MAINSTREAM MEDIA….Who’s responsible for coining the term “mainstream media”? It’s probably lost in the mists of time, but the first reference I could find in Nexis was in a Newsweek story by Elizabeth Peer and Lucy Howard titled “Washington’s Press Corps.” It ran on May 25, 1981 and contained this sentence:
The mainstream media have little in common with the burgeoning specialty and trade press, which now employs a quarter of the town’s newspeople.
For what it’s worth, the term was used commonly throughout the 80s and has been in very common use for more than a decade. Nexis returns more than a thousand hits for every single year since 1994.
Just thought you’d like to know. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
