History of Journalism

The development of journalism wasn’t possible without the invention of the movable type printing press, attributed to Gutenberg in 1456, which purpose has always been the spread of communication in different cultural contexts.

The Industrial Revolution also enabled the growth of technology and trade, marked by new specialized techniques.

Ø The first regularly published newspaper in English was The Oxford Gazette in 1665.

Ø In the U.S, the first colonial newspaper was the New England Courant, published by Printer James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s brother.

Journalism in the U.S

As American cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington grew with the rise of Industrial Revolution, so did newspapers. Technological innovations allowed newspapers to print thousands of copies, boost circulation and increase revenue.

Ø In 1851 the New York Times was founded and establishes the principle of balanced reporting in high-quality writing.

Ø By the latter half of the 1880s the print media has grown in importance around the world to a social status that rivaled even government institutions.

Journalism had risen to become the Fourth Power, commonly known as the Fourth Estate, a non-governmental private group of independent companies that had the ability to sway the general public in almost any direction they chose.

Around the world, the power of the media had become as important as the greatest heads of states of any nation.

Besides, in the U.S the constitution itself established the journalistic reporting free, independent and unregulated which allowed the rise of Yellow Journalism.

Yellow Journalism

The birth of yellow journalism was led by Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst. They owned two of the most widely read and influential newspapers in New York. Both of them competed to increase their newspaper’s circulation. Joseph Pulitzer also had to live with the fact that his chief competitor was his brother, Albert Pulitzer.

Ø Yellow Journalism is a type of journalism that presents no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of events, sensationalism, scandal-mongering and so on.

Ø In 1948, Frank Wisner the director of the CIA’s office of special projects created the Operation Mockingbird which was a Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media.

Ø The CIA had ensured the Americans could hear only those stories their government wished them to hear. As a result, the American public was being fed more and more propaganda meant to steer them in a particular direction rather than providing them with the information that they needed to make up their own minds.

Ø During the Vietnam War false information was reported back to the Americans as well as we received in our Malvina´s war. In Argentina’s case that information was controlled by the military government that had given the Press Power to the owners of Clarín, La Nación and La Razón. Besides, that military government censored information that they believed threatening to their positions.

Ø In 1983 fifty corporations controlled the majority of all news media in U.S. Ben Bagdikian wrote in his book called The Media Monopoly that in 1992 fewer than two dozens corporations owned and operated 90% of the mass media.

Ø A few years later, in 2000, in his sixth edition of the same book, the number fell to six and since them there have been more mergers and the scope has extended to include the Internet Market.

Ø Finally, in 2004 Bagdikian revised and expanded his book, The New Media Monopoly, showed that five huge corporations now control most of the media industry in U.S, they are Disney, Murdoch’s News corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom. However, as we know in Argentina this phenomenon is even worse, as the number of corporations that operate the mass media is more reduced.

Watergate

Ø June 18, 1972: There was a burglary of documents and confidential material at a Watergate office in Washington, during election time. Five men (Edward Martin, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, Virguilo Gonzalez and Bernard Barker) were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee. It was supposed that those men were helped by Hunt (CIA) and Liddy (FBI).

Ø Carl Berstein and Bob Woodward were called by the Washington Post to work on the story.

Ø They discovered that Edward Martin was a salaried security coordinator of Nixon (Republican) and that Barker had received a $25,000 check.

Ø John Mitchell was thought to have paid for the burglary and other Nixon's men were accused of sabotage, too.

Ø By 1973 there were two official investigations led by the Prosecutor Archibald Cox and Sam Erwin, from the Senate Watergate Committee.

Ø In July 1973 Alexander Butterfield, a White House aide, told the Senate Committee that Nixon had a secret taping system which recorded his phone calls and conversations in the Oval Office.

Ø There was big struggle: while Nixon was determined not to give up executive documents, the Senate Committee was determined to get them.

Ø After some months of negotiation, the White House agreed to provide written summaries of taped conversations. Erwin accepted this treat, but Cox didn't. So, Nixon ordered to fire Cox but his aides Richardson and Ruckelshows refused to and resigned. Finally Bork was the one who dismissed Cox.

Ø On November 20th, Nixon's lawyers informed a federal judge that one of the key tapes was erased.

Ø For the time Nixon declared "I'm not a crook", nobody believed him.

Ø On April 1974 Nixon announced he release of 1200 pages transcripts (they were public). The Judiciary Committe ordered the White House to hand over the tapes. A week later, Nixon did it and it was prooved that the president had played a leading role in the cover-up from the very beginnig.

Ø Before the Judiciary Committee could vote the articles of impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 8th.

Ø The journalists presented a best seller 'All the President's Men', and after that, a movie with the same name.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/06/14/VI2007061401076.html

WH Auden 1907-1973

Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

"Funeral Blues" or "Stop all the clocks" is a poem by W. H. Auden, first published in London 1936, with the revised version published in The Year's Poetry, 1938, compiled by Denys Kilham Roberts and Geoffrey Grigson (London, 1938).

The poem was set to music by Benjamin Britten and later included in a collection of settings of Auden poems under the title Cabaret Songs.

But "Funeral Blues" became popular when it appeared in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. It was read by Matthew (John Hannah) at the funeral of his partner Gareth (Simon Callow).

The poem was not written about the death of a real person. None of Auden's lovers would fit chronologically. It's one of Twelve Songs. There was a previous five stanza version, part of "The Ascent of F6" which is still copyright.

This version was written as a cabaret song for the soprano Hedli Anderson to music by Benjamin Britten. The speaker is a woman. Like the rest of the twelve songs it was satire, not pathos.

Vertigo Ensemble - "Funeral Blues" by Benjamin Britten

In the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral...

WH Auden interview

Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Night programme in 1965, Auden talks about the moment he became a poet and the purpose of poetry. Taken from Poems on the Box: Re-verse, first shown on BBC Two in 1993.

Click here to watch the interview.

T.S.Eliot´s "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"

Recently we have analysed this poem by T.S. Eliot. Here´s a reading and some explanation.This is a declaration of the Eliot's disaffection from society like Prufrock, and it written at about the same time in his life, published in 1917. He was still a virgin at the time of writing, as with Prufrock.

The narrative is Eliot's familiar "stream-of-consciousness", commonplace in writing now but at that time it was a true novelty.

La lune ne garde aucune rancune, means "The moon does not hold any resentments".

Here's some notes, you can make up your own mind what value they have:
http://everything2.com/title/rhapsody...

Andrew Lloyd Webber, who borrowed so much from T. S. Eliot, borrowed lyrics from this poem for "Memories"(song of the famous musical "Cats")

We Didn`t Start the Fire!!!

Talking about the Cold War, we analysed three songs of the 80's that represent different aspects of those times. Not only did we enjoy the music and the lyrics but we also saw how rock musicians could write music for us to dance and lyrics that make us think.

First song we talked about: "Russians" by Sting (1985) from The Dream of the Blue Turtle. As from the title we are able to guess what he will sing about.

Sting cautions about the repercussions of the Cold War including the mutually assured destruction doctrine ("there's no such thing as a winnable war/It's a lie we don't believe anymore"). Hence he hopes that the "Russians love their children too", since he sees this as the only thing that would save the world from a holocaust brought on by nuclear weapons ("Oppenheimer's deadly toy")

Our next song was "Guns in the Sky" by Australian band INXS. According to his frontman and songlyricist, Michael Hutchence, he wrote the bruising "Guns in the Sky", the opening track on "Kick"(1988), as a protest against nuclear weapons in space. The video for the song specifically flashes the letters S.D.I. - for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars system - in case viewers might otherwise misunderstand the song's intent.
Hutchence says the inspiration for "Guns in the Sky" was "pure anger". "I wouldn't call it a political song," he says. "I'd call it an anger song. I was reading that they spent $2 million a minute on arms in the world in 1987. Two million dollars a minute. How much money did Live Aid raise? Seventy million dollars? So in an hour... That's when I started getting angry!"

To watch the video, click here.

Last song we dealt with in class was "We didn´t start the fire" by Billy Joel (1989, from Storm Front).In this song, Joel makes reference to a catalogue of headline events during his lifetime, from March 1949 (Joel was born on May 9 of that year) to 1989. The events are mixed with a refrain asserting "we didn't start the fire".
The song and music video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation. The song's title and refrain reference "the fire", which refers to conflict and societal turmoil; Joel asserts that the existence of these issues can't be blamed on his generation alone, as it has been "always burning since the world's been turning".

Poetry

OK, I admit for many poetry is "boring, unintelligible, nonsense"...yes, and you might be right! Partly this has been caused by us teachers with our mania for looking for the"MEANING" or worse still..."THE POET´S INTENTION"(intention that sometimes not even the poet knows!) We are such killjoys! Because that is what poetry is about...joy! The joy of reading something that we would have liked to say, the joy of discovering someone akin to us, or just the joy of the miracle of words, the same words that we use everyday can produce magic by a skilled/gifted/inspired pen. So how can we go about poetry? First, relax, read with your mind and all the senses open, forget about meanings, look for the"punch"...What is that? The assault to your mind and senses...the way a word or two keeps coming to your mind...the awareness that you would have wanted to say that...the recognition of words that make you happy, even if it`s for a moment or sympathy for a feeling you share. I invite you to listen to two poems by one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century, the Irish William Butler Yeats, Nobel prize winner and recognised figure of the times...His poems are everlasting...


Two versions of "Second Coming" from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1920

And a modern one with exquisite music...



Or a surprising version of "Mother of God", from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)recited by Bono from Irish band U2:

Looking at 20th Century Art through the Eyes of a Physicist

Physicist and art collector Walter Lewin (MIT) shares his personal insights into major works of art from the first quarter of the 20th century.

Lewin begins by providing a framework to understand pioneering art, by dispelling the myth of “beauty” in the artwork. An excerpt follows:

“At the turn of the century we’ve reached a point that beauty is no longer an issue. Now you may find some of these works beautiful, but the intention of the artists that you’ve just seen, was definitely not to paint something that was beautiful. They wanted to introduce a new way of looking at the world, and they did that in different ways. The reason why you may now find many of these works beautiful is that their new way of seeing—their new way of looking at the world which they invented has become your world—your way of seeing. Our ideas of beauty evolve. What is plain ugly a hundred years ago can now be beautiful.


Click here

Absolutely great!!!!

20th Century Art Part 1

This is a good summary and revision of art movements in the first half of the 20th century.

20th Century Art Part 1

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