Communities of journalism : a history of American newspapers and their readers / David Paul Nord.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nord, David Paul.

Series:

History of communication

The history of communication

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Journalism--United States--History.

Journalism.

United States.

History.

American newspapers--History.

American newspapers.

Physical Description:

xi, 293 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2001]

Summary:

Newspapers do more than provide information. They enter into the process of forming communities, from voluntary associations to cities to nation-states. Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of journalism in the United States, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.

Newspapers helped to shape the idea of the American nation in the decades after the Revolution. They helped to organize support for the abolition of slavery and for municipal reform movements, from street railway regulation to trash collection. Amid industrial upheaval, they helped to articulate a vision of public community and to build a new, collective life in the city.

Nord perceives the daily press as an arena in which a broad cross-section of the populace -- ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, and economically stratified -- could participate in a common culture. During times of crisis, such as the yellow fever epidemic that gripped Philadelphia in 1793, newspapers sustained the bonds of community life. Amassing concrete historical evidence, such as readers' private letters and diaries from the late eighteenth century and letters to the editor in an early twentieth-century Chicago newspaper, Nord also examines how ordinary readers make sense of what they read and how they use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life.

Illuminating how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, Communities of Journalism is a deeply satisfying contribution to the cultural history of American journalism and to the history of reading.

Contents:

Introduction: Communication and Community 1

Part 1 Communities of Production

1. Teleology and News: The Religious Roots of American Journalism, 1630-1730 31

2. The Authority of Truth: Religion and the John Peter Zenger Case 65

3. Newspapers and American Nationhood, 1776-1826 80

4. Tocqueville, Garrison, and the Perfection of Journalism 92

5. The Public Community: The Urbanization of Journalism in Chicago 108

6. The Business Values of American Newspapers: The Nineteenth-Century Watershed 133

7. The Paradox of Municipal Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century 152

Part 2 Communities of Reception

8. A Republican Literature: A Study of Magazine Readers and Reading in Late Eighteenth-Century New York 175

9. Readership as Citizenship in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia 199

10. Working-Class Readers: Family, Community, and Reading in Late Nineteenth-Century America 225

11. Reading the Newspaper: Strategies and Politics of Reader Response, Chicago, 1912-17 246

12. Readers Love to Argue about the News

But Not in Newspapers 278

Afterword: Newspapers, Readers, and Communities Today 285.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0252026713

OCLC:

45757699