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when you hear the names Charles Dickens and Jack London

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you probably think novelist rather than journalist. or maybe you think [Dickens and London pictured]

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motorcyclist. yes it depends how well you know them .but while it might be hard to

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imagine any of the author's 800-page monsters being published in broadsheet.

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their careers can definitely help us when it comes to understanding the

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development of journalism. over the 19th century what we now know as modern

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journalism started to take shape. cities were growing and literacy rates were [hands throw a clay pot]

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rising so editors were racking their brains trying to come up with ways to

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reach a broader cross-section of this suddenly more literate society.

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well since chocolate newspapers never really took off editor's ended up going

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with sensationalism. that his stories about scandals and crimes that appealed

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to readers as a sort of guilty pleasure. sound familiar?

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yeah good news is no news. in the u.s. cheap newspapers called penny presses [man reads newspaper]

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were founded. and they covered the sensationalist stories that more

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established news outlets wouldn't touch with a 10-foot Pole.

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the British weren't left out of this sensationalist craze. on the other side

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of the pond people like William Thomas Stead covered such lurid subjects as

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child prostitution. well it's important to keep in mind that even though the [Stead shown in front of Big Ben]

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subject matter was sensational it wasn't necessarily bad journalism, although

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there were certainly some sickos reading Stead's work to lap up holographic

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detail. that was pioneering investigative journalism- deeply investigating single

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topics bringing them to a wider public understanding. well the fact that these

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articles were published under sensational headlines like the violation [cows in a field]

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of virgins and a child of 13 bought for five pounds

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didn't make it any less serious. the dawn of investigative journalism for people

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like dickens in london come in. they too were interested in exposing social ills

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through deep investigations. though they fit right into this emerging

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journalistic scene like a hand into a glove... anyway so maybe Dickens would have [crowded room in dim light]

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put it more eloquently. anyway Dickens and London elevated writing styles that

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wouldn't fly in contemporary newsrooms. although narrating in first person with

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ornate complex language was par for the course among 19th century journalists,

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temporary journalists strived for objectivity and prefer to go light on

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all those adjectives and adverbs that novelists tend to like oh so very much.[man frowns from newsroom]

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well, sure Dickens in London might be literary luminaries but hey, style guides

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are style guides.

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