The early commercial and partisan presses were, to some extent, covering important events impartially. These papers often carried verbatim reports of presidential addresses and murder trials, or the annual statements of the U.S. Treasury. In the late nineteenth century, as newspapers pushed for greater circulation, newspaper reporting changed. Two distinct types of journalism emerged: the story-driven model, dramatizing important events and used by the penny papers and the yellow press; and the “just the facts” model, an approach that appeared to package information more impartially and that the six-cent papers favored.10 Implicit in these efforts was a question that is still debated today: Is there, in journalism, an ideal, attainable, objective model, or does the quest for objectivity actually conflict with journalists’ traditional role of raising important issues about potential abuses of power in a democratic society?

“Objectivity” in Modern Journalism

As the consumer marketplace expanded during the Industrial Revolution, facts and news became marketable products. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, the more a newspaper appeared not to take sides on its front pages, the more its readership base grew (although, as they are today, editorial pages were still often partisan). In addition, wire service organizations were serving a variety of newspaper clients in different regions of the country. To satisfy all clients, readers, and the wide range of political views, newspapers tried to appear more impartial.

Ochs and the New York Times

The ideal of an impartial, or purely informational, news model was championed by Adolph Ochs, who bought the New York Times in 1896. The son of immigrant German Jews, Ochs grew up in Ohio and Tennessee, where at age twenty-one he took over the Chattanooga Times in 1878. Known more for his business and organizational ability than for his writing and editing skills, he transformed the Tennessee paper. Seeking a national stage and business expansion, Ochs moved to New York and invested $75,000 in the struggling Times. Through strategic hiring, Ochs and his editors rebuilt the paper around substantial news coverage and provocative editorial pages. To distance his New York paper from the yellow press, the editors also downplayed sensational stories, favoring the documentation of major events or issues.

Partly as a marketing strategy, Ochs offered a distinct contrast to the more sensational Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers: an informational paper that provided stock and real estate reports to businesses, court reports to legal professionals, treaty summaries to political leaders, and theater and book reviews to educated general readers and intellectuals. Ochs’s promotional gimmicks took direct aim at yellow journalism, advertising the Times under the motto “It does not soil the breakfast cloth.” Ochs’s strategy is similar to today’s advertising tactic of targeting upscale viewers and readers who control a disproportionate share of consumer dollars.

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With the Hearst and Pulitzer papers capturing the bulk of working- and middle-class readers, managers at the Times first tried to use their straightforward, “no frills” reporting to appeal to more affluent and educated readers. In 1898, however, Ochs lowered the paper’s price to a penny. He believed that people bought the World and the Journal primarily because they were cheap, not because of their stories. The Times began attracting middle-class readers who gravitated to the now-affordable paper as a status marker for the educated and well informed. Between 1898 and 1899, its circulation rose from 25,000 to 75,000. By 1921, the Times had a daily circulation of 330,000, and 500,000 on Sunday. (For contemporary print and digital circulation figures, see Table 8.1 on page 280.)

“Just the Facts, Please”

Early in the twentieth century, with reporters adopting a more “scientific” attitude to news- and fact-gathering, the ideal of objectivity began to anchor journalism. In objective journalism, which distinguishes factual reports from opinion columns, modern reporters strive to maintain a neutral attitude toward the issue or event they cover; they also search out competing points of view among the sources for a story.

The story form for packaging and presenting this kind of reporting has been traditionally labeled the inverted-pyramid style. Civil War correspondents developed this style by imitating the terse, compact press releases (summarizing or imitating telegrams to generals) that came from President Abraham Lincoln and his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton.11 Often stripped of adverbs and adjectives, inverted-pyramid reports began—as they do today—with the most dramatic or newsworthy information. They answered who, what, where, when (and, less frequently, why or how) questions at the top of the story and then narrowed down the story to presumably less significant details. If wars or natural disasters disrupted the telegraph transmission of these dispatches, the information the reporter led with had the best chance of getting through.

For much of the twentieth century, the inverted-pyramid style served as an efficient way to arrange a timely story. As one news critic pointed out, the wire services distributing stories to newspapers nationwide “had to deal with large numbers of newspapers with widely different political and regional interests. The news had to be ‘objective’ . . . to be accepted by such a heterogeneous group.”12 Among other things, the importance of objectivity and the reliance on the inverted pyramid signaled journalism’s break from the partisan tradition. Although impossible to achieve (journalism is, after all, a literary practice, not a science), objectivity nonetheless became the guiding ideal of the modern press.

Despite the success of the New York Times and other modern papers, the more factual inverted-pyramid approach toward news has come under increasing scrutiny. As news critic and writing coach Roy Peter Clark has noted, “Some reporters let the pyramid control the content so that the news comes out homogenized. Traffic fatalities, three-alarm fires, and new city ordinances all begin to look alike. In extreme cases, reporters have been known to keep files of story forms. Fill in the blanks. Stick it in the paper.”13 Although the inverted-pyramid style has for years solved deadline problems for reporters and enabled editors to cut a story from the bottom to fit available space, it has also discouraged many readers from continuing beyond the key details in the opening paragraphs. Studies have demonstrated that the majority of readers do not follow a front-page story when it continues, or “jumps,” inside the paper.

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Interpretive Journalism

By the 1920s, there was a sense, especially after the trauma of World War I, that the impartial approach to reporting was insufficient for explaining complex national and global conditions. It was partly as a result of “drab, factual, objective reporting,” one news scholar contended, that “the American people were utterly amazed when war broke out in August 1914, as they had no understanding of the foreign scene to prepare them for it.”14

The Promise of Interpretive Journalism

Under the sway of objectivity, modern journalism had downplayed an early role of the partisan press: offering analysis and opinion. But with the world becoming more complex, some papers began to reexplore the analytical function of news. The result was the rise of interpretive journalism, which aims to explain key issues or events and place them in a broader historical or social context. According to one historian, this approach, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, was a viable way for journalism to address “the New Deal years, the rise of modern scientific technology, the increasing interdependence of economic groups at home, and the shrinking of the world into one vast arena for power politics.”15 In other words, journalism took an analytic turn in a world grown more interconnected and complicated.

Noting that objectivity and factuality should serve as the foundation for journalism, by the 1920s editor and columnist Walter Lippmann insisted that the press should do more. He ranked three press responsibilities: (1) “to make a current record”; (2) “to make a running analysis of it”; and (3) “on the basis of both, to suggest plans.”16 Indeed, reporters and readers alike have historically distinguished between informational reports and editorial (interpretive) pieces, which offer particular viewpoints or deeper analyses of the issues. Since the boundary between information and interpretation can be somewhat ambiguous, American papers have traditionally placed news analysis in separate, labeled columns and placed opinion articles on certain pages so that readers do not confuse them with “straight news.” It was during this time that political columns developed to evaluate and provide context for news. Moving beyond the informational and storytelling functions of news, journalists and newspapers began to extend their role as analysts.

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Broadcast News Embraces Interpretive Journalism

In a surprising twist, the rise of broadcast radio in the 1930s also forced newspapers to become more analytical in their approach to news. At the time, the newspaper industry was upset that broadcasters took their news directly from papers and wire services. As a result, a battle developed between radio journalism and print news. Although mainstream newspapers tried to copyright the facts they reported and sued radio stations for routinely using newspapers as their main news sources, the papers lost many of these court battles. Editors and newspaper lobbyists argued that radio should be permitted to do only commentary. By conceding this interpretive role to radio, the print press tried to protect its dominion over “the facts.” It was in this environment that radio analysis began to flourish as a form of interpretive news. Lowell Thomas delivered the first daily network analysis for CBS on September 29, 1930, attacking Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. By 1941, twenty regular commentators—the forerunners of today’s radio talk-show hosts, “talking heads” on cable, and political bloggers—were explaining their version of the world to millions of listeners.

Some print journalists and editors came to believe, however, that interpretive stories, rather than objective reports, could better compete with radio. They realized that interpretation was a way to counter radio’s (and later television’s) superior ability to report breaking news quickly—even live. In 1933, the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) supported the idea of interpretive journalism. Most newspapers, however, still did not embrace probing analysis during the 1930s. So in most U.S. dailies, interpretation remained relegated to a few editorial and opinion pages. It wasn’t until the 1950s—with the Korean War, the development of atomic power, tensions with the Soviet Union, and the anticommunist movement—that news analysis resurfaced on the newest medium: television. Interpretive journalism in newspapers grew at the same time, especially in such areas as the environment, science, agriculture, sports, health, politics, and business. Following the lead of the New York Times, many papers by the 1980s had developed an “op-ed” page—an opinion page opposite the traditional editorial page, which allowed a greater variety of columnists, news analyses, and letters to the editor.

Literary Forms of Journalism

By the late 1960s, many people were criticizing America’s major social institutions. Political assassinations, Civil Rights protests, the Vietnam War, the drug culture, and the women’s movement were not easily explained. Faced with so much change and turmoil, many individuals began to lose faith in the ability of institutions to oversee and ensure the social order. Members of protest movements as well as many middle- and working-class Americans began to suspect the privileges and power of traditional authority. As a result, key institutions—including journalism—lost some of their credibility.

Journalism as an Art Form

Throughout the first part of the twentieth century—journalism’s modern era—journalistic storytelling was downplayed in favor of the inverted-pyramid style and the separation of fact from opinion. Dissatisfied with these limitations, some reporters began exploring a new model of reporting. Literary journalism, sometimes dubbed “new journalism,” adapted fictional techniques, such as descriptive details and settings and extensive character dialogue, to nonfiction material and in-depth reporting. In the United States, literary journalism’s roots are evident in the work of nineteenth-century novelists like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser, all of whom started out as reporters. In the late 1930s and 1940s, literary journalism surfaced: Journalists, such as James Agee and John Hersey, began to demonstrate how writing about real events could achieve an artistry often associated only with fiction.

In the 1960s, Tom Wolfe, a leading practitioner of new journalism, argued for mixing the content of reporting with the form of fiction to create “both the kind of objective reality of journalism” and “the subjective reality” of the novel.17 Writers such as Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Joan Didion (The White Album), Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night), and Hunter S. Thompson (Hell’s Angels) turned to new journalism to overcome flaws they perceived in routine reporting. Their often self-conscious treatment of social problems gave their writing a perspective that conventional journalism did not offer. After the 1960s’ tide of intense social upheaval ebbed, new journalism subsided as well. However, literary journalism not only influenced magazines like Mother Jones and Rolling Stone but also affected daily newspapers by emphasizing longer feature stories on cultural trends and social issues, with detailed description or dialogue. Today, writers such as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Random Family), Dexter Filkins (The Forever War), and Åsne Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul) keep this tradition alive.

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The Attack on Journalistic Objectivity

Former New York Times columnist Tom Wicker argued that in the early 1960s an objective approach to news remained the dominant model. According to Wicker, the “press had so wrapped itself in the paper chains of ‘objective journalism’ that it had little ability to report anything beyond the bare and undeniable facts.”18 Through the 1960s, attacks on the detachment of reporters escalated. News critic Jack Newfield rejected the possibility of genuine journalistic impartiality and argued that many reporters had become too trusting and uncritical of the powerful: “Objectivity is believing people with power and printing their press releases.”19 Eventually, the ideal of objectivity became suspect along with the authority of experts and professionals in various fields.

A number of reporters responded to the criticism by rethinking the framework of conventional journalism and adopting a variety of alternative techniques. One of these was advocacy journalism, in which the reporter actively promotes a particular cause or viewpoint. Precision journalism, another technique, attempts to make the news more scientifically accurate by using poll surveys and questionnaires. Throughout the 1990s, precision journalism became increasingly important. However, critics have charged that in every modern presidential campaign—including that of 2012—too many newspapers and TV stations became overly reliant on political polls, thus reducing campaign coverage to “racehorse” journalism, telling only “who’s ahead” and “who’s behind” stories rather than promoting substantial debates on serious issues. (See Table 8.2 for top works of American journalism.)

Contemporary Journalism in the TV and Internet Age

In the early 1980s, a postmodern brand of journalism arose from two important developments. In 1980, the Columbus Dispatch became the first paper to go online; today, nearly all U.S. papers offer some Web services. Then the colorful USA Today, started by Gannett, arrived in 1982, radically changing the look of most major U.S. dailies.

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USA Today Colors the Print Landscape

USA Today made its mark by incorporating features closely associated with postmodern forms, including an emphasis on visual style over substantive news or analysis and the use of brief news items that appealed to readers’ busy schedules and shortened attention spans.

Now the second most widely circulated paper in the nation, USA Today represents the only successful launch of a new major U.S. daily newspaper in the last several decades. Showing its marketing savvy, USA Today was the first paper to openly acknowledge television’s central role in mass culture: The paper used TV-inspired color and designed its first vending boxes to look like color TVs. Even the writing style of USA Today mimics TV news by casting many reports in the present tense rather than the past tense (which was the print-news norm throughout the twentieth century).

Writing for Rolling Stone in March 1992, media critic Jon Katz argued that the authority of modern newspapers suffered in the wake of a variety of “new news” forms that combined immediacy, information, entertainment, persuasion, and analysis. Katz claimed that the news supremacy of most prominent daily papers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, was being challenged by “news” coming from talk shows, television sitcoms, popular films, and even rap music. In other words, society was changing from one in which the transmission of knowledge depended mainly on books, newspapers, and magazines to one dominated by a mix of print, visual, and digital information.

Online Journalism Redefines News

What started out in the 1980s as simple, text-only experiments for newspapers developed into more robust Web sites in the 1990s, allowing newspapers to develop an online presence. Today, online journalism is completely changing the industry. First, rather than subscribing to a traditional paper, many readers now begin their day on their iPads, smartphones, or computers scanning a wide variety of news Web sites, including those of print papers, cable news channels, newsmagazines, bloggers, and online-only news organizations. Such sources are increasingly taking over the roles of more traditional forms of news, helping set the nation’s cultural, social, and political agendas. One of the biggest changes is that online news has sped up the news cycle to a constant stream of information and has challenged traditional news services to keep up. For instance, Matt Drudge, the conservative Internet gossip and news source behind the Drudge Report, hijacked the national agenda in January 1998 and launched a scandal when he posted a report that Newsweek had delayed the story about President Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

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Another change is the way nontraditional sources and even newer digital technology help drive news stories. For example, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, began in September 2011 when a group of protesters gathered in Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district to express discontentment with overpaid CEOs, big banks, and Wall Street, all of which helped cause the 2008–09 financial collapse but still enjoyed a government bailout.

Mainstream media was slow to cover OWS, with early coverage simply pitting angry protesters against dismissive Wall Street executives and politicians, many of whom questioned the movement’s longevity as well as its vague agenda. But as retirees, teachers, labor unions, off-duty police officers, firefighters, and other government workers joined the college students, the jobless, and the homeless in OWS protests across the country, the coverage and narratives in the media became more complicated and nuanced. As in the Arab uprisings, sites like Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter became key organizational tools. But more than that, they became alternative media sources, documenting incidents of police brutality and arrests, and covering the issues protesters championed. In both the Arab Spring and the OWS stories, the Internet and social media gave ordinary people more agency than ever before. Still, it’s important to remember that while successful movements need good communication and media coverage, they also require enough people willing to challenge power, just as they did in the days of the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement.

In the digital age, newsrooms are integrating their digital and print operations and asking their journalists to tweet breaking news that links back to newspapers’ Web sites. However, editors are still facing a challenge to get reporters and editors to fully embrace what news executives regard as a reporter’s online responsibilities. In 2011, for example, then executive editor of the New York Times Jill Abramson noted that although the Times had fully integrated its online and print operations, some editors still tried to hold back on publishing a timely story online, hoping that it would make the front page of the print paper instead. “That’s a culture I’d like to break down, without diminishing the [reporters’] thrill of having their story on the front page of the paper,” said Abramson.20 (For more about how online news ventures are changing the newspaper industry, see pages 298–301.)