The Media and the Road to Modernity | 81independence than on the Continent. Consequently, the post-1880s British
press saw itself less as an ‘educational agent’ than as an advocate of the reader
- a ‘representative medium’ (Hampton 2004: 52). The parliamentary system,
ample press freedom and stronger market orientation all favoured this devel-
opment.
The 1880s also marked the appearance in the English-speaking world of
reporters who were increasingly conducting independent inquiries, holding
interviews and doing on-the-spot investigations to uncover abuses and to
push for policy reforms. The first interview is often attributed to the New
York Herald in 1859, but it took two decades before this form of dialogue
became established in the Anglo-Saxon world (Hoyer, in Broersma 2007: 36).
To gather information for their disclosures, disguised journalists smuggled
themselves into factories, madhouses or brothels. In England this procedure,
pioneered by William Thomas Stead, was known as the ‘New Journalism’, and
in the United States as ‘Muckraking’ (Wiener 1988). In the countries of Con-
tinental Europe, independent reporting and the separation of opinion and
news began later because of the stronger ties between newspapers and political
parties. Here journalists tended to see themselves as cultural and political edu-
cators. The ideal was not so much fact-based, well-researched news as well-for-
mulated argument (Høyer and Pöttker 2005; Bösch, in Zimmermann 2006).
Consequently German newspapers daily seized upon political commentaries
of their competitors for the purpose of emending them.
Nevertheless, Anglo-Saxon journalism and its Continental counterpart
moved closer to each other around 1900, when various forms of investiga-
tive journalism increased in Continental Europe as well. For example, in
the Netherlands the young reporter Marie Joseph Brusse wrote a number of
socially critical articles beginning in 1898, for which he disguised himself as
a sailor and a tramp in order to pursue his investigation (Wijfjes, in Broersma
2007: 72). Although in Germany new formats such as interviews developed
slowly only after the turn of the century, reporters were already travelling to
the scenes of events to do their own research (Bösch 2009: 472). And even in
1890s’ Russia, reports of this kind appeared in an attempt to alter politics and
society (McReynolds 1991: 164f.). On a less positive note, British journalism
tended towards greater partisanship in the period around 1900, whereas the
liberal German popular papers like the B.Z. am Mittag came very close indeed
to Anglo-Saxon standards.
Although Anglo-Saxon journalists enjoyed a better reputation than their
colleagues on the Continent, there were few differences in social standing
and income. Both British and German journalists from the major news-
papers had university degrees as a rule, and in Germany as well as Britain
editors could at least look forward to earning a good salary (Brown 1985:
76, 210f.; Requate 1995: 143f., 218; Retallack 1993: 188–200). However,