Friday, June 14, 2013

Thoughts On Early American Journalism


For my Florida Virtual School assignment, I had to make a blog with an entry describing what my thoughts and what I learned from the given passage on early American Journalism. It gave me a timeline from 1690 all the way to the mid-1800s. At first, it showed the first newspaper and it was captioned that the man who produced it was arrested for this act. Next it showed more early american newspapers published by Benjamin Franklin, which I think is the first great american journalist. But then I saw a photo of the Declaration of Independence, which was printed in newspapers and spread across the colonies. I thought that it was great that people in the new country could see all the things that they represented and stood for. Instead of about 16 men gathering in a room and deciding what they wanted, it was distributed for everyone to see. The country was built on freedom and standing as one, and that is what publishing this sacred document in a newspaper allowed people to do. That is what journalism can do. It allows news and important items like the Declaration of Independence to be spread near and far, for everyone to read and comprehend.
It was also shown to me the hardship for journalism. Before the printing press and penny press (Friedman, 2009) each newspaper had to be written by hand (Frasca, 1997). The passage given to me showed that people craved and needed news, and that it has been like that since the beginning of America. Sitting down and handwriting the same thing, over and over again, showed the dedication to news that some people were, and is why journalism survived when it was hard, and triumphs in present day America. This lesson showed me why journalism and news is so important, and why people demanded and demand it.
So what if it was written in the Bill of Rights that there was freedom of the press? People could be arrested for what they write and publish for other people to see. Perhaps the government would try to cover up embarrassing things like losing a battle or wall street crashing. News could be withhold from the masses, not letting people know what is going on around them. If the press was not protected under law, america would have fallen already.

Sources:
1. Barbara Friedman. "The Penny Press: The Origins of the Modern News Media, 1833-1861. " Rev. of: title_of_work_reviewed_in_italics, clarifying_information. Journalism History 31.1 (2005): 56-56. Research Library Core, ProQuest. Web. 14. June. 2013
2. Ralph Frasca, "Benjamin Franklin's Journalism," Fides et Historia (1997) 29#1 pp 60-72.