The News in 1900 and 2001

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/8/2001 6:45:50 PM, acnasvers at hotmail.com writes:
<< I think a good analogy can be drawn with newspapers. Today's typical
regional paper (circulation on the order of 20k-200k) is much larger and
more colorful than its counterpart of 100 years ago. That doesn't mean that
we have much more, and more colorful, news than folks did in 1900, or that
our lives are much larger and more colorful. >>

This looks like it is not true.  The advertising industry in the US presents
studies on a regular basis about the sharp increase in news sources and that
one of the major factors is simply the fact that there are many more people
in the US and the world than there was in 1900, and 1950 - the usual
comparison date.   There are simply more "human events" happening in the
world today and it is an open question whether coverage has expanded
commensurately.

Another factor is the increase in the total mass of "knowledge." Neil de
Grasse Tyson, the astronomer, has talked about scientific information expandin
g exponentially every four years, paralleling the "rule" for the expansion of
technology.  Not too long ago I was asked to compare an college-level
astronomy textbook from the 1930's with a current one.  Literally, the entire
old book corrresponded to the first three chapters of the new book, which was
32 chapters long.

What this has done is essentially make the news and general information
media, in their dependence on encyclopedias and any kind of science texts,
rely on a good deal of obsolete information, quite simply because there is
too much information moving too quickly.  This is not something that was
considered a problem in 1900 or even 1950.

Researchers in the "public sector' like David Kirsh at UCSD have pointed to
hard quantitive evidence of "cognitive overload" that equates to the ad
industry's notion of "clutter."  This has intensified the investment in the
competition for attention (not even "comprehension") so that the modern news
media (including newspapers) must spend more money in promoting themselves
then in gathering news.  And because of advertising revenues and how they
have come to pinpoint and dictate preferred audiences, new organizations must
be much more calculating (than in 1900) in what news they can or will cover.

There is simply a great deal more quantitative information that is available
and that is being generated and exchanged in the world today than there was
in 1900.  That a language must alter itself to accomodate this situation is a
logical conclusion.

One last observation.  The discussion of dictionaries did not touch upon the
fact that for example American English is not a single entity but rather
represents a fair number of linguistic communities.  To the extent that
uniform education and the electronic media has served to standardize that
language, it has also created a situation where many of these linguistic
communities are now being represented as valid sources of words and meanings.
 And where therefore the selective "elite" English of the old dictionaries
may no longer apply.

Regards,
Steve Long