Time Travel Tribune
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will analyze the structure, visual aspects, as well as organizations of old newspapers, compared to the contemporary newspapers.
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hat’s going to be covered? I chose to analyze papers which were mainly covering one big event in American History. The first World War (1914-1918) I chose this topic because war is always the biggest tragedy a news paper can cover, and this war was the first one to be big enough to be called a world war. I also wondered how the US newspapers were covering this war, since the fact that they were first reluctant to enter the war.
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will talk about how the old news paper differs not only in content, but also in how they were structured.
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ooking at all three newspapers(The New York Tribune, The Evening World, and The Day Book), they share one thing in common, and that is the lack of pictures or other content producer elements, except for The Day Book, none of them used any pictures on the front page. Even the picture used
for the Day Book, was not an authentic picture of the event but rather a picture made to insinuate some feelings to the readers about the delicate matter (first US soldier death since the US entered the war). I am guessing the reason for this being the lack of good and fast transportation. Hired cameraman could certainly not fly to the place where an event took place, and come back on the same day with pictures. Especially not when that event took place in a continent across the ocean. While the news it self traveled a lot faster than before, even across oceans, with the help of telegram, that was not the case for photos. Digital photos were not existent of course as well as the Internet. So news paper editors probably had to wait for either somebody to bring them photos, or to wait the delivery, by ship or by plane(I doubt planes were good enough to carry language).
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espite that, the New York Tribune had a whole section with just photograph of the War with little notes
associated to each. To me, some of those pictures were a lot more visual than pictures contemporary news paper showed. They did not hesitate putting up pictures of dead soldiers lying on the battle field. One interesting thing I found was that news papers showed a lot more gruesome pictures of the war before the US entered it. Maybe this has to do with the fact that families who had their kids sent to the front might not like seeing atrocities of war in their news papers. The fact that papers don’t include much pictures makes the paper look crowded and hard to instantly find the article that might interest you. Although all articles have headings, it seems like they jump from one news to another, without caring much about the genre. In contemporary news papers, news on the front page are usually not separated by the nature of the news, but starting from the next pages, news are usually divided into sections(sports,
economy, etc). This easy way to guide the readers to just the information they want seems not to be present in the newspaper from the 1910’s.
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his also proved that contemporary newspapers already evolved in the field of content producing, a lot more from what it was in 1910’s. Not only they have more pictures and color photos due to the technological advance, but they also have various ways to help the readers pick up just the news thay are interested in.
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ources: The New York Tribune (Before the Involvement of the US into the War) ,The Evening World (Day when the US declared war on Germany), The Day Book (Day of the first US casualty sustained )
The New-York Tribune offered a strong moralistic flavor, playing down crime reports and scandals, providing political news, special articles, lectures, book reviews, book excerpts and poetry. Recognizable by their appeal to the average reader, their coverage of more and different types of news, and, in some instances, a marked political independence. Not averse to building circulation by carrying accounts involving sex and crime, but it was careful to present this material under the guise of cautionary tales. The day book is an ad-free newspapers. Free from commercial influences. It report on issues of concern to what Scripps called the “95 percent”(working class). The day book championed the interests of workers, with extensive coverage of working conditions, wages, union organizing, and labor unrest. The evening world had no-holds-barred approach to the news.