History of Print Media
Have you every wondered what the media was like prior to being exposed to it everyday on through our cellphones and TV's? As we take a look back into history we find a trend or a cycle of events that typically happen when a new means of media comes to the market, We refer to this trajectory as the EPS Cycle. For this blog I will be describing the events through history that changed the way media shaped society prior to internet. I will discuss discuss early development of media in newspapers. I would like to centralize this industry of media because it was the stepping stones of what the media is today, as well the first means of which we can look back and clearly apply this cycle. The EPS Cycle states when new form of media comes to the market is goes through a three phase trend of audience and content shift. EPS stands for elite, popular, and specialized. When new media comes into society it is typically adopted first by the elite or the people with higher socio-economic status that have the most access to engage. As new technology becomes available to the general public (the masses). Content is usually broadened to include as many people as possible. Then lastly comes the specialized phase, as technology evolves more the media attempts to capture specific audiences through different offerings.
To begin our look back in history we start with the oldest form of media, newspapers. As we look back into history we can divide 4 major era’s of the development of newspapers. The first era is referred to as the partisan press, which lasted from 1690 through 1830’s. In this era publishers and viewers were only of elite class. the content reflected the values, goals and opinions of the top class. By 1833 the penny press era was in full effect. with the new technology of printing newspapers and distribution methods, audience readership was at an all time high. one of the key differences besides the new advancements of technology was the newspapers began to rely on advertising revenue to produce and distribute their papers. The mass use of advertising began to drop prices for newspapers which in turn lead to the rise of literacy rate. This era lasted up until the 1860’s and can be seen as the shift from elite readership to the popular phase. By the 1870’s the news paper industry became much more competitive and to continue to be profitable newspapers began to try to steal readership. They did this by publishing sensational news as well as occasional untrue news. W.R Hearst, a publisher for one of the nations largest newspaper chain, described this era to “Prefer novelty that is not fact to a fact that is not novelty.” This shows us the perspective from a newspaper businessman of that time period, which displayed the true colors of what was wrong with the industry. This era of yellow journalism substantially increased the average newspaper per house hold and lasted up until around 1915. The last era of newspapers, which we are still living in, is referred to as the objective journalism. The publishers and readers began to realize that this type of journalism is not what the public needs and in reaction began to become more regulated and professional. the public was beginning to trust news less and in order to be seen as more creditable things needed to change. which brings us to the final stage of the EPS cycle of specialization. Newspapers began to heavily rely on the truth and two sides to every issue to regain trust in readers. In these artifacts from newspapers in two different eras we can see the shift from sensational news to trustworthy news.
In the picture on top we take a look into the journalism from the 1950’s, known as objective journalism and we compare it to the bottom newspaper which was from the late 1800’s. The Spanish American war is known to be called the media war because of the efforts of from newspaper publishers building up the war. President McKinley at the time was trying to keep the public calm as tensions rose but the news from yellow journalism was spreading like wildfire and creating a panic in the public. Comparing this to the newspaper in which the death of Einstein is featured we can see dramatic differences in writing styles and lack of push for sensationalism.
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