Communication 340
History of Mass Communication

Introduction

Course Overview

This course surveys the history of the mass media in the United States. Our purpose is twofold: first, to give you a sense of how the media have operated at different periods of American history; and second, to give you a sense of the historical factors that have determined the current shape and operation of the American mass media. Throughout the course, we will be looking at political, economic, and social factors that have influenced the mass media.

Although the emphasis in this course will be on the history of news, we will deal to some extent with how news is shaped or influenced today.

Course Objectives

This course is designed to be intellectually challenging. I want you to think about key issues and ideas in relation to mass media—specifically, how mass media are shaped by a wide variety of forces, such as politics, economics, and social concerns, and how news (media content) reflects those influences.

I have several goals for anyone who takes this course. First, I would like you to develop an understanding of how the media have evolved in this country. This will give you some perspective on the current media. You will see that the American mass media have not always been as they are today. "News" has not been static through the last two hundred years; it has changed to reflect a wide variety of cultural, political, and economic concerns within our society at large.

Knowledge of how news is defined and structured should help you understand our current media operations. This critical awareness of the media constitutes the second major goal in this course. In many ways, any good course should help you sharpen your analytical skills. So too with this course. I want you to have some sense of the process by which news is shaped and influenced, and thus how the mass media often provide us with important information, but also often fail to give us a complete picture of what is going on in the world.

Before he was president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson was the president of Princeton University. He gave a speech about the goals of education. He argued that every student needed to know some facts—"facts" about history, science, nature and the economy. But more than facts, students needed a critical awareness of the world about them, an ability to analyze their world and to make sense of it. This critical sense is what he called "citizenship in the world." He stressed that such analytical skills would serve someone for a lifetime. That is how I see this class. Certainly, you will want to develop an understanding of the media as you do the readings, the assignments, and take the tests. However, there is more at stake here than just one course or one grade. This course should broaden your view of the world about you, and make you a more analytical, and hence shrewder, participant in the world.

Your education, in the broad sense, should be considerably expanded by a course of this kind. This course should enable you to better understand your own society and culture, and your role in it.

In summary, the three primary goals of this course are to

• familiarize you with the history of the mass media in the United States;
• provide you with an understanding of the social, political, and economic factors which influence the media, both past and present; and
• sharpen your analytical skills with respect to American mass media in particular, and American culture in general.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor. We encourage you to use the discussion forum to exchange ideas, resources, and comments about your course work with other students in this course. This unstructured forum is monitored by your instructor.
• Please e-mail me directly if you have any questions about the course.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

Required Reading

• Folkerts, Jean, and Dwight L. Teeter. Voices of a Nation: A History of Media in the United States, 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 2001.
• Barnouw, Erik. The Sponsor. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003.
• Hillerman, Tony. Fly on the Wall. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1971.

Commentary on the Required Reading

I have assigned three books for this course. The first text, Folkerts and Teeter's Voices of a Nation, will provide you with a broad chronological overview of media history in the United States, in addition to a general overview of U.S. history, and discussion of the place of the media within that framework. I have chosen the Folkerts and Teeter book in part for this reason: you do not need a vast background knowledge of American history to make sense of this book.

The second book, Erik Barnouw's The Sponsor, is a history of television programming in the first two decades of television's existence. I chose it because it will give you an extremely valuable insight into the influences that exist in the shaping of television content.

The third book, Tony Hillerman's Fly on the Wall, is fiction, but I chose it because it gives you a feel for how the media operate today, and how news and the media are influenced by politics and economics. This book is a classic "whodunit," and as such it is just plain interesting. But you will find that there is something on almost every page that raises issues or questions about the mass media and how they operate in our society.

Using this Online Course Guide

The online lessons are an essential component of Communication 340. It is designed to assist you in understanding the key developments in U.S. mass media history and, more importantly, to see how the media operate as part of the society at large. The format for each lesson includes a reading assignment, a brief commentary or overview of the materials covered, and a list of study questions. The purpose of the commentary is to give you a perspective on the readings; it will not be my intent to repeat what you have read. Rather, I will try to give you some perspectives on the period, and raise important issues and questions, including some that are not found in the books.

I see the online lessons as helping you in your reading and thinking on this subject. I also see it as my major link to you, so I will try to give you my best ideas and insights into mass media history in the commentaries.

It is to your advantage to start at the beginning of your online syllabus and then move on from there. If you start in the middle, you will miss some of the basic ideas and you will find your task much more difficult.

Once you begin, try to work consistently. Set a pace you find efficient and stick to it. If you stop, for whatever reason, it may be difficult to begin again. I have found that my most productive work is done in small—almost daily—increments. I may not get a vast amount done every day, but the work tends to get done when I stick to it, bit by bit.

Remember: You have three months to complete this class from the date of your enrollment. Please see the online Student Handbook for details.

Assignments

Read both the online lessons and the reading assignments carefully. The online course guide will assist you by directing your attention to the key points in the reading assignments for which you need to watch.

Do not try to memorize all the new facts you come across in the readings. Instead, concentrate on the basic ideas, concepts, and principles of what you read. And remember, the purpose of the online lessons is to help you identify those basic ideas, concepts, and principles. So, you need to be thinking about the "big picture," and the online lessons will help you in that process.

When you have completed a reading assignment, look at the study questions at the end of the lesson, and think about how you would answer them. Then write out your answers. You will get much more out of the exercises by writing out your responses to the study questions. I know from experience. It is very easy to skim through the questions and think, "Oh yes, I know that." Often it is true that you know part of the answer, but not all of it. If you write out your response, the parts you know will be clear and, better yet, the parts you do not know will become clearer.

I am including these study questions in an effort to help you think about the basic ideas, concepts, and principles that we will be covering in the course, so spend some time on them. They are not meant just to create work for you, but to help you monitor how you are doing, and how much of the material you understand.

It is a good idea to read the reading assignment a second time. The second time through, you will pick up points you may have missed on the first reading, and the basic ideas, concepts, and principles will be better fixed in your mind.

As you go through the assignments, try not to get mired in details. Try to appreciate the significance of the course as a whole. You will benefit most if you reflect from time to time on the larger implications of the course, rather than focusing solely on the course requirements.

Finally, I urge you to keep at the course once you start it. There will be times when there are unavoidable interruptions. At other times, it will be tempting to set an assignment aside and find other things to do. However, the more you can avoid such interruptions, the better. Small amounts of work done on a regular basis will lead more easily to the completion of the course than will occasional bursts of great activity. A steady pace will ultimately result in better performance, in better comprehension, and in the completion of the task which you have set out to accomplish.

You will notice that not all of the chapters in the Folkerts and Teeter book are assigned. At some point in time, after you have completed the course, you might like to read them. Please do so.

Submitting Assignments

You will submit all of your assignments, but not the final exam, by e-mail. If this is technically impossible for any reason, please contact me and we can make other arrangements. I will respond to your assignments via return e-mail.

When submitting your assignments, please include the course name and assignment number in the subject heading of your e-mail message. That way I won't accidentally delete your message without opening it, thinking it is spam. Also, be certain that your name is on everything you submit.

lease paste your assignment into the body of your e-mail message, not as an attachment. That way we will be able to avoid potential technical problems and computer viruses.

Grading

The requirements for the course and their relative weight in determining your final grade are as follows:

Assignment 1:	20 points
Assignment 2:	20 points
Self-graded Midterm Exam	0 points
Assignment 3:	20 points
Assignment 4:	20 points
Assignment 5:	20 points
Final exam (Assignment 6):	50 points
Total points:	150

Your decimal grade will be based on the following standard: 95 percent = 4.0; 94 percent = 3.9 and so forth. Based on 150 possible points, here are some sample percentage points and grade-point equivalents:

Percentage		Point Value		Grade Point
95	=	142 points	=	4.0
92	=	138 points	=	3.7
88	=	132 points	=	3.3
85	=	127 points	=	3.0
82	=	123 points	=	2.7
78	=	117 points	=	2.3
75	=	112 points	=	2.0
72	=	108 points	=	1.7
68	=	102 points	=	1.3
65	=	97 points	=	1.0
62	=	93 points	=	0.7

Examination

This course has one graded test – the final exam – and a practice midterm exam. You will take the practice midterm exam online after the first unit, which consists of Lessons One through Five. A model answer to the practice midterm exam is also available online. This exam does not count toward your final grade, but it is designed to help you assess your understanding of the material and to help prepare you to take the final exam.

You will take the final exam after you master the material in the second unit, which consists of Lessons Six through Twelve. You will need to schedule the final exam, which is proctored, with the UW Distance Learning staff (please see the online Student Handbook for details). The final exam is an open-book test designed to be completed in two hours. Lessons Five and Twelve will provide you with tips on how to prepare for each exam.

How to Prepare for the Examination

The following suggestions will be useful in preparing for the examinations for this course:

1. Review the online lessons, the study questions, and the reading assignments.
2. Just before the exam, review the reading again to refresh your memory, so that you feel confident in your understanding of the basic material.
3. During the exam, spend some time thinking before you start writing. You will have a fair amount of time for the exam, so do not think that you need to start writing immediately. Spend five minutes organizing your thoughts on each question. You can even make a short outline at the beginning of the essay question that will help you remember the points you want to make.
4. Remember to answer the question. As you are writing, it is worthwhile to stop from time to time to think about what you are writing and how it relates to the question. Are you really answering the question? It is fairly easy to get side-tracked on some issues that are important, but that might not be quite relevant to the question you have been asked.
5. It is not my purpose to write exam questions that will trick you. I will try to write exam questions that cover the basic ideas in this course, and that will allow you to show the extent of your knowledge.

Final Course Grade

The final grade will be based on your written assignments and your scores on the final exam. The five written assignments will constitute two-thirds of your final grade, and final exam will count for the other third.

Criteria for Evaluation

The criteria for evaluating both the written assignments and the essay exam are as follows:

• Essays should cover the question asked, not merely discuss some aspect of the history of communications.
• Essays should have a central focus of theme. State your main point, or thesis, in the first paragraph, and then spend the rest of the time supporting your main point. Do not try to build an essay around a collection of minor points without providing an overall focus.
• Main points must be supported by strong arguments.
• Arguments must be supported by evidence from the readings.
• Opposing viewpoints and counter-arguments should be acknowledged and refuted.
• Understanding of the basic ideas, concepts, and principles must be demonstrated.
• Essays must be readable, clear, and clean. This means that you should proofread everything to catch misspellings or typographical errors.

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