There has been suggestions that a social history of journalism would be
helpful and that textbooks of journalism are lacking. This is quite
true, but there are many books which are heading in the right direction.
My field is British newspapers in the Edwardian period, and right off the
top of my head I can think of Lucy Brown's `Victorian News And
Newspapers', the classic, though dated - Boyce, Curran and Wingate
`Newspaper History', Stephen Koss' `The Rise and Decline of the Political
Press in Britain' 2 vols - where Koss tracked the party political press
and its decline due to increasing commercialism, and Brake et al eds.
`Victorian Newspapers' (or something like that - I can't recall the exact
title now!). The course on the history of journalism that I was involved
in at City University in London used Ward's `Mass Communication' as a
text, though it is problematic. Mostly though, we used photocopies of
articles, which though difficult, increased flexibility.
I like the idea of exchanging course outlines - I am in the middle of
creating a course proposal here at the University of Calgary and would
like some opinions of experts!
Glenn Wilkinson
gwilkins@acs.ucalgary.ca