NRJ Book Review: The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms

Abstract

The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms, by W. Joseph Campbell (New York: Routledge, 2006) 344 pages, $27.95 (paperback).Reviewed by Ronald R. RodgersTo give the study breadth, it should cover a sufficient span of years to disclose trends, to allow for the lag between events and the comments which would follow.... So goes a work of history's typical rationalization for why a study looks at a particular chunk of time.However, the other-and much rarer-approach is the study, a method that W. Joseph Campbell both successfully realizes and defends as a productive approach to revealing what he calls the pivotal moments in the history of journalism.The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms is about a year the author describes as exceptional. In that year, a clash of in the midst of a perfect storm of experiment and wrought changes and created journalistic traditions we still live and struggle with today-even as we must deal with new modes of communication that are driving another transition to new paradigms. The most exciting or worrisomedepending upon your point of view-of these experiments is blogging, which is challenging the notion of objective even as bloggers gain more legitimacy.That said, Campbell has written a history that is relevant to our own times. And, while it is about just one year, it is a multi-faceted study about many things.For one, it is a deep look at both well-known and little-known events and debates of that in their totality reveal the clash of at the center of Campbell's argument. A quite useful timeline-de rigueur for such a concentrated history-at the front of the book outlines many of the media events of 1897. These include The New York Tribune's publication of a halftone photo that showed the process was possible with a high-speed web; Richard Harding Davis' now classic tale of the execution of a Cuban rebel that is still taught today as an exemplar of the power of literary journalism; the rise of and battles about yellow journalism; such things as major sporting events, the Alaskan gold rush, infamous crimes and violent labor strife-all of which became fodder for a new kind of that helped redefine news; some of the much-publicized examples of participatory-and often advocacy-journalism that drew readers to the papers of the day; and, contrarily, note of The New York Times' unheralded front-page slogan All the News That's Fit to Print.In addition, Campbell also surveys in detail several examples of exceptional during the year 1897. These were The New York Sun's classic Christmas editorial, Richard Harding Davis' reporting from Cuba, and the works of the remarkable foreign correspondent Sylvester (Harry) Scovel.Through exploring the media events and journalistic exemplars of 1897, Campbell reveals the different philosophies about coverage to which newspapers adhered. And in it, he shows how each of these different paradigms were-in a sense-battling for the survival of their own journalistic models. It was a battle, Campbell tells us, that The New York Times' detached, impartial, yet authoritative treatment of the news would ultimately win and in the process set the course for in America through the next century. The opposing paradigms were first, William Randolph Hearst's yellow journalism of action, which was participatory in nature and acted as advocate and change agent, and second, Lincoln Steffens' literary approach, best represented by the writing that appeared in the New York Commercial Advertiser where he was city editor. …