Assignment 1: Reaction to Quotes

1) "Journalists stand in a paternalistic relationship to readers: They guide them rather than engage them in conversation. They decide on the legitimate and valuable topics for the agenda based on the estimation of the public’s need to know, but don’t see the necessity for listening to the public." (Wahl-Jorgensen Page 18)

2) "Making news became commercially viable through the selling of audiences to advertisers, instead of newspapers to partisan audiences…The new centrality of advertising income also meant that owners and editors were compelled to abandon controversial, partisan material from their reports, and instead aimed to please as many advertisers and consumers as they possible could by printing ostensibly “neutral” content and proclaiming their political independence. " (Wahl-Jorgensen Page 38)

What the first quote is trying to explain is that the purpose of journalism is not to incite debate or promote conversation, but that it is simply to navigate the reader, picking and choosing what is to be read for them, so that they aren't allowed to make the decision themselves. The job of a journalist is to publish writing that is easy to read so that word after word seamlessly flows off the reader's tongue and into their mind creating an enjoyable reading experience for them. The journalists take on a parenting role while the readers adopt an elementary one. Journalists control what is read in the papers and on the internet, and they deem what stories are actually newsworthy and worth reading, and which ones are not. They select what to publish based on what they think the public should be aware of, based on what they judge to be important. Many times this is done without taking the public's opinion into account, but only strictly with the intentions to make money.

Which leads to the second of Karin Wahl-Jorgensen's quotes. This quote refers to the transformation of journalism/publishing from a reporting/news culture into a commercial business. Once it was realized that newswriting and reporting were both profitable through advertisement, journalists and editors alike disregarded previous work methods and implemented new ideas designed to generate more money. Newspapers tried to make their papers more conservative by filling them with neutral and unbiased stories instead of controversial ones that sparked gossip. The notion behind this was that the more politically neutral a paper stayed, the more readers and advertisers it would attract, therefore accruing a larger profit. The whole journalism and publishing landscape had been changed and it was the dawn of modern capitalism as we know it.

Testing

Hey, just checking if this works since I am new to this.