Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The newspaper is the oldest and arguably the most important of all media for journalism. More journalists work in newspapers than in any other media. Moreover, dominant ideas of news – as a factual, independent account of the day's principal events, set out in an ordered way for a geographically defined audience – emerged historically along with the business of the →  Newspaper (→  Newspaper, History of ). Newspapers thus provide much of the form or architecture through which journalists and their audiences recognize news ( Barnhurst & Nerone 2001 ), such as the division of journalism into the categories →  news , features , and sports , as well as journalistic ideals, including independence from power and speaking to and for a public. Changes in newspaper journalism are therefore the focus of particular scholarly concern, and some commentators suggest that recent changes signal the end of journalism ( Hardt 1998 ). In countries shaped by liberalism, the ownership of newspapers tends to be in private hands, and journalism experiences the characteristic tension between a dependence upon the marketplace and a jealously guarded freedom from political control which allows newspapers to claim status as the defenders of the public interest (→  Commercialization: Impact on Media Content ; Journalism: Normative Theories ; Political Economy of the Media ). Critics argue that the ... log in or subscribe to read full text