taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (05/27/87)
I think that today's electronic news is much less unique than people imagine. If you look at Revolutionary America you find that the printed media provided a very similar service. There were two main forums for ``public discussions'' like today's news systems. These were: - Letters to the editor, in the various newspapers and gazettes. The publishing delays were only a couple days, and a great many public debates were conducted by letters to the editor. For example, the Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 separate letters written over a seven month period in New York by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. There were anti-Federalist letters written by Clinton and others at the same time. In fact, during 1788 there were several thousand such letters written as part of the public debate over the Constitution. These are very much like electronic news discussions, and have similar problems with loss of base-notes and the need for considerable unwritten context information. The Federalist Papers are rather unique in being constructed to both stand alone and respond to the debates of the day. This is part of why they have remained popular and why the other pro and anti-Federalist essays are much less widely published. - Pamphlets (& handbills, broadsides, etc.) were another major media for debates. These tended to be much less discussions and more stand-alone, but here too you find a statement and response type pattern. When you examine sizes and timing, these letters are similar to USENET. The adult population of America was about 1 million, and if you eliminate the backwoods population and the slaves (each about 20%) you find a typical state population of 50-100,000. This is somewhat larger than the average USENET readership, but not wildly different. The publishing delays of a couple days are somewhat better than the mail plus propagation delays of USENET, although not as good as Arpanet. The number of articles is lower but the size of an article is larger. Probably the greatest difference is that the cost structure of printing forced the earlier authors to spend more time writing a single coherent article instead of several spur of the moment thoughts. This is the result of having to convince a publisher that your letter is worth printing. It must be timely, well written, and of interest to the newspaper readers. Alternatively, (if you were so inclined) you could pay to have it published and distributed, but this was relatively uncommon. The history of the times shows that there were plenty of writers who could write well enough that the editor felt like printing, and the customers felt like buying. (The Federalist Papers are typical of the writing quality of the period, and received rather poor marks for literary quality from their contemporaries. You can discern the characteristic conversational style of the letter rather than the more formal style of the article.) I see a few differences in today's system. First, you rarely need to convince a second person that your writings are valuable. Moderators typically just screen out the truly awful and the utterly redundant. This, plus today's lower standards for writing, lead to poorer articles. Also, the CRT is a rotten medium for an essay. I find I need to print hardcopy or go to a Sun screen when reading essays. CRT's are better suited to notes. Another related difference is the ability to fire off spur of the moment replies. Since letters then were first written long-hand, and later typeset, you were forced to think about what you wrote and organize it into a single letter for the publisher. The largest economic and functional difference is in the ability to create specialist groups. The revolutionary period authors are primarily political because this is one of the few topics that will get a large enough readership to cover the costs of printing several hundred or thousand copies at the local publisher. (Boston's population prior to the revolution was only 30,000. It was the third largest city and had three newspapers.) The electronic media allow a specialist news group to exist as a mailing list without prohibitive costs. Today's electronic news systems are not unique or dramatically different from these earlier systems. They are different in details of writing style and the range of subjects that are discussed. The fervent defense of the Freedom of the Press from revolutionary and constitutional writers is easier to understand when you realize that in their time the letter to the editor was a primary forum for public discussions such as occur today in electronic news groups, and that it then encompassed the bulk of the adult population. Rob Horn
co20wta@sdcc13.UCSD.EDU (Bruce Jones) (05/29/87)
If you are really interested in this subject I can recommend a book. It is titled _Discovering the News_ by Michael Schudson. It is a book about the rise of the penny press and the divorce of the press in America from the political parties that backed them from revolutionary times. Very interesting reading. Bruce