![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Changing economic conditions in the second half of the 20th century led to a transformation in the discursive frame of reports about labour in US and Canadian newspapers. The article first historically documents the shift in the target market of US and Canadian newspapers from a mass audience of the working and middle class to a niche, “upscale” audience of the upper middle class. Secondly, the article critically analyses news reports of transit (e.g., rail, bus, and airline) strikes, and how the framing of those strikes dramatically switched from a pre-1970s orientation of worker struggles to a post-1970s orientation of high consumer inconvenience. The article's analysis tracks three North American newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Toronto Star. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the target market of the newspaper business clearly affects the language of news.
Notes
1. The story was tempered to some degree by a story the previous day, 4 January 1955, in the Star that reported a nearly 80-year-old member of the newspaper's own composing room staff walked six miles to his job at the Star and reported he “never felt better in my life” (p. 5).
2. PATCO was the union that was later infamously destroyed when President Ronald Reagan fired all striking air traffic controllers in 1981.