AMERICAN JOURNALISM – A HISTORY 1690-1960

Description

Professor Mott has written a distinguished history of the American newspaper.  In 750 pages this book covers 250 years of American news-hawking.  Beginning with the first news-sheets in New England, the Middle States, and the South,  it proceeds  to the Revolutionary  press,  to what  the author  designates  as the “Early  Period  1783-1801,”  to the “Party  Press  of  the  Middle Period  1801-1833,” to the political  newspapers  of the Later  Period  1833-1860.  This constitutes the first half of the book.  With the Civil War and Reconstruction the second  period  of American  journalism  begins,  marked  by the rise of  the independent  press,  1872-1892,  by the rise and fall of yellow  journalism,1892-1914,  and finally by the growth  of  the great  modern  newspapers, 1914-1940.  The scope is large and the  material  well  integrated,  and  the  whole makes  a sound,  solid  history  of  American  journalism.  The  chief characteristics  of this  book  are its grasp of detail,  its attention to mechanical  and technical  aspects  of  the profession,  and its emphasis  upon the impact  that  dominant  personalities  made  upon  the history  of  journalism—men like  Horace  Greeley,  Henry  J.  Raymond, Charles A.  Dana, James  Gordon Bennett,  Joseph  Pulitzer,  William   Randolph   Hearst,  and  Edward Wylles Scripps.