Overview

Randall Sumpter questions the dominant notion that reporters entering the field in the late nineteenth century relied on an informal apprenticeship system to learn the rules of journalism. Drawing from the experiences of more than fifty reporters, he argues that cub reporters could and did access multiple sources of instruction, including autobiographies and memoirs of journalists, fiction, guidebooks, and trade magazines. Arguments for “professional journalism” did not resonate with the workaday journalists examined here. These news workers were more concerned with following a personal rather than a professional code of ethics, and implemented their own work rules. Some of those rules governed “delinquent” behavior. While scholars have traced some of the connections between beginning journalists and learning opportunities, Sumpter shows that much more can be discovered, with implications for understanding the development of journalistic professionalism and present-day instances of journalistic behavior.

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Reviews

His willingness to venture outside of the standard historian's toolbox and utilize the work of other disciplines to underpin historical work in modern social science makes Sumpter's work not just good, but exceptional. To make that very interdisciplinary work the core of his thesis and theoretical paradigm is a welcome breath of fresh air in the discipline. --H-Net Reviews Sumpter introduces the notion that the day's news work rules were spread through communities of practice, that is, informal interpersonal networks involving 'knowledge brokers, ' as well as through news fiction, newswriters' autobiographies, and trade and general interest publications. The author's early point about how studying this topic can offer insight into today's technology-driven upsetting of the boundaries of journalism underscores why this study is important. --Patricia Dooley, Wichita State University; author of Taking Their Political Place: Journalists and the Making of an Occupation and The Technology of Journalism: Cultural Agents, Cultural Icons

Sumpter introduces the notion that the day's news work rules were spread through communities of practice, that is, informal interpersonal networks involving 'knowledge brokers, ' as well as through news fiction, newswriters' autobiographies, and trade and general interest publications. The author's early point about how studying this topic can offer insight into today's technology-driven upsetting of the boundaries of journalism underscores why this study is important. --Patricia Dooley, Wichita State University; author of Taking Their Political Place: Journalists and the Making of an Occupation and The Technology of Journalism: Cultural Agents, Cultural Icons

Author Information

Randall S. Sumpter is an Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. He lives in College Station, Texas.

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