wood pulp, and is not intended to last very long. Large printing presses, usually located at a plant separate from the editorial and advertising headquarters, print the editions, and a network of delivery trucks bring them to the newsstands and geographical distribution centers for subscribers.

History

Public officials in ancient Rome posted news of the day in a public space, but it was not until the invention of the printing press in the late Middle Ages that mass-produced printed matter became possible. One hundred fifty years after the invention of printing from movable type by Johann Gutenberg in 1447, the first regular newspaper, Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, appeared in Germany in the early 17th century. The first English-language newspaper, the Weekly Newes, began publishing in England in 1622. Over the next few generations, small pamphlets and broadsheets were the primary source of printed information in both England and the colonies of North America, although they were generally geared toward business matters. One of the first newspapers in the U.S. was Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, which began appearing in Boston in 1690.

These early prototypes of the newspaper eventually developed into publications that appeared on a more regular basis in localized geographic areas. At the time of the American Revolution, 35 newspapers were published in the 13 colonies. Many of these papers and their successors over the next few generations were concerned with political issues of the day and were rather expensive. This changed during the 1830s, however, when technology and publicity popularized "penny papers." The New York Sun was one of the first of these to gain widespread readership.

The development of quicker, more efficient printing methods led to a rapid growth of newspapers in the U.S. during the 19th century. As the country expanded and new metropolitan centers sprang up, so did newspapers that served the interests of the region. A growing literacy rate among the populace also helped make such printed matter more popular and profitable. In the latter decades of the 20th century, papers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have become esteemed sources of news in the U.S. and have wide distribution outside of the cities where they are produced.

Until the 1980s, many cities had more than one newspaper, and it was not uncommon for a large city to have three or four competing dailies. By the 1990s, many papers had disappeared or merged so that only one or two noncompeting papers coexisted in major cities. Smaller regional newspapers provide a mix of local news with national and international items. Such papers usually have correspondents in New York, Washington, D.C., and the major cities of the world. Tabloid newspapers, presenting more sensational news and features such as detailed crime stories, first appeared in the U.S. in the 1920s. The word tabloid refers to the size of the printed page, which is generally half the size of a standard newspaper.

The Editorial Process

The process of producing a daily edition of a large city newspaper begins with a meeting of the paper's editors, who determine the amount of editorial copy in an issue based on the advertising space that has already been sold. A specific number of pages is agreed upon, and the editorial assignments are made to the various departments. The section of national and international news, generally the first part of the paper, is compiled from correspondents who send in their stories electronically, usually via computer modern, to their editor's computer. There, the editor checks the stories, sometimes rewriting them or increasing or decreasing their length. Additional stories of importance are compiled from wire services such as United Press International, Associated Press, and Reuters. These are organizations that employ reporters in various cities of the globe to compile stories and items quickly for dissemination over telephone wires.

For a typical, newsbreaking story of local origin, the process begins with a correspondent submitting a report, either in person or via computer modern, to the "rewrite" desk person. The rewrite journalist fine-tunes the wording of the story and makes sure it answers the six important questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. He or she then sends it over to the computer at the city desk. The city desk editor, who is responsible for the paper's local content, looks over the story, makes additional changes if necessary, and sends it over to the news desk. The news editor, who makes the final call about which stories to run in the upcoming edition based on their relevance, may make further changes before submitting the piece to the copydesk. The story arrives there with guidelines for length as well as headline instructions regarding size and type.

From this point, the story is set to be inserted on a certain page that has already been roughly laid out by both the news editor and a makeup editor. A mock-up of the page, essentially a blank form showing where the stories will run and where pictures and advertising will be inserted, is called the "dummy." The makeup editor has already met with the advertising department to determine how such pages will be laid out with ad space. The dummy has rough notes for headlines, story insertions, and graphic elements such as photos and tables of statistics. It also shows the date of the edition as well as a page and section number. After the news editor has determined the placement of the story on the page in question—as well as the other items set to run there—the dummy is sent on to a composing room.

The Manufacturing
Process

Typesetting

• The composing room receives the story in an electronic format, with the computer text file already translated with typeset codes. In a typeset file, the characters are of the same "type"—style, size, and width—as they appear on the pages of the newspaper. The setting of stories into the type that a reader sees went unchanged for several decades until the latter years of the 20th century. Well into the 1800s, type was set by hand, letter by letter. A typesetter dropped small metal letters into a hand-held tray called a "stick." The invention of the Linotype machine in 1884 made possible a quicker, more efficient method of typesetting. Invented by German immigrant Ottmar Mergenthaler of Baltimore, Maryland, this large, cumbersome machine worked by casting hot lead into a line of type with the assistance of an operator who typed in the copy on a keyboard. Individual lines of type were then placed by hand onto a page form. When a page was completed, it was then sent to a stereotyping room where a curved metal plate was made from the page form. The page form was then placed on the printing press.

  Modern technology has replaced the Linotype process through a method called phototypesetting. The first step in this process is the transfer of the dummy to the page layout section of the newspaper. There, an operator transfers the instructions on the dummy into a rough page prototype. A printed version may be looked over and adjusted several times by one of the reporters whose story is featured as well as by the copy editor. If another breaking story comes in, this page layout can be altered in a matter of minutes.

Image transference

• The final version of the page is then approved by the editor on duty—sometimes a night editor in the case of a paper that is slated for a morning edition—and sent over to a process department. There, the page is taken in its computer format and transferred via laser beams onto film in an image setter apparatus. The operator then takes the film to a processor in another section of the paper, who develops it and adjusts it for its final look. Photographs are scanned into another computer terminal and inserted into the page layout. The pages that are set to be printed together are then taped down onto a device called a "stripper," and an editor checks them over once more for errors. The strippers are then put into frames on light-sensitive film, and the image of each page is burned onto the film. The film of each page is inserted into a laser reader, a large facsimile machine that scans the page and digitally transfers the images to the printing center of the newspaper.

  At the printing center, typically a large plant separate from the newspaper's editorial offices and centrally located to facilitate citywide distribution, the pages arrive at the laser room and are put through a laser writer, another scanning device that makes a negative image of them. In the negative image of the page, the text is white while the blank spaces are black. The final images of each page are further adjusted. This last-minute adjustment may involve fine-tuning of the colored sections and retouching photographs.

Platemaking

• From these negatives, the forms from which the paper will be printed are composed in a platemaking room. The film of the page, usually done two pages at a time, is then placed on a lighted box. Next, an aluminum plate containing a light-sensitive coating is placed on top of the image of the pages. The light box is then switched on, and ultraviolet light develops the image of the pages onto the aluminum plate. The aluminum plate is then bent at the edges so that it will fit into a press, and is fitted onto plate cylinders.

Printing

• The aluminum plates of each page next move on to the actual printing press, an enormous machine often two stories high. When the press is running, the noise in the building is deafening and employees must wear earplugs. The most common method of printing newspapers is called web offset. The "web" refers to the large sheets of blank newsprint that are inserted in rolls, sometimes weighing over a ton, into the actual printing press. The reels of newsprint are loaded in at the bottom floor of the press. The rolls are inserted onto a reel stand, which has three components: the first reel brings a roll of paper up to the press, a second is loaded and ready to replace the first roll when it runs out, and a third reel stays empty and ready to be fed with another when the first reel is almost finished. Each roll of blank newsprint has double-sided tape at its edges, so that when one roll runs out in the press, another smoothly takes up where the other left off without interrupting the printing process.

  The plate cylinders then press the image of the page onto a blanket cylinder, leaving a version of the page's image on the cylinder's soft material. When the paper runs through the press, the blanket cylinder presses the image onto it. The chemical reaction of the ink, which contains oil, and the squirting of jets of water into the process result in the actual newspaper page of black or colored images on a white back-ground. Since oil and water do not mix, the areas where ink should adhere to the page are black or colored, and water washes away the parts where ink is not needed. This is why this printing process is referred to as "offset."

  Next, the large sheets of printed newsprint move on to another large piece of machinery called a folder. There, the pages are cut individually and folded in order. This entire printing process can move as fast as 60,000 copies per hour. Quality control technicians and supervisors take random copies and scan them for printing malfunctions in color, order, and readability. Next, a conveyer belt moves the papers into a mail room section of the plant, where they are stacked into quires, or bundles of 24. The quires then move to another section where a machine wraps them in plastic. The bundles are now ready to be loaded onto delivery trucks for distribution.

The Future

The demise of the printed word, especially in the form of a daily newspaper, is periodically predicted to be imminent by industry analysts. The growth of other news sources —such as radio and 24-hour television news stations—has helped diminish the impact of newspapers, but the competition between dailies in many cities has forced many of the weaker, less financially-viable newspapers out of business. In many cities, joint-operating agreements—by which two competing papers share business, advertising, and printing departments—has helped to keep two editorially distinct papers afloat.

Bypassing the printed newspaper altogether, on-line computer technology has enabled consumers to pick and choose news from among their own specific interests on the information superhighway. One site on the Internet, one of the most popular providers of access to on-line information, allows a person to create his or her own newspaper. A menu appears onscreen, and the user selects stories from wire services, as well as entertainment features and cartoons, and inserts them onto a template. This template can be generated on a daily basis with a few keystrokes, producing an edition of a customized newspaper almost instantly.

Where To Learn More

Books

Miller, Margaret. Hot Off the Press! A Day at the Daily News. Crown, 1985.

Waters, Sarah. How Newspapers Are Made. Facts on File, 1989.

Periodicals

Booker, Ellis. "Extra! Extra! Newspapers Paperless." Computerworld, July 20, 1992, p. 30.

Kowet, Don. "Laying Out a Futuristic Newspaper." Insight on the News, May 14, 1990, p. 48.

[Article by: Carol Brennan]

For more information on newspaper, visit Britannica.com.

The story of America's newspapers has been one of change. Newspapers have changed with and have been changed by their target readers, whether members of a particular ethnic, racial, or religious group; a political party; or society's most elite or poorest members. From the first American newspaper printed in 1690 through the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the United States boasted 1,480 daily and 7,689 total newspapers, the industry has sought always to appeal to Americans experiencing immigration, adjustment to a new land, acculturation, and stability. For the American newspaper the equation has been simple, change or die. Many have died.

Americans have started newspapers for many reasons, including to support religious or political beliefs, to express outrage over social issues, and simply to make a buck. For those newspapers to last, however, the one imperative was to attract readers. At its heart the U.S. newspaper industry was a commercial enterprise, and readers led to profits. For even those newspapers supported by special interest groups, like unions, religious or ethnic organizations, or political parties, the need to appeal to readers has been a constant.

Newspapers have evolved throughout the years so much that some scholars liken its progress to the natural sciences, a matter of evolution from one form into another. The earliest newspapers were simple affairs, often composed of only four small pages distributed to only a few elites in colonial New England's small cities. By the twenty-first century American newspapers offered more words than a novel, hundreds of pages, thousands of advertisements, and a circulation spanning the globe. Thousands of people throughout the world read online versions. Others, reminiscent of earlier newspapers, are simple sheets targeting small, often marginalized groups.

The American newspaper story has been filled with flamboyant figures, cultural changes, technological revolutions, and a brashness mirroring that of the United States itself. Newspapers swept west along with the settlers and helped turn small towns into cities. They thundered at injustice and battled the elite. They preached to the converted and to those disdaining their messages. They attacked minorities and were minorities' voices. They gave communities not only a place to read about themselves but also a place that turned the eyes of community members outward upon the world. The story of American newspapers is one of a window on life in America.

Getting a Foothold

The earliest-known newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, lasted only one edition. Benjamin Harris, who published it in Boston, on 25 September 1690, had neglected to get official permission, and perhaps worse, he printed news from the colonies, which disturbed colonial officials. It was banned. Fourteen years later the Boston postmaster John Campbell, who had been sending handwritten newsletters to a select few in New England, bought a wooden press, and the first successful newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, was born. His was more acceptable. He got permission from authorities beforehand and focused on foreign news. Published by authority of the government and reporting foreign news, it copied the British press, which was licensed and forbidden to criticize the government. But just as America was beginning to chafe under restrictive British rules in the eighteenth century, the young American newspaper industry became unruly as well. Papers were generally published part-time by printers, and publishers objected to the licensing requirements and prior restraints on publication imposed by the British rules.

The early years were marked by repeated disputes between publishers and authorities. Benjamin Franklin first became noticed because of such a dispute. His brother James Franklin had started the New England Courant in Boston in 1821, and Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to him as a printer at age twelve. James Franklin, a fiery sort, was imprisoned for criticizing the governor, and at age seventeen Benjamin Franklin took over the paper while his brother was imprisoned. Benjamin Franklin later moved to Philadelphia and started a number of newspapers, including one in German.

Colonial newspapers were generally politically neutral, and some publishers did not want to offend anyone. Their news was that of interest mainly to the upper and middle classes, especially news from Britain and news of shipping. Publishers were frequently related to each other, and some had patrons, wealthy individuals who found it useful to sponsor a newspaper. Boston was the center of the early colonial newspaper world, but Philadelphia became a second center by the middle of the eighteenth century. American newspapers were urban institutions, and they spread with the growth of towns and cities. Thus they followed the urbanization of America. The first newspapers were centered in New England, then they moved into the South, then slowly they moved into the West. Publishers were mostly men, although Elizabeth Timothy took over the South Carolina Gazette in 1738, when her husband, Lewis Timothy, died.

In colonial America religion and religious leaders were influential, and they played significant roles in the early newspapers. Many newspapers were founded for religious purposes, printing sermons, supporting an immigrant group's religion, and performing missionary functions as with those printed to convert Native Americans to Christianity. New England's well-educated clergy promoted the press, although Puritan leaders often engaged in spirited debates with newspaper leaders. In truth these vigorous debates helped the fledgling newspaper industry become profitable in New England, and their absence is considered one significant reason that the newspaper industry grew more slowly in the South.

The colonial era was a time of immigration, and many immigrants spoke foreign tongues. Immigrants often settled in enclaves, distinct groups of one ethnic origin within larger settlements of different backgrounds. Immigrant enclaves found newspapers in their languages welcome aids in creating a sense of community, teaching new comers how to adjust to this new culture, and bringing news of their compatriots both in America and in the Old World. Benjamin Franklin's Die Philadelphische Zeitung of 1732 was typical of the foreign-language press as it was located in a city with a sizable German-speaking population. Literate Germans dominated the foreign-language newspapers for a century and a half, although virtually every other immigrant group published newspapers in its native tongue. Among the first were French and Scandinavian language newspapers.

However, a German writing in English epitomized the growing dissatisfaction of American newspapers with colonial rulers. John Peter Zenger immigrated to America from Germany with his family in 1710 and was apprenticed a year later to the printer William Bradford in New York. After seven years Zenger started his own paper, bankrolled by a group opposed to the newly appointed governor William Cosby. One of Zenger's sponsors, James Alexander, wrote a number of articles recasting British libertarian thought, especially the need for freedom of expression, for the New World. The articles were published anonymously in Zenger's paper, and the editor was arrested in 1734 for "printing and publishing several seditious libels." He spent nine months in jail. At the trial Zenger's attorney argued basically that the articles were true. The prosecution correctly cited the law, which said truth did not matter. But a jury sided with Zenger, and trut has a defense persisted into the twenty-first century.

Newspaper disputes with colonial authorities were only one source of dissent during the middle of the eighteenth-century. American newspapers began reporting perceived British injustices. When in 1765 the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, levying taxes on admittance to the bar, legal documents, business papers, and newspapers, many publishers abandoned political neutrality. Patriot newspapers, such as the Boston Gazette of 1755–1775, opposed Boston taxes and urged boycotts. It covered the Boston Massacre in 1770, when several Bostonians were killed in struggles with British soldiers. Not all newspapers sided with the colonies, but those remaining loyal to England suffered. For example, in 1773 the New York Loyalist James Rivington founded Rivington's New York Gazetter, which supported the British. He was embattled almost from the start and was jailed for a short time in 1775. After his printing house was destroyed by a mob on 10 May 1775, he fled to England, then returned with British troops. His Revolutionary War Loyalist newspaper, the New-York Royal Gazette, became synonymous with Toryism.

Following the Revolution the United States was a good place for newspapers. Advertising increased dramatically, and the excitement of a new nation led to increased readership. The new country's first successful daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, started in 1784. More efficient presses lowered production costs, which led to a rapid increase in newspapers, especially dailies. Distribution was mostly by mail, and low postal rates helped. The increased importance of advertising was evident even in the names of newspapers. Twenty of the nation's twenty-four dailies in 1800 carried the word "advertiser" as part of their names. Even the government seemed to be on the side of newspapers. In 1788 the First Amendment to the Constitution aimed to protect the press. As the nation opened the West, newspapers went along and became local boosters of the frontier towns in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

While the official name of the new nation was the United States, its citizens were anything but united in viewpoints, and the country became embroiled in a dispute over federalism. Political parties formed behind those wanting a strong federal government and those urging state sovereignty. Early debates over postal laws indicated that legislators recognized the effects of communication on modernity, and newspapers soon became leading weapons in the struggle. Both sides started or supported their own newspapers. The era was highlighted by partisan newspapers, like the Federalist Gazette of the United States, to which Alexander Hamilton was a frequent contributor, and the Jeffersonian National Gazette. One result of the struggle between the two factions was the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, aimed at silencing Thomas Jefferson's followers. One of the four laws, the Sedition Act, outlawed newspaper criticism of government officials and effectively nullified the First Amendment. Nearly 10 percent of existing American newspapers were charged under the act. However, it did provide for truth as a defense, thereby putting the Zenger verdict into law. The Sedition Act was allowed to expire in 1801, after national elections put Jefferson's party into power.

The first third of the nineteenth century was a time of expansion for the United States. The National Intelligencer was founded in 1800 as a paper of record, and it was the first to cover Congress directly. Newspapers changed their emphasis from advertising vehicles, although advertising was still a major part of their incomes. Most of their financing came from either political parties or circulation. Papers remained expensive, costing about six cents a paper. Only the mercantile and political elites could afford to buy newspapers. Ever catering to readers, editors focused on politics, business, and the comings and goings of ships in the port. Nevertheless many newspapers were feisty, fighting political or social battles. Not at all atypical of the time were lengthy attacks on immigrants, abolitionists, or black Americans, such as those in the New York Examiner in 1827 that led the Reverend Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm to found the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal. It lasted only a short time but was quickly followed by about thirty black newspapers in the next decade and even more as the abolition question heated up in the years preceding the Civil War. This lively press set the stage for the most dramatic evolution in American newspapers, the penny press.

The Era of the Reporter

The penny press derived its name from its cost, a penny apiece. It challenged the existing elite and the newspapers that served them by developing a new attitude toward advertising, cutting prices to become accessible to the masses, and by paying reporters to cover the news. Earlier newspapers had depended upon friends of the editor or publisher to provide news. The penny press revolutionized the way news was produced, distributed, and consumed. Due to faster presses and cheaper newsprint, penny papers cost less to produce. Advertising underwent a dramatic shift during this period. Previously those who advertised were those who read the paper, and advertising was seen as a mechanism for spreading information among an elite class. But the penny papers catered to the needs of all, and business advertised to inform readers about available products. These new newspapers were sold by street vendors one paper at a time. Thus the paper was available to all and needed to appeal to all for those sales. This led to a change in the kind of news covered. Readers wanted something other than strong opinions. With the rise in reporting, news became more local.

The first penny paper was Benjamin Day's New York Sun in 1833, quickly followed in 1834 by the Evening Transcript and in 1835 by James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald. The successful format spread quickly from New York to other East Coast newspapers and a bit slower to the West. But all followed Day's formula for success, that is, expanded advertising; low price to customers; street sales; new technology in gathering news, printing, and distribution; and paid reporters. Penny papers ushered in a lively time for the United States and for its newspapers, which experienced dramatic changes in technology, distribution, and format. Technological changes during this period included a steam-powered cylindrical press, much cheaper papermaking processes, the growth of railroads, and in the 1840s the advent of the telegraph, which directly led to the establishment in 1848 of the Associated Press, an association of New York newspapers.

Alongside the penny press arose an advanced specialized press appealing to special interests, such as those advocating the abolition of slavery, labor unions, and women's issues. Amelia Bloomer started the first woman's newspaper, the Lily, in 1849 initially as a temperance then as a suffrage paper. Others quickly followed. This era also experienced a grow thin racial and ethnic newspapers. Virtually all these newspapers were published weekly, and their influence on their specialized audiences was great. Before the Civil War more than twenty black newspapers emerged, some edited by towering figures such as Frederick Douglass, who started the North Star in 1847. This paper lasted sixteen years, a long time for an abolitionist paper, during which the name was changed to Frederick Douglass' Weekly. The abolitionist papers published by both black and white advocates were among the most controversial. The abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy of the Observer in Alton, Illinois, was killed by a mob in 1837. No counterpart for abolitionist newspapers existed in the South. Southern legislators had virtually banned comment on the slavery situation. The story was different in the West as the U.S. frontier expanded. Newspapers frequently were boosters of their new cities and often engaged in ideological battles, especially in "Bloody Kansas, " split by the slavery issue.

All this was a prelude to the Civil War, which not only permanently changed the United States but also permanently changed American newspapers. The media had never covered a war before, and the emotional fervor of the war coupled with the increasing competitiveness of the nation's newspapers prompted a host of changes. The Civil War was the first modern war, and newspapers became modern as well. Major newspapers sent correspondents, a first, and the reliance on the telegraph led to two major developments in the way stories were written. The telegraph was expensive, so the writing style became less florid, using fewer words. The telegraph also was unreliable, which popularized the inverted pyramid style of writing in which the most important news is first in the story, followed in succession by less important facts. Photography, especially that of Mathew Brady, brought further developments, although it was a decade before photos could be engraved. Newspapers used Brady's photos as models for staff artists. Sometimes the heated competition led to bribery and fakery. At other times news correspondents faced heavy censorship. For instance, General William T. Sherman ordered the arrest and trial of a reporter, who faced the death penalty. General A. E. Burnside ordered the Chicago Tribune closed and prohibited the New York World from circulating in the Midwest, but President Abraham Lincoln rescinded the orders.

After the Civil War newspapers faced new challenges and opportunities. The pace of urbanization sped up, creating large cities and another spurt of immigration. Mass production replaced artisan craftsmanship, giving further impetus to advertising. Along with the nation, the news became bigger, more costly to report, and reliant on commercial advertising. Newspapers reflected city life, and publishers identified strongly with local business. Frequently publishers realized that extreme partisanship drove away valuable readers, and their political tones moderated.

Despite their growing numbers, immigrants and African Americans in the North felt left out of the competitive mainstream newspapers, which focusing on attracting the largest number of readers, appealed to native-born Americans. Consequently, these groups created their own newspapers. In 1870 the United States had 315 foreign-language newspapers, a number that grew to 1,159 in 1900, two-thirds of which were German. More than one and a half million German-language newspapers were sold in 1900, followed by 986,866 Polish news papers, 827,754 Yiddish papers, and 691,353 Italian papers. More than one thousand black newspapers were founded between 1865 and 1900, but most quickly failed. Black newspapers took the lead in challenging the scaling back of Reconstruction in the South. The editor and writer Ida B. Wells, a former slave, documented lynching throughout the South.

In 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution enfranchised all men, including African Americans, but not women. This sparked a second wave of feminism, much of which was centered around newspapers edited and published by women. They were split into two factions, those concentrating on obtaining the vote for women and those seeking broad political and social reform. The latter group included the Revolution, started in 1868 by Susan B. Anthony with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as editor. As shown by its motto, "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less, " the paper was radical. It lasted only two and a half years. On the other hand, Lucy Stone's more moderate Women's Journal, which was started in 1870, lasted until 1917 despite never having more than six thousand subscribers. These papers maintained pressure for woman suffrage until its eventual passage in 1920.

A short-lived agrarian press had more subscribers. But from its start in the 1880s it primarily served the Populist Party, and it died along with the party after the beginning of the twentieth century. A vociferously anti-urban press, it stood up for farmers' issues. The most notable paper was the National Economist with more than 100,000 readers at its peak. However, more than one thousand Populist newspapers spread throughout the nation's midsection.

By 1920 half of the people in the country lived in cities, where newspapers thrived. This was especially true at the end of the nineteenth century, when two of the most controversial figures in American newspapers took control of New York papers. They led a revolution in coverage and display that earned their style of journalism the sneering label of "yellow journalism" after a comic strip character, the "Yellow Kid." Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst arrived on the New York City scene at a time when its mainstream newspapers were segmenting the audience by focusing on news of interest mostly to one type of reader. For example, the New York Times and Chicago Tribune appealed to the business classes. Hearst and Pulitzer's sensationalized newspapers were aimed directly at the working classes, adding to audience segmentation.

From its beginnings under Henry Raymond in 1851 the New York Times had grown in substance to become the newspaper most appealing to those wanting information. Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New YorkJournal most appealed to those wanting entertainment. Pulitzer, who had started with a German-language newspaper and had merged the St. Louis Dispatch with the Post before moving to New York in 1883, added display flair. His newspaper emphasized sports and women's news, and he attracted good reporters, including Elizabeth Cochrane. Known as "Nellie Bly," Cochrane became famous for her stunts, such as rounding the world in seventy-two days, beating the time needed in the Jules Verne classic Around the World in 80Days. Pulitzer's chief rival, Hearst, had turned around his family's failing Examiner in San Francisco and purchased the struggling Journal. Aiming at sensationalism of the highest order, Hearst raided Pulitzer's staff, including Richard Outcalt, creator of the "Yellow Kid" comic strip, and introduced color printing. The war for subscribers between Hearst and Pulitzer became sensationalized, and many blamed Hearst for the U.S. involvement in a war with Cuba. The rest of the nation's press splintered into two groups, those growing more sensational and those emphasizing solid reporting of the news. However, all were affected, and following this period multicolumn headlines and photographs became the norm for American newspapers.

By the beginning of the twentieth century many editors had college degrees and came from the ranks of reporters, not from the owner class. This led to an increase in professionalism, as did the general philosophy of the newspaper business that news was a separate division, funded by but not directly affected by advertising. Reporters, often paid on a space-rate system, earned salaries comparable to skilled craftspeople, such as plumbers.

World War I was an unsettling time for the industry. Foreign-language newspapers reached their peak in 1917, but wartime restrictions and prejudices hit them hard, especially those papers printed in German. They began a steep decline. The number of all newspapers peaked in 1909, when a total of 2,600 newspapers were published in the United States. Circulation continued to rise as the country became more urban. Newspapers had another war to cover, an all-out war that brought a rise in American nationalism. As has happened frequently when the nation was engaged in war, the federal government sought to control newspapers. The Espionage and Sedition Act provided a legal basis for shutting down newspapers. The former newspaperman George Creel directed the new Committee on Public Information and worked hard to determine what newspapers printed and omitted, relying generally on cooperation but lapsing into coercion when he felt he needed it. Socialist and black newspapers were particularly hard hit by government actions. Notably Victor Berger, editor of the socialist newspaper the Milwaukee Leader, was jailed. Because it refused to support U.S. involvement in the war, the Leader lost its mailing privileges, which crippled its ability to circulate and to gather news. Lack of support for the war effort, especially attacks on racial discrimination in the armed forces, created problems for black newspaper publishers as well. Creel believed those stories hurt the war effort, and in 1919 the Justice Department claimed the papers' racial stance was caused by Russian sympathizers.

Reflecting the great migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, black newspapers achieved their greatest success in the first half of the twentieth-century. The number of black newspapers rose from about two hundred in 1900 to a peak of five hundred by the 1920s, then the number began a slow decline to slightly higher than two hundred at the start of the twenty-first century. While most of these were small-town southern papers, in the 1920s four large black newspapers in the North developed circulations of more than 200,000, Marcus Garvey's Negro World, which lasted only from 1918 to 1933, Robert L. Vann's Pittsburgh Courier, Carl Murphy's Baltimore Afro-American, and Robert Abbott's Chicago Defender. The Defender was probably the best known of them, particularly in the 1920s. Abbott, who founded the paper in 1905, was one of the leaders in urging African Americans to move north. Some historians consider his newspaper, which was circulated throughout the South, one of the most effective institutions in stimulating the migration.

Newspapers in a Modern World

The year 1920 marks the line designating when a majority of Americans lived in urban areas. The United States was changing, and news adapted to the modern urban, technological, consumer society. The years since the era of yellow journalism's sensationalism had seen an end to the massive growth in the number of newspapers, although circulation continued to grow. The industry had stabilized, advertising had become national in scope, reporters were becoming higher educated and more professional, and the ownership of newspapers by chains and groups became more common, a trend that continued into the twenty-first century. Newspapers gained new competitors in broadcast media. Newsreels in theaters provided an alternative in presenting news, with moving pictures of events. The growth of the advertising industry pushed the United States toward a consumer society and greater use of brand names, and a professional public relations industry developed.

Newspaper content continued to evolve, especially in the 1930s. Competition pushed newspapers beyond presenting only the facts. Journalists sought to put facts into context. Newspaper content and style became interrelated, and the industry moved toward interpretation, photos, political columns, weekly review of news, and faster, more efficient technology in gathering, printing, and distributing news. Full-time columnists and editorial writers became more common. It was a time of journalism of synthesis, as newspapers attempted to add to the news via such techniques as daily and weekly interpretive news summaries, like the New York Times "Week in Review" section. Consolidation of mainstream papers continued, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt attacked what he called the "monopoly press." Roosevelt's antagonism toward the press had long-term ramifications as he started regular radio chats to bypass reporters. With the Great Depression afflicting most people, the alternative and socialist press thrived, especially social action newspapers like Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, an influential alternative voice that actively opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, costing it much of its circulation.

The war emphasized some of the weaknesses and strengths of American newspapers. Their lack of coverage overseas left Americans unprepared for the strength of the Axis forces, and they have taken some justified criticism over the years for the lack of reporting on German restrictions on Jews during this period. But the war also emphasized newspapers' strength in their ability to change as needed. During the war the number of correspondents blossomed, and they reported in a vast variety of styles, ranging from the solid hard news of the wire services; through personal journalism like that of Ernie Pyle, one of an estimated forty-nine correspondents killed in action; to cartoonists like Bill Mauldin, whose "Willie" and "Joe" debated the war; to photographers like Joe Rosenthal, whose photo of the flag raising on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima symbolized American success.

Federal authorities censored and attempted to control newspapers, especially the black press, which had more than doubled its circulation between 1933 and 1940 to 1.3 million people. J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had monitored the black press since World War I and was concerned because it was becoming increasingly militant on racial matters. The growth of the big three black newspapers, the Courier, the Afro-American, and the Defender, changed the black press from small, low-circulation southern newspapers to mass-circulation, highly influential northern ones. During World War II the black press was investigated by seven government agencies, and an eighth, the War Production Board, was accused of cutting newsprint supplies to black newspapers. Wildly popular among African Americans was the Courier's Double V platform, standing for "victory abroad [on the battlefield] and victory at home" over racial restrictions.

Much of the press faced a chill from government regulation and the public in the Cold War period following World War II. The Smith Act (1940), the nation's first peacetime sedition act since 1801, prohibited advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government. It was rarely used before 1949, when public opinion turned violently anticommunist. Twelve journalists were indicted. Many newspapers, now facing severe competition from television for advertising dollars, turned right along with the nation. Although a lonely few remained on the left, newspapers still attracted congressional anticommunist investigations. Though some questioned Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy from the start of his anticommunist crusade, he easily manipulated most American newspapers and wire services. McCarthy followed a pattern of launching vague charges shortly before deadlines so they could not be questioned.

The growing disenchantment with newspapers by the public during the Cold War intensified during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s as a generational divide among Americans was duplicated in newsrooms. Young reporters pushed editors to challenge authority on such controversial topics as civil rights, the counterculture, and antiwar activities. New forms of journalism included personalized and activist reporting, which led to even more public dissatisfaction with newspapers. The "new journalism" and criticism by government figures caused a steep decline in public respect for the media accompanied by circulation declines. In 1968 the pollster George Gallup reported that the media had never been as poorly regarded by the public.

Then came Watergate. The press reported events in the investigation of a break-in by Republican operatives at the Democratic Party national headquarters in Washington's Watergate Hotel that culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, and public dissatisfaction with the press grew. Nixon's popularity had reached a peak of 68 percent after a Vietnam peace treaty was signed in 1973, and many Americans felt the media was out of touch.

The growing use of computers dramatically changed how newspapers were produced, with significant savings in labor and improvement in quality. Computers added depth to coverage and increased the use of color and graphics, especially after the 1980s. Serious reporting during Watergate was notable, as was the courage of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret report detailing governmental decisions during the Vietnam War.

Continued newspaper consolidation coupled with more media companies going public resulted, in the view of many, in a thirst for high profit margins and caused continued concern in the industry, especially as the number of independent metropolitan dailies declined to fewer than the fingers on one hand by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Circulation actually was rising, but at a rate far less than that of the population. In an attempt to reverse the circulation weakness, the industry turned to consultants. A study in 1979 for the American Society of Newspaper Editors changed the kinds of news covered. It spotlighted as hot areas economic news, business news, financial news, health news, personal safety, technology, and international news. Many newspapers changed to include more of those areas, cutting coverage of more traditional areas, such as government. Other studies added to the changes in news focus, and the influence of market research reached its peak with the founding in 1982 of USA Today, a five-day-a-week national newspaper published by Gannett Corporation behind the guiding light of its chairman Allen Neuharth. Gannett's research indicated that readers wanted short stories that would not "jump" (would not continue on another page). Readers liked sports, charts, and graphs and wanted information presented in ways that could be absorbed quickly. The paper's success led many other newspapers, especially those with continued readership weakness, to copy the USA Today formula. After Neuharth's retirement, USA Today changed some of its emphasis and by the twenty-first century was garnering the journalists' praise that had eluded it earlier.

The new century found the newspaper industry in the same position as at the founding of the nation, facing uncertainty and change. New challenges to its prime product, news, came from the Internet and all-news cable television channels. Most newspapers established online publications, but as with the Internet in general, few had figured out how to make a consistent profit. Change started the newspaper story, and change ends it.

Bibliography

Cahan, Abraham. The Education of Abraham Cahan. Translated by Leon Stein, Abraham P. Conan, and Lynn Davison. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969.

Emery, Michael, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts. The Press and America. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Errico, Marcus. "Evolution of the Summary News Lead." Media History Monographs 1, no. 1. Available from http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/mediahistory/mhmjour1-1.htm.

Fishman, Joshua A., et al. Language Loyalty in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by American Ethnic and Religious Groups. Hague: Mouton, 1966.

Folkerts, Jean, and Dwight L. Teeter Jr. Voices of a Nation. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002.

Hindman, Douglas Blanks, Robert Littlefield, Ann Preston, and Dennis Neumann. "Structural Pluralism, Ethnic Pluralism, and Community Newspapers." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 76, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 250–263.

Janowitz, Morris. The Community Press in an Urban Setting. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

Kent, Robert B., and E. Maura. "Spanish-Language Newspapers in the United States." Geographic Review 86 (July 1996): 446–456.

Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan, 1922.

Miller, Sally M., ed. The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Park, Robert E. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922.

Reed, Barbara Straus. The Antebellum Jewish Press: Origins, Problems, Functions. Journalism Monographs, vol. 84. Columbia, S.C.: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1993.

Rhodes, Jane. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

Simmons, Charles A. The African American Press: A History of News Coverage during National Crises, with Special References to Four Black Newspapers, 1827–1965. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998.

Stamm, Keith R., and Lisa Fortini-Campbell. The Relationship of Community Ties to Newspaper Use. Columbia, S.C.: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1983.

Suggs, Henry Lewis, ed. The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

———. The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865–1985. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Wilson, Clint C., II, and Félix Gutiérrez. Minorities and Media. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1985.

The first news sheet issued with some regularity in Russia was Sankt Peterburgskie vedemosti (St. Petersburg Herald), a biweekly published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, beginning in 1727. Until the Great Reforms of 1861 - 1874, nearly all newspapers in Russia were official bulletins issued by various government institutions. To the extent that there was a print-based public sphere in pre-Reform Russia, it was dominated by the "thick journals" that published literary criticism and philosophical speculation.

The relaxing of censorship and limits on private publications during the Great Reforms, advances in printing technology, and the spread of literacy in Russian cities led to the development of a mass-market, commercial press by the 1880s. Daily papers targeting various markets covered stock-market news and foreign affairs, as well as the more sensational topics of crime, sex scandals, and natural disasters. As Louise McReynolds has demonstrated, Russian commercial mass newspapers resembled their counterparts in North America and Western Europe in appealing to and fostering nationalist sentiment.

By World War I "copeck" (penny) newspapers in Moscow and St. Petersburg achieved circulations comparable to those of mass circulation organs in the United States and Western Europe. The most popular newspaper in the Russian Empire in 1914 was Russkoe slovo (Russian Word), with a circulation of 619,500.

After the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, they created an entirely new kind of mass press. By the summer of 1918 the Soviet government had shut down all non-Bolshevik newspapers on their territory. Bolshevik newspapers during the years of revolution and civil war (1917 - 1921) aimed to mobilize the populace in general and Party members in particular for war. Resources were scarce, and typical civil war newspaper editions were only two pages long. The state funded the press throughout the Soviet era.

The Bolsheviks shared with most Russian intellectuals of the revolutionary era a profound contempt for the sensationalistic urban copeck newspapers that aimed to entertain a mass audience. They created a mass press that was supposed to educate, guide, and mobilize readers, not entertain them. Other important functions of Soviet newspapers were the gathering of intelligence on popular moods and the monitoring of corruption in the Party or state apparatus. To fulfill these tasks, the newspapers solicited and received literally millions of readers' letters, some of which were published. The editorial staff also forwarded letters denouncing crime and corruption to the appropriate police or prosecutorial organs. They used letters to compose reports on popular attitudes that were sent to all levels of party officialdom.

The role of direct censorship in Soviet newspaper production has been overemphasized. Agenda-setting by party and state organs was more important. The role of official censors in controlling press content was negligible. Soviet journalists were generally self-censoring, and they followed agendas set by the Communist Party's Central Committee and other official institutions.

Illegal newspapers were central to Bolshevik Party organization in the prerevolutionary years. This heritage of underground political culture contributed to a Soviet fetishization of newspapers as the mass medium par excellance. As a result of this fetishization, Communist propaganda officials and journalists were slow to understand and effectively use the media of radio and television. By the 1970s, Soviet means and methods of mass persuasion and mobilization were far inferior to those developed by advertising agencies and governments in the wealthy liberal democracies.

Bibliography

Brooks, Jeffrey. (2000). Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hopkins, Mark. (1970). Mass Media in the Soviet Union. New York: Pegasus Books.

Kenez, Peter. (1985). The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917 - 1929. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

McReynolds, Louise. (1991). The News Under Russia's Old Regime. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

—MATTHEW E. LENOE

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IN BRIEF: A daily publication of current events.

On being told that her death was rumored: With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying. — Bette Davis (1908-1989), American Oscar-winning actress.

Quotes:

"I keep reading between the lies." - Goodman Ace

"A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure." - Arthur Baer

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"A newspaper is the lowest thing there is." - Richard J. Daley

"They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat." - Charles Dickens

"Headlines twice the size of the events." - John Galsworthy

See more famous quotes about Newspapers

If there is anxiety felt in a newspaper dream, then reading a newspaper may indicate concern about one's reputation. It may also signify the desire to be recognized and acclaimed.

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This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - avis

Nederlands (Dutch)
krant

Français (French)
n. - journal, papier journal

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zeitung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - εφημερίδα

Italiano (Italian)
giornale

Português (Portuguese)
n. - jornal (m), agência (f) de jornais

Русский (Russian)
газета, газетная бумага

Español (Spanish)
n. - diario, periódico

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - tidning

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
报纸

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 報紙

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 신문, 신문사

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 新聞, 新聞社, 新聞印刷用紙

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) صحيفه, جريدة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עיתון‬

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newspaper	asian newspaper
advertiser newspaper	australian newspaper