JOURNALISM

JOURNALISM The enterprise of producing newspapers and magazines (including reporting, writing, editing, photographing, and managing) as well as the styles of writing used in such publications. The term came into use some two centuries after the practice had started. From the 18c, there were basically two styles: the elegant and ornate ‘high’ style of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Samuel JOHNSON, and the other essayists, and the ‘low’ style of the so-called Grub Street hacks. Daniel DEFOE is often regarded as the first journalist, as distinct from the man of letters. With the rise of the popular press in the 19c, the more fashionable alternative terms were the higher journalism ( Matthew Arnold's term) and the gutter press. To a large extent these modes are perpetuated in the division of modern British journalism into the quality press and the tabloids. By the mid-19c, the term was starting to fall into disrepute, to imply rather superficial social and political commentary and a style which was less than exemplary. In England in 1879, George Eliot commented rather scornfully on ‘Journalistic guides to the popular mind’, while journalese, recorded from 1882, was defined by the OED c.1900 as ‘“newspaper” or “penny-a-liner's” English’. The term journalism continues throughout the English-speaking world to retain a tinge of disapproval, and most of the epithets applied to the profession (such as hacks, muck-rakers, rat packs, reptiles, scribblers) are uncomplimentary.

It was, however, from the early 19c to the First World War that journalism enjoyed its greatest influence. Editors were raised to virtually legendary status, their editorials or ‘leaders’ being regarded as models of stylistic elegance and political authority, with an impact on current affairs which has never been surpassed. Especially under the editorship of Thomas Barnes, The Times became such a powerful voice in Britain (promoting the Reform Bill and condemning the Corn Laws) that by 1829 it had earned the sobriquet The Thunderer. Both Samuel Coleridge and Benjamin Disraeli served as leader-writers for the Morning Post, which also published poems by William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling. Although editors are not so strongly associated with newspapers in the US as in the UK, the names of Ambrose Bierce, A. J. Liebling, H. L. MENCKEN, Lincoln Steffens, and Tom Wolfe are especially notable in American journalism.

Newspapers will do whatever is necessary to catch and hold readers at the level at which they operate. ‘Serious’ or ‘quality’ newspapers cater to a minority with a higher level of education and interest. This minority is willing to read lengthy articles and expects a quasi-literary quality in what it reads. ‘Popular’ newspapers are aimed at the un-literary majority in any area. Many of their readers have no special interest in language and little time or inclination for detail. They also often have a great interest in social events and sport, and in the human side of the entertainment business. There is therefore a greater emphasis on ‘gossip’ and ‘inside stories’ than in the ‘heavies’ (the serious papers), although these also carry more muted versions of the same thing, often in the form of reviews. Adapting to their markets, newspapers differ in physical terms (with preferred formats such as broadsheet or tabloid; preferred headline styles; longer or shorter stories and features) and in the linguistic style that appeals to their target readerships.

The tradition of trenchant freelance political journalism founded by Defoe and continued by John Wilkes in the 18c was maintained in the 19c by William Cobbett and Charles DICKENS. In the 20c, the emphasis has moved from the editors who run newspapers to the entrepreneurs who own them, while new kinds of journalism have developed, contrasting print journalists with radio journalists and television journalists. See HEADLINE, JOURNALESE.