creation of the media: pgs. 1-46

There are a few, specific points that I took from the introduction and first chapter of Paul Starr's The Creation of the Media, and rather than attempt to string them together in any logical way, I intend to present them individually, and then try to pinpoint some connections in my thought processes.

First and foremost, I have to address my fascination with the depth and scope that this book takes on its subject, and my surprise when I discovered just how much I didn't know about the creation of the media. Perhaps typical for someone born in the late 80s, I tend to take the media for granted, in that I had never bothered to consider how it had developed into what we now encounter on a daily basis. Having immediately noticed my shameful lack of historical knowledge on this topic, I powered through the first 46 pages with more pleasure than I'd expected to experience. :)

From the Introduction:

I find it interesting that Starr notes the way that changes in communication were presented to the public as they were made: "All these deviations from the society's ideal standards led to political struggles, and these political struggles changed the practical working of communications, though the changes were often presented and understood as reaffirmations of founding principles" (14, my italics). This is sneaky and quite clever, a way of avoiding a confession of wrongdoing by reaffirming that our intentions always were to provide what we'd been advertising all along: freedom of speech.

I'm also intrigued by problems that the American media managed to create by avoiding such regimented governmental control. On page 16, Starr mentions the monopolies of Western Union and the Associated Press, and remarks that "Americans confronted a new form of centralized power for which they at first had no institutional response". This is immediately followed by a mention that "advertising achieved earlier and wider acceptance in America than in Europe", a subject that I hope will receive more attention elsewhere in the book (16).

Finally, I have to comment on the curious reaction I had to a particular clarification that Starr makes in the introduction when he states that "Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American newspapers gave primacy to reporting the news, while French newspapers gave primacy to literary essays" (18). Honestly, I had to read this sentence several times over, because never have I felt more absolutely American than I did in that moment. Of course newspapers should give primacy to the news, literary essays are for literary journals, you silly French! This must be a reflection of the way we've developed and come to rely on the newspaper in modern times, but can also be seen as an impulse to separate journalistic endeavors from academic or literary ones. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, or even if we're "right" in favoring news rather than literature in newspapers-- but I found my reaction as a reader surprising and possibly in need of a greater analysis.

From Chapter One: Early Modern Origins:

Throughout this chapter, I found myself drawing connections between early print circulation and the ever-expanding information overload of the internet. In particular, I was interested in the implications of the "invisible threads of connection" that are mentioned early in the chapter, and how they impact the way we do research in this field as modern scholars.

"Publications weave invisible threads of connection among their readers. Once a newspaper circulate, for example, no one ever truly reads it alone. Readers know that others are also seeing it at roughly the same time, and they read it differently as a result, conscious that the information is now out in the open, spread before a public that may talk about the news and act on it" (24).

What strikes me about this passage is the way that we as researchers must be contextualizing every piece of media that we come across, no matter in what century it originally appeared. If it isn't interesting enough to consider how readers read private and public communications differently, we also have to take into account how we are reading the periodicals that we find now in our current place and time. Not only are we charged with the responsibility of interpreting contextual information about the artifact's original circulation, but we also must be paying careful attention to our own context, and how interpretation may be shaped by these contexts.

Finally, because I'm finding myself beginning to ramble, I couldn't help but wonder what subscribing to eighteenth century British periodicals meant to those who subscribed to them. What was the subscription list like? What was the motivation for investing in a subscription? And, most interestingly, was the motivation always about reading or about appearing to read?

A highlighter lost its life due to my enthusiastic reading of these first 46 pages. I have bought more highlighters in preparation for the coming weeks. There is little doubt in my mind that I'll be needing them. :)