The document discusses the development of media and its link to scientific and technological discoveries. It describes how printing became widespread after Gutenberg's invention of the printing press using movable type. This allowed books and information to be mass produced, increasing literacy and access to knowledge. It facilitated the spread of ideas during the Reformation and helped unify vernacular languages across Europe. The printing press is thus seen as a major catalyst of cultural and societal changes during this period.

1. The Media Catalyst
Printing becomes rapid with the invention of Gutenberg press,
Giant strides are made after the invention of Telegraph and
Telephone, Photography and Motion pictures contribute
phenomenally
Objective
By the end of the lesson the students will be able to appreciate
the development of media which is closely linked with discoveries
of science and technology
The invention of printing is a story of many inventions. We’ve
already mentioned the development of paper by the Chinese.
China was also responsible for the development of block
printing . Character outlines were carved out of a block of
wood, and the raised parts were inked and pressed against a
piece of paper. The oldest surviving block printed book was
published in 868. The Chinese also perfected a system of
movable type, first using clay and later blocks of wood
for individual characters.. The Koreans too were experimenting
with movable metaltype by the beginning of the15th century.
The next major invention occurred in Germany, where Johann
Gutenberg is gen-erally credited with developing a printing
press that used movable metal type. Gutenberg published his
famous Bible around 1453, and his new printing method
quickly spread across Europe. Only30years after Gutenberg’s
Bible appeared, there were printing presses in more than 110
towns in western Europe alone. The total increase in the
number of books available in-Europe is impassible to-calculate,
but it one can safely say that by 1500 there were hundreds times
more books avail-able than in 1450. As books proliferated, their
cost went down. Although still expen-sive, books were no
longer the exclusive possession of the very rich. The printed
book could now be afforded by those who were relatively
prosperous.
The consequences of the printing revolution are so far-reaching
and extensive that it is impossible to discuss all of them. Most
scholars seem to agree, however, on the most significant results.
Effects of the Gutenberg Revo1ution
First, the printing press helped the development of vernacular
(everyday) lan-guages across the European - continent; Most of
the pre-printing, hand lettered books had been written in Latin,
the language of the Catholic Church and of higher education.
Reading these works therefore required the knowledge of a
second language, which restricted the type of people who might
use them to the educated elite. Many early printers, however,
recognized that a broader mar-ket for their books would be
available if they were published in French. German -or English.
Many printers also felt closer ties to their home country than to
the church, further encouraging the printing of the books in
native languages. This trend had other consequences. Bodies of
LESSON 6
THE MEDIA CATALYSTS
information now became more accessible to more people,
further encouraging the growth of literacy, and, in turn prompting
more people to read and more books to be published.
Finally, the use of the vernacular probably helped prepare the

2. wave of nationalism that swept Europe in succeeding centuries.
The printing press played a role in the religious upheaval that
swept Europe in the 16th century. Before the press, those clerics
who disagreed with the doctrines and policies of the church.
had limited channels for expression. Handwritten copies of
their views were few, had limited circulation, and could easily be
cen-sored or confiscated by the authorities. The situation was
forever changed after Gutenberg. Theologian and religious
reformer Martin Luther’s writings were translated from Latin
into the vernacular, printed as pamphlets, and distributed all
over Europe.-It has been estimated that it took only a month
for his famous Ninety-five Theses (the ones he nailed to the
church door in Wittenberg, Ger-many) to be diffused across
Europe. One of his later pamphlets sold 4,000 copies in a
month. Despite efforts by the church to confiscate and bum his
writings, the Reformation movement continued. In addition,
the printing of the Bible in the vernacular meant that individuals
now had direct access to the core of their reli-gious belief
system. The Bible could now be read directly and interpreted
individ-ually; there was no need for clerical intervention. This
increased access to infor-mation further weakened the power of
the Catholic Church and helped the spread of Protestantism.
Moreover, the arrival of printing speeded up the publication of
scientific research. Although it would still be considered
agonizingly slow today in an era of e-mail and the Internet,
printing a book of scientific findings took far less time than it
did when manuscripts were handwritten. Printing also ensured
that iden-tical texts would be read by scientists in different
countries and helped them build on the work of others. Galileo
and Newton came along in the 17th century, after advances in
the 16th-century printing.
The printing press even helped exploration. The efforts of the
Vikings are little known, due in part to the fact that they
explored during a time when it was diffi-cult to record and
publicize their exploits. Columbus visited America after printing
developed, and his deeds were widely known in Europe a
year after his return. Printed accounts of the discoveries of early
explorers found a ready audience among those eager to find
wealth or bring religion to the New World. Many early developers
published glowing (and sometimes overly opti-mistic)
accounts of life in the new lands, hoping to promote investments
and help business. The journeys of the early voyagers
were helped by printed books that contained navigational and
geographic information about the Americas.
Further, the printing press had a profound effect on the growth
of scholarship and knowledge. Whereas access to handwritten
textbooks was difficult, university students now had printed
40
DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
texts. (Think how hard it would be to take this course if
everybody in the class had to use just one textbook.) As the
number of books increased, so did the number of students
who studied at a university. Literacy increased further. Interest in
the classical works of Greece and Rome was revived as they
appeared in-printed books that were read by many. Books based
on the scholarship of other countries appeared. The advances in

3. mathematics made by the Indians, Muslims, and Arabs were
disseminated. Without the printing press, the Renaissance of
the 16th century might not have occurred.
Finally, the printing press led to the development of what we
would today call news. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, early
newspapers sprang up in Europe at the beginning of the 17th
century. These early publications were primarily con-cerned with
foreign-news. It wasn’t long, however, before these early papers
focused on domestic news as well. This development did not
sit well with some early monarchies, and government attempts
to suppress or censor news content were not unusual. It took
until the end of the 17th century to establish the notion of a
press free of government control (more on this topic in
Chapter Four). The early newspapers made government and
political leaders more visible to the pub-lic and helped create a
climate for political change in both Europe and America.
Technology and Cultural Change
Before leaving this topic, we should point out that it is easy to
ascribe too much significance to the printing press. The above
discussion makes it easy to assume that the printing press was
the prime mover behind all these effects. Such a view is called
technological determinism-the belief that technology drives
historical change: Amore moderate position suggests that
technology functions with vari-ous social, economic, and
cultural forces to bring about change. Printing didn’t cause the
Reformation, but it probably helped it occur. And vernacular
lan-guages were growing in importance before Gutenberg, but
his invention certainly helped them along. In any case, the birth
of printing marks the beginning of what we have defined as
mass communication, and it is certainly a momentous event in
Western history.
The next centuries brought further refinements to printing. A
metal press was developed by the late 1790s: steam power to
drive the press was added shortly thereafter. Advances in
printing techonology helped usher in the Penny press, a truly
mass newspaper.. A better grade of paper made from wood
pulp came into use in the 1880s, about the same time as
Linotype machine that that could compose and justify a whole
line of metal type. :Photo engraving ‘brought better visuals to
the paper in the 1890s, as did the development of half tone
photography a few decades later. Hot metal type gave way to
photocomposition and offset printing in the 1970s and 1980s,
and the –computer ushered in an age of relatively cheap
desktop printing a few years later. Printing has changed a great
deal over the years, but its consequences are still there with us.
The next two communication milestones occurred during what
many have called the age of invention and discovery, the period
roughly encompassing the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The
reasons behind the many achievements of this period are
several. The great explorations of previous centuries had
brought dif-ferent cultures together, and scholars were able to
share ideas and concepts. Fur-ther, there was a change in the way
people generated knowledge itself. The tradi-tional authority of
the Catholic Church was eroding, and intellectuals looked less to
revelation as a source of knowledge and more toward reason
and observation. Philosophers such as Bacon, Descartes, and

4. Locke argued for systematic research based on what the senses
could perceive. In addition, scientific societies in Italy, France,
and Great Britain helped advance the frontiers of knowledge.
And, as we have already mentioned, the printing press helped
distribute news of current dis-coveries to all, prompting others
to new breakthroughs. Whatever the reasons, these three
centuries saw such advances as Galileo’s use of the telescope and
the notion of a heliocentric solar system; the theory of blood
circulating through the body; Newton’s theory of gravitation;
the roots of modem chemistry; electricity; and the discovery of
microscopic bacteria. Inventions came along at a dizzying rate:
the steam engine, the locomotive, the plow, the internal
combustion engine, the automobile, the sewing machine, the
dynamo, and a host of others. Not sur-prisingly, the field of
communication also saw major developments, as the next two
milestones demonstrate.
CONQUERING SPACE AND TlME: THE
TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE
It’s appropriate that we spend some-time discussing the
telegraph and telephone, two related technologies that presaged
many of the features of today’s media world. For instance, the
telegraph harnessed electricity; it demonstrated the tech-nology
that would eventually be used in radio. It was also the first
medium to use digital communication (dots and dashes). The
telephone, with its interconnected network of wires and
switchboards, introduced the same concept now at the core of
the Internet: Everybody was linked to everybody else.
Development of the Telegraph
It’s difficult for people raised in an age of cellular phones, fax
machines, e-mail, and the Internet to appreciate the tremendous
excitement that greeted the development of the telegraph.
Before the appearance of the telegraph in the early 19th century,
messages, with some minor exceptions, information could
travel only as fast as the fastest form of transportation. A
messenger on horseback would clop along at around 15 to 20
miles an hour. A train carrying sacks of mail could travel about
30 miles in an hour. The fastest form of message transportation
was the carrier pigeon, which could cover more than 35
miles an hour. Then along came the telegraph, which sent
messages traveling over wires at then almost unbelievable
speed 186,ooo miles per second, the speed of light itself. No
wonder that when it first appeared, the telegraph was described
as the great” annihilator of time and space.” It was the first
device that made possible instantaneous point-to-point
communication at huge distances. It was also the forerunner of
what we today might call, the information superhighway.
The technology necessary for the telegraph dates back to the
discovery of elec-tricity. Many early inventors realized that
electricity could be used to send messages simply by varying the
time the current was on and off. Experiments with early
versions of the telegraph (telegraph comes from Greek words
41
DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
meaning “to write at a distance”) were performed in the
late1790s.By the 1830s and 1840s workable telegraph systems
had been developed in England and in the United States.

5. Samuel Morse was the principal force behind the creation of the
telegraph in America. His device consisted of a sending key, a
wire, and a receiver that made marks on a paper tape in concert
with changes n the eelectrical current. Later versions let the
operator read messages by listening to the clicks made by the
receiver and did away with the paper tape. To simplify message
transmission,
Later scientists developed code consisting of dots and dashes
that is still in use today.
Morse demonstrated his device till-the late-’1830s and eventually
received a grant from the government to continue his work.
He constructed a line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.,
and opened the nation’s first telegraph service with the famous
message, “What hath God wrought?”
Cultural Impact of the Telegraph
Public reaction to the new machine was a combination of awe
and amazement. The telegraph wires that swayed between poles
were called lightning lines. Thereby telegraph offices set out
chairs so that specta-tors could watch as messages came in from
distant cities. Some people refused to believe the new invention
worked until they traveled to the source of the telegraphic
message and verified it with the sender. Some were afraid that
all that electricity flowing around above them posed a danger to
their health, and they refused to walk under the wires.
Despite these fears, the telegraph grew quickly and the lightning
lines quickly crisscrossed the
entire nation. By 1850 almost every city on the expanding
Western frontier could com-municate with every other city.
Maine could talk to Texas at the speed of the light. Some were
skeptical about the benefits of the telegraph. Maine might be
able to talk to Texas, but, as Henry David Thoreau pointed out,
“what if Maine and Texas have nothing important to talk
about?”
By 1860 a cable was laid underneath the Atlantic Ocean, linking
Europe and America: Four years later, the overland wires and
undersea cable carried more than 30 mil-lion telegraphic
messages (telegrams).
While telegraph was changing communica-tion,another
invention was changing transportation-the railroad. Interestingly,
the telegraph wires generally followed the railroad tracks,
and station- masters were often the first telegraphers. The telegraph
made it possible to keep track of train locations and
coordinate the complex job of shipping goods to various parts
of the coun-try-particularly to the West. The telegraph helped
the train bring settlers to the frontier and played a role in the
country’s westward expansion.
The conduct of war was changed by the telegraph. Troops could
be mobilized quickly and moved, usually by railroad, in
response to tactical and strategic developments. The significance
of the telegraph for the military was demonstrated many times
during the Civil War.
Morse’s invention had an impact on commerce as well. It sped
up communica-tion between buyers and sellers, reported
transactions, and organized deliveries. Instant communication
brought about standard prices in the commodity markets.
Before the telegraph, the price of corn varied with local market

6. conditions and might be several dollars cheaper in Chicago than
in St. Louis. After the telegraph connected all markets, local
variations were evened out.
Further, as we will discuss in more detail, the telegraph greatly
enhanced the newspaper’s ability to transmit news. Information
from distant places had previously taken weeks to reach the
newspaper office. With the tele-graph and Atlantic cable, even
news from Europe could make the next day’s edi-tion. Newspaper
publishers were quick to realize the potential of this new
device and used it heavily. Many incorporated the word “Telegraph”
into their name. The telegraph also helped the
formation of news agencies, or wire services as they were also
called. The Associated Press made great use of the expanding
telegraph-ic service to supply news. to its customers. Finally, the
telegraph changed the style of reporting. Since the early telegraph
companies charged by the word, news sto-ries became shorter.
Rather than the wordy, reflective, and interpretive reports that
characterized news reports in the early 19th century, the telegraph
placed an emphasis on scoops, breaking news, and the bare
facts..
Government and Media
The telegraph also set the precedent for the relationship
between the government and large media companies. In many
other countries, since the telegraph was used to deliver messages,
it seemed an extension of the post office, and the
government agency that assumed responsibility for the postal
service also administered the telegraph. This model was not
followed in the United States. Although some in the government
endorsed a federal takeover of the telegraph system, the
prevailing sentiment was in favor of private, commercial
develop-ment. By the end of the 19th century, telegraphic
communication was dominated by a large company, Western
Union. As we shall see in later chapters, other mass mediamotion
pictures, radio, television-were also developed as private
rather than government enterprises and were dominated by one
or more large companies especially in the western countries.
Change in Perspective
Finally, another consequence of the telegraph was subtler and
harder to describe. In some ways, the telegraph changed the way
people thought about their country and the world. By erasing
the constraints of space, the telegraph had the potential to
function as an instant linkage device that tied people together.
Morse wrote how the telegraph would make a neighborhood
of the whole coun-try. A Philadelphia newspaper, shortly after
the successful demonstration of the device, wrote that the
telegraph destroyed the notion of “elsewhere” and made
everywhere “here.” The paper declared the telegraph “will make
the whole land one being.” An article in a magazine of the
period was even more expansive. The telegraph “binds together
by a vital cord all nations of the earth.” It may not be too much
of an overstatement to contend that the telegraph introduced
the notion of a global village that was to be popularized a
42
DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
hundred years or so later by Marshall McLuhan. It created a
sense of unity among Americans and encouraged them to think

7. in national and international terms.
The telegraph was joined by a companion invention, the
telephone. Like the Morse invention, the telephone also
conquered time and space and had the added advantage of
requiring no special skills, such as Morse code, for its use. It
transmit-ted the human voice from point to point. There was
some confusion over the pre-cise role the telephone would play
in society, but eventually the notion of linking phone users by
wires and the development of the switchboard made it possible
to interconnect one place with many others. This arrangement
helped it become a fix-ture in businesses and homes across the
nation. The telephone made private com-munication easier to
achieve. It was now possible for people to converse away from
the watchful eyes of parents, bosses, and other authority
figures. Finally, like the telegraph industry, the telephone
industry was dominated by a large corporations, AT&T, which
eventually gained control of Western Union.
In sum, the telegraph and the telephone enabled people to
communicate vast distances in what we now call real time and
had far-reaching impact in the politi-cal, economic, and social
development of the United States and the rest of the world.
We will discuss this impact in detail throughout our course. In
many ways, it is still making itself felt today.
CAPTURING THE IMAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY
AND MOTION PICTURES
The telegraph and the telephone drew upon advances in the
science of electricity. The next communication advance we will
examine could not have occurred with-out advances in the field
of chemistry.
Early Techno1ogica1 Development
Two things are required to permanently store an image. First,
there must be a way to focus an image on a surface. Second, the
surface must be permanently altered as a result of exposure to
the image. The first requirement was fulfilled by the end of
the18th -century with the discovery of the camera obscura- adark
chamber with a pinhole in one wall. The light rays that
entered the chamber through the small hole pro-jected an image
on the opposite wall.
The second requirement took longer to achieve. In the 1830s,
two Frenchmen, Joseph Nielle and Louis Daguerre, experimented
with various substances that changed upon exposure to
the light rays. Even-tually, silver iodide provided the best results
and Daguerre sold his discovery to the French government. An
English scientist, William Fox Talbot, working at about the
same time as Daguerre, refined the process by capturing his
images on paper in the form of negatives, permitting copies to
be made. Other advances quickly followed, including the use of
flexible celluloid film. George Eastman’s company introduced
the Kodak box camera in the 1890s with the slogan, “You press
a button. We do the rest.” The Kodak was designed for the
mass market. Amateur photographers simply loaded a roll of
film in the camera, pressed the button, and sent the film off to
Kodak to be developed, printed, and returned to the photographer.
There were several long-range consequences of these technological
advances. Early photos (called Daguerreotopes). required
long exposure times, making them particularly suitable or

8. portraits, where the subject could remain still. These early
portraits provided a way to preserve and humanize history.
The images of George Washington, for example, are from
paintings that show him in an idealized manner, usually in
noble poses where he appears distinguished and powerful. The
images of Abraham Lincoln, how-ever, come from the many
photographs that were taken of him during his term in office.
The early photos, done around 1860, showed him in flattering
poses. The later photos, taken after years of war, showed a man
grown visibly older, with lines creasing his forehead, and tired
eyes.
Mathew Brady
The Civil War was the first American war to be photographed. Before the
camera, the public’s view of war was probably shaped mostly by paintings
and etchings that showed magnificent cav-alry charges and brave soldiers
vanquishing the enemy, not the horror and the car-nage of combat.
Mathew Brady (a photographerduring the civil war)persuaded the US
government to give him access to the battlefield. Brady apparently thought
the government would cover the costs of his venture, but his expectations
were never met and many of his photos were lost. Because early
photography was not able to capture action scenes, Brady was limited to
photo-graphing scenes of the aftermath of a battle. His images, however,
were power-ful enough.
In 1862, Brady’s colleagues photographed the battleground at Anti-etam
just two days after the battle and before all the dead had been buried. The
resulting photographs were the first to show the actual casualties of war.
When the photos went on view in a New York gallery, they caused a
sensation. The car-nage of battle was revealed to all. As Oliver Wendell
Holmes remarked, “Let him who wishes to know what war is like look at
this series of illustrations.” A hun-dred years later, other communication
advances would bring scenes of horror from the Vietnam War directly
into American living rooms.
Photography had an impact on art. Now that a means had been developed
to preserve realistic images, artists were free to experiment and develop
different ways of portraying the world. Again, although it’s hard to say
how much of a role photography played in the movement, the impressionist,
postimpressionist, and cubist schools of painting came to prominence
at about this same time. At the other end of the spectrum, photography
itself became a fine art, as virtuosos such as Alfred Steiglitz, Margaret
Bourke-White, and Edward Steichen created master-pieces of graphic
reproduction.
43
DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
What happened to Mathew BradyThe U.S. government
granted Mathew Brady authorization to take his camera
equipment to the battlefields of the Civil War but was reluctant
to promise him any firm financial support. The best the
government could offer was a vague promise to buy his
negatives at the end of the war. Further, his photos could not
be reproduced in the periodicals of the time. (Wood cuts from
his pictures appeared in Harper’s Weekly, but although they
brought him publicity, Brady apparently made little if any
money from them). Despite these problems, Brady was willing
to take a chance. Thinking that his war pictures would make a
handsome profit from exhibitions and books, he paid his own
expenses during the war years.Brady did make a sizable amount

9. at income from the thou-sands of photos he and his colleagues
took, particularly from his New York exhibition, but not
enough to payoff his costs. An expen-sive book of his photos
published after the war failed miserablyBrady was soon
bankrupt. Congress finally voted to pay him $25,000 for his
pictures, but this came too late to do him much good. By that
time he gad forgotten where he had stored many of his photos.
The glass photographic plates that eventually became government
property were forbidden to be shown or published for
commercial gain, a decision that kept people from seeing them.
Government workers did not realize the significance of Brady’s
work. Hundreds of glass plates were broken through sheer carelessness.
Eventually, the government thought the glass plates
were more valuable than the photographic record they contained.
Some plates were sold to greenhouses as replacement
glass; the sun quickly faded those images and valuable evidences
of history were lost. Other negatives were used to make face
plates for World War I gas masks. Brady himself faded from
the public eye. He died in a hos-pital charity ward in 1896.
Photography’s Influence on Mass Cu1ture
You didn’t have to be an artist, however, to take pictures.
Everybody could and did. Advances in film and camera
technology put cameras in the hands of the masses. Ordinary
people took photos of significant people, objects, and events:
marriages, new babies, new cars, pets, vacations, family portraits,
family reunions, proms, and so on. Photo albums quickly
became a part of each family’s library. Photography enabled each
generation to make a permanent record of its personal history.
Advances in the printing process, such as half-tone photography,
made it possible for photographs to be published in
magazines and newspapers. By the beginning of the 20th
century, dozens of illustrated dailies and weeklies were published
in the United States. This development created a new
profession-photojournalism-and changed America’s conception
of news. Photojournalism reached new popularity in the 1920s
when the pace of life increased, and many innovations cropped
up that promised to save time for the consumer-lunch counters
for fast meals, express trains, washing machines, vacuum
cleaners, and so forth. When it came to news reporting, the
biggest time-saver was the picture. Readers could look at
photos more quickly than they could read the long text of a
story. As a consequence, printed columns decreased and space
devoted to pictures increased, helping popularize the tabloids
and picture magazines such as Life .
Photojournalism had more subtle influences as well. For one, it
changed the definition of news itself. Increasingly, news became
that which could be shown. Accidents, natural disasters,
demonstrations, and riots were natural photo opportunities.
This visual bias in news reporting continues to be a topic of
concern even today. Second, as photo historian Vicki Goldberg
put it, photography created “a communal reservoir of images.”
Certain historic events were fixed forever in the minds of the
public by their photos: the fiery crash of the Hindenberg, a
suspected Viet Cong member executed on a Saigon street, the
young girl screaming over the dead body of a student at Kent
State, the rescue worker holding a critically injured baby after the

10. Oklahoma City bombing. All these images have been permanently
etched on the national consciousness.
Pictures in Motion
The technology behind photography led to the development of
another way to capture an image. The goal behind this new
milestone, however, was to capture an image in motion. Later
in the course we shall read more about the early history of the
motion picture medium and trace how it evolved from a series
of toys into a giant entertainment industry. It is significant that
this new medium evolved while three significant trends were
occurring in the United States. The first was industrialization.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in the early 19th
century, continued into the 20th century. Production and
manufacturing both increased significantly. Along with industrialization
came urbanization, as people moved into the cities to
be near the plants and factories where they could find jobs. In
the United States, one-fourth of all Americans lived in an urban
area by 1914. The third trend was immigration. About 25
million people immigrated to the United States between 1871
and 1914, and most of them wound up in cities where they
went to work in manufacturing plants.
The culmination of these trends was the creation of an
audience that was drawn to the new medium of motion
pictures. The first movie houses sprang up in the cities. They
were called ‘Nickelodeons, storefronts that had been turned into
makeshift theaters, with uncomfortable rows of folding chairs
for the audience, a tinkling hole, for ventilation. Nonetheless,
the nickelodeons were big hits among the newly arrived
immigrants. By 1910 there were more than 10,000 of these
nickelodeons around the country, and film exhibitors and
filmmakers quickly realized that there was a market for filmed
entertainment. The motion picture business had started. Film
eventually moved to plusher theaters and tried to appeal to the
middle class, but it left its mark on the immigrant population.
Many learned the customs and culture of their new country
from the nickelodeons.
Motion Pictures and American Culture
The long-range impact of the motion picture lay mainly in the
areas of entertainment and culture. As the demand grew for
feature-length films, only very large companies were able to
come up with the money needed to pay production costs. As
will be noted in Chapter 9, these large companies came to
dominate the production, distribution, and exhibition of
movies. Today’s film industry is controlled by global conglom44
DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
erates that still follow many of the patterns established in the
1920s.
Movies forever altered America’s leisure time. Vaudeville soon
died out. Going to the movies became an important social
activity for the young. Saturday afternoons that once were spent
going to parks and friends’ houses were now spent inside a
darkened theater.
The movies became a major cultural institution. Photography
and the mass-appeal newspaper had made it easier for people to
recognize and follow the fortunes of their favorite celebrities,
but motion pictures raised this process to a new level. Hollywood

11. produced cultural icons, the movie stars. The popularity
of motion pictures was based on their appeal to all social
classes. Unlike serious drama, opera, and ballet, which appealed
to the elite, movies attracted the masses. The movies helped
bring about the notion of a popular culture, a phenomenon
whose benefits and liabilities are still being debated.
In 1915, American poet Vachel Lindsay published The Art of
the Moving Picture. This volume signaled the beginnings of a
new popular art form. Lindsay’s book was the first of many
serious attempts to develop a theory of film. Although a
popular entertainment form that blended business and art, film
soon became a topic worth serious study, a trend still with us
today as evidenced by the many universities that teach film as
part of their curricula.
In the early 1930s, the Payne Fund was set up to study the
possible harmful effects of attending motion pictures. This was
the first of many studies that tried to establish just what impact
film and, later, broadcasting had on society . The Payne Fund
studies were significant because they marked the first time the
public had decided that a medium, in this case motion pictures,
did something to society and was deserving of serious
examination.
Finally, although film played its most prominent role as a
medium of entertainment, it’s important to note that it had
influence on journalism as well. Started around 1910, newsreels
appeared weekly or semiweekly and pictured the major events
of the period. The big movie studios eventually controlled the
production of newsreels. They standardized the content of the
10-minute reels so that audiences could expect to see something
from Europe, some national news, sports, a feature or two, and
perhaps a human-interest story. The newsreels were discontinued
in the 1950s and 1960s as pictorial journalism moved to
television. These early news films, however, influenced many of
the conventions and expectations of broadcast news reporting.
In the next lesson we shall look at the way news and entertainment
steeped into our homes, their cultural impact and of
course the evolution of digital media and its effect on the
modern society.
Refernces-
1. Davis, Anthony; Magazine Journalism Today; (1988); Heinemann
2. Baird, Click; Magazine and Production; 4th edition
3. Mogel; The Magazine
4. Anderson, Douglas;
Contemporary Sports Reporting; (1985); Nelson-Hall
5. Melkote, Srinivas; Communication for development in the third world; (1991); Sage
6. Ed. Glasser, Theodore; The idea of Public, Journalism;(1999); Guilford Press