All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to W. Joseph Campbell, an associate professor of journalism at American University and the author of four books, the most recent of which is The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms. Campbell was a newspaper and wire service reporter in an award-winning, 20-year career that took him across North America to Europe, Asia, and West Africa. He reported for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Hartford Courant, and the Associated Press. Below, Campbell compares the state of journalism today with it’s condition in 1897. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices.

American journalism was in turmoil. Reporters were losing jobs by the score, victims of cost-cutting moves at big-city news organizations. Critics condemned the temptations of “yellow journalism” and the “lamentable lack of fairness” in political coverage. One commentator even accused big-city newspapers of being “so devoid of principle that they constitute a perpetual menace to every genuine interest of our civilization.”

It all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? But those characterizations date not to last week, last month, or even last year. They date more than 100 years, to 1897—a year that in many ways marked the dawning of contemporary American journalism. The upheaval that swept American journalism during that long-ago year can offer a measure of reassuring context for journalists considering the profound changes now sweeping their field.

So what was it that made 1897 such a decisive time? There are many reasons.

Read full post…