Journalism (1940)

For our homework assignment this weekend, I watched Journalism.  The film talks about the newspaper, newspaper, and print media in the 1940's.  This time period for journalism was also called the "deep analog era".  The video discusses a variety of different topics about journalism during this time.  It talks about the printing process, job responsibilities, different types of media, and the creation of a society filled with information.  During this time period, there were a myriad of magazines coming out having to do with beauty, fashion, news, sports, etc. The more specific news articles and magazines got, the more people became attached to them.  I thought it was very interesting when they discusses the role of gender in the journalism field.  This was still a time period where women did not have the respect they do now in the workplace.  In the video, they openly discussed how journalism opened up job opportunities for women because of interests in fashion, beauty, and home decor.  I believe this perfectly exemplifies the progression of the modern information infrastructure.

This was the launch of media that still exists today.  Today we have numerous magazines about numerous topics that attract a variety of different people.  However, there are changes within the journalism field, including the gender example.  In the video, they discussed the role of a man doing the investigating and the reporting.  In present day, women flood the journalism world and not just in stereotypical genres.  Also, the printing process has evolved to an extent that newspapers and magazines can be mass-produced and sent across the world in a very small time frame.  The molding, printing, and drying stages slowed the transmittance of news back then, creating a gap between knowing the information with when the information actually occurred.

This film was very interesting because it shows how much the overall aspect of journalism has stayed the same, but at the same time, different parts of it have changed dramatically.  Journalism is a way of life in today's society.  We look at Twitter, Facebook, and other social media mediums and we instantly know when something happens.  Information is transmitted so quickly these days, and that luxury did not exist in the 1940's.  However, the very same aspect of journalists, reporting, and topic advertising are essentially still the same.

LINK TO VIDEO: https://archive.org/details/Journali1940