Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers (History of Communication) [Hardcover]

David Paul Nord (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0252026713 | ISBN-13: 978-0252026713 | Publication Date: September 25, 2001

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 journalism in the U.S., 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. Newspapers helped to shape the idea of the American nation in the decades after the revolution. They helped to organize support for the abolition of slavery and for municipal reform movements, from street railway regulation to trash collection. Amid industrial upheaval, they helped to articulate a vision of public community and to build a new, collective life in the city.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, such as readers' private letters and diaries in the late eighteenth century and letters to the editor in an early twentieth-century Chicago newspaper, Nord also examines how ordinary readers make sense of what they read and how they use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life. Illuminating how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, "Communities of Journalism" is a deeply satisfying contribution to the cultural history of American journalism and to the history of reading.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Collects 12 essays written during the past 20 years by a leading journalism historian... Provides examples from more than two centuries of how newspapers fostered a sense of cultural identity in U.S. society and influenced community participation... Well annotated and clearly written throughout, this volume stands as a distinctive scholarly effort." -- Choice "Nord ... a skilled and incisive practitioner of journalism history, has collected in this volume his essays of the last twenty years, centered on the theme of newspapers and their communities. In the most entertaining, he traces the sources of today's tabloid news to the bizarre occurrences recorded tot show the divine hand at work in seventeenth-century New England. At the other end chronologically, he finds that the search of public, or civic, journalism, for a single, unified community fails to come to grips with the realities of power in a divided, 'interest-group society.'" -- James Boylan, Columbia Journalism Review "Almost without exception, the essays in Communities of Journalism attain a balance that is rare in the scholarship of journalism history. The studies attend to the nuts and bolts of newspaper production while also venturing outward to engage the big issues of social and cultural history; they offer generalizations that would satisfy most social scientists, yet support them with detail that is characteristic of a humanist's work; they tell complex stories in a precise, nuanced style that is never so subtle or technical that it confounds meaning." Indiana Magazine of History "In each of his separate essays, Nord gives a model of not only deeply developed ideas but careful use of the primary media sources complemented by the latest historical studies with many explanations in his endnotes." Journalism History "...brings together some of the most insightful and cogent statements about the meaning and significance of news, and the institutions that produce the news, to American history. ...This book should be read by established and young scholars alike. ... this book is certain to become a classic study of American draft resisters in Canada." American Historical ReviewADVANCE PRAISE:"David Paul Nord is our most versatile historian of American journalism. In Communities of Journalism, he reads newspapers through their communities and brilliantly reads readers through their newspapers in ways original, accessible, and eye-opening." -- Michael Schudson, author of The Power of News"These lucid essays are notably successful in connecting the history of journalism with social and cultural history; and when Nord turns to the history of reading, the data he has brought together and interpreted is of the highest importance." -- David D. Hall, author of Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book

From the Inside Flap

"David Paul Nord is our most versatile historian of American journalism. In Communities of Journalism, he reads newspapers through their communities and brilliantly reads readers through their newspapers in ways original, accessible, and eye-opening." -- Michael Schudson, author of The Power of News "These lucid essays are notably successful in connecting the history of journalism with social and cultural history; and when Nord turns to the history of reading, the data he has brought together and interpreted is of the highest importance." -- David D. Hall, author of Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (September 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252026713
• ISBN-13: 978-0252026713
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,693,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.