1. Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Steve Ember. This week on our program, we talk about the newspaper industry in the United States and its history.
2.The new movie "State of Play" is a political murder mystery. Ben Affleck plays a congressman whose assistant -- and lover -- is killed. Russell Crowe investigates her murder. Does he play a Washington police officer, a federal agent, a private investigator?
3. No, a newspaper reporter -- a reminder, in this age of new media and social media, not to forget the importance of the old media. American newspapers are reporting what some fear is the slow death of their own industry.
4. Newspapers in the United States earn most of their money from selling space for advertising. The rates theycharge are tied to the number of readers. But the number of people who buy newspapers has been falling for years. And this traditional business model has not worked very well on the Internet, especially not in a bad economy.
5. Industry profits are shrinking, and many newspaper companies have large debts from buying other papers. Some papers have recently closed or declaredbankruptcy or reduced their operations.
6. Newspapers are looking for new ways to reinvent themselves, new ways to earn money. That includes giving new consideration to an old idea -- charging for at least some of the material that most papers now publish online for free.
7. Internet access to newspapers means that more people may read the news, which is good for society. But good reporting costs money. The question is how much are people willing to pay for news that they have gotten used to receiving for free?
8. Another suggestion is for newspapers to become nonprofit organizations. That way they could seek tax-free donations. But the industry has never worked that way.
9. The first newspaper published in Britain's North American colonies appeared in Boston, Massachusetts, in sixteen ninety. It was called Publick Occurrences BothForeign and Domestick. It began with this news:
10. READER: "The Christianized Indians in some parts of Plimouth, have newly appointed a day of Thanksgiving to God for his Mercy in supplying their extreme andpinching Necessities under their late want of Corn, & for His giving them now a prospect of a very Comfortable Harvest. Their Example may be worth Mentioning."
11. Publick Occurrences appeared only once. The National Humanities Center in North Carolina explains on its Web site that the newspaper was banned for threereasons.
12. One was the failure of its editor, Benjamin Harris, to get permission to publish. Another reason was his criticism of the abuse of several French prisoners captured by Indian allies of the English. And the third reason was the publishing of rumors about the moral behavior of the French royal family.
13. Newspapers that came later reprinted information from papers in Europe so as not to offend colonial officials. Politics and public policy issues were avoided until the New England Courant was published in Boston in seventeen twenty-one. It accused the colonial government, for example, of not doing enough to protect ships from pirates.
14. The editor, James Franklin, was arrested and barred from publishing the paper. So he appointed a new publisher -- his younger brother Benjamin. And that was how one of America's founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, came into public life.
15. Freedom of the press is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Historians say a trial in the colony of New York in seventeen thirty-five went a long way toward establishing this freedom.
16. The trial involved publisher of the New York Weekly Journal. The newspaper had criticized the colonial governor. Zenger was arrested and charged with seditiouslibel. English law defined seditious libel as criticizing the government in such a way as to reduce public confidence. It made no difference whether the criticism was true or not.
17. Zenger admitted criticizing the governor. But his defense lawyer asked the jury to decide if citizens have the right to criticize public officials. The jury foundZenger not guilty. Historians say the trial formed the beginning of the legal idea that a statement is not libelous if it can be proven true.
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