History of journalism
Journalism has served each of the latest technologies in the course of its more than 2000 years of history. Milestones were the invention of printing in the Renaissance, the development of information transmission in the 19th century by the telegraph and the inventions of radio ( 1920 ) and television ( 1950 ). Early 90s came the online journalism on the Internet to do so.
The beginnings
The origins of journalism can be found in the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC v. from the appearing daily newsletter Acta Diurna was issued. The editors of this first graphic medium were called diurnarii. At the same time appeared with the Rerum Novarum Commentarius the first weekly newspaper, who already have a similar range of topics such as today's newspapers - a mix of official information, news and entertainment - and had created about 300 professional writers.
In the Middle Ages it was common, even before the invention of printing, economic information to the trading centers ( in particular ports ) on leaflets. They were called in Italy and in German-speaking countries avvisi newspaper.
The printing press accelerated the production of such information sheets, the breakthrough of journalism had yet to wait another century on what was primarily due to the then still slow transmission of information on the land and sea. This problem could be solved only in the 19th century satisfactory.
The beginning of modern journalism
The Strasbourg newspaper publisher Johann Carolus was inspired by correspondents from towns along major Postrouten - such as Cologne, Vienna, Prague, Venice and Rome - Send to a week the latest news (then called " advices "). At first, he copied the news with his own hand and sent them to wealthy buyers who had subscribed to this service. Among the subscribers by Johann Carolus were especially rich merchants, who exported their goods abroad and wanted to know what happened in Europe. 1604 Carolus acquired by a Strasbourg printer three presses and put them on in his apartment. In that print he put probably 1605 the first printed edition of his bulletins.
1631 was the Frenchman Théophraste Renaudot out the first newspaper in the modern sense, La Gazette and filed a patent on this type of information dissemination on. Renaudot is considered a visionary of modern journalism and as the inventor of most journalistic forms such comment or report that are still used today in the print media. From the beginning of the 18th century, the first newspapers were issued in the United States that still addressed to the educated elite.
The late 18th, early 19th century were in printing technology crucial breakthroughs that made print media significantly cheaper. At the same time, the job of a journalist concretized.
At this time, the coverage in most media was still very opinion- colored. 1835 was founded with the New York Herald, the first newspaper to try to provide objective and realistic date information. Although this informative journalism soon found imitators, the dominant aspect of it was not until after 1900. Likewise in the year 1835 with the first Havas news agency founded.
Beginning of the mass media
Middle of the 19th century saw the first mass media in the United States. A major influence on this development had the advances in education that enabled the learning of reading and writing and the upper middle class and made them thus to customers for the newspapers. But the advances in technology - automation of printing and the optimization of information transmission by telegraph and telephone - contributed to the success of the press, because they made the production of a medium always cheaper.
Fall key economic progress such as systematic placing of advertising in the newspapers in the same time.
In the second half of the century journalism had finally established itself as a means of power in the social opinion. It was therefore the object of attempts interests of all kinds - to spread - especially political and economic nature. These experiments continue today and are one of the main criticisms that are directed to the journalism.
Advent of broadcasting
End of the 19th century, the technology of moving images has been developed. It was used after the invention of sound films in the 20s for informational purposes, especially for weekly news overviews ( newsreels ).
However, a greater impact initially, the advent of radio in the 20s. This new medium changed the way to write fast because the radio was able to report in real time on current events and also through music had access to the emotions of the listener. It created new subcategories of the profession of journalism, as the commentator and presenter, as well as new forms of representation.
In order to survive against the radio, the journalists shifted in the print media to analyzing and commenting on the news. In the U.S., the so-called interpretative journalism in special magazines, news magazines have been called already taken shortly after the First World War. Important was no longer to transmit a message, but to put them in context and to make the reader more easily understood. Especially after the 1929 global economic crisis such background information was becoming more important as many economically interested people wanted to learn about the causes of this crisis. Around 1950 the interpretive journalism had achieved a dominant role among the manifestations in his discipline.
The television made the end of the 40s for another quantum leap, now that the information could be transmitted live together images and the users had the opportunity to attend an event virtually from afar. It had a great impact on the political journalism, as the politicians were able to show in interviews and panel discussions live, whereby the reporting and therefore their intake by the population was personal.
This new media ensured a specialization within the profession. While television and radio were the place for informative journalism, partly because long analyzes and comments are disturbing there, the print media on the niches of the interpretive and opinion journalism specialized. The way to write the lyrics, was different for each medium. For example, it comes on the radio on, especially on a short and succinct but complete language, while print media allow longer and more complete treatises, because the consumer can decide here what he reads when. If the recipient in the text " stuck ", it can also read it several times. A radio report, however, he needs to understand right away. On television, it is important that image and text complement. His character as a combined text, audio and video media gave the journalism particularly creative possibilities to get access to the attention of the viewer. Documentary films about the interpretive journalism interlocked with the art music and visual effects are used to emphasize the information and so create a suitable atmosphere.
The opinion journalism at the same time experienced a new boom with advent of tabloid journalism, who sought with sensationalist, partly fictional reporting to satisfy the interests of the masses. The best known example in the German-speaking area is the Bild newspaper.
From the 50s the form of investigative journalism was in its heyday. These were targeted to research by the media on specific, particular policy issues that had so far remained hidden from the public. The journalists were able to discover several scandals. The most famous case was the so-called Watergate affair beginning of the 70s, which led to the resignation of the then U.S. President Richard Nixon.
In the 80 - years appeared as the newest form of presentation of interpretive journalism in the print media and on television, the information graphic that could make text and image combined and thus complicated issues understandable. This was accompanied by an increasing importance of images in the print media, were able to make their appearance more attractive. Thus, from 1990, the integration of color images and a variety of design elements in major newspapers as standard.
Journalism today
Today is the journalism in a further upheaval. The advent of online journalism in the 1990s caused a revolution within the discipline. This new form of expression could combine the advantages of print media with those of the radio and television. On the one hand it can be reported on current events in real time, on the other hand can be published and archived because of the virtually unlimited storage space large amounts of text. More and more multimedia information is incorporated, such as videos or sound files. From the online journalism also dates the invention of user-generated content.
With the advent of user - generated content, there was a renaissance of opinion journalism, as every internet user could take per site or blog on any topic without additional cost position. In many online magazines you will find a mix of opinion journalism and interpretive journalism, as it is tempting in such publications to present their own view of things. This development is being watched by advocates of journalism as a bastion of objective reporting with concern. A Polemisierung in journalism is feared (see also gonzo journalism ) while researching and presenting different points of view threatens adjacent to fade into the background.
The variety of offerings has the disadvantage that the information altogether confusing and attention is often drawn to banalities. The advent of online journalism leads to an increasing " informatization " of society. At the same time the communication is increasing in society.
Siegfried Weischenberg: " The professional journalism Worse is on the decline yet. He loses in the process of the digital revolution and its identity is by Selbstkommerzialisierung on the best way to abolish itself. "