'The history of news since the nineteenth century has been the history of a translation from popular defined as "for the people", to popular as "for the market"' (Hartley, 1982:130). Discuss with reference to examples from today's popular press.
This essay will begin by defining the press as popular "for the people". Newspapers were once the bearers of education, in all it's shapes and forms, working for the benefit of the people. Now, the popular press, following in the traditional Sunday paper's footsteps they have become the conveyors of light, and often salacious, entertainment. This essay will continue by discussing the changing nature and role of the popular press, which was typically represented by small radical, liberal newspapers, prior to the nineteenth-Century. It will consider the decline in government controls and the subsequent growth of enterprise capitalism. It will show how technological and commercial change transformed the press to popular, as "for the market", and what this meant for the people.
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English: Ad for Hearst papers 1920s William Randol...
The Brooklyn Eagle's Washington bureau office, str...The emergence of a cheap daily press by commodification, which occurred in the late 1800's, led to an ever increasing reading public. The press's progressive change to a market commodity in the nineteenth-Century, led to the erosion of social and intellectual deference. The application of photography a further factor contributing to the radical alteration of the press and subsequent commercial development. (Marshall, 1983:11) As well as technological developments this essay will examine the effects of massive growth in advertising during this period, and more importantly advertising revenue. It will continue by seeking to explain the economic control driving the press. (Marshall, 1983:20) Finally this essay will strive to clarify, with examples and analysis of today's press, the dramatic changes brought about within the newspaper industry that have led to the mass medium " for the market" that we have...