[BM013-3-1] MASS MEDIA TO MULTIMEDIA

Individual Assignment
UC1F1103MP
[TP025217] TRAN DINH TRUONG THINH

Lecturer : Miss RAHILAH BINTI AHMAD Due date : 1st Dec 2011

Asia Pacific University Of Creative Technology

Mass Media To Multimedia

Table of Contents ***

Cover Page .............................................................................................................................................................01 I, The history of newspapers ..........................................................................................................................03 II, Factors contributed to the adoption, growth and acceptance of newspapers .......................05 III, A challenging time, is press industry dying? .....................................................................................07 IV, Journalism, an honorable profession ....................................................................................................09 Reference................................................................................................................................................................10 Marking Scheme ..................................................................................................................................................11

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Mass Media To Multimedia

I, The History Of Newspapers ***

hat is news? Barrett and Rantanen (1998, p.1) said that News represented the reformulation of information as a commodity gathered and distributed for the three

purposes of political communication, trade and pleasure. To put it simply, news is anything that interests a large number of people and has never brought to attention before. Among the media being used to produce, distribute and present news, newspaper is considered as one of the most popular and oldest media forms. The history of newspaper begins its very first page in 1690 when Benjamin Harris published the first American newspaper, Publick Occurrences both Foreign and Domestick. But the paper was shut down by Puritan officials of the colony right after issuing an article related to an affair between the King of France and his sons wife. In 1704, Boston Newsletter was put out by a local postmaster named John Campbell. By strongly supporting British Empire, the paper was rejected by the audience since it lacked of interesting and sensitive items. A few years later, James Franklin published another Boston paper called New England Courant. And later it was taken over by James brother, Benjamin. Under Bens leadership, the paper soon gained its leading position in the society. In 1729, he stated the Pennsylvania Gazette, the most successful colonial newspaper during this time. Thanks to his endless commitment, journalism achieved a memorable step in the history and was considered as an honorable profession. During the Revolutionary War, there was an increasingly large number in the newspapers. The so-called political press began to emerge in the society. During this time, most of the newspapers were partisan, propagating views of a particular party, or entity. In 1777, the Continental Congress assigned Mary Katherine Goddard, publisher of Maryland Journal to print the first official copies of the Declaration of Independence. From 1790 to 1833, the constitution of the United States marked another achievement of the journalism with the First Amendment: Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom

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of speech or of the press. The newspapers target during this time was not only the majority of people in the society but also the minority groups. Freedom Journal, for example, was the first one that served the concerns and interests of the black, reflecting serious instabilities in the US itself, such as: unequal treatment, social gap, sex bias, slavery, etc. Due to the rapid growing of the press, the year 1830 was marked as the birth of the mass newspaper (Vivian 2011, pp. 83-84) by the manufacture of a steam-powered press that could produce 4000 copies per hour. It allowed increasing the number of copies while offering a more affordable way for both of the publishers and audience. The penny press period began in 1883 with the launch of New York Sun. The paper was sold for only a penny. The owner of it, Benjamin Day, mainly focused on local news, such as sex, violence, and human-interest stories. After the success of the Sun, there were various number of penny newspapers being launched. Among of them were New York Herald in 1835 (James Gordon Bennett), New York Tribune in 1841 (Horace Greeley) and the New York Times in 1851 (Henry Raymond). When the Civil War came in 1884, a new method of delivering news came on the scene, it was called lightning news, allowed eager readers to get news through the use of telegraph. This period also marked the rise of a new convention in writing news, the inverted pyramid. It was considered as one of the most efficient in development of the press because it allowed readers to learn what was most important at a glance. Also, the method helped editors to fit stories into the limited confines of a page. However, in the 20th century, the press industry faced a general decrease in the number of daily newspaper even though circulation and profits went up. So what happened? There were many explanations but the most relevant and acceptable was the cost of new technology (which was too much for many marginal papers), smaller-circulation papers found it hard to compete with major ones in term of generating revenue from advertisement, and the great impact from the Great Depression in 1930s. The gloomy economy knocked down those marginally profitable newspapers which were unable to make profits. The total income dropped about 20 percent and more than 66 dailies went under in this decade (Dominick 2011, p. 87).

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II, Factors Contributed To The Acceptance, Adoption, and Growth Of Newspapers ***

ow, lets take a look at the factors that contributed to the acceptance, adoption, and growth of newspapers. As being mentioned before, the task of newspaper is passing along

information about everything from wars and economics conditions to social customs and human interest features. That is the main root explained the growth of newspaper. Looking back to the history, before the age of printing, royal edicts, police regulations and important events, such as the birth and marriages of princes, war news, treaties of peace and alliance were communicated to the public by the town crier. This could be considered as one the first forms of delivering news. Hence it is doubtless to say the invention of printing gave wings to the news. We had gained a big step which provided us an easier way to adopt information. The 16th century was full of religious wars in Germany, France and the Low Countries; of formidable invasion of the Turks in Eastern Europe; of voyages of discoveries or commercial enterprise. Hence news from distant countries was an object of curiosity among all classes and the rapid and regular spread of news became a public necessity. The big books, too long to write and especially too long to be read, gave place to little tracts which were easy to spread. In 19th century, the industrial revolutions, which totally changed all aspects of American life and society, dramatically affected newspaper. With the invention of steam-powered machine, press industry had gained a memorable achievement, allowed to increase copies of newspaper and deduct printing costs. It became more and more common among citizens and played as one of the must-read in their everyday life. Another element that led to the development of the mass newspaper was the increased level of literacy in the population. Public education in that time was only meant for upper classes of people on the society, such as royal members, clergy, etc., but thanks for the democracy process, the public school system then became attainable for the middle and lower socioeconomic groups. This importantly increased emphasis on education made newspaper more and more popular in the society, creating a reading habit among people. Besides, it was again the democracy itself which played as a key unlocked the barriers of society, therefore led to the remarkable transformation of newspaper. The mass press appeared during an era that historians call the age of Jacksonian democracy, a political movement toward

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greater democracy. It encouraging equal political policy, and opposed the idea of a monopoly government by elites. In other words, ordinary people were first recognized as a political and economic force. Property requirement was no longer relevant to voting. The candidates who collected the most popular vote became presidential electors. The trend toward democratization of business and politics fostered the creation of a mass audience responsive to a mass press (Vivian 2011, p.84).

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III, A Challenging Time, Is Press Industry Dying? ***

o one deny the dominant role of newspaper nowadays. But the survival question of it is being pondered. The problem of the newspaper industry became apparent during the

1990s and intensified as the new decade processed. The invention of Internet sure bring human to the new horizon of knowledge, but ironically, it is also a big threat to press industry. Readership started a slow but steady decline. Thomas Jefferson once said that Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. His famous saying stressed the inevitable part of newspaper in our society. We know what a world without newspaper would be more screaming heads and fewer facts, greater control by the marketing and propaganda machines and less accountable government. The tracks of history has marked certain milestones of newspaper, such as the political scandal Watergate during the 1970s, Teapot Dome in 1921, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, etc. It is the newspaper that keeps the balance of this world. But lets see whats happening to the newspaper industry: circulation is dropping, display and classified ad revenue is dying up, and the industry has experienced an unprecedented wave of layoffs. People coming home from work turn on television instead of opening a newspaper, and afternoon newspapers in 1950s and 1960s saw their circulations plunge and profits dry up. However newspaper still survived. It is true that television surpassed newspaper in terms of speed, but they could not provide the kind of in-depth news coverage that newspaper could, plus the convenience of carrying it everywhere. And to compete with television, savvy editors focused more on visually impact, which made the paper look colorful and appealing, with an emphasis on clean layouts and graphic design. But the challenge didnt stop here. The speedy technological advance in the late 20th century exposed human to many other creative inventions besides television. Internet and mobile devices are one of them. Steadily gaining their leading position, and proving newspaper is no longer the most popular mean of delivering news. Why? The answer may take pages but to put it in simple words, online papers have certain advantages over traditional newspapers such as: Printed newspapers are limited by the newshole, but online papers have no such limitations. Everything can be accommodated easily; it can be updated continuously; there are no edition deadlines; it is

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the interactive feature which allows readers to share opinions, provide feedbacks to the paper, and even connects with relatively external sources of information; the experience of readers is being enhanced by checking photos and videos and audio clips. So how about the mobile devices? Thanks to internet again, the way of delivering news is totally changed. When traditional newspapers are being delivered to a place, online news is being delivered to a person. This is the big difference that focuses more on the so-called individuality. Everyone has totally control over what they want to read, how they want to read, and when they want to read. According to a research of Vivian in the US market, the number of people using mobile devices to access news on the internet doubled from 2008 to 2009 to about 63 million per month. Young people are heavy users of cell phones, and these same young people are the ones most likely to abandon print newspapers. They are keen to what we call multitask orientation, prefer to do tasks simultaneously. Hence mobile media are exactly helping satisfy young peoples demand. The future of newspaper seems to be darker when in 2008-2009, Tribune Company declared bankruptcy, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Rocky Mountain Times, and about 100 other daily and weekly papers shut down, newspaper advertising revenue dropped an alarming 23 percent, and more were among the bad news of press industry.

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IV, Journalism, An Honorable Profession: ***

hus what does future behold for traditional newspaper? And is it a dying medium? To find an acceptable answer is not an easy task at all. The challenges from other media are putting

the press industry in the most difficult time ever. However, it is doubtless to say that journalism is a very honorable profession. Journalists are the people who seeking truth and it is because of the truth is always being hidden, the history of press has been witnessed countless sacrifices. According to Reporters Without Borders (a France-based non-government organization that advocates freedom of the press) there are 58 journalists killed and 170 imprisoned in 2011.

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Reference: *** Book References: DAN LAGHEY. (2007) Key Themes In Media Theories. Open University Press, New York. JEAN, F. STEPHEN, L, and ANN, L. (2008) The Media In Your Life: An Introduction To Mass Communication. Fourth Edition. Pearson, New York. JOSEPH R. DOMINICK. (2011) The Dynamics Of Mass Communication: Media In Transition. Eleventh Edition. Mc Graw Hill, New York. OLIVER, B. and TERHI, R. (1998) The Globalization Of News. Sage Publications, London. JOHN VIVIAN. (2008) The Media of Mass Communication, Eighth Edition, Pearson Education, New York.

Electronic References: TONY ROGERS (n.d.) Are Newspapers Dying? Yes Or No? About.com Guide. Available from: http://www.journalism.about.com/od/trends/a/papersdying.htm [Accessed 22/11/11] TONY ROGERS (n.d.) Why Are Newspapers Dying? About.com Guide. Available from: http://www.journalism.about.com/od/trends/a/dyingpapers.htm [Accessed 22/11/11] PHIL BARBER (n.d.) A Brief History Of Newspapers Historic Pages. Available from: http://www.historicpages.com/nprhist.htm [Accessed 19/11/11]

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*Marking Scheme: 1. Introduction 2. Factors contributed to the acceptance, adoption, and growth of the chosen medium 3. Challenges 4. Conclusion 5. Citation & Reference Total Presentation a) Content b) Communication Skills Total 10 marks 10 marks 20 marks 20 marks 5 marks 5 marks 60 marks 10 marks 20 marks

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