Activity 2. Vocabulary expansion. Familiarize yourself with the words and word-combinations and compose sentences of your own. The media: print

Typical sections found in newspapers and magazines.

One thing I always read in the paper is the obituaries; it’s so interesting to read about the lives of well-known people. I also usually read the leader; it helps me form my opinion on the things. Although national newspapers give you all the important news, I find that if you just want to sell your car or something, the classified ads in a local paper is the best place. But at the weekend I just love the Sunday papers. Most British Sunday papers have supplements with articles on travel, food and fashion and so on, and that keeps me occupied for hours. Last week there was a feature on new technology in one of them; it was fascinating. My teenage daughter prefers magazines, especially the agony columns. I just can’t imagine writing to an agony aunt. It amazes me how people are prepared to discuss their most intimate problems publicly.

Without looking at the text, test your memory for memory for words that mean…

1. the small advertisements in different categories found in newspapers

2. a person you write to at a magazine to discuss intimate emotional problems

3. the section of a newspaper which has tributes to people who have just died

4. an article in a newspaper which gives the editor’s opinion

5. a separate magazine that comes free with a newspaper

6. an article or set of article devoted to a special theme

Activity 3. Read the text and dwell on the points involved.

History of the media

America’s earliest media audiences were quite small. These were the colonies’ upper class and community leaders – the people who could read and who could afford to buy newspapers. The first regular newspaper was the Boston newsletter, a weekly started in 1704 by the city’s postmaster, John Campbell. Like most papers of the time, it published shipping information and news from England. Most Americans, out in the fields, rarely saw a newspaper. They depended on travelers or passing townsmen for this.

When rebellious feeling against Britain began to spread in the 1700s, the first battles were fought in the pages of newspapers and pamphlets. Perhaps, one of America’s greatest political journalists was one of its first, Thomas Paine. Paine’s stirring writings urging independence made him the most persuasive media figure of the American Revolution against Britain in 1776. His pamphlets sold thousands of copies and helped mobilize the rebellion.

By the early 1800s, the US had entered a period of swift technological progress that would mark the real beginning of modern media. The inventions of the steamship, the railroad and the telegraph brought communications out of the age of windpower and horses. The high-speed printing press was developed, driving down the cost of printing. Expansion of the educational system taught more Americans to read and sparkled their interest in the world.

Publishers realized that a profitable future belonged to cheap newspapers with large readerships and increased advertising. In 1833 a young printer named Benjamin Day launched the New York Sun, the first American paper to sell for a penny. Until then, most papers had cost six cents. Day’s paper paid special attention to lively human interest stories and crime. Competition for circulation and profit was fierce. The rivalry of two publishers dominated American journalism at the end of the century. The first was Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant whose Pulitzer prizes have become America’s highest newspaper and book honours. His papers, St.Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World, fought corporate greed and government corruption, introduced sports coverage and comics, and entertained the public with an endless series of promotional stunts.

The second publisher was William Randolph Hearst. His brand of outrageous sensationalism was dubbed “yellow journalism” after the paper’s popular comic strip, “The yellow kid”.

Pulitzer and Hearst symbolized an era of highly personal journalism that faded early in this century. The pressure for large circulation created one of today’s most important press standards: objective, or unbiased, reporting. Newspapers wanted to attract readers of all views, not drive them away with one-sided stories. That meant editors began to make sure all sides of a story were represented. Wider access to the telephone helped shape another journalistic traditions: the race to be the first with the latest news.

1. The first American newspaper.

2. The beginning of the modern media.

3. Pulitzer and Hearst’s newspaper era.

4. The role of the press as a shaper of public opinion.

5. The interrelation of a person’s educational level and his/her newspaper preferences.