History of Mass Communication.

http://faculty.washington.edu/baldasty/340.htm

Scope of the Course. This course covers the development of U.S. mass media, with particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. We’ll be examining a variety of media (newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures, radio and television) within the broad social context (politics, economics, culture, race, gender, etc.) within which they developed and operated.

Course objectives. By the end of this course, you will be able to

• demonstrate, using examples from media, readings and other evidence, how the U.S. mass media developed.
• analyze the influence of the US mass media’s political and economic environment, production and work force values, and information-gathering practices on media content.
• describe how different media have different societal functions.

Specifically,you should have an understanding of

• How "objective" reporting norms replaced the partisan advocacy that was a staple of newspapers before 1880;
• government efforts to control news, through censorship and especially through news management;
• self-censorship by the mass media (to protect profits);
• creation of alternative forms of media by people and groups ignored or denigrated by the mainstream media (and especially by people of color);
• how the structure and organization of the media industry influences content;
• how "new media" (movies, radio, television) have changed the way we see the world, changed the way we get information and influenced older media.

Required Readings. There are three paperback books for this course.

• Gerald J. Baldasty. The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century. This book describes and analyzes the rise of the modern media corporation.
• Tony Hillerman. Fly on the Wall. This is fiction, but still quite useful for our purposes in this class. Hillerman describes how reporters operate, thus illustrating one of the class’s key terms: the news process.
• James L. Baughman. The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking and Broadcasting in America since 1941. This book describes and analyzes the post-World War II media world, explaining how the advent of television forced other media to re-position themselves in serving readers/listeners.

Exams, Grading Information. Your grade will consist of

1. Two essay exams, each worth 25 per cent of the total grade (Total: 50%)

Sample exam questions will be given out in lecture.

2. A paper and group presentation, worth 40 per cent of the total grade.

(It is your obligation to make 2 copies of your paper -- one to hand in, another to keep in case the submitted paper is lost.)

3. Participation in Friday sections, worth 10 per cent.

The syllabus is posted on the course website-- (http://faculty.washington.edu/baldasty/340.htm). Overheads and notes from lecture will be posted at the end of each week in the weekly reading/topics section (e.g., See week 1 for overheads for that week).

General rules. You are not required to attend class. If you do attend class, you are expected to be attentive and to participate in class discussions. Class is not a place for newspaper reading or conversations. Late papers will be penalized. You are expected to do you own work; copying/cheating will result in a 0.0 for the assignment involved.

Gerald Baldasty joined the faculty of the School of Communications in 1978. He received his Ph.D. and B.A. (in Communications) from UW and his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the press in the 19th and early 20th centuries, dealing primarily with business issues. He’s also interested in issues of media, race and gender. He has done research on the Northwest Enterprise, an African-American newspaper in Seattle in the 1930s, and on press coverage of the civil rights movement. He’s written numerous research articles and two books: The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century and E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers.

Matias Valenzuela is a doctoral student in the School of Communications. He has professional experience in print and broadcast journalism. In 1990, he worked as a Spanish- and English-language reporter for Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. From 1991 to 1994, he was a journalist and photographer for an international publication based in Nicaragua. He has a broad base in communication theory and methods. His interersts in U.S. communications include media and democracy, news organizations and processes and media representations. Internationally, he is interested in health communication, development and globalization. His current research focuses on changes in telecommunications in Latin America.

Introductions, implications of the printing press, advocate/partisan journalism in the United States.

Communication in the 19th century: penny press, early ethnic presses, books, oral tradition (songs, poetry), reformers, the growth of a transportation and communication infrastructure, Industrialization and its impact on the press.

The "modern" newspaper corporation (c. 1900) -- influence of advertising, impact of business organization, types of news, leading media magnates.

Development of new styles of news norms, early motion pictures.

Wartime and the press (World War I); post-war developments in public relations, sound movies.

Tabloids, radio.

World War 2 and the press, Seattle ethnic media, television.

Television, Movies in the age of Television.

Press-government relations, news management.

Television and the civil rights movement, modern movies.