ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


All British Literature Videos 53 videos

1984
135161 Views

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

1984 and V for Vendetta
17150 Views

Imagine a world in which all literature was dystopian. Okay, so we may be getting to that point, 1984 and V for Vendetta helped start it all.

1984 Summary
136167 Views

By the end of this video, you will be brainwashed. There's nothing you can do about it; we just wanted to let you know. We like to think we're bigg...

See All

ELA 12: 6.5 On the Level 5 Views


Share It!


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

Related Videos

A Tale of Two Cities Summary
75858 Views

Meet Charles Darnay, the nobleman who spends more time on trial and in prison than attending balls and drinking expensive wine. Don't feel too bad...

Beowulf
113100 Views

Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...

Brave New World
79224 Views

Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...

Dracula
27348 Views

What is Dracula really about? Just Count Dracula? Or is there more to it than vampires? This video addresses some major ideas in Bram Stoker’s cl...

Dracula: Father of the Modern Vampire
17557 Views

There are plenty of famous vampires that send chills up our spines, but Dracula was and still is the king of them all. No one else can touch him. N...