Are you wondering how the newspaper developed? The very first newspaper was in the early 1800’s, it was 6 cents and back then the working class and the artisans couldn’t afford this price. It was only for the elite. The first print that the common person could afford was sold for a penny.  This is in September of 1833 and the title of it was called The Sun.  It is hard to believe you could get something for just a penny!  The Sun was primarily about people’s interest and police reports. The very first newspaper would only print 125 papers an hour and the penny press would 18,000 papers an hour.  Another successful penny paper was James Gordon Bennett’s New York Morning Herald. Bennett had a more aggressive ways to get news, he sent reports to actual crime scenes.  

By the late 1800’s Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were major competitors in the paper industry. Joseph Pulitzer started a new “style” that used sensationalism which is stories-based crime, violence, emotion, and sex.  In 1896, William Randolph Hearst established New York World. Hearst published Yellow Kid; it was to attract the immigrants even though they mostly likely did not purchase a paper that was based on the English language. Most of the published works were comic based. In other words, called as yellow journalism

At the end of the 19^th century, New York Times started to battle with Pulitzer and Hearst. They raised prices to pay for bills which led to a decrease in readership and New York Times went bankrupt. In the 1930’s was the development of broadcasting. Radios were common in most of U.S. households, the problem for newspapers was people had to pay for news and radios are giving free news.

The journalism struggled between consensus and conflict journalism. Consensus Journalism is usually in small communities, it provides calendars, meetings, articles and local schools, events, government, property, and crimes. Conflict Journalists provide news as social conflict, and issues that violate social norms. Watchdog journalism developed the public with information about business owners and government.

In the 1970’s there was a decrease in the newspaper industry and started to get more competition.  There was an act that congress established called the Newspaper Preservation Act which is to give formation of a joint operating agreements.  In other words, two newspapers could share expenses of advertising, and distribution of the company.  With the being said, this act started to fail when the industry started to decline rapidly. The two newspapers companies could not function successfully in one community.

The newspapers made it through the invention of the radio, and the television. The newspaper industry had to evolve somehow which was online newspapers.  In 2010, there were over 10,000 newspapers there transferred to online for the public. Modern journalism referenced to the inverted pyramid style. The top of the pyramid is about the most important information that leads to the story, then the subsequent paragraphs that give additional facts, and lastly, the least important information that closes the story.  This style helps author to write more effectively.

For me, I never had a chance to read a newspaper. I live in the country, so no one delivered them to our house.  When I think of newspapers, I think it is for older people to read. In today’s world, we have our car radios. The news on the TV, we can stream on our phones, we have googled if people want a certain question. There is so much technology surrounding us there is not a point of newspapers for the younger generations.