a brief history of journalism in america -...

A Brief History of Journalism inAmerica

America's news media in 1776 barely resembled those oftoday and it's a safe bet the news media of 2076 will barelyresemble those of today.

1690 America's first newspaper, Publick Occurrences, BothForeign and Domestick, is published in Boston. It lasts forjust one issue.

1769 In Connecticut, Isaac Doolittle builds the first printingpress made in American.

1791 The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbidsCongress from making any law "abridging the freedom ofspeech, or of the press."

1823 A steam driven printing press is invented by JonasBooth.

1833 America's first penny press newspaper is BenjaminDay's New York Sun. It attracts a wide audience.

1835 James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald becomesthe most widely read newspaper in the United States.

1841 Horace Greeley publishes New York Tribune.

1844 A telegraph line stretches from Washington, D.C., toBaltimore, Maryland, makes it possible for newspapers tooffer timely coverage of distant events.

1846 The U.S. Congress awards printing contracts to thelowest bidder. Previously, contracts had been given to loyal

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Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick

partisan printers.

1847 Robert Hoe's four-cylinder rotary press is capable ofprinting 8,000 pages per hour.

1849 A group of publishers start an organization to bringnews from Europe. It will become the Associated Press(AP).


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The Yellow Kid cartoon 1898The Yellow Kid cartoon in 1898

click image to enlarge

1859 The New York Clipper publishes the first baseball boxscore by Henry Chadwick. It lets newspapers standardizetheir game summaries.

1883 Joseph Pulitzer buys the New York World from JayGould for $346,000.

1887 George Hearst appoints his son William RandolphHearst editor of the San Francisco Examiner.

1895 William Randolph Hearst buys the New York MorningJournal, renams it the New York Journal and converts it to apenny paper like James Gordon Bennett's New YorkHerald.

1897 The New York Journalpublishes the first colorSunday comic pages.

1898 The New York Journalblames Spain for a mysterious explosion that sank the USSMaine in Havana Harbor, Cuba. That helps push the UnitedStates into war with Spain. The sensational coverage is anexample of yellow journalism.

1904 William Randolph Hearst stars the Los AngelesExaminer and the Boston American. He will eventuallystarts and buys papers in many American cities. By 1930,his holdings will include 28 newspapers.

1911 Joseph Pulitzer's will leaves $2 million to ColumbiaUniversity to establish a graduate school of journalism andthe Pulitzer Prize. The prizes have been awarded since1917 recognizing achievements in journalism, literature andmusic.

1920 Radio station KDKA begins broadcasting regularlyscheduled programs at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


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Radio Station KDKA in Pittsburgh in 1920

1926 The U.S.begins regulatingbroadcasting withthe Federal RadioCommission(FRC).

1934 The U.S.increasesregulation ofbroadcasting withfounding of theFederalCommunicationsCommission(FCC).

1941 OrsonWelles's movieabout WilliamRandolph Hearst,Citizen Kane,premieres in NewYork City.

1941 The FCClets 18 televisionstations begincommercial broadcasting. CBS and NBC beginimmediately. Hardly anybody watches. Station WCBWdemonstrates the news potential with its bulletins on theJapanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

1948 More television stations begin broadcasting after theend of World War II and people begin to buy receivers andwatch programs. Radio stations begin to switch fromnetwork entertainment programs to local DJ music shows.

1955 Compatible color television begins to catch on.


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1969 The Pentagon invents a communication system thatwill become the Internet.

1971 The New York Times publishes Daniel Ellsberg'sPentagon Papers, series of classified government VietnamWar documents. President Richard Nixon gets a courtinjunction ordering The Times to stop publication of thedocument, but the U.S. Supreme Court finds the injunctionis unconstitutional prior restraint.

1971 Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and CarlBernstein cover a burglary at the offices of the DemocraticNational Committee in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate Hotel.They eventually link the break-in to a dirty tricks campaignled by advisers to President Richard Nixon whose attemptsto cover up the misdeeds lead to his own resignation in1974.

1973 Australian Rupert Murdoch acquires his first Americanproperty, the San Antonio Express-News.

1980 Ted Turner starts the Cable News Network (CNN).

1988 The Internet opens to commercial users.

1989 Tim Berners-Lee begins to invent the World WideWeb on the Internet.

1993 Mosaic, the first World Wide Web browser, is relased.

1994 Public awareness of the World Wide Web – theinformation superhighway on the Internet – awakens withnews coverage of its potential. Yahoo! opens.

1995 The wiki is invented.

1996 Rupert Murdoch starts Fox News Channel on cableTV.

1997 Blogging starts.


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Time magazine cover April 12, 1993

1998 Internetsearch engineGoogle starts up.

2000 Y2K isrelativelyuneventful.However, freeonline classifiedads at Craigslistwill grow to serve500 cities with 30million postings amonth. Thisdepletesnewspaperclassified adsales, animportant sourceof revenue.

2001 Wikipedia is created. Apple starts selling iPods.

2003 The virtual world Second Life is created on theInternet. MySpace starts.

2004 Facebook begins collecting friends. Flickr shares itsfirst photographs. Podcasting starts. An Internet newsaggregator, Digg.com, lets users determine which newsstories are most important.

2005 The Huffington Post internet news site mixesprofessional news gathering, opinion reporting anduser-generated content. YouTube begins sharing videos.

2006 Twitter begins to tweet.

2007 Rupert Murdoch purchases Dow Jones & Co.,publisher of The Wall Street Journal.


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The Wall Street Journal

2010 The Internetis well establishedas part of mostAmericans' newsconsumption.Two-thirds getsome news onlineeach day. Mostalso get newsfrom other media.On the other hand,there arequestions about print and local media and even whetherthere is a future for the mass-market magazine anymore.

2011 Advertising in local newspapers and on localtelevision stations is down, while advertising on the Internetis up. Some newspapers have ceased publication of theirprint versions in recent years in favor of developing theironline editions. Examples include the Pulitzer Prize winningRocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

2012 The digital revolution has fostered a mobile age.People are connected wherever they are. Half of Americanadults own a smartphone and a quarter have a tablet. Carshave internet connections. Mobility enables newsconsumption which boosts journalism. Access to news iseasy 24/7 with devices in peoples' pockets and laps, and ontheir desks and kitchen tables. Meanwhile, mobile platformsand social media channels are additional technology layersfor news organizations to accommodate. Some gianttechnology firms – Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple – areworking to help people consolidate their digital lives.

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© 2013 Dr. Anthony Curtis, Mass Communication Dept., University of North Carolina at Pembroke 910.521.6616 e-mail home page

The images linked from this page are courtesy of the websites of the publishers and others.


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