W. Davis "Buzz" Merritt Jr. was editor of The Wichita Eagle from 1975 through 1998. [1] He is considered one of the fathers of public journalism, a reform movement that urged journalists to do their jobs in ways that could help citizens engage in public life rather than discouraging them. A major component of public journalism is to train journalists to view events from the citizen's perspective rather than that of the participants in the news. [2] Merritt is the author of four books on journalism, "Public Journalism and Public Life," "The Two W's of Journalism" (with Maxwell McCombs), Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk , a critique of corporate ownership of newspapers that reserves its most pointed criticism for Knight Ridder, the company that owned The Wichita Eagle and his employer for 43 years and his latest book, "On Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Perfect"
He is especially known for "The Voter Project" and "The People Project," both demonstrations of ways that public journalism could affect journalistic practice.
In 2017, W. Davis Merritt was inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
  | This article about an American journalist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This biographical article about a print editor is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation, the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. Journalistic media include: print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public-benefit corporation that publishes a news website (Inquirer.com) and two daily newspapers that serve the Philadelphia metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest continually operating daily newspaper in the United States. Owned by The Lenfest Institute, a subsidiary of The Philadelphia Foundation, The Inquirer is the largest newspaper in the United States organized under nonprofit ownership. As of 2007, it is the 17th largest average weekday U.S. newspaper circulation, and has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes as of 2021.
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors or news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism.
Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, it was the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspaper brands sold. Its headquarters were located in San Jose, California.
The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and has an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. In 2006, it purchased Knight Ridder, which at the time was the second-largest newspaper company in the United States. In addition to its daily newspapers, McClatchy also operates several websites and community papers, as well as a news agency, McClatchy DC Bureau, focused on political news from Washington, D.C.
The Wichita Eagle is a daily newspaper published in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is owned by The McClatchy Company and is the largest newspaper in Wichita and the surrounding area.
Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.
Civic journalism is the idea of integrating journalism into the democratic process. The media not only informs the public, but it also works towards engaging citizens and creating public debate. The civic journalism movement is an attempt to abandon the notion that journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes. In its place, the civic journalism movement seeks to treat readers and community members as participants.
The history of American newspapers begins in the early 18th century with the publication of the first colonial newspapers. American newspapers began as modest affairs—a sideline for printers. They became a political force in the campaign for American independence. Following independence the first amendment to U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press. The U.S. Postal Service Act of 1792 provided substantial subsidies: Newspapers were delivered up to 100 miles for a penny and beyond for 1.5 cents, when first class postage ranged from six cents to a quarter.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants in journalism, communities, and the arts.
The Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia is one of the oldest formal journalism schools in the world. The school provides academic education and practical training in all areas of journalism and strategic communication for undergraduate and graduate students across several media including television and radio broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, photography, and new media. The school also supports a robust advertising and public relations curriculum.
Journalism in the United States began as a "humble" affair and became a political force in the campaign for American independence. Following independence, the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press and freedom of speech. The American press grew rapidly following the American Revolution. The press became a key support element to the country's political parties, but also for organized religious institutions.
Digital journalism, also known as online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.
Clark Hoyt is an American journalist who was the public editor of The New York Times, serving as the "readers' representative." He was the newspaper's third public editor, or ombudsman, after Daniel Okrent and Byron Calame. His initial two-year term began on May 14, 2007, and was later extended for another year, expiring in June 2010.
Lee Hills (1906–2000) was an American editor and publisher of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press. He was the first chairman and CEO of Knight-Ridder Newspapers and president of the Knight Ridder news service after he helped arrange the merger of Knight Newspapers and Ridder Publications; later in life, he was president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Community journalism is locally-oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhoods, individual suburbs or small towns, rather than metropolitan, state, national or world news.
Darrow J. "Duke" Tully was a former publisher of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette newspapers, published in Phoenix. Both were owned by Central Newspapers, Inc., headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the time. Central Newspapers was founded by Eugene C. Pulliam, grandfather of United States Vice President Dan Quayle.
Robert Skinner Boyd was an American journalist who spent most of his career working for the Knight Newspaper Group, spending two decades as the group's Washington bureau chief. He and Clark Hoyt won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for uncovering the fact that Senator Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern's choice for vice president, had had severe psychiatric problems and undergone three shock treatments. Instead of publishing their scoop, they disclosed their findings to McGovern's top advisor, and Eagleton withdrew as the Democratic nominee.
Jeffrey A. Marx is an American journalist. In the early 1980s, as a correspondent for the Lexington Herald-Leader, he co-authored a series of exposes on improper cash payoffs to University of Kentucky basketball players which won him and the co-author, Michael M. York, the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. The article series "Playing Above the Rules", exposed improper cash payoffs to University of Kentucky basketball players and improper offers made to recruits by other universities. The authors interviewed 33 former Wildcats – some of whom spoke to Marx and York with the goal of ending the abuses – and the paper sued the university and the state of Kentucky under freedom of information laws to get detailed information, including the names of specific violators, for the series. The piece also led to NCAA regulation changes.
Roger Fidler is an internationally recognized digital news media pioneer and journalist. He is best known for his prototypes of digital newspapers and mobile tablets, which he first described in a 1981 essay he wrote and illustrated for an Associated Press Managing Editors special report titled Newspapers in the Year 2000. In 1994, he produced a video at the Knight Ridder Information Design Laboratory, titled “The Tablet Newspaper: A Vision for the Future,” that demonstrated how tablets might be used for reading newspapers early in the twenty-first century. After Steve Jobs launched the Apple iPad in 2010, a digital copy of his video went viral on the web and embroiled Fidler in a global patent war between Apple and Samsung.
