Schudson, Michael - Discovering the News.pdf

Excerpt from ''For Eugene McCarthy'' from History by Robert Lowell. Copyright C 1967. '

1969. 1970, and 1973 by Robert Lowell. Reprinted with the pennission of Farrar. Straus & Giroux. lnc.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schudson, Michael. Discovering the news : a social history oí American newspapers. lncludes bibliographical reíerences and index. 1. Journalism-United States-History. 2. -Objcctivity. PN48SS.S3

l. Tille. 071'.3

Journalism

78-54997

ISBN: 0-465-01669-3 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-465-01666-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-465-01666-2 (paper)

Copyrig.bt C 1978 by Basic Books, lnc. Printed in the United States of America /Hsigned by Vincent Torre

'

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Janowitz, Peter Novick, Paul Starr, Gaye Tuchman, and my most thoughtful editor at Basic Books, Martin Kessler. For critica! reading of the introduction, 1 want to thank Herbert Gans; for chapter one, Robert Ferguson; for chapter three, N eil Harris; for chapter four, Ronald Steel; a.n d for chapter five, Paul Hirsch, Robert Manoff, Martha Minow, a'nd Paul Starr. Libby Bruch at Basic Books provided expert copy editing. Financia! support for my research was provided by the Danforth Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation Residency in Law and Social Science, and the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. 1 am indebted to Alice Ryerson for a week as resident at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, where 1 drafted the final chapter. I am grateful to the score of journalists who shared their time and thoughts with me. They will see ali too well the shortcomings of this work, knowing as they do the complexjty and diversity of American journalism. 1 hope, nevertheless, that in my focus on main directions of metropolitan daily journalism and main connections between newspapers and society, they will recognize elements of a world they know. 1 owe thanks to many libraries and librarians: Widener Library at Harvard University; the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts; tb.e library of the School of Journalism, Columbia University; the New York Historical Society Library; Sterling Library at Vale University; the Library of Congress; Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago; and the Chicago Tribune archives. Many friends, colleagues, and students have led me to books or articles they thought might interest me. To handle a wide-ranging topic the art of browsing is invaluable, and 1 have been fortunate to have so many friends who share my delight in it. Why do writers so often acknowledge the obvious fact that none of the people who have helped them are responsible for the errors in the finished work? Because, as 1 now under-

'

,

X p

1

n

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

stand, a work of scholarship is a collective enterprise, even if one's style of working is solitary. When finished, the work is necessarily inadequate to the good wishes and high hopes of so many who helped it along. I remember a friend saying that the best time in pottery is the moment, with the wheel spinning, just before you shape the pot just before the infinity of possibilities becomes but one of the possible things. The process of writing is guided by ho¡.'e and ambition; the product must be defined, in part, by its limitations. A last word of thanks. Among the many things for which 1 am grateful to my parents, 1 feel particularly blessed by their encouragement, from my earliest years, to express myself in painting, in music, in poetry, in prose. With love and gratitude, 1 dedicate this book to my father and to the memory of my mother. ,

'

•

Xl

p

'

1

n

'

'

'

C.cpyri¡;~let'

1