“I very much recommend [On Press]… It’s about the rise of explanatory reporting, the changeover from journalism as really a kind of stenography, where they’re just reprinting speeches and press releases…to more interpretive reporting… Really terrific.” —Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show
“My prayers for a new way to think about the so-called crisis over ‘trust’ in the press have been answered thanks to media scholar Matthew Pressman’s erudite new history… Pressman’s framing helps explain President Donald Trump’s broadsides against what he calls the ‘fake news’ and why measurements of trust in the news profession decline almost every time Gallup fires up a new poll.” —Jack Shafer, Politico
“Pressman adeptly shows how a number of forces converged to produce a new, and now disappearing, form of newspaper journalism.” —Nicholas Lemann, New York Review of Books
“In On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News, the historian Matthew Pressman argues that any understanding of the crisis of journalism in the twenty-first century has to begin by vanquishing the ghost of Spiro T. Agnew. For Pressman, the pivotal period for the modern newsroom is what [Jill] Abramson calls ‘Halberstam’s Golden Age,’ between 1960 and 1980, and its signal feature was the adoption not of a liberal bias but of liberal values…. These changes weren’t ideologically driven, Pressman insists, but they had ideological consequences.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
“In On Press, the journalism historian Matthew Pressman examines The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980. During this seeming golden age, the leading news organizations adjusted their fundamental relationship to government, shifting from a kind of elevated stenography to the critical journalism that has become the norm.” —Jacob Weisberg, Foreign Affairs
“A new history of newspapers traces today’s debates about journalism to shifts in tech and politics 50 years ago…. Pressman details…a once-in-a-century sea change that both ushered in journalism as it’s understood today and foreshadowed the press corps’ current predicament.” —David Uberti, The Nation
“A really trenchant look at the ways that the news media has changed … I also literally cannot put it down.” —Natalia Petrzela, Past/Present podcast
“On Press is thoroughly researched and meticulously argued…. [It] can help us recognize how we came to have what we are now presenting to students as legacy values, what those values replaced, and why they superseded the previous generation’s news values. In this way, On Press can do more than just tell how news values and practices changed. Pressman’s book can help us pass the journalistic torch.” —Michael Fuhlhage, Journalism History
“In On Press, Matthew Pressman provides the private memos, the internal debates, and the backstories to how the New York Times and Los Angeles Times covered the momentous stories and social forces that were sweeping the late twentieth century…. Some of the most illuminating parts of On Press focus on race and gender and offer a significant contribution to the field…. Pressman handles both racial and gender issues with precision and incisiveness.” —David T. Z. Mindich, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
“On Press presents a thoughtful, provocative, smartly written argument…. [T]he author’s engaging thesis…left me satisfied and hungry.” —Thomas Mascaro, American Journalism
“Pressman does a fabulous job of explaining how newspapers evolved their content to meet the changing values of America’s middle class…. A swell overview of how newspapers came to find themselves in their present pickle.” —Steve Halvonik, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Pressman’s book is a much-needed account of an important development…. Pressman illuminates a major shift in the professional values of reporters, editors, and executives…. [a] fascinating book.” —Charles L. Ponce de Leon, Journal of American History
“On Press is an absorbing narrative…. a secret history of journalism previously buried in archives, stretching beyond the four corners of the daily paper to detail the political and cultural milieu of the era…. On Press is well-rounded, compact, and feels impressively complete for its length. It should interest students of political history, cultural history, and anyone curious to how the press became what it is today.” —Clay Waters, Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy
“Pressman offers a thoughtful, meticulously researched analysis of the construction of journalism values over the past seventy years. Through an examination of the history of objectivity and professional perspectives since the 1950s, Pressman contextualizes the news media’s present dilemma.” —Gwyneth Mellinger, H-Net
“An engaging, historical dive into the fourth estate… impressively well-researched…. Pressman presents a logical and compelling look at journalism past and present.” —Catherine Ramsdell, PopMatters
“Well-researched, lucid, and engaging, On Press helps us understand attitudes toward the mass media (and, especially, financially strapped and embattled newspapers) in the Age of Trump.” —Glenn Altschuler, Psychology Today
“Matthew Pressman makes a persuasive case for studying newsrooms between 1960 and 1980 if we want to understand how contemporary journalism emerged. On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News provides a well-researched picture of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times during this period…. readable and informative.” —Danielle Charette, The Tocqueville Review
“Something dramatic changed in American journalism between 1960 and 1980, claims Matthew Pressman. Instead of just a bald catalogue of what politicians and officials were doing and saying, news coverage in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, for example, began to reflect a distinctive set of values: “mistrust of the wealthy and powerful, sympathy for the dispossessed, belief in the government’s responsibility to address social ills”. Although “not designed to serve any ideological agenda”, the result, Pressman admits, was “a news product more satisfying to the centre-left than to those who are right of centre”. On Press explores this decisive liberal turn and its enduring impact down to today.” —Times Higher Education