Ebook: Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page

The front pages of newspapers reveal a shift over the past few years: stories are more personal, more inclusive, less distant from readers experience. Journalist Michele Weldon takes a fresh look at how newspapers have carved out a narrative niche that reflects society s fascination with personal stories and readers demands for diversity in content. Comparing 160 front pages in twenty American newspapers for eight dates in 2001 and 2004, she shows a shift toward features over hard news, along with an increase in anecdotal or humanistic approaches to all stories. Forces such as blogs, citizen journalism, newsroom diversity, and other factors have converged to remake the front page, and Weldon unveils the content of everyman news as commodity apart from the mode of delivery. She also incorporates more than fifty interviews with people connected to journalism about what these changes mean.