The Historiography of Journalism History: Part 1: “An Overview”

Home , History of journalism, Journalism

By Chris Daly Boston University

The discipline of American journalism history has a long history of its own, since the field is almost as old as the country itself. That history is not only long, it is also vital, given that the institutions of journalism are central to so many parts of American life. Yet, our field is indeed too isolated intellectually from other academic disciplines, as American Journalism editor Jim Martin noted in his call for these papers. It remains true that other American historians rarely venture into the history of journalism. They often use newspapers in their research, but they do not usually study them—or any other media. It is also true that many articles and whole books in our field are marked by a strictly empirical approach. This characteristic of our field contributes, in turn, to the isolation, because scholars and thinkers in other disciplines find little to engage. They can find information in our research, but they do not typically find any theo- retical overlap with their existing intellectual concerns. To take one example: newspapers were at the heart of the trends usually grouped under the heading of a “market revolution” in antebellum America, yet few newspaper scholars engage the rich and still unfolding historiography of the market revolution, and vice-versa. Before discussing a possible remedy, it should be noted that one salutary effect of the lack of theory in journalism history is that historians of journalism have mostly stayed out of the higher, thin-

— Winter 2009 • 141 ner branches of literary and social theory—post-modernism, decon- structionism, and the like. By avoiding such intellectual vogues, we have largely avoided the cul-de-sac in which some historians and other scholars find themselves, cut off from a general audience and talking only to the small group that ran down the same narrow alley. If we consider it desirable to reach a general audience, then we must approach issues involving theory with some care.

One might liken the problem in journalism history to a problem commonly found in military history, which is often faulted for its strictly empirical approach. In many military histories, the only question asked is: who did what? The focus is on military action, carried out by individuals or small units. In such works, the em- phasis is often on individual heroes. To be sure, this literature also includes accounts of military blunders, and it can be quite critical of individual commanders, soldiers or sailors. Overall, though, the entire enterprise is often suffused with a sense of sympathy for the military life, and it frequently includes overt displays of admiration. But the presence of critical comments does not, by itself, make military history a “critical inquiry” in a scholarly or intellectual sense. For that reason, a lot of military history has not engaged other historians. It is, however, possible to take a different conception of military history. One might, for example, notice that military units are orga- nizations and decide to examine them in light of studies of organization behavior. Or, one might observe that all military personnel and units in the United States share two fundamental features—that they are ultimately under civilian control and that they must ask elected officials for all their resources. On that basis, one could begin to for- mulate new questions about the relationship between military and civilian leadership, or about the degree of success the military has shown in meeting the goals established by civilian authorities. In that sense, one could pursue a genuinely critical study of military history—not in the sense of being “negative” or anti-military but in the sense of having a yardstick by which to evaluate the military’s philosophy and actions.

This essay began in response to the lack of theory in our field. That shortage was famously identified decades ago by the scholar James Carey. In his 1974 essay “The Problem of Journalism His- tory,”1 Carey identified the Whig Theory and subsumed much of the writing in our field up to that point within that rubric. The Whig view

142 • American Journalism — holds that American journalism history represents a march toward freedom, an ever-closer approximation of perfect liberty driven by something in our national character, which is held to be innately freedom-loving. As Carey wrote, the theory had run its course 30 years ago. He then called for a cultural history of journalism, which he defined as a history of consciousness. The main goal, he said, would be to recapture the historical consciousness of reporters: what did it feel like to be one? What was the mental outlook of someone who prepared a “report”? What did it mean to have an audience that considered a journalistic “story” a meaningful representation or sample of reality? So far, the history of “the idea of a report” is still largely unwritten, or at least unfinished. By 1985, Carey revisited the issue and observed that the ideas that inform the practice of journalism history had broadened con- siderably in just over a decade.2 In the two decades since then, the trend has only continued. At this point, it appears that there are actu- ally a fair number of theories in the discipline of journalism history, although too often they are implicit or not fully developed. Some- times, the theory appears to be ad-hoc—that is, it pertains to this period but not that one. Some have little explanatory or predictive power. Few cover 300 years. In addition to those identified by Carey, the following can be detected in the literature: —We have a lot of dogged empiricism. This is the problem identified by Jim Martin when he observed that many articles and books address essentially the same question: How did X cover Y? The resulting articles add data to the record, but they are not intellectually engaging. They say almost nothing to historians from other fields, nor to scholars in other disciplines. Historiographically, they are inert. —We have articles and books written under the idea that Amer- ican journalism is the record of Amazing Things Done by Great Men. These are like the ancient chronicles of good kings, followed by bad kings, followed by good kings, etc. Recently, there has been a worthwhile corrective in the form of Amazing Things Done by Great Women and Amazing Things Done by African Americans and all sorts of previously marginalized groups. Those works certainly leave our story more complete but not more intellectually satisfying. They do not draw attention from scholars in other fields because, while they are informative, they are not part of a broader scholarly conversation. —There are occasional sightings of the venerable Pendulum

— Winter 2009 • 143 theory, which has the press swinging between episodes of “responsibility” and “tabloidism.” Or between liberalism and conservativism. Or between liberty and repression. In this mode, journalism marches not upward, but back and forth. —We have a Developmental model. According to David Sloan, in Makers of the Media Mind, this viewpoint may be the most pervasive in our field. It emphasizes the growth and evolution of journalism.3 It celebrates the (presumably one-way) movement from a journalism of “views,” typified by the Partisan Press, to a journalism of “news,” typified by the Penny Papers and their successors. This watershed is seen as putting the practice of journalism on a higher plane. What, then, to do with the current passion for blogging, for a “journalism of assertion,” and for a resurgence of views at the very moment when news is in eclipse? It is not clear how a developmental model would address an apparent regression. —Sloan also identifies a Progressive school, which holds that journalism should be judged by how well it serves the plain people in their struggle against the venality of the rich and the politicians they buy.4 In addition, we have a (sort of) Marxist theory, thanks to the Frankfurt School and its successors. This view holds that journalism plays a key role in the class struggle, which is an idea of limited utility in the American setting. —We have many examples of the Technological Imperative, which holds that history is propelled by inventors. How many books start a new chapter for the coming of radio? Then a new chapter for television? Then, one for the web? The problem with this approach is the fixation on machinery. It is, for example, commonplace to say that radio changed American journalism. But what really changed American journalism during the 1920s was the emergence of radio in a particular social context. After all, radio also came to Iceland, China, and Botswana, and when it did, the very same technology had very different impacts. —Some works, usually more polemical than scholarly, pursue a Conspiracy theory in American journalism. These works (like Brock’s Republican Noise Machine or Goldberg’s Bias) construe the practice of journalism as a cover for the practice of partisan poli- tics, and they usually perceive a guiding hand behind the actions, practices, and attitudes of working journalists. In these works, the media are serving (or advancing) one party, usually for selfish or nefarious reasons. Sometimes, the practitioners of this view adopt the stance of bias-hunters, and their work often finds a ready audience eager to have its suspicions confirmed. It is an open question

144 • American Journalism — whether such works qualify as scholarship, but they are too numer- ous to ignore altogether. —We have Fred S. Siebert’s famous Four Theories of the Press, published in 1956. This was an admirable attempt to bring system- atic thought to the field, but it is now mainly an artifact of the Cold War. It is also quite unsatisfying as a guide to thinking about history because it says little about the process of change. The authoritarian, libertarian, “social responsibility,” and Communist models all co- exist, but it is hard to see where each one came from, or how any one of these models would ever change. —We have the Biographical method. There are many terrific and well-reserached biographies in journalism history, but they cannot solve all our problems. For example, Walter Winchell is the subject of a fine biography by Neal Gabler, and Walter Lippmann is the subject of a fine biography by Ronald Steel. Yet, a reader can find almost no mention of Lippmann in the Winchell book and vice- versa, even though both men were almost exact contemporaries and each man dominated his own sub-genre of journalism for decades. A reader of either biography could readily draw the conclusion that the other journalist was not important. Biography focuses our attention on prominent and well-documented individuals, at the risk of slighting all else. —Recently, W. Joseph Campbell has proposed an approach based on the Single-Year study.5 In his hands, this approach has yielded notable results, as in his study of Yellow Journalism focusing on the year 1897. The single-year approach has the added advantage of connecting scholars across specialties, since it used by classicists, medievalists, and others. At the same time, however, this idea has its limits, notably in tracking trends over long periods of time. —We have the Social History approach (such as David Paul Nord’s focus on the audience in his Communities of Journalism), which has shown great power and potential. This work, effectively, turns the lens around and directs the reader’s gaze away from the owners or producers of journalism and onto the consumers. This very promising field includes some important work on the history of literacy, but there is a lot more to do in terms of studying the audience. What was the experience of consuming news for various audiences over the past 300 years? How did it change? Why? These are important questions. —We have the Sociological school (which includes not only Alfred M. Lee and Sidney Kobre, but also Michael Schudson, Her- bert Gans, Todd Gitlin, Paul Starr and others). The sociologists

— Winter 2009 • 145 have done some of the most important work in our field, and most journalism historians owe them a large debt. Their publications are among the most widely cited in the field, precisely because they bring theory to bear. Even so, we need to be careful about borrow- ings from sociology—as well as from anthropology, for that matter, or literary criticism, philosophy, or other fields. We have much to learn from the sociologists, but ultimately, we have to recognize that they are in a different discipline from ours, because the central problem they address is not change over time. Sociologists study people in groups or they examine institutions, but in the main they do not propound theories of historical change. A promising specialty is the field of historical sociology, which may offer a useful synthesis of sociological and historical theory.6

As historians, we need our own theories—and given the state of the field, the more, the better. We cannot expect to have them provided by other fields. As we go about hypothesizing, refining, and critiquing theories, we must ask: What do we want from a good theory? I submit that any for any theory to be useful in history, it should have the following qualities:

—It should be universal, across space and time. It should apply in pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial societies, and it should work equally well in Alabama and Zambia. —It should be scalable, providing insight at the level of individuals, groups, and whole societies. —It should balance determinism and contingency. (To para- phrase a famous historian: People make their own history, but they do not make it entirely of their own choosing.7) —It should explain patterns and trends without presupposing any ultimate purpose. All of history is change, but not all change is purposeful. —It should help to reduce intellectual isolation and connect our field to broad trends in other disciplines. —Above all, it should be dynamic in the sense that it helps us understand change over time.

Whether such a theory is desirable is self-evident. Whether it is possible is an open question.

146 • American Journalism — [Note: This paper is based on research for my book, Covering America: A Narrative History of Three Centuries of U.S. Journalism, which is forthcoming from UMass Press. Although these ideas are not argued explicitly in that book, they are embedded in the narrative and inform the whole undertaking.

An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the AJHA-AEJMC joint confer- ence, March 2006, Fordham University, New York. Thanks to those colleagues who responded with suggestions.]

Endnotes

1 Carey, James W. “The Problem of Journalism History.” Journalism His- tory I (Spring 1974). 2 “ ‘Putting the World at Peril’: A Conversation with James W. Carey.” Jour- nalism History 12 (Summer 1985). 3 Frederic Hudson may have founded this school as early as 1872, followed by James Melvin Lee and Willard Bleyer. 4 Turner, Beard, Parrington, Alfred M. Lee—all attacked conservative owners. 5 W. Joseph Campbell, The Year that Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms. New York: Routledge, 2006. 6 For a masterful review of the field, see the article by the late eminent scholar Charles Tilly, “Three Visions of History and Theory,” History and Theory, Vol. 46, No. 2, May 2007. 7 Karl Marx, in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, wrote: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing al- ready, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead genera- tions weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

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The Historiography of Journalism History: Part 2: “Toward a New Theory”

By Chris Daly Boston University

This essay puts forward a theory of change in the field of U.S. journalism history that promises a new interpretation of the major periods in the 300-year span of the news business in America. It rests on three key propositions: 1. The most important characteristic of the news business in America is that it is an economic enterprise. It has taken place, pre- dominantly, in a setting of private business. The activities of gather- ing and disseminating news and views could have been organized differently: as a government ministry, as a public utility, as an organ for a party or church, as a product of individuals only (and not corporations), as a “wiki” enterprise. But none of those models prevailed. Instead, the undertaking was embedded in the vehicle of private enterprise. Usually, the vehicle has been a for-profit enterprise, but not always. From that fundamental fact, many consequences flow. There- fore, it is essential to focus on the business model in journalism (as a few historians have done, in a few periods). The most important engine of change over time in American journalism is economic. It is not the only one, but is the most important and most consistent single one. In looking at almost any kind of enterprise, undertaking, or institution, a historian will want to ask certain questions: How is it organized? Who or what determines that organizational scheme? Where does it get resources? Who decides how those resources are allocated? (These are questions that would be asked in a history of the U.S. Marine Corps or the Girl Scouts. But it is surprising to see how often they are not asked in journalism history, especially in the “How X Covered Y” monograph, which usually turns on the virtues or defects of some individual’s character.) 2. Because journalism is lodged in the business world, change often comes to journalism because of broader changes sweeping through the general economy. The news business is not isolated from the rest of the economy. Indeed, for most of its existence, the news business has been not only a large business itself but has also func- tioned (through advertising, spreading news about prices, and so on)

148 • American Journalism — in a way that has affected the economy as a whole.1 For example, it might be observed that one of the most important and pervasive trends in the U.S. economy during the twentieth century was the rise to dominance of the large-scale, publicly traded corporation. The news business, especially, the newspaper business, was initially resistant to that change, and many papers remained in the hands of sole proprietors or families. Starting with the Dow Jones company in 1963, however, the newspaper industry rapidly suc- cumbed to the dominant trend, usually for the same reasons that other types of businesses had done so earlier: the need for ever-greater amounts of capital, squabbles among heirs, the tax advantages, and the potential for greater returns through sale to outsiders. No sooner had newspapers converted to publicly traded corporations than they began to be bought and sold, usually combined with other papers into chains and eventually combined with other types of media or entirely unrelated businesses into giant conglomerates. In this way, newspapers were transformed, as businesses, by changes in the overall economy. As part of the economy, the news media could hardly be expected to remain exceptional. 3. When change comes to the economics of the news business, the change can be expected to force a tension between the impera- tives of the new business model and the prevailing culture of news. This process leads to a new interpretation of the values, professional norms, and guiding philosophy of what we might call “news culture” in order to find a working reconciliation between culture and economics. The term “culture” is sometimes used as a catch-all or a black box that is called upon to explain all manner of phenomena. In the context of journalism history, the problem of culture is central, for several reasons. First, the news business is itself a form of culture, in the sense that the contents of journalism are themselves cultural. Although the work is usually embodied in some tangible medium like paper or videotape, those conveyances are not valuable in themselves; journalism is valued for the information, images, ideas, and arguments it contains. At the same time, of course, journalism is also the product of a particular culture, in that it reflects the views and values of the individuals who create it. In the second sense, the culture of news—that is, the ideas, values, and attitudes that pervade the newsroom—is a central concern of journalism history. In my view, it is inextricably bound up with the economy of news. Changes in news culture are not random, and they are usually not driven by changes in the general culture. Instead,

— Winter 2009 • 149 it is the changes in the economy of news (which come from several sources) that propel changes in the culture of news. The economic change does not determine the cultural change; it just determines the necessity for some change. The outcome is contingent, but the process is not. Consider, for example, the great transformation of the big-city daily newspaper during the nineteenth century. The big dailies went from being a small-scale trade conducted along craft lines to being a large-scale industry organized along factory lines. By the second half of the century, it was clear that the older “shop” model was doomed, and that the factory model would prevail—bringing with it not just new machinery but a new way of organizing the workforce. Instead of the master printer running a small, independent, local shop, the big papers adopted an elaborate division of labor, in which most em- ployees could look forward to nothing but a lifetime of waged labor. One response on the level of news culture was an upsurge of interest in professionalism late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth. Professionalism, especially in the form of the ideal that the journalist should be independent, was a cultural adaptation to economic change, one that gradually gained force until the coming of the Internet upset the economic apple cart once again and precipitated a new cultural crisis in American journalism.

Theory and Method: Periodization

To allow us to think productively about change over time—that is, to let theory prove its utility—we need to apply theory, using specific historical methods. One of the most powerful of all the historical methods is periodization. By periodization I mean the intellectual effort to examine the past for the purpose of noticing eras of time (of any length) in which an issue of particular interest appears to be stable. It is the first step in thinking about change. If we are to notice change, we must have a backdrop of comparative stability against which to perceive it. Then, of course, we can begin to reason productively about the causes or impacts of the change we are interested in. A historical period, it could be said, is an era of some duration in which something worth measuring appears fairly stable within the period and different from other periods. These distinctions are, of course, artificial but not entirely arbitrary. They ask us to suspend our awareness of the unceasing flow and the untidy mess of human life. Change is an unruly process; people and institutions usually change

150 • American Journalism — at different rates. Eras rarely start and stop on command. Neverthe- less, the practice of periodization can be a powerful tool for under- standing the process of change over time. Indeed, across any long stretch of time, it is nearly impossible to think in an orderly way about the past as entirely undifferentiated phenomena; it is difficult to reason about the past without seeing patterns that make some stretch- es of time seem more similar or coherent and the intervals between them relatively turbulent. We may disagree about the definition of a particular period, but we would not want to dispense with the method altogether.

Using the economic/cultural theory I have proposed, we can apply it to identify periods of continuity and intervals of change in the history of U.S. journalism. That process of periodization allows us, in turn, to think about the field—on almost any time scale—in pro- ductive ways. In examining the past three centuries and attempting to synthesize the work of many scholars, I argue that there have been fivemajor periods in U.S. journalism history. What follows is a brief synopsis of the dominant trend during each period, focusing on the recurrent economic changes that have prompted recurrent cultural changes. In addition, I have prepared a chart that attempts to track certain specific themes across the same span of years. (See below.)

ERA #1: The politicization of news (1704-1832)

This period saw the transformation from a fairly timid, business- oriented press to a fairly robust, partisan press, relying on the traditional “shop model” (master/ journeyman/ apprentice). At first, the definition of news was information of commercial value, along with a miscellany of items aimed at avoiding conflict. But over the course of this period, the logic of the business model created a challenge: printers had to take a side in the rising ideological polarization, or go out of business. Many (although not all) editors attempted to resolve the challenge by becoming partisan.

ERA #2. The commercialization of news (1833-97)

The commercialization of news during the nineteenth century (as noted by Baldasty and others) relied on a new “factory model” of newspaper organization, one that made it possible for publishers to build the big-city daily into a powerhouse of profit and influence. In

— Winter 2009 • 151 doing so, publishers destroyed the older “shop model,” substituting employment for wages instead of the traditional route to master. At the start, the definition of news was: whatever helps the party. But as the leading business model changed—to the big-scale factory —the social organization of work underwent a profound change, with political consequences.2 The mass production of news created a new challenge: editors must reach the mass urban audience. So, papers became less overtly partisan in an attempt to grow beyond the party “base.” That drove a change in newsroom culture that embraced the idea that news is whatever a mass audience will buy.

ERA #3: The professionalization of news (1900-1974)

In this period, the triumph of the factory model gave rise to anxi- ety about the practice of journalism. Beginning in the late nineteenth Century, some news leaders like Pulitzer attempted to bring professional standards and norms to news (including schools, professional associations, and the like); a primary professional value for journalists that emerged in this period was independence, which culminated in the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cases. As the period began, the definition of news was: whatever sells. But the business model changed again, as family papers turned corporate, which presented a challenge to the old ways. As of the 1920s, radio and the weekly news magazine (TIME) also started to carry news, establishing the stock corporation in the news business. Some journalists attempted to resolve the contradiction by going professional. The ideal of professionalization was thrown up as a bulwark against the degradation of reporting into a boozy, sensationalistic, dead-end. Instead, the professional model saw journalism as a well-paid, independent, responsible pursuit.

ERA #4: The conglomeration of news. (1965-1995)

The conglomeration of news began when owners found a new business model in the publicly traded corporation. Drawing on existing models in radio and television, owners of print journalism joined the broader economic movement toward highly capitalized enterpris- es, sometimes on a global scale, in which key decisions about resources were no longer made by journalists but by business executives. In another key trend, most newspaper owners sought to establish local monopolies (pursuing a business value, not a journalistic one). The big, for-profit media outlets became profit centers, to be combined

152 • American Journalism — and re-combined in conglomerates by profit-maximizing global business executives. In response, the definition of news changed once again. One new definition was the rise of infotainment (in the forms of talk radio and celebrity news). Another was the rise of non-profit models (AP, NPR, PBS) as alternatives, which came to do more and more of the original reporting. In addition, a few important special cases (the Times and the Post) have—thus far—found ways to evade the harshest demands of the market by remaining in the hands of owners who mix non-economic motives with economic ones.

ERA #5: The digitization of news. (1995- )

The Internet, considered as both a new technology and a new set of social relations, has smashed the old business model. The Web has choked off both sides of the dual revenue stream for newspapers and magazines (thanks to innovations like Craigslist and “free” on- line viewing of content). The Web has reduced the “barriers to entry” in journalism almost to zero, allowing everyone with a computer to enter the field. This trend, in turn, has encouraged a journalism of assertion (in order to be noticed) and it has imperiled the older, factual ideal of reporting. The “legacy” media have come to see that they must adapt or die.

Conclusion

In brief, I see journalism as a field in which, historically, change is a dynamic process that can best be understood by seeing news as a business rooted in the general U.S. economy. When change comes to the business model, it creates a recurring series of crises, which in turn force a response from the prevalent news culture, which must resolve the crisis within the parameters of the emerging business model. The results will vary endlessly, but the process is recurrent. When applied to the mass of data that is known about the past 300 years of journalism in America, the theory yields one way of periodizing the field that would not be possible otherwise.

[Note: This paper is based on research for my book, Covering America: A Narrative History of Three Centuries of U.S. Journalism, which is forthcoming from UMass Press. Although these ideas are not argued explicitly in that book, they are embedded in the narrative and inform the whole undertaking.

An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the AJHA-AEJMC joint confer- ence, March 2006, Fordham University, New York. Thanks to those colleagues who responded with suggestions.]

— Winter 2009 • 153 PERIODS IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM by Chris Daly, Boston University 1704-1832 1833-1900 Journalistic era The politicization of news Commercialization of news

Major trends Papers are small, Owners expand operations to independent, opinionated. the scale of factory, elaborate Initially timid, they are the division of labor, and forced by readers to take turn the big-city daily into sides. a powerhouse of profit and influence.

Key form of ownership Master printer (sole Private corp.; partnership; proprietor) family trust.

Leading business model The print shop (master, The factory journeyman, apprentice)

Revenue sources Subscriptions, (ltd adv), Advertising, subscriptions government subsidies

Key technologies Hand-powered press, Steam-powered, rotary movable type (Gutenberg) presses. Photography.

Audience White male elites All literate whites, including immigrants and women.

Dominant Philosophy of Political argumentation; Anything that sells papers. news party-building; serving commerce

Relation to government Initially subservient, later a Increasingly independent partner.

Characteristic frequency Weekly → daily Daily

Emblematic figures Franklin, Paine, Bache Pulitzer, Hearst, Ochs

Contemporaneous The commercial press “movement papers,” alternatives (Garrison) small-town (these categories are weeklies, black and ethnic cumulative) papers, labor and socialist papers, the AP (a non-profit cooperative)

154 • American Journalism — PERIODS IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM Cont. 1900-1974 1965-1995 1995- Professionalization of news The conglomeration of news The digitization of news

Papers grow. Some Media outlets become profit The Internet shatters the old journalists aspire to centers, controlled by global business model, diverting professional standards and business executives who are revenues from advertising prestige. Radio and the not journalists. Many seek and circulation while also weekly news magazine monopoly or oligopoly. lowering barriers to entry. challenge newspapers.

Privately held corporations. Stockholders Individuals

Larger operations; media Publicly traded corporations; Sole propietorship chains. transnational conglomerates.

Advertising, subscriptions Advertising, subscriptions, On-line advertising Sponsors (radio) stock sale, carrier fees.

Electric presses, radio, film Computerized typesetting, Computers, digital cameras, photography, newsreels. radio, TV, cable, magazines, the Internet. ENG, etc.

Entire adult population. All literate adults (plus the All computer users illiterate).

Non-partisan factuality Factuality/ opinion/ infotain- News is a conversation, not ment a lecture.

From partnership (WWI Increasingly regulated, TBD & WWII) to challenging increasingly partisan. (Vietnam, Watergate).

A.M and P.M. news cycles 24/7 coverage Non-stop posting

Sarnoff, Sulzbergers, Luce Murdoch, Turner, Neuharth Marshall, Drudge, Huffington

“patron” publications Family-run corporations, All “legacy” media. (Atlantic), syndication, think-tank outlets, partisan Corp. for Public Broadcasting organs, blogs

Endnotes 1 See Douglass C. North on the role of institutions in economic history. 2 See Sean Wilentz’s Chants Democratic.

— Winter 2009 • 155