Nature as news: Science reporting in theNew York times 1898 to 1983

Commercial newspapers not overtly tied to political parties or sponsored by governments can be understood to contain two types of news: stories about society and stories about nature. The first category, "social stories," includes coverage of the humanly constructed environment: politics, crime, the marketplace. Typical "social stories" convey a critical or evaluative response to the happenings they report. Individual stories comprise parts of a broader mosaic of social history in which the interpretation of daily events in the newspaper merges with and reinforces the elements of the reader's direct experience. The two forms of experience, firsthand and newspaper-mediat ed, interact in memory to form a composite. Because the newspaper comprises hardcopy which is retrievable and because its message is widely distributed, it gains authority as an intersubjective anchorage for personal recollection. The microfilming of "newspapers of record" such as The New York Times has advanced this process of focusing individual memory of collective events around newspaper copy. Through newspapers, and especially their "social stories," the individual locates him or herself within an historical topography. Daily life, at least in retrospect, can take on an epic dimension. The second category of newspaper article is "nature stories."