Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
More recently, the development of the World Wide Web, social network sites,
and blogs have led yet another revolution in the way media impacts our lives.
In order to more fully understand the elements of the relationship between
emergency management and the media, it is necessary to understand the char-
acteristics of the various types of media. Let us begin our examination with the
traditional media forms of newspapers, radio, and television.
Newspapers
Arguably, the first newspaper in the United States was called
Publick Occurrences
Both Forreign and Domestick
(National Humanities Center 2006). It was pub-
lished on September 25, 1690, and edited by Benjamin Harris. It only printed one
issue, and was banned four days after publication by the Governor and Council of
Massachusetts (Massachusetts Historical Society 2010). The only surviving copy
of the newspaper is in the Public Record Office in London (Library of Congress
2009).
Traditionally, modern newspapers have been published on a daily or weekly
basis, depending on the size of the reading audience. Circulation of newspapers var-
ies greatly. The newspapers with the three largest weekday circulations in 2009 were
the
Wall Street Journal
(circulation 2,024,269),
USA Today
(circulation 1,900,116),
and the
New York Times
(circulation 927,851). The Newspaper showing the smallest
circulation was the
Medina (NY) Journal Register
(circulation 2117) (Audit Bureau
of Circulation 2009).
Newspapers have traditionally been viewed as providing more in-depth cov-
erage than either radio or television because of the amount of space available in
which to write the story. Newspapers also provided some of the first coverage of
events far removed from the place where they were published by the mechanism
of the telegraph (see section “Radio,” for more details). This allowed remote cor-
respondents to send a story from far away back to the newspaper home office,
and created a style of journalistic writing known as the “inverted pyramid.” The
inverted pyramid style of writing called for the correspondent to relay the most
important facts first, followed by those of lesser importance in the body of the
story (Scanlon 2008).
Based on this information, then, we can anticipate what print organizations
want in the way of news, as shown in Table 21.1.
Radio
It is not possible to talk about the history of radio without mentioning the wired
telegraph system. The telegraph was made practical within the United States
by Samuel Morse, who did his first public demonstration of the device in 1838
