The Medium Is The Message

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THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE Patrik Lundell

Online Publication Date: 01 April 2008

To cite this Article Lundell, Patrik(2008)'THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE',Media History,14:1,1 — 16 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13688800701880382 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688800701880382

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THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE The media history of the press

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Patrik Lundell This paper argues for the relevance of the media history of the press. Using a broad and open media concept, this perspective should be understood as the study of the construction and communication of the self-images and ideology of the press. Rather than describing the complex of problems as images that are ‘spread’ through one channel (newspapers) by one actor (the press), it should be seen as a mutual exchange between various media and various actors. Different audiences have been resources for the press, just as the press has been a resource for them. Instead of separating proper journalism, the spreading of the self-image, and the reception of different audiences as clearly defined areas, they must be seen as constituting each other. Focusing on the funeral of Swedish editor Lars Hierta, the paper argues for the methodological advantages inherent in the media event and the surrounding cultural circumstances.

KEYWORDS media history of the press; cultural history of media; press history; self-images; ideology; media events

The death of the Swedish King in the autumn of 1872 was followed by a number of formal ceremonies. This led Aftonbladet to remark that a similar event, the funeral for Lars Hierta (who established Aftonbladet in 1830), was, in contrast, certainly ‘not arranged’. Thousands of people had nevertheless followed the great editor to his final rest. ‘In the newspapers, there had been nothing to encourage this. Only the briefest of paragraphs beside the announcement of the funeral were published’ (Aftonbladet 3 Dec. 1872). The ideology of the press is to a great extent considered as ‘natural’, by its own practitioners as well as by its consumers (and several of its critics). In numerous countries the ideology is in effect officially sanctioned in the sense that the institution is supported by government through funding, jurisdiction and education. The historical study of the press as an institution means paying attention to its ideology and self-image and taking it seriously as a historical phenomenon. In other words, its legitimacy must be historicized. The burial of Lars Hierta in 1872
and its reception
testified to the status the Swedish press had acquired in the 1870s. Nothing like it had been seen before. Hierta was not just a representative of the previously much disregarded fourth estate. Many considered him its founding father. His heroic battles in the 1830s and 1840s were often viewed as the beginning of the modern and independent Swedish press. One perspective that is still lacking
and this applies to other mass media including journalism at large
is how this ideology has been mediated, and how the institution has gained its legitimacy. The internal, or journalistic, narrative
that this legitimacy is achieved through what the press has actually used to fill its columns
is utterly incomplete. When these questions have been touched upon, scholars have confined themselves to stating that the ideology of journalism has been spread by way of the main channels within the traditional mass media itself. The perspective proposed here suggests that such an understanding is far too narrow. Media History, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2008 ISSN 1368-8804 print/1469-9729 online/08/010001
16 # 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13688800701880382

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Certainly, the funeral in 1872 testified to the standing of the press at the time. However, the event cannot merely, or even primarily, be seen as a measure of the legitimacy of the fourth estate. The funeral was not as spontaneous an event as Aftonbladet claimed. Thousands of people do not gather by chance, and obviously the procession, the banners, the choir and the speeches were ‘arranged’. And, regardless of this, public events not only reflect, they also create esteem. Although the funeral is long forgotten, it promoted the legitimacy of the press and the course of historiography. Today, there is no greater historical hero in the internal narrative than Lars Hierta and, in traditional academic discourse, he is frequently referred to as the founding father of the modern, independent press. These notions are not merely dependent on Hierta himself, nor on his writings and doings in the 1830s and 1840s. On the contrary, they play a comparatively marginal role. Were it not for the funeral (1872), the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation (1878), the medallion and the biography/memorial publication (1880), the sepulchral monument (1891), the centenary festivities (1901), the new editions of the autobiography (1901 and 1926), the publishing of his parliamentary speeches and bills (1913
17), the statue (1927, relocated a second time as recently as in 2001) and so forth, not only the Hierta image but also notions of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ would be different. This paper discusses media events that were clearly and consciously staged by the press, and focuses on the funeral of Lars Hierta in Stockholm in 1872. The event per se is not the issue
it is not a case study. The purpose is theoretical, or heuristic and explorative, rather than entirely empirical. Similar events
funerals, statues, inaugurations, conferences, expositions and other publicity stunts
can be identified in any nation’s press history. However, even in empirical terms, the perspective can be applied to more than media events, these organized, collective and extrovert phenomena; everything from ads and architecture to bibliographies and best-selling novels should be considered. I will argue here for the methodological advantages inherent in the media event and the surrounding cultural circumstances.

Related Fields of Research The press seen as a self-regarding means of production is a neglected field. How has it communicated its power, through language, rites and symbols? How has it created its strong trademark? Much is known about the press as a sometimes involuntary, sometimes prompt channel for most kinds of propaganda. We also have a fairly substantial knowledge of the existence of public trust, though how this developed is virtually unknown. Furthermore, trust in the actual press is always relative to an ideal. This extensive and, by necessity, multi-disciplinary field cannot be approached with a singular model of analysis. To understand academic historiography demands other analytical tools than the study of monuments, and how to relate them to each other raises yet more issues. Three particularly relevant (and more or less separate and coherent) academic fields can however be discerned. Firstly, historical research into the press as an institution, and its ideology, is of course important. Secondly, insights and perspectives from the study of other institutions’ self-image and struggle for legitimacy are useful. And thirdly, what can be termed the ‘cultural history of media’ is highly relevant. What follows

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seeks only to place the proposed perspective within a framework of research, not to offer a complete survey (if such could even be imagined). In the last decades, questions about the ideology of the press and its place in society have often been touched upon, and in some studies these are the main issues under discussion.1 One inspiring work is Aled Jones’ Powers of the Press (1996) with its broad account of notions in nineteenth-century England. More recently Mark Hampton’s Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850
1950 (2004), in which ideas of the press in relation to different elites, including the journalistic elite, are linked to notions of the public and the emerging mass democracy, has continued the debate. In The Form of News (2001), Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone observe that the newspaper as a medium is ‘almost sanctified’, dramatically changed but constantly linked to a democratic function (Barnhurst and Nerone 1). To understand this status an additional effort is needed. ‘Readers do not read bits of text and pictures. What they read is the paper, the tangible object as a whole’ (Barnhurst and Nerone 7). How the medium has physically presented itself, the authors demonstrate, has been crucial to the values connected to it. In Politics and the American Press (2002), Richard Kaplan analyses how the ideal of objectivity was established around the turn of the nineteenth century. This ideal, he argues, was a response to a new political culture in which the press had to win legitimacy in a new way (and not a ‘natural’ step in its ‘evolution’). Kaplan is, to some extent, interested in how these ideals were communicated or staged, and he wants to document ‘the ritual nature of the fourth estate’s symbolic practices’ (Kaplan 17). More examples could be given.2 One valid objection concerns this literature’s rather single-minded preoccupation with the medium itself.3 To paraphrase Barnhurst and Nerone: readers do not read only the paper; they read a whole world of signs and symbols. There is also often a reductionist tendency to oversimplify ‘the Press’ as a singular meaning-producing agent. It is taken for granted and considered simply to ‘spread’ its ideology and self-image without intervention.4 Other institutions have been approached from a less prejudiced angle. Studies into how political power has legitimated itself
with a modern classic in Peter Burke’s The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1992)
have analysed everything from verses and medals to statues and architecture. Another major field is that identified as ‘Science, Media and the Public’ (Kasperowski). At least since Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), laboratories have been opened up, and scientific practices have been seen as actively adjusting themselves to the medial process. This ‘medialization’ has not merely been the story of how science has been represented, but rather of how the mutual exchange with different audiences and institutions, in various media forms, has affected not only the diffusion but also the production of scientific knowledge (e.g. Ekstro¨m). Straightforward ‘translations’
to replace ‘Louis XIV’ or ‘Uppsala physics’ with ‘the Press’
take us into almost uncharted territory, and they clearly underline the necessity of separating the institution from the medium. (In the terminology of Ju¨rgen Habermas: we must study the principal manifestation of the bourgeois public sphere as we would its precursor and opponent, the representative publicity of the Old Regime.) These translations also indicate a possible explanation for the absence of these perspectives in press studies. Fairly quickly, one acknowledges what a concept like ‘public science’ might mean (Turner). ‘Public journalism’ is an established term for something quite different

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(Glasser). ‘Science and Media’ is easily comprehended at a general level. ‘The Press and Media’ initially sounds rather odd. This conceptual resistance, however, says nothing about the relevance of the perspectives, and we ought not merely to overcome it, but acknowledge and analyse it as a decisive part of the production of meaning concerning the press. (Several of our most central analytical concepts originate from those we study.) Consequently, it is no surprise to find that these perspectives are more easily found outside traditional media studies. The same can be said of the expanding field of the cultural history of media, which, by and large, stems from a critique of media-specific perspectives in favour of studies of ‘media systems’ and ‘media cultures’. Cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries, the field should be understood in the light of the cultural turn within the historical disciplines generally. Questions about how meaning is produced and transmitted between different contexts, and a growing sensitivity (acquired not least from the field of visual studies) to the materiality and spatiality of these processes, have been essential. The earlier fixation with printed texts has given way to a broader understanding of the production and communication of meaning. The written word has also begun to be seen in new ways as in David Henkin’s City Reading (1998), with its attention to signs, posters and banknotes.5 Furthermore, today’s new media have opened the door for new questions about historical media cultures (e.g. Bolter and Grusin). Contributions like Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree’s New Media, 1740
1915 (2003) and David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins’ Rethinking Media Change (2003) have shown that early media history must also be understood in terms of ‘intermedial exchanges and overlapping media practices’ (Ekstro¨m, Ju¨lich and Snickars 25). The perspective outlined in this paper is press history, in the sense that the press as an institution and its ideology are in focus. By introducing new perspectives at the intersection of the fields presented above, a discipline that can more specifically be termed the media history of the press begins to emerge.

Media Concepts and Media Events Defining an unequivocal concept of media is not fruitful. Such attempts easily become too narrow and often anachronistic (as they are usually based on the traditional mass media which dominated the twentieth century). The concept of media contained in this view is empirically defined. In fact, the function of the historical situation is decisive. The funeral in 1872 is seen as a medium, which consisted of a number of other media: the procession, the banners, the choir, the speeches, the audiences, even individual actors, all functioned as media.6 The press reports of the funeral ceremony communicated a number of things: Hierta had also been a distinguished member of the Swedish Parliament, a successful publisher and a very wealthy industrialist. His significance for the press no doubt overshadowed these other elements in the rhetoric, and the central roles in the ceremony were played by men of the press. Hence, the event specifically communicated the idea that the Swedish press deserved and had actually obtained the support of the public. Which particular medium played the most important role
the newspaper or the event itself
cannot be decided at a general level. Assuming, a priori, that other media are secondary to the press is to adopt its own self-image. More specific questions must be posed. Some spectators

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were probably more profoundly affected by the funeral itself than by the articles in the newspapers. The majority, on the other hand, learned of the occasion only through the papers. Nevertheless, the two media presupposed and influenced each other. The funeral, as it was actually performed, is unthinkable without the newspapers’ previous and
no matter what Aftonbladet asserted
excessive reporting of the editor’s death and the numerous hagiographic articles. ‘No subject has, during the last few days, occupied the newspapers more than the demise of L.J. Hierta’, the weekly Samtiden (23 Nov. 1872) noted the day before the ceremony. Particularly noteworthy were the frequent references to the vast audience expected at his funeral. Ny illustrerad tidning (30 Nov. 1872) hoped that ‘the thousands of people, who doubtlessly will follow his coffin, like us, will acknowledge with gratitude the importance of his lifework for the development of our nation and our people’. Apparently, the newspaper-reading public could conclude that the event was expected to attract a huge crowd. Conveniently enough
whether the reader saw her- or himself as a part of this crowd, or merely wanted to take a look at it
the funeral took place on a Sunday. On the other hand, the massive press coverage of the funeral, and at least some of its ingredients, required the public event and its audience. Such staging can be called a media event. I understand media events as public activities analysed as a composite of different media, mutually amplifying or at the least impinging on each other. The kind I focus on are, inevitably, media events at another level as well; they are explicitly devoted (not necessarily in a positive sense) to the press (or any other ‘central’ media).7 The most interesting aspect, from my perspective, is the dynamic interaction between the different media involved. The papers not only drew the public’s attention to the forthcoming funeral. They also interpreted it afterwards. According to Ny illustrerad tidning (7 Dec. 1872), the audience lived up to expectations
almost out of necessity, it seems: the masses, the paper reported, ‘testified by their mere presence that the lifework of Lars Hierta was now known and acknowledged’ (my italics). Other media should also be considered: the editor’s autobiography (frequently referred to and excessively quoted) had a profound impact on how the day of the funeral went. The event reappears in memoirs and press histories. The illustrations have been reprinted. The course of events has been retold at anniversaries, reconstituted by academics in the classroom and has moved outwards through the complex circuits of oral communication. An analysis of this intricate history of the production of meaning is something quite different from the mere study of the media coverage of the funeral.

Journalism in Perspective In Sweden, the high standing of the newspaper was established during the late eighteenth century. The raison d’eˆtre of the press, many argued, was its promotion of the Enlightenment. The medium was thought of as a vehicle of utility. Its central role for civic and truth-seeking conversation and the public good was frequently emphasized (Lundell Pressen). Its functions have since changed considerably, while its high esteem still has much the same connotations. The newspaper is, like no other medium, associated with democratic, deliberative and civic values. Newspapers are considered something essentially good, and newspaper consumption is used as a measure of the level of democracy and civilization.

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The facts that individual newspapers fail in respect of these ideals, and that they have other aims besides promoting democracy, are commonly acknowledged. The content is criticized for ideological bias, concealed structures of power and sensationalism. However, this has not profoundly reduced the notions (even among its critics) of the ‘true’ purpose of the medium. The medium, it seems, supplies the standard against which the content is measured.8 The standard is, in other words, considered eternal, absolute and universal. The history of the press is, accordingly, often told as a gradual fulfilling of these ideals (in the critical version, to a certain point when a decline begins): from naive forms, it develops towards its true mission (and perhaps its decline). Studies of the press must, instead, put into question all teleological interpretations. The medium has no given part to play, and no preset goal has ever existed (e.g. Curran). Much could be said about notions associated with the press. Freedom is a central concept, as is responsibility, independence and (the evidently ideological term) the ‘fourth estate’. Some are recurring and obvious, some more temporal and less evident. At times the responsibility has been stressed, at others the power-controlling function. Sometimes the role as the voice of the people has dominated, whereas, at other times, the role of leader and educator has been stressed. Ideals presented as traditional are not always particularly so. These notions have, furthermore, more often than not, been contradictory. The press has, simultaneously, been moulding public opinion, and representing it. The journalist has been a bohemian, and a noble knight. The perspective proposed here contributes to the history of these notions, to the history of the ideas and ideals of the press. A no less important point, however, is to direct our attention to the
admittedly evident
condition that these notions are historically determined, and not attached to the medium itself. One method for doing this is focusing on how these notions have been communicated in specific situations, and by whom. Ideas of the press have not entered the minds of newspaper consumers by themselves. Nor have they been formed solely, or even primarily, by their experiences as newspaper consumers. Of course, form and content matter. However, what newspaper readers take in
and that they bother to read them at all
is, to a great extent, determined by their understanding of the press as an institution. This understanding has also been constructed and communicated outside the newspaper columns. Furthermore, newspaper consumers, too, have been actors and resources in this process. The press has had the possibility, like few other institutions, of shaping public understanding. This journalism on journalism is important, as is the more or less deliberate staging of the ideals performed in what is usually recognized as journalism (including what is commonly understood as media events); regardless of genre, the journalist or the press plays a prominent role. Nevertheless, to assume that conceptions of the press emanate primarily from its own columns would be to adopt and confirm a central part of its selfimage, that is, the notion of the enormous opinion-moulding power of newspapers. This observation creates yet another perspective, one in which journalism as a practice assumes a central position. However, the press has been occupied with far more than the mere production of newspapers. Several media
from stamps and posters to congresses and statues
have been enrolled. Instead of looking at these expressions as exceptions, or phenomena outside proper journalism, they should be considered as obvious features of the practice of journalism. From the perspective argued for here (and

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

carrying the argument to its provocative conclusion): what journalists produce and perform is journalism, not just (to refer to the conceptual discussion above) what they happen to define as such.9 Mass media, it has long been argued, gain their actual power by creating a pseudoreality: reports on the masses at a demonstration are politically more important than the actual masses (Lippmann; Boorstin). But also staged events, as well as their audiences, are themselves media, determining how journalists, newspapers and the press are to be perceived. These media, too, create a pseudo-reality. High-handedly borrowing Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase and carrying the argument to its logical conclusion: the medium (i.e. the press) is the message. A funeral, for example, is the medium.

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History, Historiography and the Archive Statements about the press almost always use historical arguments. The present is implicitly or explicitly described as a natural result of an evolutionary history, which by no means excludes heroes or times of great change. Ever since the seventeenth century, the press had been heading towards its assumption of a democratic role, and the liberal heroes of the nineteenth century, not least Lars Hierta, gave this development a helping hand. The present, from which this development is viewed, marks a peak; progress has continued. Lars Hierta’s successor at Aftonbladet was, even in his speech at the graveside, discreetly critical of Hierta’s sometimes overly aggressive tone (e.g. Aftonbladet 2 Dec. 1872). Occasionally the notion of the end of history is raised and the medium’s development is considered to have been completed. The event itself is often given a historical significance. ‘Who could, forty years ago, have anticipated that Lasse Hierta would be followed to his grave by royal cabinetsecretaries and the governor of Stockholm?’, one newspaper exclaimed (Fa¨derneslandet 4 Dec. 1872). When the newspapers say that an occasion of great importance is taking place, that is precisely what is actually happening. It is however reasonable also from a historical perspective to ascribe to the funeral in 1872 a symbolic role in the history of the legitimacy of the Swedish press: nothing like it had been seen previously, and although his ‘actual’ importance is certainly not the issue here, Lars Hierta had doubtlessly played a significant role in the history of the Swedish press. However, the recognition hardly presented itself. Should the funeral be seen as a symbol, that is the result of the making of this symbol, in the newspapers and in other media forms. Through the making of this symbol the belief systems of different audiences were to some extent conquered, and new values were established. The event was not just passively reflective but actively formative. Our contemporary experiences shape our views on history, and our pictures of the past have an impact on our judgments of the present. Our notions are historically formed. But they are also, and not least, determined by historiography. History does not come to us unmediated. We view the press in accordance with what historiography has taught us. If historiography is given a broader meaning than conventional press history, the allovershadowing producer is the press itself. The perspective discussed is in a sense an old one, and the issues in question can be understood with the aid of Herbert Butterfield’s ‘Whig interpretation of history’ or, alternatively, be analysed in terms of Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘invention of tradition’. Around the funeral in 1872, an interpretation of history was

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presented. Hierta’s significance in the emergence of ‘the independent, political press’ was hailed from left to right (Samtiden 30 Nov. 1872). A continuity, which inculcated specific values, was staged. No one could doubt that those, who ‘in the name of the Swedish press’ made speeches and laid wreaths on his grave, claimed to be his journalistic heirs (Dagens Nyheter 2 Dec. 1872). Whether this continuity was factual or not mattered less. More important was its function in the present situation. The merits attributed to Hierta promoted a self-image: the contemporary press was independent, and crucial for the development of the Swedish nation. Inspired by so-called ‘media archaeology’, chiefly on German ground and originating from Michael Foucault, the most basic conditions for historiography can also be touched upon (e.g. Zielinski; Andriopoulos and Dotzler; Ernst; Ebeling and Altekamp). Not even to the historian does history come unmediated. Obviously he or she is dependent on the historiography at hand. However, the historian does not, regardless of this dependence, simply put empirical facts together into historical knowledge. The sources are always various mediated statements. One can speak of the mediality of history, and between history and the historian is the archive. One explanation for the importance attributed to newspapers is that they can be filed more easily, systematically and accessibly than other media. The main elements of various media have simply vanished. Many forms of mass media are either ephemeral or inadequately filed. Newspapers play an important role for historiography; at the same time, truly ephemeral media are overlooked in analyses of the present as well as the past. It is all too easy for the historian (professional or not) to transfer her or his predicament, sitting in the archive (literally or metaphorically), to those situations and actors in the past being studied. The archive forms our collective memory, and arranges it hierarchically. The archive structures and regulates. It is partly conditioned by purely practical, material circumstances. Some phenomena
like a funeral
simply cannot be filed. Some artefacts
like a letter describing the same funeral
are preserved by chance. Ideological factors are involved as well. The press is considered important, hence it should be accessible. Furthermore, the press has contributed to the filing of itself. Bibliographies have been ordered and financed. Archives have been founded. Means for research have been donated.10 There is no reason for seeing this simply and solely as conscious steps for gaining legitimacy, and hence throwing doubt on such useful arrangements. (Neither should it be assumed that journalists in general are fervent guardians of the archive and financiers of research.) Nevertheless, these factors have an effect on the conditions for historiography, and they should also be considered manifestations with symbolic functions. An awareness of the fact, that the organization and accessibility of the archive is by no means ‘natural’ or in any direct way reflects the media landscape of the past, is essential. Media-specific limitations, policy considerations and historical conditions of production fashioned the documentation of the funeral in 1872 and, consequently, the content and organization of the media archive. The main source for the study of the funeral is newspapers. There are other sources, but regardless of the amount of committee records and correspondences produced and to some extent preserved, the actual event is not filed. The crowds have dispersed, and the flowers have withered away. The event in

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1872 cannot possibly be experienced as it was experienced from, say, a window facing the street where the procession passed. However, the actual state of the sources does not mean necessarily adopting the hierarchy of the media archive
or turning off our imagination
when trying to understand the press in a historical context. It only implies that an effort needs to be made not to confuse uncritically the sources with the object of study, not to mix up our own position with that of the historical audience. It is a matter of trying to see beyond the history readily available in the medial representations of the archive. In a newspaper library there are newspapers, not the press. The press has also manifested itself through a number of other media as well. A media-archaeological awareness is crucial to the perspective proposed.

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‘The Press’ and Other Producers of Meaning The power of the press is chiefly the power of description, and this, evidently, embraces the description of the press itself. Every power is anxious about how it is viewed. Conditions are actually more compelling than that. Any exercise of power requires the production of meaning that conveys and confirms the legitimacy of that power. Power must take a form before it can be conceived and understood; it must be symbolized before it can be acknowledged and respected (e.g. Walzer 194; Hunt 54; see also Douglas 45). This is transferable also to individuals: everyone has the need for self-presentation, which is partly done through a professional identity (e.g. Goffman). Everyone
be she/he a journalist or not
needs to produce meaning concerning their professional function. Thus, the production of self-images is a given, both from the perspective of power (and sales) and of the human condition. Hence, there is no reason to moralize on this production per se. Identifying self-images as such, and trying to offer critical correctives, is therefore no less important. ‘The Press’ is a nebulous concept, an impossible singularity. However, we do not refrain from forming a conception about it. On the other hand, our conceptions are seldom unequivocal. They harbour tensions and contradictions. Similarly, the press never acts in complete unison, as one well-defined actor. Instead, there is a more or less unanimous collective, occasionally expressed through a more or less acknowledged association. Sole actors (journalists as well as newspapers) can, with varying success, play the role of, or more unintentionally function as, representatives. Lars Hierta represented, as the founding father, the origins of the independent press, and his successors at the graveside, speaking and acting ‘in the name of the Swedish press’, the contemporary independent press. The difficulty, or impossibility, in exactly defining the Press is not necessarily a problem. A tentative concept is, on the contrary, a prerequisite for analyses of the perpetual changes. An internal struggle is constantly at hand. More radical papers indeed joined the general appraisal, but also stressed that they were Hierta’s true heirs, that is, the heirs of the early Hierta, fighting the establishment in the 1830s and 1840s. As he got older, they argued, he became as obsolete as the conservatives and the so-called ‘liberals’ at the time dominating the public sphere (e.g. Fa¨derneslandet 23 Nov. 1872). Conservative papers, on the other hand, played down the role of the young Hierta and celebrated the mature politician (e.g. Nya Dagligt Allehanda 20 Nov. 1872).

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Conflicts and contradictions are explained also by the fact that the actors involved not only, or even primarily, acted with the legitimacy of the press in mind. Individual newspapers as well as the relatives of the deceased editor in 1872 had their own agendas. And there are motifs other than the drive for legitimacy. However, grief and a sense of loss can serve the same purpose. Promoting a specific political agenda can simultaneously promote the Press. Similarly, the self-legitimating attempts to interpret history might have originated in a sincere desire to understand the present and find guidance for the future. Thus, these phenomena must not be reduced to a mere strategic power-game. This, however, does not exclude the presence of the exact opposite. Legitimacy is a cherished subject, which has been on the agenda of the press at least since the first half of the nineteenth century. Measures have been taken, openly declared or silently agreed upon, for the purpose of attaining status. Differentiating the Press and opening the door for more unintentional effects are, however, not enough. The press has by no means lacked the assistance of others. Actual audiences are part of the picture. The press has, since Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), often been described as an active force in the making of the Nation. However, the opposite is also true: the Nation, and its People, has been a resource in the making of the Press. Of importance is not merely a large and representative audience
‘all classes’ and ‘both sexes’ as the papers reported in 1872 (e.g. Fa¨derneslandet 4 Dec. 1872; Aftonbladet 3 Dec. 1872). Audiences with high social or professional prestige are no less crucial. In the procession at the funeral in 1872 there were, in addition to cabinet ministers and a governor, also scientists, scholars and artists. Some of them attended as private persons, as friends to the Hierta family, but undoubtedly also played their parts in the drama as representatives. Over the years, politicians have very often thanked the press, historians have written a large number of memorials on distinguished editors, and novelists, painters and sculptors have made their own contributions. From the perspective of legitimacy, there are at least two fundamental models of explanation. Actors external to the press contribute because (1) they are engaged in the same project and share the ideals of the press, or (2) they receive something in return. If the press is, for example, seen as an engine in a national project of progress, others want to support this dynamic role. An obliging and understanding attitude might be rewarded in the same currency
or possibly in nothing but ready money. The former explanation does not exclude the latter. That external actors share the values of the press is partly the result of these values having been staged in various media
that is the starting point for the perspective argued for here. Hierta’s funeral mattered. The press has, not only among the general public (and its own practitioners), but also among artists, scholars, politicians and industrialists, successfully created a strong trademark. However, straightforward linear models of diffusion poorly describe a far more complex interaction. It is rather a question of a legitimating circle. Mutual benefits and common interests, rather than competition, is the leitmotif. Furthermore, boundaries are porous. The politician can also be (and very often has been) an editor; the best friend of the editor is perhaps a historian; the industrialist shares economic interests with the publisher (who, for that matter, is an industrialist). Overlapping is common, and social networks undoubtedly play a crucial role. Internal tensions and external actors influence the mediated self-image. It can be understood in terms of negotiations with resulting compromises, be studied from the

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perspective of a Bourdieuan struggle for capital and the establishing and maintenance of a specific field, or be interpreted in Gramscian notions of hegemony. This applies not only to the elites but also to the larger audience, the so-called general public. It does not accept anything that is presented
certainly not when it is expected to play an active part. If the staged self-image is to be accepted, it must always touch the chords of society’s dominant values. Rather than describing the complex of problems as images that are ‘spread’ through one channel by one actor, it should be seen as a mutual exchange between various media and various actors. Different audiences have been resources for the press, just as the press has been a resource for them. Instead of separating proper journalism, the spreading of the self-image, and the reception of different audiences as clearly defined areas, they must be seen as constituting each other.11 The values staged are often experienced, by the press as well as others, not as values (but as natural features of the medium). Cold-blooded calculations and deliberate delusions are only a marginal part of the phenomena. Most of all it is about an inherent logic, about efforts indissolubly attached to influence, power and economics at one level, and (professional) identity at another. By necessity, this logic cannot operate independently from those audiences and media it engages. The relatively scarce elements of hardcore propaganda do not, however, make the study of these phenomena less important, only more difficult to identify. * My focus on media events must not be perceived as an assumption that they played a more important role in our understanding of the press than other kinds of representations. It is well worth focusing on low-key productions of meaning. (What do, for instance, our children’s textbooks tell them about the history of the press?) Nor should these specific events be seen primarily as historical milestones with particular significance. However, it can be argued that there are methodological benefits which case studies in general offer in terms of depth and concreteness. The events clearly reveal mechanisms and overlapping media practices which are always at hand. They open our eyes to more general aspects of questions about legitimacy and self-image. That actual journalism, the spreading of its ideals, and the reception of the audiences always constitute each other, becomes exceptionally clear: in some respects the elements of straightforward propaganda are obvious
at the same time as the dependence of other actors is evident. No definite line can be drawn between where these events end and where the press reports begin. Furthermore, the nebulous Press takes a manageable form in various organizations, committees or groups composed of specific actors. The catchword level, which is dominant, offers in all its superficiality notions in concentrated form, a sort of fixed ideal perpetuated in texts, images and bronze. (At the same time, a condition of the strength of these manifestations is their conceptual vagueness. Concepts like ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ are open enough to unite political opponents.) Certainly, they were unique events. But the unique event might just as well be said to amplify and make visible what is there all the time. (Besides, one could always ask when history’s periods of normality actually took place.) This does not, however, mean that the picture is onedimensional or unambiguous. There are always tensions, and the manifest expression is

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PATRIK LUNDELL

always the product of negotiations and compromises, which can also be revealed from letters, minutes and other archive material. Thus, it becomes possible to identify the common interests, as well as which actors have been dominant, and over whom. In the case of Sweden, many events worthy of attention were orchestrated by Publicistklubben (the Swedish National Press Club), founded in 1874: for example, the 4th International Press Congress in 1897 (Lundell ‘Pressen a¨r budskapet’), the inauguration of the Lars Hierta statue in 1927, and a lavish press exposition in 1945 (Lundell ‘Det goda samha¨llets tja¨nare iscensatt’). Using a term from the sociology of science, the Press Club can be seen as a ‘boundary organization’, rather than as the impartial bastion for the freedom of the press as it is usually described (Guston). These events can furthermore serve to illustrate an important historical change. At the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Swedish press was represented by a rather modest exposition, and the absolute highlight of the simultaneous international press congress was the King’s dinner party for approximately 400 journalists. The exposition in 1945 was grand, professionally organized and skilfully marketed, and the organizers asked themselves if they should bother to invite the Prime Minister. They actually did so, along with some members of the royal family, but no one could doubt who decided on the guest list. Like the funeral in 1872, the congress of 1897 was marked by a certain humbleness and considerable gratitude for the acknowledgement bestowed; in 1945, on the other hand, the importance of the press was taken for granted by all the actors involved. These events are particularly suited for modulating our understanding of contemporary phenomena. The formation of the nation, the emergence of mass democracy and the construction of the welfare state were evident elements in the rhetoric surrounding them. Despite tendencies like the dissolution of the nation state, the dismantling of the welfare state and the challenges to democracy in the last decades, the rhetoric is still very much the same. The claims of the press enjoy high acceptance. However, rhetoric manifests itself in new forms, not always easily identified. Events like these should not, however, be read only, or even primarily, as a continuous history. They must be accompanied by a broader account drawing on other materials and phenomena. This paper should be read more as a proposal than as an answer. That the perspective is important, academically as well as civically or politically, is nevertheless my prime driving force. Notes 1. Literature of relevance is also that which is preoccupied with notions of self-esteem among journalists, for example, Dooley, Eide, and Hardt and Brennen. 2. E.g. Schudson, Hallin, Chalby, and Dicken-Garcia have all inspired this paper. 3. See, e.g.: ‘Journalism must always attract attention to itself, and it does so through its own texts’ (Ekecrantz and Olsson 27; my transl.). Kaplan is interested, as quoted, in ‘the ritual nature of the fourth estate’s symbolic practices’; these, however, take place within the paper, it constitutes a ‘public stage’ (Kaplan 17). Naturally there are exceptions: Hanno Hardt discusses for example artists’ representations of newspapers: ‘regardless of whether newspapers appear peripherally or centrally as objects of a visual narrative, their presence

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE reinforces the social or cultural significance of the press across class and gender lines’ (Hardt 22). See also Jones. 4. For an unusually explicit example of this reductionistic view: ‘The media themselves are [contrary to ‘‘other institutions, e.g. authorities and organizations’’] hardly dependent on any external ideology apparatus’ (Ekecrantz and Olsson 23; my transl.) 5. An often-overlooked field, when media history is discussed, is the history of books.

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6. Within some communication studies the term ‘spatial media’ is used (for example, museums and statues). These have also been called ‘informal’ and distinct from ‘formal’ media such as the press (Kerlen 10). At times the concept of informal media has embraced considerably more than what is proposed here. See, e.g. Luhmann, where money, love and power are considered as media. 7. There is a flood of literature on media events, the lion’s share of which has focused on live broadcasting, working with a narrow media concept and addressing contemporary sociological questions. Two particularly important works are Dayan and Katz, and, a critic of the former, Couldry. The media events in focus in this paper are highly engaged in the construction of what Couldry, passim, terms ‘the myth of the mediated centre’. 8. Compare: ‘the form supplies the standard against which the content is measured’ (Barnhurst and Nerone 1). 9. This can be seen as an extension of the discussion on proper journalism, and hence as a way of avoiding a narrative of a sudden degeneration of ‘a once pure and rational public sphere’ (Hartley 23
24). 10. These issues are discussed in Jones, Chapter 3. In Sweden, an indispensable bibliography
Bernhard Lundstedt’s Sveriges periodiska litteratur, I
III (1895
1902)
was ordered by the Swedish National Press Club and financed by a wealthy editor. Pressarkivet (the Press Archive) in Riksarkivet (the National Archives) originates from the Press Club exposition in 1945, to give only two examples. 11. Compare Hartley, ‘Introduction’, on ‘the mediasphere’ and the view that journalism is ‘meanings’ and ‘readership’.

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Patrik Lundell, Department of Culture Studies, Linko¨ping University, 581 83 Linko¨ping, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]