Colloquium Presentation Part 6: The Public Sphere: Transformation of News Media

“The political daily press came to have an important role during this same period. In the second half of the eighteenth century, serious competition to the older form of news writing as the compiling of items of information arose in the form of literary journalism. Karl Bucher describes the main outlines of this development: ‘From mere institutions for the publication of news, newspapers became the vehicles and guides of public opinion as well, weapons of party politics. The consequence of this for the internal organization of the newspaper enterprise was the insertion of a new function between the gathering of news and its publication: the editorial function” (Habermas)

Art Speigelman's depiction in In the Shadow of No Towers of his "interview" with Tom Brokaw illustrates this idea that the media guides public opinion instead of merely reporting it.