Shameless commerce division: Here’s a review I just came across.
[FYI, I use a “Google alert” to tell me about new mentions on the Web of the phrase “Covering America.” Turns out, they miss a lot of stuff. If you are using a google alert for something important, don’t assume that it’s catching everything. Do an active search once in a while.]
Here goes:
Information & Culture: A Journal of History
Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism
By Christopher B. Daly.
[Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012. 546 pp. $49.95.]
From the earliest days of European colonization of North America, the settlers were by
and large literate and able to afford reading materials. That was the backdrop for the
birth of the press in what eventually became the United States. Historian and one-time
reporter, Christopher B. Daly provides a narrative history of journalism, of its major
figures, institutions, and industry from 1704 to the early 2000s. He devotes much of his
narrative to the lives of individual publishers, such as printer Benjamin Franklin,
publisher James Gordon Bennett, and editor William Randolph Hearst, describing the
organizations they built, the publications they produced, and the effects they had on the
profession of journalism. The book is organized in two parts, the first covering events
from 1704 to the 1920s, the second where he focuses on the media from the 1920s to
the present. The first was all about print publications, from broadsides to newspapers
and magazines, while the second in addition included radio, television, and most
recently, the Internet.
While narrating the evolution of the press into the profession of journalism, he pays
considerable attention to their business organizations: how they made money and who
bought their products, because the vast majority of the work done by this sector of the
American economy was conducted by private enterprises. As with other industries,
media evolved in response to changes in the American economy, political attitudes,
desires of their customers (readers), and events in the life of the nation. Technologies
came that also altered the events of this industry, from the introduction of the telegraph
in the nineteenth century to the arrival of the Internet in the twentieth.
Daly argues that the history of journalism went through five cycles. The first (1704-
1832) involved a highly politicized and partisan press, while the second (1832-1900)
saw the commercialization of a national news industry with large newspapers, a national
readership, and the development of specialized workforces, such as full-time reporters.
The third era (1900-1974) witnessed the professionalization of news gathering and
reporting, both of which occurred during a time when electronic media came into its
own. The fourth period (1965-1995) Daly characterizes as the time when media
businesses conglomerated, with newspapers and radio and television becoming parts of
much larger enterprises, often run by executives with little or no background in
journalism. The fifth era (since 1995) introduces the period of the PC and the Internet.
Most readers familiar with the history of American newspapers, magazines, and
journalism will find no surprises in this synthetic well-written history up through World
War II. The chapters covering the next six decades, however, are some of the best in this
book, providing a history of journalism through the Cold War, the Vietnam period, and
recent national developments, most notably the arrival of the Internet. It is these later
chapters that provides much new material, and offers a synthesis of developments on
the part of the media, but that also contributes an analysis on the expanding role of
citizens in using their content. Consistent across all periods is his attention to
technological innovations, the economics of the media industry, the culture of the
profession, the political environment in which they operated, and finally on the work
values of the profession. He includes discussions about the African-American press and
the role of women in each period, beginning after the Age of Jackson and extending to
the present. In the process, he demonstrates that these communities initially had an
alternative, yet parallel, development alongside mainstream journalism that during the
twentieth century increasingly became more intertwined with the activities and
institutions of American journalism. This was particularly the case with African American
journalism. However, he barely discusses Hispanic journalism of the late twentieth
century, possibly because it may not yet have developed sufficiently to warrant attention
in such a broad treatment of American journalism.
This is a useful, very up-to-date one volume narrative summary of the story. It is not a
book based on archival research; rather, Daly relies extensively on secondary literature,
which he documents in notes and in a bibliography. For students of the history of
information, this is a welcome addition to the literature on who supplied many types of
publications to the American public and how they functioned. It is a practical volume for
both students of American history and for participants in American media, such as
journalists, editors and publishers. In the vernacular of today’s media, it is also “a good
read.”
James W. Cortada, IBM Institute for Business Value
Information & Culture
info@infoculturejournal.org
Published by University of Texas Press
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