Newspapers

     American newspapers get much of their news from the two US largest news agencies AP (Associated Press) and UPI (United Press International ).

   AP is the oldest international agency (founded in 1848). It maintains reporters and cameramen at 122 domestic and 65 foreign news bureaus and has some 10, 000 subscribes in 115 countries. - newspapers, radio and television stations and other agencies which pay to receive and use AP news and photographs.

       UPI has 92 domestic and 81 foreign bureaus in over 90 countries. It is estimated that altogether, around 2 billion people get most of their news directly or indirectly through AP and UPI.         

       According to statistics, more than 9, 000 newspapers (daily, weekly, Sunday, etc. ) appear

in 6, 516 cities and towns in the United States. Including the 85 papers published in 34 different languages, the daily newspapers in the United States sell over 63 million copies a day. There are also more than 7, 000 newspapers, which are published weekly, semiweekly or monthly.  

It is often said that there is no “national press” in the United States as there is in Great Britain. In one sense this is true. Most daily newspapers are distributed locally, or regionally. Americans buy one of the big city newspapers in addition to the smaller local ones. There have been attempts to publish truly national newspapers, e. g. USA Today. But it still has only a circulation of 1. 2 million, which is not enough in a country where state, city, and local news and political developments most deeply affect readers and are therefore especially interesting to them.

   The papers with large circulation and national brand T he Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post , and The Los Angeles Times not only print newspapers, but also collect and sell news, news features, and photographs to hundreds of other papers in the U. S. A. and abroad. Many other newspapers “borrow” news from the major American newspapers and magazines, so their influence spreads far beyond their own readers.

        Political and editorial cartoons are also widely syndicated. Well-known political cartoonists such as Olyphant or MacNelly are known to most American and many foreign newspapers readers. Comic strips from Jules Feiffer, Garry Trudeau, or the creator of “Garfield” are similarly distributed. Satire and humor columns often have international reputations as well. . Many newspapers also use syndicated columnists as a way of balancing political opinion. The so-called op-ed pages (opposite the editorial page) of newspapers, columns from leading liberal and conservative commentators are often printed side by side.

  Many American newspapers have Sunday editions, which are much larger than regular ones (some of them around 900 pages). Reading the Sunday paper is not only English but also an American tradition. Getting through all the sections can take readers most of the day, leaving just enough time for the leisurely Sunday dinner.  

    Most newspapers are of the “quality” rather than the “popular” variety. But the tradition of “muckraking”- digging out the dirt and exposing it for all to see - is still extremely strong. When something which has been hidden behind closed doors about public figures, politicians, judges, policemen, generals, business leaders, sports figures, or TV and movie personalities. is brought to the front pages, it can appear in a lot of newspapers.

   The American press responds by quoting their constitutional rights and proudly repeating Thomas Jefferson’s noble words: “Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost”. The Freedom of Information Act allows anyone, including newspaper reporters, to get information. Even small-town newspapers employ reporters who are kept busy searching, for example, of political corruption, business malpractice, or industrial pollution. Courts and judges cannot stop a story or newspaper from being published. Almost all American editors and journalists agree that news should be separated from opinion about the news as much as possible, and that opinion and political viewpoints belong to the editorial and opinion pages. Therefore, when a news story appears with a reporter’s name, it means that the editors consider it to be a mixture of fact and opinion.

        When the Internet first engaged the attention of the newspaper industry, it looked like a new, cheap distribution medium. To papers such as The Washington Post or The New York Times the internet offered a way of getting the paper around more of the country and selling such products as data and analysis along with the paper..                                                                                           

        Besides newspapers there are over 11, 000 magazines and periodicals in the United States. More than 4, 000 of them appear monthly, and over 1, 300 are published each week. They cover all topics and interests, from art and architecture to tennis, from aviation and gardening to computers and literary criticism. Altogether, there are about 60 magazines in the United States that sell over a million copies per issue each, and roughly the same number with more than 500, 000 copies per issue.

Quite a few have international editions, are translated into other languages, or have “daughter” editions in other countries. Among such internationals are Time, Newsweek, and U. S. News& World Report, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Time, Newsweek,  and Psychology Today. The best known professional periodicals The Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Educational Review, Saturday Review, National Geographic, Smithsonian (published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. ), Scientific American, etc. provide a broad and substantial forum for serious discussion and have a huge readership both in the USA and abroad.

                                                   Radio and Television

  There are many different types and varieties of American radio and television: commercial, non-commercial, individual, etc. There are similar types of stations, but no one station is exactly the same as another.

   All radio and television stations in the United States, public or private, educational or commercial, large and small, must be licensed to broadcast, by the independent federal agency. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Each license is given for a few years only and. can be taken away if stations do not conform to FCC regulations.

  There are several such regulations, preventing any single group from having too much influence in any area. E. g., laws prohibit any state or the federal government from owning or operating radio or television stations (stations such as Voice of America may only broadcast overseas). There is also no governmental censorship or “reviewing” of programs and content. There are no governmental boards or groups, which control any radio or television broadcasting. Rather, the FCC ensures that no monopolies exist and that each area has a variety of types of programming and stations. It also regulates media ownership: no newspaper, for example, may also own a radio or TV station in its own area, nor may a radio station also have a television station in the same area. No single company or group may own more than a total of 12 stations nationwide.

Another FCC regulation, the so-called Fairness Doctrine, requires stations to give equal time to opposing views and to devote some part of their broadcasting time to “public service” announcements and advertising free of charge: e. g. advertisements for Red Cross blood drives, for dental care, for programs on Alcoholics Anonymous and car safety.

   With this “something-for-everyone” policy, even communities with only 10, 000 or so people often have two local radio stations. They may broadcast local stories and farming reports, weather and road conditions in the area, city council meetings, church activities, sports events and other things of interest to the community. They also carry national and international news taken from large stations or networks and emphasize whatever might be the “big story” in the small town.

  The big cities are served by a large number of local radio stations, of course. For instance, people who live New York, Chicago, or Los Angeleshave a choice of up to 100 AM and FM stations and many different “formats..

  There is also a great variety among television stations. The majority of commercial television stations buy most of their programming, roughly 70 %, from the three commercial networks. ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company ). Two of the TV commercial stations in Louisville are “independent” and take their programs from a wide variety of sources. The growth of public television in the past two decades has been dramatic. PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) with its 280 nonprofit, non commercial stations has become also very popular.

There are plenty of cable systems serving the cities The largest cable networks are CNN {Cable News Network ) which carries only news and news stories and ESPN, the all-sports cable network, or MTV, which is famous for its music videos.

    . There is no nationwide system or policy on cable television. Local communities are free to decide whether or not they will have cable television. There are many different types of schemes, systems, and programs. Some offer top-rate recent movies on a pay-as-you-watch system, some offer opera and symphonic music. All are willing to provide “public access” channels where individuals and groups of citizens produce their own programming. It does not appear, however, that the hopes once voiced for cable television will be realized. Cable firms are trying to offer something special to get many people to pay for what they can normally see free of charge through regular public and commercial stations.  

At present, no one seems quite sure what will come out of the cable television, video, and satellite or internet “revolutions”. The main problem is competition for people’s time. Over the years, technology and economics have produced more and more ways of occupying people’s time: more television channels, more magazines, more theme parks, and now besides traditional media video and computer games, chatrooms and all other delights of the information age.