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All British Literature Videos 53 videos

1984
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Well, if this book doesn't make you want to tape over your laptop camera, we don't know what will.

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1984 Summary
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ELA 12: 6.5 On the Level 5 Views


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Description:

Believe it or not, writers like London and Dickens got their starts in journalism. Apparently brevity wasn't always part of the news.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:01

No When you hear the names charles dickens and jack

00:05

london you probably think novelist rather than journalist Or maybe

00:10

you think motorcyclist Yes well you know But while it

00:14

might be hard to imagine any of the author's eight

00:16

hundred page monsters being published in broadsheet their careers can

00:21

definitely help us when it comes to understanding the development

00:24

of journalism over the nineteenth century What we now know

00:27

as modern journalism started to take shape cities were growing

00:31

and literacy rates were rising so editors were racking their

00:34

brains trying to come up with ways to reach a

00:36

broader cross section of this suddenly more literate society Well

00:41

since chocolate newspapers never really took off editors ended up

00:44

going with sensationalism that its stories about scandals and crimes

00:49

that appealed to readers as a sort of guilty pleasure

00:52

down familiar Yeah good news is no news in the

00:56

us Cheap newspapers called penny presses were founded and they

01:00

covered the sensationalist stories that more established news outlets wouldn't

01:04

touch with a ten foot pole The british weren't left

01:07

out of this sensationalist craze On the other side of

01:09

the pond people like william thomas stead covered such lurid

01:14

subjects as child prostitution well it's important to keep in

01:17

mind that even though the subject matter was sensational wasn't

01:20

necessarily bad journalism although there were certainly some sicko is

01:24

reading steady work tio lap up holographic details that was

01:28

pioneering investigative journalism deeply investigating single topics bringing them to

01:33

a wider public understanding Well the fact that these articles

01:37

were published under sensational headlines like the violation of virgins

01:41

and a child of thirteen bought for five pounds didn't

01:45

make it any less serious Dawn of investigative journalism where

01:49

people like dickens in london come in they too were

01:51

interested in exposing social ills through deep investigations so they

01:56

fit right into this emerging journalistic scene you know like

02:00

hand in glove anyway so maybe dickins would have put

02:03

it more eloquently anyway Diggins in london elevated writing styles

02:07

that wouldn't fly in contemporary newsrooms although narrating in first

02:11

person with ornate complex language was par for the course

02:15

among nineteenth century journalist contemporary journalists drive for objectivity and

02:20

prefer to go light on all those adjectives and adverbs

02:23

that novelists and like oh so very much not sure

02:26

dickens in london might be literary luminaries but hey style 00:02:30.21 --> [endTime] Guides or start guys You know what guys

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