Blog Post #7 Journalism, Then and Now

The journalism of the eighteenth century seemed more of a commentary upon everyday life as opposed to the journalism of the modern times that is focused on the occurrences of everyday life. Steele and Addison set out to “…enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality, that my reader may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day.” The Washington Post slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is symbolic towards the dangers of silencing information. Modern journalism is focused on the delivery of said information before any competitor hence the inception of breaking a story. From the writings of Johnson, Addison and Steele one can infer that they strived to elucidate the reader. Nowadays, the focus is centered on skewing the reader’s perspective to whomever funds the newspaper or network. For example, Fox News caters to conservatives while CNN leans more for liberals. This doesn’t mean that what’s being reported is not true, but that the facts are selected to compose a narrative that otherwise might not be there. The ability to reach out to a larger audience naturally increases the tenacity for propagation of personal ideas and credos. Even a class assignment whose audience is more than just the professor, causes stylistic changes on the prose. For example, I find myself using a more sophisticated vocabulary in my blog posts than I would do for a regular essay, which is ironic considering that the latter innately requires a sense of polished prose while a blog post is meant to be more easygoing. Yet in writing assignments, it tends to be from our word choice that the reader can glean at the writer’s persona. There must be a sense of authority (the writer knows what he is talking about) for the reader to trust. If not, the reader’s confidence is lost. Ironically, in journalism, the less one’s persona enters the piece, the better. It is has devolved into reporting facts, unless it is an editorial and that is what one would call Johnson’s and Addison and Steele’s pieces using a modern term: editorials.

Comments

  1. Virtual BordersOctober 30, 2017 at 12:56 PM

    You make some insightful comments about the differences in 18th-century journalism and today. I definitely agree that the media today tries to skew toward a particular ideology. Writers in the 18th century were concerned with educating the reader and improving society.

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