Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers

by Nord, David Paul

• ISBN13: 9780252026713
• ISBN10: 0252026713
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Newspapers do more than provide information. They enter into the process of forming communities, from voluntary associations to cities to nation-states.

Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of American journalism, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.

Nord perceives the daily press as an arena in which a broad cross-section of the populace -- ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, and economically stratified -- could participate in a common culture. During times of crisis, such as the yellow fever epidemic that gripped Philadelphia in 1793, newspapers sustained the bonds of community life. Amassing concrete historical evidence, Nord also examines how ordinary readers make sense of what they read and how they use journalism to form community attachments

Author Biography

David Paul Nord is a professor of journalism and American studies and an adjunct professor of history at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Communication and Community	1	(30)
PART 1: COMMUNITIES OF PRODUCTION
Teleology and News: The Religious Roots of American Journalism, 1630 --- 1730	31	(34)
The Authority of Truth: Religion and the John Peter Zenger Case	65	(15)
Newspapers and American Nationhood, 1776 - 1826	80	(12)
Tocqueville, Garrison, and the Perfection of Journalism	92	(16)
The Public Community: The Urbanization of Journalism in Chicago	108	(25)
The Business Values of American Newspapers: The Nineteenth-Century Watershed	133	(19)
The Paradox of Municipal Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century	152	(23)
PART 2: COMMUNITIES OF RECEPTION
A Republican Literature: A Study of Magazine Readers and Reading in Late Eighteenth-Century New York	175	(24)
Readership as Citizenship in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia	199	(26)
Working-Class Readers: Family, Community, and Reading in Late Nineteenth-Century America	225	(21)
Reading the Newspaper: Strategies and Politics of Reader Response, Chicago, 1912 --- 17	246	(32)
Readers Love to Argue about the News---But Not in Newspapers	278	(7)
Afterword: Newspapers, Readers, and Communities Today	285	(4)
Index	289