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Blogging Congress: Technological Change and the Politicsof the Congressional Press Galleries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Michael T. Heaney
Michael T. Heaney
Affiliation:
2007–2008 APSA Congressional Fellow
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Extract

New media historically have had difficulty obtaining access to the U.S. Congress. As technological changes have shifted the competitivebalance among news organizations, the more established media havetraditionally fought back by attempting to exclude the upstarts fromthe corridors of power. For example, Associate Senate HistorianDonald Ritchie (1991) recounts thestruggle by radio to gain a foothold against the opposition ofentrenched newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s. Thenewspaper-controlled Standing Committee of Correspondents, which wasresponsible for granting credentials to the Capitol Hill PressGallery, refused to credential radio reporters unless they alsoworked for newspapers. The dispute was finally settled in 1939 whenCongress created a separate Radio Gallery, making Congress “the onlynational legislature to divide its galleries among different formsof media” (Ritchie 1991, 217).I thank Jeffrey Biggs and Jerry Gallegosfor helpful suggestions. Generous financial support for thisresearch was provided by the Congressional Fellowship Program ofthe American Political Science Association.

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Type
ASSOCIATION NEWS
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 422 - 426
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

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