"A rare and important work, the best I know of on American journalism as a product of American social history."
--Ben J. Bagdikian, Chicago Sun-Times
"Valuable.... Schudson is to be commended for bringing intellectual freshness to the mundane business of press
history."
--Columbia Journalism Review
"Traces the development of the American newspaper ... thoughtfully and intelligently, and provocatively enough
to raise legitimate doubts about the usefulness of most published histories of the American press."
--The Nation
"Displays the working of a first-rate sociological mind on almost every page. No book shows better the value
of an attempt to achieve a fusion of history and sociology in coming to grips with journalistic beliefs and practices."
--Public Opinion Quarterly
Perseus Books Group Web Site, March, 2000
Summary
This instructive and entertaining social history of American newspapers shows that the very idea of impartial,
objective "news" was the social product of the democratization of political, economic, and social life
in the nineteenth century. Professor Schudson analyzes the shifts in reportorial style over the years and explains
why the belief among journalists and readers alike that newspapers must be objective still lives on.
Table of Contents
The Ideal of Objectivity
The Revolution in American Journalism in the Age of Egalitarianism: The Penny Press
Telling Stories: Journalism as a Vocation After 1880
Stories and Information: Two Journalisms in the 1890s
Objectivity Becomes Ideology: Journalism After World War I
Objectivity, News Management, and the Critical Culture
