By: Jessica Nam
March 18, 2008

John Steele Gordon, the historian and editor for the American Heritage magazine wrote the article “The Internet lets everyone become a journalist”. In this article he talked about Bennett and his emphasis on the journalism field today.  

James Gordon Bennett, founder and editor of the New York Herald once said that “an age of chaos... heaving, tumbling age". He was describing the American industry and this statement is still applicable today as it was back then. The news 150 years ago and news now is profoundly different.

News delivery has now adopted a news-magazine type of format. Topics such as weather reports, sports, stock prices, and financial news started to emerge, thanks to Bennett.

“He made a fetish of being the first with the news, exploiting the telegraph to the fullest and paying handsome bonuses to reporters who scooped the competition,” wrote John Steele Gordon. “In short, Bennett made the Herald a window on the world.”

Bennett knew exactly how to get news. Due to him newspapers began to become a major power center for politics. Writing stories about illegal political activities by politicians began to circulate all over the newspaper. This was new—and it worked.

Unfortunately, this started to bring up the question of ethics and the first amendment issue. Not only journalists but politicians soon began to test the waters on ethics and news began to become a big business.  Until now, ethics is always an issue that journalists must be careful for.  
Slowly but surely, news began to mature into a whole new realm.  
“The technology of the internet makes it extremely easy to provide links to the underlying evidence for a story, such as full texts of press releases, congressional reports, statistical studies, and on-the-record interviews,” wrote Gordon.

That’s right, the digital age, technology, and the Internet kicked into the journalism field.

The question of who a journalist is was something that needs to be reconsidered. Anyone can deliver the news now. The internet opens doors for many. If you blog, write posts on your website, even when writing papers about something you are passionate about may very well mean that you are a journalist.

“Now, thanks to the Internet, a person can do exactly what James Gordon Bennett did 165 years ago: open his own outlet with a prayer and a song,” wrote Gordon.