TY - JOUR
AU - Schudson, Michael
AB - Question authority: a history of the news interview in American journalism, 1860s-1930s Michael Schudson DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The interview is the fundamental act of contemporary journalism. Reporters rely overwhelmingly on interviews; according to a study of Washington reporters in the 1980s, journalists depend so heavily on interviews that they use no documents at all in nearly three-quarters of the stories they write (Hess, 1981: 18, 52). This has not always been the case. While newspapers in America date to the early .17OOs, the interview as accepted journalistic practice cannot be traced back before the 1860s. The early colonial press devoted most of its editorial space to news items found in London papers with a sprinkling of essays of moral instruction, humor and letters. After about 1765, as the press grew overtly partisan, essays and letters on topics of political controversy became central but there was little that a modern reader would 1820s, as both political combat and recognize as ‘reporting’. In the commercial competition increased, leading urban dailies began to hire reporters to gather news; with the coming of the commercially minded ‘penny papers’ of the 1830s’ reporters covered local news as never before, 
TI - Question Authority: A History of the News Interview in American Journalism, 1860s–1930s
JF - Media, Culture & Society
DO - 10.1177/016344379401600403
DA - 1994-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/question-authority-a-history-of-the-news-interview-in-american-G3w0RrPY6d
SP - 565
EP - 587
VL - 16
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -