NOTE: You may well find it easier to read this article in your Adobe Acrobat reader, where you can increase the magnification to 150% or more. It is much easier to read that way. Paper large enough to reproduce this article at 100% of its original size won't fit into a standard printer. If you do read it on your computer, you must still print it out and bring it to class with you. I myself read these articles printed out. They are clear enough to read. You just have to read them carefully - something you ought to do anyway! |
In 1911 noted journalist Will Irwin was commissioned to write a book-length series of articles for Collier's Magazine. Collier's was a big-format, "muckraking" magazine. You may remember that Upton Sinclair had some unflattering things to say about Mr. Peter Collier's devotion to reform in The Brass Check, Chapters 3 and 4.
Irwin wrote a long series, in fifteen parts. Like Lippmann and Merz's 1920 study of the New York Times' biased and false reporting on the Russian Revolution, -- we will read this work shortly -- it is cited by every history of journalism.
However, again like the Lippmann-Merz study it has never been reprinted, never published in book format.
Now, thanks to the Internet and PDF format, both works are available and very readable, on the Internet.
Irwin went on to become a very successful and important writer on cultural matters. Perhaps his most famous book is The House That Shadows Built, his 1928 study of the origins of Paramount Pictures through the life of its founder, Adolph Zukor (my late mother's husband, Adrian Meyer, was Zukor's godson).
We will read only four of the chapters from Irwin's famous study. Go to Chapters 9 through 12 here. It's a pretty big file, and may take a long time to load. If you prefer, download it from Canvas.
Read chapters 9 and 10, on the influence of advertising. Then review Bagdikian, Chapter 8, "The High Cost of Free Lunches".
Write 350 words -- 300 on Irwin's analysis of the effect of advertising on newsgathering and reporting in 1911, and 50 comparing it to what Bagdikian is saying about this same effect in the 1980s.
Email to me and to your group.
Bring the Irwin readings; the Chapter from Bagdikian, and your HW assignment to class.