'Doctor Who'; the journeying through past times in a Journalism lecture

Chris Horrie taught today's lecture and provided some amusement in describing the clothing that the people of Joseph Addison's time would have worn, acute descriptions to their very tall wigs for example. In the 1600's and early 1700's there was an immense amount of focus on insincere politeness, all the men bowing and making gestures in their French style silks, jewels, and wigs. Chris 'acted out' what sort of elaborate insults would have been devised in such times and we learnt how Joseph Addison's writings mocked current affairs with his use entertaining description as a writing style. My favourite of Addison's essays is the one about the Shilling that goes travelling around the world as an illustration of the trade of those times. Chris showed us another essay where Addison again comments on trade, he states how a woman's complete outfit 'has seen one hundred climates' for example. Addison can come across as quite xenophobic in his writing, their is also an air of superiority in his tone.

Joseph Addison's writings are the first western journalism. Addison writes with dry humour and a sarcastic undertone. He wrote in the time of the Restoration of Charles the II. Americans today are obsessed with the British history, culture and politics of the 1600's and early 1700's because it is what they based their republic on. As such it is actually easier to get hold of Addison's works in America rather than here in England. The real connection between England and America is the writings of John Locke and the reason why it is important for us to look at this 'American' element of history is because contemporary journalism today is essentially American.

It was interesting to learn that Addison mocked empiricists and that economics today basically comes out of empiricism. Chris Horrie used an example out of one of the student's bottle's of water asking why an elite brand name car is more expensive than water, when if you don't drink water you die and if you don't have a car you are ok? Why is water 60,000 times more expensive than a car? why not 70,000 times more expensive? Economics then breaks down each step and answers why, this is closelt linked to research and experience which is essentially empericism. Not how the two words are similar as well.

I am going to end this post with Chris's definition of journalism 'journalism is a business of turning information into money, or selling information'. This could be selling hard or factual news (eg. price of gold or the exchange rate) or more gossip news (like Britney Spear's latest diet), but it is information that peopl want and will pay for. The most you can really get for a newspaper, for example something like the Financial Times is £2 but if a million people want to buy it, you are in business.