This document provides a historical overview of journalism from the penny press era to modern photojournalism and television news. It outlines the development of key newspapers and their editors from the 1800s. It also discusses the emergence of radio broadcasting networks like NBC and CBS in the 1920s-30s and the growth of broadcast news under anchors like Murrow, Cronkite and Jennings. The document then covers events like the Vietnam War, Pentagon Papers, Watergate scandal and the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein that helped define modern television journalism.

1. Historical Overview
Comms 239: Principles of Journalism

2. Penny Press
Benjamin Day
New York Sun
Journalism History

3. Yellow Journalism

4. Great Newspaper Editors
Benjamin Day Henry Raymond
New York Sun New-York Times
James Gordon Bennett Joseph Pulitzer
New York Herald New York World
Horace Greeley Wm. Randolph Hearst
New York Tribune New York Journal
Journalism History

5. Photojournalism
The emergence of a new journalism

6. Milestones
Leica: mass produced in 1924
• Half-tone photographic
printing
• Gelatin-based film
• Flashbulbs
• Smaller, mass-produced
cameras

7. Photojournalism
• Photographers no longer need
permission or cooperation of
subjects
• Photographs more candid, intimate,
immediate, episodic
• Considered “objective” documents
• News content in their own right,
not just illustrations ancillary to the
text

8. LIFE Magazine
• Founded in 1936 by
Henry Luce
• Instant success
• Two million
circulation by 1938
• 22 million readers by
1944

9. Robert Capa
• Born 1913 in Budapest,
Hungary as Andre
Friedman
• Escapes anti-semitism by
moving to Berlin, takes up
photography
• Shows promise by
photographing Leon
Trotsky
• Creates persona
• Spanish Civil War: Moment
of Death

10. Walter Cronkite
Ernie Pyle
Andy Rooney

11. Edward R. Murrow – “The Murrow Boys”
Cecil Brown Richard C. Hottelet
Winston Burdett Larry LeSueur
Charles Collingwood Eric Sevareid Mary Marvin Breckinridge
William Downs William L. Shirer
Thomas Grandin Howard K. Smith

12. “I don’t make the
infantryman look noble,
because he couldn’t look
noble even if he tried. Still
there is a certain nobility
and dignity in combat
soldiers... With dirt in their
ears ... They wish to hell
they were someplace else ...
Bill Mauldin They wish to hell the mud
“Willie & Joe” was dry and they wish to
hell their coffee was hot.”

13. “I don’t make the
infantryman look noble,
because he couldn’t look
noble even if he tried. Still
there is a certain nobility
and dignity in combat
soldiers... With dirt in their
ears ... They wish to hell
they were someplace else ...
Bill Mauldin They wish to hell the mud
“Willie & Joe” was dry and they wish to
hell their coffee was hot.”

14. Voice by wire
Alexander Graham Bell — 1876

15. Wireless
James Clerk Maxwell
• Electromagnetic radiation theorized
1864
Heinrich Hertz
• Transmission of radio waves
1887
Guglielmo Marconi
• First wireless transmission 1895
• Transatlantic wireless transmission
1901

16. Broadcasting
Reginald Fessenden
• Wireless voice transmission
1906
Lee deForest
• Audion Tube 1864
• Broadcasts from Eiffel Tower 1908
Edwin Howard Armstrong
• Regenerative Circuit 1913

17. Radio Networks
US Congress
• Establishes the Federal Radio
Commission 1927
David Sarnoff
• Suggests Radio Music Box 1916
• Establishes NBC 1926
William Paley
• Columbia Broadcast System 1928

18. NBC
1921
AT&T radio network
WEAF flagship station

19. NBC
1921 1923
AT&T radio network GE + Westinghouse = RCA
WEAF flagship station WJZ flagship station

20. NBC
1921 1923
AT&T radio network GE + Westinghouse = RCA
WEAF flagship station WJZ flagship station
1926
AT&T sells to RCA
Becomes NBC

21. NBC
1921 1923
AT&T radio network GE + Westinghouse = RCA
WEAF flagship station WJZ flagship station
1926
AT&T sells to RCA
Becomes NBC
NBC NBC
Red Network Blue Network

22. ABC
• FCC declares NBC a monopoly 1940
• NBC Blue becomes ABC in 1945

23. Radio News
• NBC establishes hard
newscasts 1930
• CBS’s Paul White
establishes first
network news
operation 1933
RCA 44-BX

24. Radio-Press War
• 1922 - A.P. says copy is not for radio
• 1933 - “Biltmore Agreement”
• Two, five-minute newscasts per day
(after 9:30 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.)
• Networks respond with
commentary
UPI “clacker”
• 1939 - A.P. lifts ban

25. Broadcast Commentators
Floyd Gibbons Walter Winchell Lowell Thomas

26. Hindenburg Disaster
Lakehurst, NJ – May 6, 1937
• Reported by Herb Morrison, WLS Chicago
• Recorded on “disc cutter”
• Played in Chicago next day
• First recorded news on NBC

27. Mechanical Television
John Logie Baird

28. Philo T. Farnsworth
• Born in Beaver, Utah (1906)
• Raised in Idaho
• Attended BYU (1923-1924)
• Invented first all-electronic
television (1926)

29. High School Drawing (1921)
Research Notes (1927)

30. Dissector Tube

31. Cathode Ray Tube

32. RCA
Vladimir Zworykin David Sarnoff

33. Edward R. Murrow

34. See It Now
“This instrument can teach, it can
illuminate, and yes it can inspire.
But it can do so only to the extent
that humans are determined to use
it to those ends. Otherwise it is
nothing but wires and lights in a
box.”
RTNDA Convention, Chicago, October 15, 1958

35. Douglas Edwards

36. John Cameron Swayze

37. Huntley & Brinkley

38. Chancellor & Brokaw

39. Walter Cronkite

40. Walter Cronkite

41. Walter Cronkite

42. 30 Minutes
• CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite -
September 3, 1963
• NBC News “Huntley-Brinkley Report” -
September 9, 1963
• ABC News with Peter Jennings - January
1965

43. Elmer Lower &
the “Almost Broadcasting Corporation”

44. The JFK Assassination
Television News Comes of Age

45. BULLETIN

46. First TV bulletins

47. Live for 56 hours over 4 days

48. Vietnam

49. Leading up to Watergate
• Nixon runs on Law and Order
platform and promise of “secret
plan” to get out of Vietnam
• Secret bombing campaign
against neutral Cambodia
• Congress twice rejects Nixon’s
nominations to Supreme Court

50. Leading up to Watergate
• U.S. openly invades
Cambodia, leading
to massive protests
• Four students killed
at Kent State
• News leaks

51. Wiretapping
• June 1970: Nixon agrees to plan for White
House, FBI, and CIA to wiretap, commit
burglaries and (if necessary) other crimes, in
the interest of providing intelligence on
persons disloyal to the administration
• J. Edgar Hoover refuses to cooperate
• Nixon authorizes wiretaps on 4 newsmen
and 13 government officials

52. Pentagon Papers
• MacNamara orders a history
of U.S. involvement in
Indochina
• Leaked by Daniel Ellsberg
• Published in June 1971 by
New York Times
• Government sues for prior
restraint
• Other papers, including
Washington Post, also publish

55. Leaks & Dirty Tricks
• Pentagon Papers a turning point
• Nixon forms a surveillance team to plug
leaks on classified information
• “The Plumbers”
• “Enemies List”
• “Dirty tricks” campaign

56. Campaign against
journalists
• Pat Buchanan suggests
deliberate campaign to
attack networks as small
group of liberal elites
• Speech given by Vice
President Spiro Agnew
• “Nattering nabobs of Spiro Agnew, the only vice president to resign
while under criminal investigation
negativism”

57. Watergate Break-in
• June 17, 1972: Democratic
National Committee in the
Watergate complex
• Five “plumbers” planting
listening devices are caught
by Washington, D.C. police
Watergate complex – Washington, D.C.
• Operation financed by
illegal contributions to
CREEP

58. Watergate Break-in
• Taping system reveals
president participated in
coverup

59. Woodward & Bernstein

61. End of an era
• Brokaw - NBC anchor
retired Nov. 2004
• Rather - CBS anchor forced
out March 2005
• Jennings - ABC anchor dies
August 2005