This morning the CBS Sunday Morning Show had a good, but long segment discussing the demise of the newspaper industry. Later in the show, they ran a shorter segment featuring the Fast Draw team making comparisons between developments in the history of newspapers to the current evolution of blogging and crowd-sourced news. The video draws a comparison between the development of steam powered printing presses making newspapers more plentiful at the end of the 19th century and the Internet making news websites and blogs plentiful today. The best part of the video is the visualizations at the end. If you have a two and a half minutes, the video is worth watching.
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Applications for Education
There are a couple of items in the video that could be used in a history classroom. The video mentions the role Thomas Paine’s and other pamphlet makers’ roles in American Revolution. The video also mentions the role of improved printing presses and yellow journalism in the dissemination of news in US history.
The visualization at the end of the video makes it clear that the history of the news industry has a repeating pattern.
