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Media History - Book - Summary
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A summary of all the required readings from the book for Media History in first year Media Studies at the University of Groningen.
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Media and Society into the 21st Century summary
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Media and Societyinto the 21st Century
A Historical Introduction
Lyn Gorman and
David McLean
SUMMARY
,Table of Contents
Chapter 2 - The Press as a Mass Medium ............................................................................. 2
Chapter 3 - The Development of the Film Industry ............................................................. 5
Chapter 4 - The Growth of Radio Broadcasting ................................................................... 7
Chapter 5 - The Rise of Advertising....................................................................................... 9
Chapter 6 - Propaganda in Peace and War ......................................................................... 11
Chapter 8 - Television and Consumer Societies .................................................................. 15
Chapter 9 - Media, Information and Entertainment.......................................................... 19
Chapter 13 - Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 22
1
, Chapter 2 - The Press as a Mass Medium
The press barons were responsible for substantial changes in the economic organisation of the
press from the late nineteenth century into the early decades of the twentieth. Their mass-
circulating newspapers also attracted attention during wartime, as vehicles for propaganda
and means of sustaining national morale.
• Early Newspaper Development
- The first English newspaper, the London Gazette, appeared in 1665, and the first daily in
London in 1702, the Daily Courant. In both the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when
few individuals could afford to buy a newspaper, locations such as coffee houses, public
houses, and barbers’ shops provided access to newspapers to an increasingly literate
public.
- In the American colonies, the emergence of a middle class and a skilled labour class,
provided the context for low-priced, larger circulation, popular newspapers with broader
appeal than the political and mercantile papers. The establishment of international news
agencies in major European cities in the 1830s-1850s extended news gathering and
provided previously inaccessible content to newspapers.
- News agencies also had an effect on journalism and reporting, placing greater emphasis
on objectivity and “facts” rather than opinion, signalling a move away from the central
role of opinion in many early newspapers, whose proprietors or editors saw them
primarily as vehicles for the expression of their own views on contemporary issues.
- Finally, the abolition of previous restrictions on the press, which kept prices high enough
to limit sales and act as a disincentive to advertisers, opened the way for considerable
change in the field of journalism. (In the US, the first amendment to the constitution had
already ensured freedom of the press since 1791).
• Changes in the Economic Organisation of the Press
- There were two changes in the economic organisation that were crucial to the growth of
newspapers. The first was the rise of advertising – which made it possible to sustain a
cheap popular press; the second was the development of newspapers and magazine chains
– which produced a different pattern of newspaper ownership, led to the emergence of
“press barons” at the turn of the century, and made it possible to achieve “economies of
scale”.
- Earlier newspapers had been run mainly as small family businesses or by a proprietor,
often publishing opinions on a range of political or social issues, but generally not
expecting to reach a wide audience. In the late nineteenth century, the popular press was
commercialised, and newspapers became large businesses whose owners were essentially
interested in making profit.
- A key factor to the fall in the cost of newspapers was the growth of advertising. From the
advertiser’s point of view, it became more and more attractive to advertise in newspapers,
as their circulation increased; the newspaper press provided an ideal means of promoting
goods aimed at a popular market.
2
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