History 2000 Abstracts
History Division
Collusion and Price Fixing in the American Newspaper Industry, 1890-1910: A National Trend • Ed Adams, Brigham Young • This study cites examples of price fixing and collusive practices used among newspapers in several cities across the United States during the late 1890s and early 1900s. An examination of the E.W. Scripps papers reveals secret agreements or “combinations” that were utilized between competitors to gain market advantages or to limit competition. These practices were used to limit or eliminate competition. The practices included, but were not limited to profit pooling, price fixing, collusion and contract exclusivity.
The Birth of the Demise of Valentine Decision: Development of the Supreme Court’s Opinion Toward Commercial Speech • Soontae An, North Carolina • This study traces the development of the Supreme Court’s opinion toward commercial speech from 1942 to 1976. Early cases demonstrated that the Court’s uncertainty on what made certain speech commercial led to subsequent difficulties in deciding the boundary of the First Amendment protection for other categories of speech when they entailed commercial features in their messages. From his first remark in 1959, Justice Douglas consistently argued the deficiencies in the Valentine decision and urged the Court to set a more appropriate standard for the commercial speech.
Selling the National Pastime: The Formation of Major League Baseball Public Relations • Bill Anderson, Georgia • Understanding how one industry used publicity in the nineteenth century generated insights into how the field as a whole was utilized. In the case of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs owners, they learned that maintaining the top player talent ensured favorable newspaper coverage. To maintain sympathetic media coverage while fighting to maintain the top player talent, the owners started their own publications, and bribed reporters to present their side of the industry.
The U.S. Military and War Correspondents in World War II: Roles and Relationships • Alan Armitage, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville • The relationship between the U.S. military and war correspondents during World War II affected coverage of the war as much as the rules of censorship. Colin Sparks’ six roles which the state plays in relation to the media (patron, censor, actor, masseur, ideologue, and conspirator) are the basis for an examination of works by and about World War II war correspondents to explore the impact of the relationship on coverage of the war.
“A Society Without A Newspaper is Like a Body Without a Head”: Chicago’s Immigrant Workers And Their Press • Jon Bekken, Suffolk • At the turn of the century, Chicago’s immigrant working class developed dense networks of community institutions, bound together by weekly and daily newspapers which were integral parts of those communities. This paper briefly examines the Lithuanian, Italian and Croatian immigrant press, examining the ways in which these newspapers helped give shape to developing communities and to define and make their place in the world around them.
“American Press Coverage of Sociologist Herbert Spencer During His 1882 Visit to America” • Jack Breslin, Minnesota • Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher and social scientist of evolution, enjoyed remarkable popularity in post-bellum America. This paper describes the newspaper coverage of Spencer’s 1882 visit to America in an attempt to discern what views of Spencer’s were conveyed to readers which shaped how they perceived him. Through content analysis of relevant news stories, feature stories, dispatches and editorials in nine selected major newspapers, this study of press coverage of Spencer’s visit offers an insight into this country’s acceptance or rejection of his intellectual contribution.
First Use: The Emergence and Diffusion of “Yellow Journalism” • W. Joseph Campbell, American University • This paper seeks to resolve a matter of enduring dispute among media historians by presenting specific and compelling evidence about the date and context of the earliest published use of the term “yellow journalism”: It appeared first in Ervin Wardman’s New York Press in January 1897. Wardman, before seizing upon “yellow journalism,” had experimented with at least one other phrase – “nude journalism” – as a substitute for “new journalism,” which then was commonly associated with the newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer.
The (S.C.) Palmetto Leader: A Successful Start, 1925-1927 • Kenneth Campbell, South Carolina • The Palmetto Leader was a vibrant (but now little known) black weekly that got off to a successful start in 1925 because it catered to the emerging black middle class in South Carolina, particularly in Columbia. This research addresses the factors that made the weekly successful, both those traditional factors and others that might set The Leader apart.
William G. Brownlow and the Knoxville Whig: A career of Personal Journalism or Partisan Press • Alisa White Coleman, Texas-Arlington • An example of personal journalism was The Knoxville Whig, edited by William Gannoway Brownlow, Tennessee’s first Reconstruction governor. Brownlow used his newspaper as a tool for the Whig party, his own religious beliefs, and to further the interests of himself and his friends. This paper takes a historiographical approach to examine Brownlow’s editorial stand on the issues concentrating on the period from 1849, when he moved to Knoxville, to 1865, when he was elected governor.
Yosemite’s Transition from Space to Place: An Historical Investigation into Media’s Role in the Place-Making Process • Nickieann Fleener and Edward Ruddell, Utah • In the early 1850s very few individuals knew that the area which now constitutes part of Yosemite National Park existed. Yet the area’s obscurity was short lived and by 1864 Yosemite was protected by federal mandate. Cultural geographers refer to this transition from space to place and acknowledge the integral part media play in the place-making process.
Chicago Newspaper Theater Critics of the Early 20th Century: Mediating Ibsen, the Syndicate and the Little Theaters • Scott Fosdick, Missouri • This paper responds to the near total lack of scholarship on the Chicago newspaper theater critics of the period 1900 to 1920 by offering a preliminary look at who these critics were and how they responded to three challenges they faced: the controversial new “problem plays” of such European playwrights as Ibsen and Shaw, the expansionist tendencies of the New York theatrical Syndicate, and the Little Theater movement.
The National Geographic Magazine and Environmental Coverage, 1970-1980 • Jan Knight, Ohio • In 1970, National Geographic began covering environmental pollution, an editorial shift away from its eighty-two-year-old policy of avoiding controversy. Through a review of the magazine’s history from 1888 to 1980, editor’s letters to readers, and interviews with staff members, this paper reveals that the magazine’s environmental coverage focused largely on threats to U. S. energy sources and was tempered by fears that disgruntled, but powerful, readers would challenge the National Geographic Society’s nonprofit status.
The Creation of the “Free” Press in Japanese American Internment Camps: The War Relocation Authority’s Planning and Making of the Camp Newspaper Policy • Takeya Mizuno, Missouri • This study investigates how the War Relocation Authority (WRA) planned and documented the newspaper publishing policy in Japanese American internment camps during World War II. The WRA allowed internees to publish their own newspapers “freely” without “censorship” but under the authority’s “supervision.” This study examines the process and content of the WRA’s camp press policy. This study also shows that the federal government’s propaganda tactics had much to do with the WRA’s “free under supervision” scheme of press control.
The Klan and Press in Atlanta, 1919-1921: A Tale of Public Relations and Newspaper Opposition • Hanna Norton and Karen Miller, Georgia • This paper analyzes press coverage of the Klan in three Atlanta newspapers before, during and after its Imperial Wizard hired a public relations firm in June 1920. Scholars have not reached a consensus on the national press’s importance to the rise or destruction of the Klan. They have, however, most often condemned the press for not undertaking active opposition to the Klan. Our own research found that all three Atlanta daily newspapers did comment negatively on the organization during the two week period surrounding the 1921 Congressional investigation.
Race and the Construction of News: Press Coverage of the Tuskegee Study, 1972 • April L. Peterson, Washington • On 26 July 1972, Associated Press reporter Jean Heller broke the story of a 40 year-old Public Health Service study of syphilis in a population of African American men in Macon County, Alabama. This paper reviews news coverage of that story as a case study of race and the construction of news by examining news stories in the mainstream press and black press of the period. News frames are discussed to illuminate how news is constructed.
Czars, Presidents, Philosophers, and Miscegenation: The Cultural Power of Early Motion Pictures • Elaine Walls Reed, Kutztown University-Pennsylvania • From the vantage point of time, aided by access to the personal documents of movie czar Will H. Hays and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, motion picture historians and critics learn more about the public and private negotiations that helped to shape 20th century American race relations.
The Confederate Press Association: A Revolutionary Experience in Southern Journalism? • Ford Risley, Penn State • This study examines the guidelines for telegraphic reporting established by the Confederate Press Association during the Civil War. The association’s superintendent liked to say the practices, which stressed concise, timely, and factual news reporting, represented a “complete revolution” in Southern journalism. Indeed, they were a major change in a region where timely news reporting traditionally had taken a backseat to editorial opinion. Although the work of the association was not the revolutionary experience claimed, the standards it sought to live up to clearly raised the bar for Southern journalism.
Crisis Public Relations at Pennzoil: An Organization’s Corporate Communication Response During a Landmark Legal Battle • Dennis R. Robertson, Arkansas State University • Pennzoil’s battle with Texaco in the 1980s over the Getty Oil reserves was legendary legal history. It was also public relations history. This paper examines the role of public relations in the Pennzoil-Texaco battle. Through literature review, personal interviews and oral histories, the research documents the policies, practices, and tactics of Pennzoil’s public relations department during one of the most fascinating events in American corporate history.
“Pounding Brass” for the Associated Press: A Surviving Press Telegrapher Recalls His Craft • J. Steven Smethers, Oklahoma State • Before the widespread adoption of the teletype, the Associated Press employed telegraph operators to dispatch news copy to member newspapers. This paper chronicles the heyday of press telegraphy through the reminiscences of a former AP telegrapher, Aubrey E. Keel of Kansas City, covering various aspects of this lost profession, including the training, daily routines, professional standards and the eventual displacement caused by the industry’s conversion to teletype technology.
Bat Masterson: Sheriff of the Sports Page • Mike Sowell, Oklahoma State • Bat Masterson not only was one of the last heroes of the Old West in the late nineteenth century but also one of the first heroes of a new frontier at the turn of the century the sports page of the American newspaper. This paper is an examination of how Masterson’s sports columns from 1903 to 1921 reflected his self-appointed role as a de facto “sheriff of boxing,” and how he used his forum as a sports writer to apply his Western sense of honor and justice to the boxing ring.
Science, Journalism and the Construction of News: How Print Media Framed the 1918 Influenza Pandemic • Meg Spratt, Washington • This paper examines how the relationship between scientific method and journalistic norms shaped news frames of the 20th Century’s most deadly pandemic in both scientific and mainstream publications. By examining journalistic coverage in Science, Scientific American, Survey, and The New York Times of the Spanish Influenza at the height of the 1918 pandemic, it becomes apparent that reliance upon objectivity, neutrality, and empirical data supported the views of authoritative sources while almost obliterating the voices of victims and average citizens.
Liberal Journalism in the Deep South: Harry M. Ayers And The “Bothersome” Race Question • Kevin Stocker, Brigham Young • This paper looks at why Anniston (Alabama) Star editor Colonel Harry Ayers progressed then retrogressed on the race issue. He befriended blacks in the 1920s and advocated economic, educational, and electoral equality in the 1930s and 1940s but opposed integration. A study of his writings provides a unique look at a member of an ignored group of southern community newspaper editors who tried to build a New South without harming the old one.
Strange Bedfellows, or a Marriage Made in Heaven? Advertising, the Federal Government, and the Second World War • Inger Stole, Illinois • Contending that the Second World War helped solidify the institution of advertising in the economy, the polity, and American culture, this paper chronicles how the American advertising industry navigated the treacherous political waters of Washington D.C. in the early 1940s, primarily through its newly created public relations arm, the (War) Advertising Council. It argues that the Council successfully neutralized the threat of hostile government actions towards advertising, and helped establish cordial relations between the federal government and the advertising industry.
Expanding the “Dual Role” Concept: The Latvian Newspaper Kanadietis, 1913-1914 • Andris Straumanis, Wisconsin-Eau Claire • Adopting the work of anthropologists who have studied “rites of passage,” this paper suggests that the long-standing debate about the role of the immigrant press should be reexamined by stressing the liminal stage. Expanding the notion of a “dual role” allows for inclusion of media that do not fit the traditional dichotomy of cultural maintenance vs. acculturation. The Latvian-language newspaper Kanadietis, published in Winnipeg, Canada, from 1913 to 1914, is presented as a case study.
Covering the Century: How Four New York Dailies Reported the End of the 19th Century • Randall Scott Sumpter, Texas A&M • This study compares how two groups of New York dailies covered the end of the l9th century. The “yellow” press linked the century’s end to jingoistic predictions, self-promoting scoops and coverage of sensational topics. Other editors, seeking reader and advertiser niches not yet dominated by the yellow journals, avoided sensation and tempered optimistic predictions with stories about possible shortages. Their efforts furnish another example of how market competition nourished the development of “objective” news practices.
New York City Press and the McKinley Assassination: Debates About Journalism Ethics When a Newspaper Was Accused of Killing a President • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois • William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal was accused of inciting a presidential assassination following the shooting death of President William McKinley in September 1901. At that point the Journal and a rival, The New York Sun, promptly engaged in a letters to the editor war. This paper examines public reaction and debates about journalistic responsibility published in five leading New York City daily newspapers -The New York Journal; The Evening Post; The New York Sun; The New York Times; and The New York World.
Burning Crosses and Activist Journalism: The Unlikely Heroism of Two Mississippi Editors • Jan Whitt, Colorado • Journalists summarize lifetimes and abbreviate events in order to serve the interests of public knowledge and/or social action. It is tempting for them to write the stories of everyday citizens as if their subjects are somehow more courageous, more spiritual, or more committed than the average person. Telling the stories of “heroes” • such as Pulitzer Prize-winning Mississippi journalists Ira B. Harkey Jr. and Hazel Brannon Smith • requires an understanding of the nature of both journalistic and historical narrative.
World War I and the Success of the United Press • Dale Zacher, North • This study uses extensive original source documents to examine the importance World War One played in the eventual financial success of the United Press wire service. The U.P., created in 1907, faced a difficult task in covering a global war, yet emerged from it stronger than ever. The U.P. was able to use several notable scoops early in the war to establish a long-lasting reputation, overcoming problems with censorship, technological limitations and cutthroat competition.
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