Tabloids: A Representation of what we consider News
Why is it that every time we see that someone is keeping a journal we have that gut urge to sneak into their bag and read all of their innermost thoughts? We all experience it. Although most want to deny it, there is no escaping that part of us that wants to know all we can about other people. Luckily, there is a medium that lets us do just that. Tabloids make the lives of others, especially celebrities, an open book for all to read and scrutinize. Not only do tabloids offer the lives of others on a silver platter, but they also let readers get sensational satisfaction, meaning they have the ability to be actively involved in articles with all their senses. Emotional stories, graphic images, terrifying fantastic epics, the lives of others, are all presented to readers in one convenient medium; the tabloid.
The tabloid is not a new medium whatsoever, in fact the model for the modern tabloid dates all the way back to folklore. Before the printing press was introduced into society, oral storytelling was the only way society satisfied their craving for scandal and thrilling stories. People spoke about their neighbor’s business and far-fetched happenings, and the only way to pass those stories on was to tell the story. Just like a game of telephone that we have all played in grade school, stories ended up changing and being misconstrued to later form urban legends that we still hear about today.
It wasn’t until Johann Gutenberg introduced the printing press in the 1450’s that the ancestors of tabloids truly emerged in a form that specifically helped to shape the modern tabloid we see today. America and Europe experienced a monumental transformation because...
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In the documentary film, Page One: Inside The New York Times, the inner world of journalism is revealed through journalists David Carr and Brian Stelter as the newspaper company The New York Times, struggles to keep alive within a new wave of news journalism. The film is dedicated to reveal the true inner mechanics of what modern day new journalists face on a daily basis and leaves the audience almost in a state of shock. It broadcasts news journalism as yes, an old school method of news generation, but it also highlights an important component that reveals the importance behind this “old school” methodology. We often think that progression always correlates with positive products, but the documentary insists that within the case of modern journalism, the new wave method is actually a detriment that can reap negative consequences.
In ‘The Peek-a-Boo World,’ chapter 5 of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that the 19th century saw America begin to develop a shallow and sensationalist culture that only took information and media at face value. In support of his argument he makes the following three points: that telegraphs allowed insignificant information to be easily conveyed, thus cheapening media as a whole; that penny newspapers used more readily accessible information from telegraphs to begin printing countless sensationalist headlines; and that the popularization of photographs began to draw people to superficial images rather than the articles that they were intended to be supporting.
Bradford is very negative towards television tabloids. Her tone towards everything in the article is strong and negative. She uses profane and Informal language, like tits-and-ass raunchiness and rubbernecking at the oddities of American life. Her language has a lot of trashiness to it. She also says TV tabloids do not mature the mind, they mutate it. In the article, Bradford doesn’t make the mistake on using too big of words. She uses words that everyone can understand, not just her colleagues. For instance, she uses the word “bigwigs,” basically everyone knows what that word means. She also uses the phrase “Joe six-pack.” A lot of what has to do with articles are the race of a person their attractive ness and their sexual orientation. The truth is TV tabloids discriminate against people of different race, gays, and unattractive women. They also use racial slurs and that will upset a lot of people. These are some of the negative points she uses against tabloid television.
Today’s mass media has been molded by hundreds of years of reporting, journalism, and personal opinions. America’s mainstream media thrives upon stretching the truth and ‘creating’ interesting stories for the public. Tactics like this can be credited to people such as William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul from the late 19th to the 20th centuries. Hearst greatly influenced the practice of American journalism through his wealth, short political career, and use of unorthodox reporting methods such as yellow journalism.
I feel that my need to study this topic is because everyone seems to assume that all of tabloids are false. However I believe that maybe not 100% of the tabloids are false....maybe just 95%. Tabloids are believed to all be fraudulent pieces of work used to give more publicity to the magazine. People are known to listen and believe rumors, and that's what most of tabloids are believed to produce...rumors. My theory is that the people (reporters) who work to get the story for the magazine embellish on the facts that they get from their sources. Or it could be that the sources may be just trying to sell a made-up story so they could make a profit which only benefit th...
The term “muckraking” was coined by Theodore Roosevelt because according to Roosevelt the journalist “raked up “filth” at his feet”. Before the 1880s, quality magazines were expensive and had poor circulation around the nation. Newspaper on the other hand were more popular with the public and of course they were cheaper. Entering the 1880s, technological developments made the circulations of magazines popular and affordable for
The author provides a rough timeline of the objective norm emerging in American journalism, and explains the inner origin of these co...
We still engage in Yellow journalism today, but is called fake news. Fake news is an issue that we face more than ever due to social media. The newspapers during 1875 to 1912 staged several events and even over exaggerated headlines. In present day there are several outlets for exaggeration such as, tabloids and blogs. These are all forms of dishonest journalism. The creation of the internet has only increased the spread fake news further around the globe, making it hard to get rid of. The main issue is that bogus news has become
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The Prime Minister of Spain once told an American, “The newspapers in your country seem to be more powerful than the government.” This statement was never more true than in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The rulers of the New York newspaper empire, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, battled against one another in the ultimate test of journalism. With a real war on the horizon, these men fought to produce the most sensational stories Americans had ever read; and, as a result, they brought forth a new age in the American newspaper business, an age of fighting for the little guy, and beating back tyranny one paper at a time.
tabloid papers but this one isn't. I bought it on the 19th of May 2004
People will always want to express their rights to the First Amendment; which is the freedom speech. Newspapers have allows for such freedom of speech to take place. In order to get your voice heard, you must speak it, and what better way for you to write your thoughts down and share them...
I intend to conduct research into the widespread fall of newspaper sales, and how the Internet is causing this, if it is even. Furthermore I will branch out into whether the journalists themselves are to blame, or simply because of citizens’ lack of interest in news, whether it is in the newspaper or the television. I will also investigate how people read their news; do they purchase a broadsheet? What interests them? How much does the Internet take the place of the newspaper? These are all questions and more that I intend to research thoroughly, perhaps with the help of the general public.