Introduction to Journalism

Fundamentals of Journalism

• Journalism involves gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information
• It has existed since people felt the need to share information
• The study of journalism is valuable for understanding how news shapes perceptions and realities

Role of Journalism

• News acts as a social connector, uniting readers through shared stories of current events
• It's tied to democracy, shaping citizens' identities and enabling conversations between citizens and representatives
• News provides essential information for personal lives and livelihoods
• An open, democratic society requires independent news media

Defining News and Journalism

• News is informative content of importance, defined by timeliness, exclusivity, conflict, proximity, prominence, relevance, and scale
• Includes political reports, sports results, and celebrity updates
• Excludes personal social media posts
• Journalism involves producing news through information gathering and storytelling techniques, including watchdog roles

The Function of Journalism in Modernity

• It is the primary sense-making practice of modernity that advances narratives and provides a collective memory
• Called "the first draft of history," used by historians to understand different eras
• It articulates consensus and conflicts, capturing the drama between ideology and challengers

Journalism Studies as a Field

• Studying journalism is crucial for understanding contemporary culture
• Journalism studies is a growing field with new journals like Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism

Journalism and News

• Journalism encompasses gathering, processing, and delivering information through various media
• It is concerned with news, which differs from information due to its public nature

Objectivity in Journalism

• News reports must be accurate and objective, free of reporter's feelings or opinions, and based on verifiable facts
• Verification is essential for ensuring truth and accuracy
• Fairness and evenhandedness are important, though difficult to achieve

Discipline of Verification: Core Concepts

• Transparency: Showing your work so readers decide for themselves why they should believe it
• Humility: Keeping an open mind about what you hear and your own ability to understand
• Originality: Doing your own work and reporting what you can directly vouch for

Transparency Guidelines

• Avoid deceiving the audience through omissions.
• Disclose what you know and what you don't.
• Reveal sources, their potential biases, and their positions to know the information
• Transparency respects the audience, allowing them to assess information validity
• Transparency protects against errors and deception by biased sources

Journalistic Humility

• Journalists must keep an open mind
• Exercise humility, avoid assumptions, and avoid arrogance about your knowledge
• Recognize your own fallibility and the limitations of understanding

Journalistic Originality

• Reporters must always do their own work to ensure that information is accurate
• Failure to check information from someone else is when something is most often wrongly reported

Journalism Under Scrutiny

• Questioning if journalism is a benevolent force and if is really does provide a check on state power
• Press has been heavily instrumentalist in some parts of the world, being used to advance national socialist ideology or used to facilitate genocide

Shifting Focus in Journalism Research

• An increasing interest to trace consequences of changes in journalism organizations as results of political, economics, and technological change
• These changes are happening in journalist organizations, production practice, content, and audiences

Historical Context of Journalism

• Journalism history tracks news culture's rise in print and media
• Since the 1970s, journalism history has struggled with its identity compared to media history

Studying Journalism Histories

• The best approach is to historicize them, showing how writing journalism histories has been part of defining news culture
• History acts as a tool to critique professional journalism by showing how it's contingent and entangled

Origins of Journalism History

• Intellectual interest in means of communication evolution
• New technologies (steam press, broadcasting) and also in journalist stories
• Historical awareness is itself a feature of journalism's development

Influence of the Printing Press

• The printing press significantly developed journalism, ending a gap between the mass and elite classes
• Allowed books and newspapers to be made available for the masses

Johann Gutenberg

• Known as the father of modern printing, he invented the printing press in 1440 in Germany
• Although people knew of printing like the Chinese and Korean people, he perfected it
• Created movable typeface came into market
• His invention transmitted knowledge, culture, and heritage and revolutionized printing technology
• The first modern printed book was his Gutenberg Bible

Impact of Movable Type

• Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type in 1439 revolutionized printing.
• Moveable type allowed faster printing which helped knowledge spread
• Printing has advanced due to technological advancements

Journalism in Post-Independence India

• Raja Rammohan Ray and British Journalists in India like James Silk Buckingham demanded a free press during the British era
• Resulted in newspapers rooted in British territories by the administration, with no criticism or inconvenient news
• 19th century newspapers consisted of cultural arms of British imperialism.
• gradual tools of the freedom movement played an active role in India's cultural renaissance
• Anti-colonialism continued and so India had a divide between Government owned broadcasting system and private press

Post-Independence Indian Media Landscape

• Nation-building was done in a vast, geographically and culturally diverse country with 23 official languages
• Popular journalism grew, newspapers vehicle for struggle.
• Missionary work kept getting done with social responsibility valued more
• 70s saw shifted technology from hit metal to offset print
• Gandhi took control
• Government Advertising
• Took control of 4 private news agencies
• Fear of journalists/shareholders

Post-Emergency Growth and Changes

• Indian daily circulations increased after 1977
• India's regional language newspapers are much larger than English-language newspapers
• India's television changed after 1992.
• Content across platforms as media began to become increasingly managerial

Shift in Media Business Practices

• 1980s newspapers were modest, then Newsrooms made profits and “paid news” flourished
• In 2009 India's election commission found purchasing paid news although activities still continue today
• Scholars criticized India's television news and endorsements

Current Trends in Indian Journalism

• The press produces editions to participate in ownership
• Mobile newspapers, started.

Trade vs. Profession

• The question of journalism is asked if its a trade or profession depending on if it had educational pathways vs. habitual work training
• It becomes difficult in determining what journalism is and public is influenced

Laws Struggling

• This revealed because considerable uncertainty
• It is may be the act but or maybe just publication
• Educational pathways give jobs, they need an organization that can do such

Contradictory Positions

• As Deuze says there is dichotomy here from the theory compared to education
• Journalisms need the Western support of political of a society

Key Reminders

• Be critical about democratic education
• Internet changes views
• Increasing intervention due to communications

How Journalism Affects View

• Some journalists are on progress
• self-criticize is important because of institution
• Democracy must provide in society

Purpose

• People can make up citizenship
• Journalism make what government do right
• Freedom and independence from being controlled

New changes to journalism

• Can see changes when a news image is reviewed
• If you can not trust the process, inevitably make the new source of information
• News that is always important