NEWSPAPER COMPARISON BETWEEN 1910 & 1985

Newspapers worldwide have been recording history for a long time. They have been able to depict what goes on in the world by being one of the best sources that a human being can rely upon. More importantly, the newspaper industry is known to keep archives of their work, which is fascinating to know since these archives allow people to look more than a century back and try to understand as to how the world worked back a century ago. Furthermore, newspaper archives are also important since they help people understand the cultural differences that existed back in the day, specifically a date that the particular individual is trying to observe, and the way cultural differences take place in modern times. In this paper, the main aim is to differentiate between the changes that have occurred in the American society over the course of 75 years through identifying the changes in content of the newspapers, the method of advertisements used in the newspaper, as well as through the kind of information that is presented in the newspaper between these two time intervals.

The newspaper that was chosen for the year 1985 and the year 1910 is the Los Angeles Herald situated in California. The two newspapers, even though they belong to the same firm and are operated by the same ideologies that have been present since 1910 all the way to 1928, do present a bit of a pickle in the manner that each newspaper from the different years has a lot to present, but in a different cultural perspective, and in a different manner of organization. Furthermore, there are a lot of other differences that can be observed from this exercise as well. Some of these differences can be accumulated in the manner that each newspaper does have the same manner of portraying high headlines and catching the attention of the reader that they want to discuss.

When it comes to discussing the Los Angeles Herald in 1985 (Corsair 1985) and the differences that were found in the same newspaper in the 1910 version is that there seem to be less advertisements about travelling the world. Moreover, it feels like the newspapers from 1985 focus more on the leadership and the government’s actions rather than on the travelling and other factors since the paper from the 1985 edition focuses on talking about key politicians and other leaders. The mast head, for example, covers the information and updates about Ronald Reagan and his decisions over the holocaust matter. The headline is pretty implicit about dictating Ronald Reagan as a failure in dealing with the politics of the time and does seem to associate the president with the German dictator that once used to trend with similar policies on the world and therefore, tries to associate his power with the German dictator’s (Corsair 1985). A headline that can help produce an image so vast and specific in detail right form a few words is simple enough to associate as to how the headline can bring so much detail into the leading article’s facts and information. The headline itself can muster an opinion into the reader’s mind, which is least enough to say what propaganda methods the journalistic paper was using in 1985. As for the newspaper version from 1910, the news headline simply asked the readers if they liked to travel. This goes to show as to how the entire theme on the newspaper back in the early 20^th Century only got directed by the first headline on the main post. However, this headline is followed on by more headlines and questions that relate to travelling in the newspaper. So, in this case, it goes on to show how the main headline did have a way in promoting and maintaining the theme of the rest of the paper. Furthermore, this goes on to show that the entire newspaper has some point of interest in travelling at the time. Furthermore, the fact that the newspaper was giving out trips to different people depending on how they answered their questions was an intriguing approach to a peek in society.

That brings the newspapers into a new perspective about how they showed the social background of the society in their times. This is, of course, to assume that the newspapers were publishing stories according to the interest of the general audience that they maintained at the time, and hence, it can be said that what the newspapers showed was in fact how the society acted in real life at the time. So, in accordance to this scenario, it can safely be presumed that the society of the United States of America in 1985 was more involved in the politics of the nations. This can simply be said from the satirical review of Ronald Reagan and his comparison to a former Nazi dictator. Furthermore, it can also be said that the nation was straight forward in 1985 since it was able to realize and discuss crude topics such as discussing the attitude and the manner in which the entire first article was written on the newspaper and how it was able to criticize the president of the country without any haste. Furthermore, this also goes on to show how the country was more politically in depth with the country’s tactics on an international scale, and how it was more involved in the country’s matters in comparison to the current response of the country to its political matters worldwide (Corsair 1985). Back in 1985, it sure seems like the people knew the world they were living in and how to resolve matters that were ethically meant to be resolved, and this was portrayed by the defiance of the article to given in to the president’s decisions that did not make sense to the general public of the nation. On the other hand, the newspaper and its articles and headlines back in 1910 from the Los Angeles Herald told a completely different perspective about the society of the United States of America. This new portrayal showed an energetic society who was more into adventure and similar sort of things such as travelling across the world. It is known that back in 1910, the only method of travelling around the world was by sea. This meant that the American society was willing to travel for hundreds of days to other destinations across the world, such as the orient, which the newspaper was willing to give travel passes for to the selected readers of the subscription. This goes on to show how mesmerized the American society was with the rest of the world and how deeply it was rooted in experiencing other cultures and exotic locations across the world. However, it can also be said that the American society was not repressed or afraid of terrorist activities in either 1985 or 1910. Moreover, the country also did not depict any signs of Islamophobia or other current anti-faith concepts in the society. This goes on to show how religiously tolerant the society was both in 1910 and in 1985, and how the American society was willing to accept more cultures and was willing to enjoy the new experiences so that it could evolve into a better nation overall. This was both prevalent in the 1910 text as well as in the 1985 text.

There also seemed to be another difference that was observable while reviewing both versions of 1910 and the 1985 newspapers of the Los Angeles Herald. This observational difference was the use of images and the number of times that images were presented in the newspapers respectively. In the 1910 newspaper, the images seem to cover more than 60% of the main page as well as consequent pages. This is a rather appalling figure in terms of the number of images that are portrayed in a newspaper for the general public and the readership of the newspaper at the time. Moreover, the example of a widescreen image showing a ship sailing out into the sea along with travel associated advertisements being presented were a very precise example of how the newspapers used images to control their audience and advertise their ideas without much effort or content of text (LA Herald 1910). In the 1985 version of the newspaper, it is even odder to see a difference in the amount of images used since they are only used in order to associate evidence to an article, such as the involvement of suspects or actual caught criminals being put alongside the article that documents the respective criminal’s crime and associated wrongdoings. Furthermore, the newspaper version of 1985 also uses comic strips as a medium of displaying their satire and opinions about particular subjects in the newspaper. One prevalent example is the comical image of Ronald Reagan giving a comparison of how dead Nazis are as much of victims as the people who died in the holocaust, which goes on to show the dark humor which was involved with the newspaper’s methods at the time (Corsair 1985). This goes on to show how images were used for the public’s relief by the newspapers at the time as well.

These observations about the differences in which the images were used and the mediums of communications that they covered, such as comic relief, advertisements, and plain support to the article’s claim and evidence, goes on to show how the society of America had its perceptions motivated in both time zones. The perceptions of the American society in 1985 can be seen as ones who enjoyed comical satire, especially when it was related to their subjects of interest, which have earlier been revealed to be international as well as domestic politics as well as interest in social activities and social agenda of the societies at the time. The fact that Ronald Reagan’s comical script was posted on the front page goes on to show the eagerness of the general public of being attracted to such comic relief. It goes on to show how the American society at the time was also able to understand dark humor and accept it without much annoyance. In current times, such comic relief could have created controversy for the newspaper since it would not be acceptable by the entirety of the society since someone is bound to get offended by such dark humor. This is already understood by the amount of people who get offended on different kind of jokes, even when they are just simple rhetorical statements with no intention whatsoever. In 1910, the American society’s portrayal of enjoying travelling and tourism around the world is exhibited clearly through the use of the images that are presented in the newspaper. It can be said without doubt as to how each picture has some kind of association towards travelling. The main image, the biggest and centered in between the main page, shows the image of a ship sailing out to sea which goes on to show where the central interest of the readership of the newspaper lies. This is, after all, the reason due to which the newspaper published such a picture in such an important area of the newspaper itself. Furthermore, the images also go on to show how involved the general society of America must be at the time with art since using more images than context simply means that the society was more mutually agreed at viewing pictures to understand news and other information rather than long pieces of text. At least, this seemed to be the matter at the main pages of the newspapers. Of course, there was plenty of news alter on in the newspaper, but at first, it is the images that cover most of the page.

Hence, it was described as to what differences in both the layout of the newspapers from 1910 and 1985 had among them and what differences each set of newspapers had in terms of the content and advertisements that they carried, as well as their headlines and other news tactics or methods of communication that were used. It was also discussed as to how these elements described and portrayed the American society at their respective times, and how both time zones showed different perspectives of the American society, even when the societies were compared to the society that exists in the United States of America right now. Therefore, it can be concluded that while newspapers do change methods over time in terms of how they present information and news to their readership, this is generally directed by the perspective of the American society at the time.

Bibliography

Corsair. “Corsair.” California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 24, 1985. http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=CRS19850424.2.1&srpos=7&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN-1985——-1 (accessed March 20, 2016).

LA Herald. “Los Angeles Herald.” California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 24, 1910. http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19100424.2.194.1&srpos=5&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN-1910——-1 (accessed March 20, 2016).