This scholarly look at journalism from past to present
investigates what we call news, why we read the media and
how our perceptions have been changed by texts, mobile
media and news websites. MISTER PULITZER AND THE SPIDER is
an amusing title referring to the spider's web of modern
communication technology, and how the classic news story
and culture is caught in the web.
Kevin G Barnhurst admits that he is an academic, not a
journalist. Perhaps this was necessary in order for someone
to have time to read through a hundred years of news,
digitizing a project and detailing changes. He discovered
that news was originally all about telling dramatic
stories, such as firefighters killed when a building
collapsed onto them; he says that news has now become
either a short bite which is not much more than a headline
or an in-depth story which is all about presenting the
background.
Like all of civilization and crafts, news work started out
as being a broad skill and when specialization began - the
separate pages of news, international affairs, sport,
fashion, good housekeeping, motoring, seen in early
newspapers - then the new craft really took off and
innovation was possible. Advertising as well as circulation
paid for news distribution. Pulitzer, a newspaper mogul,
decided to set standards and brisk competition arose. This
extended to radio and television. While today paper
manufacturing has slid into decline (I notice its harmful
environmental effects were not mentioned), communicating
news has prospered. So changes occur and can lead to
benefits for everyone.
Barnhurst tells us that in the nineteenth century, up to
fifty small story items might fit on a front page. Late in
the twentieth century a handful of items fit, continued on
inside pages. He found fewer quotes from ordinary people
and more from experts, organizations and spokespersons.
Barnhurst only looks at American news sources, with
references to Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and
Baltimore. He quotes from books and articles by
journalists, such as Jon Franklin, recipient of more than
one Pulitzer Prize. Today news stories can be edited and
lines rearranged almost instantly, but that wasn't always
the case and a journalist might type up two stories a day.
If the editor chose, the later lines would be cut.
This work provides bar charts and graphs showing how
stories appeared in longer or shorter texts over the years.
This extends to radio news and inevitably political matters
are cited. Some news sources were partisan but others were
fiercely independent. TV news stations might have identical
content on a breaking story, so viewers turned to papers
for depth. With competition from so many on-demand sources,
modern journalism sees the in-depth longer article as an
elite form. Barnhurst also considers the economics of
producing ever more copy in a world where talk is cheap.
Barnhurst discusses the cultural position of the
journalist, and this role in helping the public learn about
and understand major events. This extends to worldwide
reporting, which has seen a great upsurge. A later chapter
details the changes introduced by online news sites, when
print distribution with its disadvantages has been in some
areas largely replaced by the same product online.
Ownership of domain names was an important step for
traditional publishers. Photojournalism took on a renewed
importance. Then broadcast journalism is studied.
Sensationalism versus integrity is of course no newcomer to
the news discussion.
While reading I noted that I didn't see a woman quoted
until halfway through, and the women tend to be
sociologists rather than working journalists. This is until
we hear of Barbara Serrano, who was inspired by the
Watergate hearings on TV to become a journalist. Her work
for the Seattle Times was highly praised and she became
political editor in 1999, continuing to progress through
study at Harvard and editing with the Los Angeles Times.
She later took a law degree and became a criminal
prosecutor. A few other women's paths of progress are
quoted but the vast majority of names in the text are male.
While the author is trying to reflect the combined history
of the craft, I feel that a chapter on the pioneering
female journalists, who sometimes had to work under male
pseudonyms, and the opening of this avenue of employment
for women, who tended to focus on social conditions and
change, would be a valuable inclusion. I believe Kevin G
Barnhurst might be quite amused to think someone was
analyzing his text just as he has analyzed screeds of news
print and recorded news programs. MISTER PULITZER AND THE
SPIDER will be a good read for anyone studying or
interested in journalism, sociology, media studies,
philosophy and social history.
A spidery network of mobile online media has supposedly
changed people, places, time, and their meanings. A prime
case is the news. Digital webs seem to have trapped "legacy
media," killing off newspapers and journalists' jobs. Did
news businesses and careers fall prey to the digital "Spider"?
To solve the mystery, Kevin Barnhurst spent thirty years
studying news going back to the realism of the 1800s. The
usual suspects--technology, business competition, and the
pursuit of scoops--are only partly to blame for the fate of
news. The main culprit is modernism from the "Mister
Pulitzer" era, which transformed news into an ideology
called "journalism." News is no longer what audiences or
experts imagine. Stories have grown much longer over the
past century and now include fewer events, locations, and
human beings. Background and context rule instead.
News producers adopted modernism to explain the world
without recognizing how modernist ideas influence the
knowledge they produce. When webs of networked connectivity
sparked a resurgence in realist stories, legacy news stuck
to big-picture analysis that can alienate audience members
accustomed to digital briefs.
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