ABOUT THIS BOOK

Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of journalism in the United States, David Paul Nord reveals how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, His lively and wide-ranging discussion shows journalism to be a vital component of community. Ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press and how ordinary readers use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David Paul Nord is a professor emeritus of journalism and an adjunct professor emeritus of history at Indiana University. He is the author of Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America.

REVIEWS

“In twelve beautifully written essays, David Paul Nord examines journalism as a vital component of communities. . . . Communities of Journalism is among the best thought-provoking books to be published in our field. It is a ‘must’ for anyone who researches and teaches mass media history.”--Journalism History

TABLE OF CONTENTS








  Acknowledgments ix
  Introduction: Communication and Community                      1

  PART 1: COMMUNITIES OF PRODUCTION
1. Teleology and News: The Religious Roots of American
  Journalism, 1630-1730                                           31
2. The Authority of Truth: Religion and the
  John Peter Zenger Case                                          65
3. Newspapers and American Nationhood, 1776-1826                  80
4. Tocqueville, Garrison, and the Perfection of Journalism        92
5. The Public Community: The Urbanization of Journalism
  in Chicago                                                      108
6. The Business Values of American Newspapers:
  The Nineteenth-Century Watershed                                133
7. The Paradox of Municipal Reform in the Late
  Nineteenth Century                                              152

  PART 2: COMMUNITIES OF RECEPTION
8. A Republican Literature: A Study of Magazine Readers and
  Reading in Late Eighteenth-Century New York                     175





9. Readership as Citizenship in Late Eighteenth-Century
   Philadelphia                                                   199
10. Working-Class Readers: Family, Community, and Reading in
   Late Nineteenth-Century America                                225
11. Reading the Newspaper: Strategies and Politics of Reader
   Response, Chicago, 1912-17                                     246
12. Readers Love to Argue about the News-But Not
   in Newspapers                                                  278
   Afterword: Newspapers, Readers, and Communities Today          285

   Index                                                          289