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Soc (2011) 48:8487DOI 10.1007/s12115-010-9386-3
BOOK REVIEW
Christopher H. Sterling, ed., Encyclopedia of Journalism
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2009. 6 vols., 3,136 pp. $795. ISBN-10: 0761929576; ISBN-13: 978-0761929574
Stephen Bates
Published online: 30 November 2010# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
In 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse showed off his magnetic telegraph by sending the message What hath God wrought? from Washington to his partner, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. In a follow-up demonstration two days later, Morse asked, Have you any news? Vail replied, No.
But news soon zipped over the fast-spreading telegraph network. A year after the Baltimore-Washington tryouts, one newspaper went so far as to predict that the invention would kill off much of journalism. The New York Herald said that the papers will experience to a degree, that must in a vast number of cases be fatal, the effects of the new mode of circulating intelligence.... The mere newspapers the circulators of intelligence merelymust submit to destiny and go out of existence. People would get the latest news directly by telegraph, it seems. The telegraph did end up revolutionizing newsgathering, especially with the rise of the Associated Press, yet news delivery remained much the same. Rather than congregating around telegraph tickers to hear the latest, people continued to rely on those mere newspapers.
Today, though, the threat is more palpable than in 1845. Newspaper statistics from the indispensable Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism range from discouraging to chilling. (The situation is bleak for other news media too, though it seems that cable news is beginning to rebound.) The typical newspaper stock is down 80 to 90 percent from its peak. In the last three years, newsroom employment has fallen by a quarter. Newspaper circulation has dropped by
over a quarter since 2000though as James Fallows points out in The Atlantic, the trend predates the Internet. Newspapers sold 1.4 copies per household in 1947. Now its below 0.5.
What the Internet has brought about is a hemorrhage in ad sales. In the last three years, newspapers ad revenue has fallen by over 40 percent, mostly due to competition from online firms outside the news business. In particular, the largely free Craigslist has undermined the sale of classified ads, which once accounted for close...