| Abstrakt: |
At the turn of the 20th century, the Czech lands and its centre Prague saw a rapid development of the newspaper market, thanks to the gradual expansion of election census, growth of urban population and improvement of its economic situation. The research is based on a quantitative content analysis of the best-selling Czech-language dailies published in Prague in 1898 and 1908. They can be divided into three categories. The first category are newspapers Národní listy and Hlas národa focused on readers of higher social status, who could be classified mainly as bourgeois or middle-class. Their model reader searched for in-depth reports of political events and economic situation. The second category consists of dailies of the socialist parties, Právo lidu and České slovo. They offered mostly partisan news supplemented with commentaries and reports about life of underprivileged people. It came closer to the sensational newspapers after the turn of the century. The readership community consisted of more skilled workers, small craftsmen, traders and, in the case of the České slovo, lower officials. Among these two groups was sensational newspapers - the best-selling Národní politika, with the least emphasis on political news, with strong interest in local news, sensations, entertainment, and the greatest focus on activity of clubs and societies. The nucleus of its widely distributed reader community can be found among the members of the middle to the lower middle-class, although its overall audience was probably much wider. Pražský illustrovaný kurýr was similarly focused, but its main attraction were a large spectacular illustrations and sensational content, celebrity news and recreational content such as fiction and quizzes. Typical readers of Kurýr can be seen as a certain transitional stratum, with an unclear, unstable social status, economically on the level of better-earned skilled workers and craftsmen, but looking up to the middle class habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
