[comp.society] news - then and now

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