History 2007 Abstracts
History Division
The FBI and the Hunt for Newspaper Reds, 1940-1950 • Edward Alwood, Quinnipiac University • This study concerns FBI spying on newspapers during the 1940s and how information gathered during that period fueled McCarthyism aimed at the press. The FBI cooperated with journalists who sought to purge Communists from leadership of the Newspaper Guild. Previously undisclosed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered newspaper surveillance in conjunction with efforts to monitor domestic communism though the FBI lacked statutory authority to engage in domestic spying.
Little More Than Minutes: How Two Wyoming Community Newspapers Covered the Construction of a Japanese-American Internment Camp • Ron Bishop, Drexel University • I explore how two Wyoming community newspapers – the Cody Enterprise and the Powell Tribune – covered the internment of more than 6,000 Japanese-Americans at the Heart Mountain relocation camp from the day the announcement was made that the camp would be constructed to Heart Mountain’s official opening in August 1942.
Jim Murray at Sports Illustrated: The Development of the King of Sports Columnists • David Bulla and Ted Geltner, Iowa State University • “Jim” Murray, one of only four sports writers to win a Pulitzer Prize, helped found Sports Illustrated magazine as a reporter for Time, Inc., but Murray left the magazine after seven years to work for the Los Angeles Times. There he worked as a columnist for thirty-seven years. This study looks at how those years at Sports Illustrated helped develop Murray’s style, voice, and journalistic philosophy, and turn him into a nationally prominent sports columnist at the Times.
“Genêt” On the Air: Janet Flanner’s Wartime Broadcasts • Johanna Cleary, University of Florida • For 50 years, journalist Janet Flanner wrote the bi-weekly “Letter from Paris” column for The New Yorker magazine. Her legacy includes influencing American literary journalism and political commentary. But Flanner also recorded a little-known series of radio reports from the hotspots of Europe in the critical months following the end of World War II.
From Newspaper Row to Times Square: The Dispersal and Contested Identity of an Imagined Journalistic Community • Dale Cressman, Brigham Young University • Until the early twentieth century, Park Row was synonymous with New York newspapers. Of the newspapers that left Park Row, The New York Times was notable for having established a geographic landmark that was identified with the newspaper. In fact, by 1906, Times Square had replaced Park Row as a place for New Yorkers to get election night news or to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Nevertheless, Times Square did not remain associated with its newspaper namesake.
Practicing Free Speech: The Spanish American Press on the Eve of Independence • Juanita Darling, CSU Monterey Bay • Before Spain’s American colonies became independent, they had a dress rehearsal for free speech. A liberal legislature in the mother country passed a constitution that permitted freedom of the press. This paper argues that newspapers published during that era, from 1811 to 1814, set the tone for the role that the press would play in the new republics as they established their national identities.
Online Citations in History Journals: Current Practice and Views from Journal Editors, Daniela Dimitrova, Michael Bugeja and Hye Hyun Hong, Iowa State University • This study examines use and stability of online citations in Journalism History and American Journalism. Content analysis results show that unlike other journalism and communication journals, online citations remain rare in media history articles. Analysis is supplemented with interviews of the journal editors. Discussion addresses factors accounting for the rarity of online content, predicting more as Internet becomes the focus of historical research, and analyzes implications of vanishing primary, secondary and “ephemeral” sources.
Secret Restricted Data, Media Timidity & Dead Cold Warriors: A Study of the Circulation of Classified Information, 1943-1949 • Carolyn Stewart Dyer, University of Iowa • This study addresses government secrecy about atomic energy from 1943 to1949 by focusing on the circulation of information about a toxic substance essential to nuclear reactions. Using declassified Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) documents, medical studies and news stories, it follows open scientific communication in journals to the press. And it documents the AEC’s substitution of propaganda for truthful information about the risk to workers and neighbors, which community newspapers published unquestioningly while local people died.
“To the detriment of the institution”: The Missouri Student’s Fight to Desegregate the University of Missouri • Aimee Edmondson and Earnest L. Perry Jr., University of Missouri • This study focuses on a white university newspaper’s advocacy role on behalf of African Americans and desegregation during the 1930s and 1940s. The University of Missouri’s student-run newspaper took a strong stand on its editorial pages for desegregation while university officials were fighting a protracted legal battle to keep African Americans out of the school. This study is significant because most of the research on civil rights activism at white universities focuses on the 1950s and 1960s.
The “Atomic Bomb” of Broadcasting: Westinghouse’s “Stratovision” Experiment, 1944-1949 • James Foust, Bowling Green State University • This paper examines “Stratovision” a system of providing television via airborne transmitters developed by Westinghouse in the mid-1940s. The company said that it could provide service to 78 percent of the U.S. population. At the time, there was not yet a national distribution system for television. Using Federal Communications Commission documents and Westinghouse records, the paper argues that Stratovision was ultimately doomed because it did not fit within the existing network-local station broadcasting structure.
“Rebellion in the Kingdom of Swat”: How Sportswriters Covered Curt Flood’s Lawsuit against Major League Baseball • William Gillis, Indiana University • In 1970, baseball star Curt Flood sued Major League Baseball in an effort to change the game’s free agency rules. With few exceptions, those who have written about Flood’s case agree that sportswriters of the era were overwhelmingly unsupportive of Flood. The author researched hundreds of newspapers and magazines, and has concluded that the belief that the majority of sports columnists considered Flood’s lawsuit “a traitorous undertaking,” as one author put it, is false.
Bridging the Gulf: Authors and Editors Imagine the Political Work of the American Federationist • Phil Glende, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Labor leaders, economists, reformers, and government officials actively participated during the 1930s in a social action network tied to the publication of the American Federationist, the monthly journal of the American Federation of Labor. Records of correspondence with AFL President William Green, and the AFL’s director of research, Florence Thorne, suggest these writers believed they could educate and influence organized labor, and more broadly, the working class, during the Great Depression.
The Pivotal Role of the Priest-Journalist in the Development of the Mexican Press, 1533-1821 • Victoria Goff, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay • Charles Rosstaeuscher (pronounced ROSS-toy-sher) arrived in Manitowoc in 1853. Well-educated and a brewer and butcher by trade, his fellow Germans regarded him as a bit of a [trouble maker.] The scarlet-colored cloak he always wore did nothing to dissuade the image of mystery which he seemed to want to perpetuate. Though a bit wary, Wilhelm Rahr was willing to give his fellow German a chance[,] and took him on as a partner in his brewery business.
Solving ‘The Negro Problem’: Social Commentary in the Journalistic Writings of Joel Chandler Harris • Cheryl Gooch, Clark Atlanta University • While the controversial themes of Joel Chandler Harris’ famous Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus tales have been extensively debated, Harris’ journalistic writings about the “”Negro Problem”” have been largely overlooked. During his 24 year tenure at the Atlanta Constitution as associate editor and lead editorial writer, Harris addressed a range of issues affecting Blacks, and later wrote a series of popular articles on “”Negro”” issues for major publications.
The U.S. Information Bulletin and Mixed Signals in the Democracy Lessons for Post-War Germany • Kevin Grieves, Indiana University • In post-World War II Germany, the U.S. military government’s Information Bulletin magazine reflected a fundamental tension between teaching the value of a free, open press and the use of the press as a means to rally support against opposing forces. This paper examines content of the Information Bulletin, tracing this shift from teaching the ideals of a free press in 1945 to a marked anti-Soviet tone in 1950.
The Kefauver Crime Committee Hearings and the Ambivalence of Citizenship in the Film Noir • Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University • The Kefauver Crime Committee hearings of 1952 were a landmark in the developing discourses of television journalism and entertainment. The broadcast hearings intersected the development of the film noir, providing the genre with both a topical subject, and a locus for its analysis of the failure of the institutions of democracy. This paper examines the reflexive relationship between the Kefauver hearings, film noir, and the Hollywood film industry’s ambivalent relationship to organized crime and ethnicity.
Media in the Riot City: How the November 1967 Kerner Commission media conference blamed the messenger • Thomas J. Hrach, Ohio University • In November 1967, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders gathered some of the nation’s top editors and television news executives to Poughkeepsie, New York, for a media conference. The commission, which was known as the Kerner Commission due to its chairman Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, was named that previous summer to study the causes and solutions for the urban rioting that plagued American cities in the 1960s.
Covering a Coup: The American Press and Guatemala in 1954 • John Kirch, University of Maryland • The 1954 coup in Guatemala has been a subject of considerable debate almost since the day that Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas and his ragtag group of exiles toppled the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. In the years immediately after the coup, the event was characterized as an internal uprising that pitted the people of Guatemala against a pro-Communist regime.
Dens of Hell in the Cities of Zion: Newspaper Coverage of Opium Abuse in Northern Utah, 1869-1896 • Andrew Kirk, University of Utah • When the habit of opium smoking spread from the Chinese in Mormon-controlled Utah Territory to white people, the local newspapers responded by condemning the drug, but not necessarily the Chinese. Fulfilling their role as organs for the dominant class, the newspapers acted as educators in Gramsci’s “teacher/pupil” hegemonic relationship. The newspapers led campaigns to outlaw, suppress, and eradicate opium dens. Unlike other regions, however, the Utah newspapers blamed the drug’s addictive qualities and did not scapegoat the Chinese.
Another Cuban Story: Ruby Hart Phillips, New York Times Havana Correspondent, 1937-1961 • Christina Locke, University of Florida • The New York Times told “The Cuban Story” of Fidel Castro’s revolution with the help of longtime Havana correspondent Ruby Hart Phillips and editorial board member Herbert L. Matthews. Phillips’ contemporaries praised her objectivity. Matthews was accused of propelling Castro to victory. Fifty years later, Phillips has disappeared into historical obscurity, but Matthews’ name is synonymous with the Cuban Revolution. This paper seeks to remedy the lack of scholarly attention to Phillips’ life and work.
An Army Like That of Gideon: Communities of Reform on the Pages of Free Russia • J. Michael Lyons, Indiana University • This paper argues that the newspaper Free Russia, published in London 1890-1914, established a transnational “virtual community” of readers and helped knit together a variety of social movements of the period behind the cause of Russian Revolution. The newspaper’s editors believed they were embarking on a “new departure in journalism” that connected readers to one another by reporting on events inside Russia but also by chronicling the “Russian freedom movement” around the world.
Editor A.D. Griffin: Envisioning a New Age for Black Oregonians (1896-1907) • Kimberley Mangun, University of Utah • From 1896 until 1907, Adolphus D. Griffin published The New Age, a weekly newspaper for African Americans, in Portland, Oregon. During most of his tenure, the paper was the sole voice for a small but vibrant community. Consequently, The New Age offers important insight into race relations in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century.
“It’s Up to the Women”: Edward Bernays and the Ladies’ Home Journal Campaign to End the Great Depression” • Jane Marcellus, Middle Tennessee State University • This article examines a 1932 “Ladies’ Home Journal” campaign, developed by Edward Bernays, aimed at convincing housewives they could end the Depression by spending “normally.” Analyzing the LHJ articles and Bernays’ papers, this article shows how women’s domestic duties were conflated with business needs and patriotism as values shifted from thrift to consumption. Paradoxically, campaign rhetoric resembles that of the Roosevelts in 1933, including FDR’s “”fear itself”” line and the title of ER’s first book.
Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of Newspaper Competition in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia • Roger Mellen, George Mason University • For two hundred years, historians have written that Thomas Jefferson and his fellow patriots brought a second printer into the colony of Virginia so that their radical messages could be heard. This paper uncovers flaws in that interpretation, and attempts a better understanding of what actually happened, and how that influenced the development of a free press. New print competition changed the relationship between printer, government, and readers in crucial ways.
‘One Hell of a Story’: Information Control, News Process and the Hiroshima Bombing Announcement • Samuel Murphey, University of Missouri • This paper analyzes the information and news process leading to the Truman administration’s announcement of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Drawing on Siebert’s Proposition II, the paper demonstrates that the release of atomic bomb information deviated significantly from standard White House public relations procedures and World War II propaganda and censorship systems. Such deviance resulted from increased authoritarian controls of information during a period of extraordinary conflict.
Textbooks and Bombs: A Newspaper Framing Analysis of a Violent Fight Over Book Selections in Public Schools • Mark Paxton, Missouri State University • This study is a qualitative framing analysis of 53 editorials published by West Virginia’s Charleston Daily Mail in 1974 concerning a sometimes-violent protest over textbooks. The editorials, which won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, used seven frames in writing about the protest: the textbooks belong in the classroom; some of the textbooks should be removed from the classroom, based on a vote by the public, protest violence was unacceptable.
The Columnist and the Antihero: Marquis Childs Covers Senator McCarthy • Robert Rabe, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper examines the anti-McCarthy reporting and commentary of columnist and St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsman Marquis W. Childs. It makes use of Childs’ extensive writing, as well as manuscript sources from the Childs Papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society, to reexamine this often neglected figure of postwar liberal journalism. The paper argues that Childs was one of the significant liberal anti-communist journalists who led the effort to expose and contain McCarthyism in the early 1950s.
Searching for “Freedom of the Films” • Elaine Reed, Kutztown University • Prior to World War II, with the approval of film czar Will Hays, philosopher Mortimer Adler drafted a publication claiming motion pictures deserved First Amendment protection. Freedom of the Films never appeared in either man’s publication credits, but research proves the work was published under Hays’ byline, marked “Confidential” with only 20 copies printed for committee reference, and presented during Hays’ testimony before the Hutchins Commission’s landmark investigation of press freedoms in America.
The Relevance of Historical Research for the Understanding of Ethnic Press Models: The Spanish-language and Bilingual Press of New Orleans as a Case Study • Ilia Rodriguez, University of New Mexico • This paper presents a critique of functionalist approaches to the development of the ethnic press for their tendency to divorce the journalism produced by ethnic minorities from the major historical movements associated with the development of mainstream journalism. Taking the Spanish-language press in New Orleans (1808 to 1927) as a case study, this paper underscores the value of historical research for the refinement and development of our analytical frameworks.
Public Relations and Corporate Policy: Arthur Page and AT&T’s Financial Policy, 1927-1939 • Karen Russell, University of Georgia • Arthur Page is remembered as the ideal public relations manager because of his influence on AT&T management and policy. Yet scholars have not adequately evaluated the consequences of the policy he helped to design and implement. A review of the Financial Policy and its effects on shareholders, consumers, and employees during the Depression indicates that AT&T upheld its commitment to service and reasonable profits, but the policy benefited investors at others’ expense.
Atrocities and Grisly Souvenirs: Suppressing News of Wartime Brutalities in the WWII U.S. Press • Karen Slattery, Marquette University • In most respects, Byron Price and his U.S. Office of Censorship artfully balanced the inherent tension between press freedom and military security during World War II. But stories of U.S. and Allied atrocities, collected from stateside sources and reported in the domestic press, offended the U.S. military and others. Consequently, the military’s interest in censoring the press was renewed, forcing Price to compromise his own policy.
The Original Bust: A Magazine Offers a “New” Perspective on Womanhood • Tracey Thomas, affiliation • From 1993 to 2000, Bust was a self-published magazine that served as an alternative to women’s and feminist publications alike. Ultimately, its growing popularity led to the end of its days as a self-published publication and, thus, the “original” Bust. This historical research paper analyzed published interviews with Bust’s creators and the fifteen issues that make up the original Bust in order to document the publication’s transition from a ‘zine to mass-produced magazine.
“Activities Among Negroes,” Race Pride and a Call for Interracial Dialogue in California’s East Bay Region, 1920-1931 • Venise Wagner, San Francisco State University • In 1923, Delilah Beasley became a regular columnist for the Oakland Tribune and the first African American woman to write for a mainstream (White) daily. “”Activities Among Negroes”” showcased the inner workings of the East Bay region’s black middle class, and as result promoted interracial understanding between Blacks and Whites, as Beasley transferred the Black press’ journalistic style of advocacy to a mainstream paper.
When the Bomb Plant Came to Town • David Weintraub, University of South Carolina • This paper examines coverage in the Aiken Standard and Review of the U.S. government’s decision in 1950 to build the Savannah River Plant about 15 miles from the town of Aiken, South Carolina. The coming of the Savannah River Plant, a facility to create fuel for the nation’s arsenal of hydrogen bombs, caused massive changes, both positive and negative, to the surrounding area.
Print friendly
