The Inverted Pyramid and The Evolution of Newswriting
Newswriting, as it exists today, began with the adoption of the telegraph, which roughly coincided with the start of the American Civil War. The necessity of getting at story through before the telegraph’s occasional malfunction forced a radical change in the style of writing used in reporting. Before the telegraph, much of writing news was just that: writing. News was reported much like books were written. The reporter would set the scene with a detailed account of the setting or the mood and tell the tale just like any other narrative that one might read simply for pleasure. Since the telegraph made it possible for news to be printed the day after it happened; it was immediately adopted as the preferred method of getting news to the newsroom. Occasionally, however, the telegraph line would go down. Often this happened during a transmission, and the remainder of the message could not be sent until the line was repaired. Since a detailed description of the setting and the mood are useless without the actual piece of news, the system of writing, now known as the inverted pyramid, in which the most important items are written first in a concise manner, was born. The inverted pyramid system, born of necessity, was absorbed into newswriting over the proceeding century, and exists today as the standard style for reporting news.
At the beginning of the civil war, the protracted narrative style still predominated the newswriting of the period. For the most part, stories were verbose almost to the point of obsequy and read more like an intellectual discourse on the topic, rather than a report of news. In a story on the front page of the Times of April 11, 1861, the reporter, who is begins his story, “Every good citizen must rejoice that the new administration manifests a disposition to guard more faithfully its State secrets than did its predecessors. The promulgation of the purposes of the Government while those are not yet entirely formed, or when disclosure would tend to defeat or embarrass them, is quite as weak as it is undignified. But this reticence may be carried to far, and lead to more mischief than it is designed to prevent.” It is important to note that these lines come not from an editorial, but from a story on the front page of the paper and that this is not a follow up to a news story about the administration’s decision to be more careful with its secrets.
More than 25,000 letters and 250 private diaries from men on both side of North and South. Talking about the soldier's ideals for which they fought over conflicts and beliefs of each side. McPherson took all of the soldier’s ideas and beliefs and made this powerful and important book on an often-overlooked aspect of the Civil War. Also, it brought great honor and powerfully moving account for the men that fought in the civil war.
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
Thus, the information expresses personal opinions from the point of view of Lincoln and the writers who contributed to the article. Similar to Lincoln’s views, a section in the article goes against the Confederacy because they have disrupted the peace within the Union. For example, the men of the Border States fear their welfare while trying to ward off the fear of a possible great disaster (New York Tribune, 9 March 186, p.6). On the other hand, the views from the south in the article saw Lincoln and his Cabinet as enemies to the Institution of Slavery. Salmon P. Chase is seen to be one of the most offensive man to the south because of his power and influence to command and humiliate sections of where slavery exists (New York Tribune, 9 March 186, p.6). Finally, Lincolns speech is geared towards the Union as a whole rather than the article, where it’s focused on subsections of the
The American Civil War not only proved to be the country’s deadliest war but also precipitated one of the greatest constitutional crises in the history of the United States. President Lincoln is revered by many Americans today as a man of great moral principle who was responsible for both preventing the Union’s dissolution as well as helping to trigger the movement to abolish slavery. In retrospect, modern historians find it difficult to question the legitimacy of Lincoln’s actions as President. A more precise review of President Lincoln’s actions during the Civil War, however, reveals that many, if not the majority, of his actions were far from legitimate on constitutional and legal grounds. Moreover, his true political motives reveal his
A successful army requires discipline, but Confederate soldiers refused to concede authority to anyone they did not vote for, at least in the beginning. Confederate soldiers were also prone to shirking duties they deemed menial, and some even left the army without dismissal if they believed they had served long enough. In the uppermost chain of political command, Jefferson Davis proved deficient in quelling the media outlets which railed against his decisions at nearly every turn. Davis gave deference to the right of free speech no matter how damaging it was. Donald then uses these points to highlight the Union Army and Lincoln administration’s successes. The North had the advantage of numerous immigrant conscripts who were used to being ordered around, so the pecking order was easily established from the beginning. In the political realm, Abraham Lincoln did not let Constitutional rights obstruct his goals; Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and threw defamatory journalists into prison. The Union thus had the unity it needed to achieve victory in the face of the South’s
The Myth of the Lost Cause was edited by Gary Gallagher, Alan T. Nolan, and other several editors have taken the challenge of a difficult task of trying to summarize of what happened in the end of numerous of misrepresentations of this historic event. The book has a total 9 essays, giving me a different kind of reading style and showing its precision in showing it. I think what the editors were trying to convey was that the final analysis of the book is trying to explain how the Lost Cause myth was created and how it is still in effect to our national memory of the Civil War.
The WWII time period was a hard time for American families. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League helped to change the rights of women in the industrial world. Men took care of their responsibilities and served their time in war, but in the meantime, the world-winning women of the AAGPBL stormed the country by surprise. This league was a major success in our history and will leave its legacy among baseball fans for years to come.
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.
Baseball is a part of the past, present and future. Unfortunately for two unlucky teams, the future is as bleak as the cold January mornings in State College. Ever since the “Strike of 1993,” baseball has been financially hurting. What fan wants to go and watch a bunch of greedy, overpaid, crybaby million dollar athletes after they decided not to play as a demonstration of their demands for even more money? However, baseball was soon on the proverbial road to recovery as the...
For example, “sociological and popular understanding of gay and lesbian relationships has been greatly distorted by the false presumption that only heterosexual relationships are normal ways of expressing sexual intimacy and love” (Andersen 1997, 95). This explains how society helps in influencing and identifying people sexual identities throughout their lifetime. Andersen admits that “heterosexual identity includes the belief that men have an overpowering sex drive and that women are considered more loving, soft and are link to sex [… and] contemporary sexual attitudes are shaped by phallocentric thinking-that which sees men as powerful and women as weak” (Andersen 1997, 94, 96). Although, society is lead to believe that men should be the dominant figure of the family. The reality is that, in gay and lesbian relationships, no one individual displays the behavior of an authoritative
It wasn’t just when the news was delivered but also how it was delivered. It had an influence because of the great personalities of Dick Smyth, Lee Marshall, Grant Hudson and others who dramatically and entertainingly delivered the news. They reported the news “dramatically” and with the “same energy as disk jockeys had snappy writing with alliterations, and a lot of short sound bites.” They were deejays without music. This dynamic combination of news reporting made for an amusing news report; that not only captured the audience, but also kept them tuning in.
Nemee, David. “100 Years of Major League Baseball.” Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications Infernational, Ltd, 200. Print.
The sport of baseball in the United States exists in a dynamic social world. Although the sport of baseball has evolved as an international game and other popular sports have emerged, baseball remains America’s national pastime. The sport of baseball has a long history and has experienced numerous cultural changes.
The American Civil war is considered to be one of the most defining moments in American history. It is the war that shaped the social, political and economic structure with a broader prospect of unifying the states and hence leading to this ideal nation of unified states as it is today. In the book “Confederates in the Attic”, the author Tony Horwitz gives an account of his year long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought. He took his childhood interest in the Civil War to a new level by traveling around the South in search of Civil War relics, battle fields, and most importantly stories. The title “Confederates in the Attic”: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War carries two meanings in Tony Horwitz’s thoughtful and entertaining exploration of the role of the American Civil War in the modern world of the South. The first meaning alludes to Horwitz’s personal interest in the war. As the grandson of a Russian Jew, Horwitz was raised in the North but early in his childhood developed a fascination with the South’s myth and history. He tells readers that as a child he wrote about the war and even constructed a mural of significant battles in the attic of his own home. The second meaning refers to regional memory, the importance or lack thereof yet attached to this momentous national event. As Horwitz visits the sites throughout the South, he encounters unreconstructed rebels who still hold to outdated beliefs. He also meets groups of “re-enactors,” devotees who attempt to relive the experience of the soldier’s life and death. One of his most disheartening and yet unsurprising realizations is that attitudes towards the war divide along racial lines. Too many whites wrap the memory in nostalgia, refusing...
Thirty years ago, if I told you that the primary means of communicating and disseminating information would be a series of interconnected computer networks you would of thought I was watching Star Trek or reading a science fiction novel. In 2010, the future of mass media is upon us today; the Internet. The Internet is and will only grow in the future as the primary means of delivering news, information and entertainment to the vast majority of Americans. Mass media as we know it today will take new shape and form in the next few years with the convergence and migration of three legacy mediums (Television, Radio, Newspaper) into one that is based on the Internet and will replace these mediums forever changing the face of journalism, media and politics. In this paper I will attempt to explain the transition of print media to one of the internet, how the shift to an internet based media environment will impact journalism and mass media, and how this migration will benefit society and forever change the dynamic of news and politics.