Journalism and the Revolutionary War
Andie Tucher, director of Columbia Journalism School’s PhD program, discusses why it’s important to study journalism history. She explains how understanding past events in the life of American journalism can help us think about (and not fear) present disruption.
For example, deep partisanship governed the country’s early papers with notions like “objectivity” not becoming part of newsroom vernacular until the 20th century.
And as much as we fear the business disruption digital has had on print, that too has precedent: radio was once going to kill print, television would kill radio and film would kill television.
The solutions aren’t the same for each era, but each era has important ideas and examples to study as we consider our own.
