Since 1892 journalists have been steadily shortening politician's quotations.
According to an article in the academic journal Journalism Studies by David M. Ryfe and Markus Kemmelmeier, both professors at the University of Nevada, newspaper quotations evolved in much the same way as TV sound bites.
The average political quotation in a 1916 newspaper story had fallen to about half the length of the average quotation in 1892.
The sound bite, they argue, stems less from a collapse in standards or seriousness than from the rise of a more sophisticated and independent style of journalism — which means the sound bite might not be such a bad thing.
As newspapers started attracting more advertising dollars, more readers, and more competition for both, reporters went out and reported, instead of waiting on letters or telegrams, and their articles became longer and more complex.
Since newspapers now felt less tied to political parties, they could take candidates’ words and combine them with context and analysis. But this meant cutting those words down to a more manageable size, which meant quotations had to shrink.
As television network executives saw their news operations as potential profit makers they needed more glitz, structure, and speed. Meanwhile, reporters, influenced by Vietnam and Watergate, were becoming more skeptical and more cynical. It all added up to a more active journalism — which meant, on TV, a journalism that was more interested in exposing and analyzing political image-making than in passively transmitting those images.
The most measurable casualty of all this was the political quote, which was reduced from coverage of rambling speeches to the 9 second sound bite.
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