What Can Journalism History Teach Us About the Present?

Have you ever wondered about The Evolution of The Summary News Lead, or when the first stock average was published in a newspaper? Maybe you want to read about famous journalists (did you know Ernest Hemingway started out as a journalist?). As you might expect, there are a lot of great resources on the Web about the history of journalism.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like some stuff going on around us could make it into the journalism history books. While many ponder questions about what the future of journalism will look like, it’s also a good time to reflect on the past (you know, that thing about history repeating itself?).

It’s easy to see how some could view the Internet as a threat to newspapers, when you look at how telegraph fans must have felt about radio waves (as a side note, the telegraph transformed journalism forever, serving as the foundation for the first wire service). The Internet is just the latest medium to come into favor. We’re moving forward, not backward. I’m sure we’ll get freaked out someday when our kids start getting information in yet a new way (communicating via telepathy for example), and the Internet seems so yesterday.

Here are some great resources I found on the Web for brushing up on your journalism history:

• American Journalism Historians Association
• Center for History and New Media
• Encyclopedia of USA History: Journalists
• History of Business Journalism
• Media History Monographs
• Media History Project
• Newseum
  

(Source: most of the links referenced in this post were found on Poynter Online’s Journalism History Bibliography. Visit this site for dozens of Journalism History resources.)

What are some of your favorite moments in journalism history? What resources should I add to this list?
(Photo: cliff1066 / Cliff)

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Tagged as: journalism history, media trends