History 2002 Abstracts
History Division
The Poor Man’s Guardian: Radicalism as a Precursor to Marxism • Eugenie P. Almeida, Fayetteville State University • In this paper, the five year publication of the Poor Man’s Guardian, a radical and illegal newspaper of the 1830’s, is described. Excerpts from the newspaper are used to illustrate four points: (1) the Poor Man’s Guardian’s general strategy of establishing reader identification with its chosen audience; (2) the strategies by which it differentiated itself from the establishment press and other competing unstamped newspapers; (3) its attempts to foster “working class” consciousness in its readership.
Price Competition Editorial Vigor and Community-Ism: Edwin Aldrich and the Promotion of McNary Dam • Jon Arakaki, Oregon • This paper examines the editorial promotion of the Umatilla Rapids Project (later, McNary Dam) by East Oregonian editor/publisher Edwin Aldrich from 1929-1933. The dam, situated on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington State, is one in a series of large federal projects that transformed the economic, physical, and political nature of the Pacific Northwest. An examination of Aldrich’s arguments is provided to determine if the rhetorical patterns correspond with historical events.
Not A Hoax: New Evidence in The New York Journal’s Rescue of Evangelina Cisneros • W. Joseph Campbell, American • This paper offers new evidence about the New York Journal’s rescue in 1897 of Evangelina Cossio y Cisneros, a nineteen-year-old Cuban jailed in Havana during the rebellion against Spanish colonial rule. For the Journal, the rescue represented a triumph over Spain’s harsh efforts to quell the insurrection, which in 1898 gave rise to the Spanish-American War.
Ridicule and Reason: Editorial Analysis of a Nearby Black Weekly’s Fight to Avenge a Southern Lynching • Kenneth Campbell, South Carolina • This research examines what both the black press and the white press said in editorials in response to the 1926 triple lynching in Aiken, S.C. The paper finds that the black press responded with both reasoned editorials and ridicule of the concept of white superiority, and that on some issues it was in agreement with the white press.
The Black Press and Coverage of the Negro Leagues before And After Integration: When To Stop the Cheering? • Brian Carroll, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The signing of Jackie Robinson cleaved baseball history into eras “before” and “after.” The cleaving is reflected in black press coverage, which rapidly and comprehensively shifted to the major leagues with Robinson’s arrival in Brooklyn. This paper analyzes that fundamental shift in coverage by examining the multidimensional relationship the press had with the Negro leagues, including its officials, team owners, and fans.
Letting the Marketplace Decide: Children’s Television in the 1980s • Naeemah Clark, Kent State University • Mark Fowler chaired the Federal Communications Commission from 1981 and 1987. Fowler, a Reagan appointee, led the FCC under the philosophy “Let the Marketplace Decide.” This philosophy meant that broadcasters had the freedom to program their stations in ways to get the largest audience and increase profits. This article uses primary sources such as oral history and television schedules and various secondary sources to address what Fowler’s philosophy meant to educational children’s television and its advocates during his reign.
Democratic Morality and the Freedom Academy Debate: The Dialectic Over Propaganda Use in America, 1954-1968 • Stacey Cone, Iowa • Debate in government during three administrations over the “Freedom Academy” — a proposed propaganda training institution — has been an important but undocumented aspect of media history. This paper describes and analyzes how and why enthusiasts of the bill sought to institutionalize propaganda through the Freedom Academy, and how and why their critics labored to prevent it. The Freedom Academy story is an intellectual history tracing the idea of propaganda in America.
Building Resentment: How the Alabama Press Prepared the Ground for New York Times v. Sullivan • Doug Cumming, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), which gave the American press vital protections against libel suits from public officials, was the Supreme Court’s reaction to the extreme punishment that an Alabama judge and jury laid upon the Times. This paper looks at the way the Alabama press helped build resentment against the kind of attention the Times was bringing to racial tensions in the late fifties and in 1960, when the Sullivan suit was brought.
Class Awareness in the Formation of British Journalists, 1886 To the Present • Anthony Delano, London College of Printing • Preparation for journalism in Britain has been retarded by class awareness. Position of journalists at the beginning of the twentieth century contained seeds of present-day considerations of status, occupational hegemony and organizational preference. Rival outlooks continue to dominate the controversy over whether journalism can best be taught in the classroom or learned in the newsroom. Questionable contention that for journalism to be effective its product needs to be delivered by people of the same background as those who receive it attracts some support from scholars.
The Fracturing of FM: Coverage of the 1944-1945 Frequency Allocation Debate • Christaan Eayrs, Bowling Green State University • A 1945 FCC decision to shift the operating frequencies for FM radio ended a contentious battle that raged for nearly a year. While scholars have discussed the social, political, and economic factors that influenced the decision, this paper’s analysis of the coverage in Broadcasting from 1944 to 1945 illustrates the highly technical focus of the proceedings. The FCC’s wish to center discussion on technical grounds through the exclusion of other issues framed both the nature and subsequent coverage of the debate.
Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Coverage of Women Journalists in Editor & Publisher, 1978 to 1988 • Cindy Elmore, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The 1970s were full of turmoil and change for women and the press. Women students were filling journalism schools, women journalists were filing complaints of sex discrimination, and women were securing “firsts” all over the journalism profession. So by the late 1970s, the momentum was strong for the continued advancement of women and women’s issues in the media. This study examined the coverage of women journalists during the decade following the settlement of The New York Times sex discrimination case in Editor & Publisher magazine.
The Adventures of Cuff, Massa Grub, and Dinah Snowball: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Frederick Douglass’ Hometown Newspapers, 1847 • Frank E. Fee Jr., North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This research examines the content of three daily newspapers published in Rochester, New York, the city where anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass began publishing The North Star in December 1847. The purpose of the study of each daily in the last four months of 1847 was to identify the ways these mainstream papers referred to race, ethnicity, and gender on the eve of Douglass taking up residency in the community.
William Brennan’s Century: How a Justice Changed His Mind About Obscenity • John M. Harris, Western Washington University • William J. Brennan, Jr., was considered one of the finest Justices to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court in the twentieth century — some say he was the best. His imprint is especially evident in cases concerning freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yet in 1957, during his first term on the Court, Brennan declared in Roth v. U.S. that obscenity wasn’t protected by the Constitution.
An Old Familiar Story of Using “New” Technology • Louise W. Hermanson, South Alabama • This paper provides an overview of how thousands of youngsters began using new printing technology to put out their own publications from 1866 to 1890. It outlines the variety in size, shape, philosophy and content of the publications and looks at how the young editors and publishers organized themselves into local, state, regional and national organizations to critique each other’s works and improve the reputation of publishing.
Adjusting Frames/Choosing Sides: British Journalists and the Cold War, 1944-1950 • John Jenks, Dominican University • Major diplomatic revolutions have wide-ranging effects on journalism, as was the case in Britain’s shift in relations with the Soviet Union — from alliance to hostility — in the mid-1940s. Left-wing journalists whose views had been acceptable during the wartime alliance now found themselves suspect and out in the cold. Some were fired, some quit, and some defected, while conservative and moderate journalists who had willingly reported from a pro-Soviet conceptual frame in the interest of allied unity shifted their vision and began reporting other facts.
Overcoming Asymmetric Information: The Rise of Chicago as a Center of Information, 1850-1865 • Richard Junger, Western Michigan University • Urban and mass communications historians have concentrated on the role of boosters when describing the press of nineteenth-century American frontier cities such as Chicago. Unfortunately, boosters specialized in asymmetric or unequal information, deliberately misleading perspective settlers, investors, out-of-town journalists and others about the prospects and even reality of their settlements. This paper seeks to redress the prevailing image that antebellum Chicagoans only provided booster-type asymmetric information.
Human Sexuality and the U.S. Newspaper Editor Coverage of the “Kinsey Reports” in Six Newspapers, 1948 and 1953 • Susan Keith, Arizona State University • Coverage of Alfred C. Kinsey’s research into human sexuality changed markedly in six U.S. daily newspapers between the 1948 publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and the 1953 publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Three factors appear to have been responsible for the change. First, the frank treatment of the male book by magazines opened the way for newspapers to discuss the female report frankly. Second, editors benefited from hindsight.
Literature to Form a More Perfect Union: An Examination of the Anti-Saloon League of America’s Early Messages and Methods Through a Framework of Public Relations History • Margot Opdycke Lamme, Florida • The Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) was a church-based social reform movement whose work for National Prohibition became nationally prominent during the 1910s and through the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Although scholars have examined its work as a political pressure group and in the broader context of the Progressive Movement, the League’s communications have not been studied to determine whether they reflected what Robert Wiebe called the Movement’s increasing use of “moral suasion to excellent effect.”
Journalism’s Role in Society: Ethics Codes Framework of Responsibility • Jane S. McConnell, Minnesota State University • Journalism ethics codes written during the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century reveal a dramatic evolution in the concept of press responsibility. At the turn of the century ethics codes provided little more than directives concerning reporters’ personal behavior. Within a decade the focus had moved to the importance of the newspaper as a business. In 1922 the South Dakota press association became the first to produce a code of ethics that distinctly articulated journalism’s societal role.
“The Whole Affair is to Put Us on the Defensive”: Know-Nothingism, Rutherford B. Hayes, and The Weekly Press of Northwest Ohio • Michael T. McGill, Jr., Bowling Green State University • During presidential campaigning in late 1876, Republican and Democratic political organizers, candidates, and supporters waged a bitter battle within the columns of the American press. This paper analyzes one of the many political accusations utilized by Democrats through the Democratic press: that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes had direct associations with an American anti-foreigner organization.
Suppression of an Enemy Language During World War II Prohibition of the Japanese Language in Japanese American Assembly Camps • Takeya Mizuno, Bunkyo University • This article investigates in detail how the United States government prohibited the use of the Japanese “enemy” language at Japanese American “assembly centers” during World War II. Drawing on the archival documents of governmental agencies concerned, this study demonstrates that assembly camp officials strictly barred the evacuees’ from using their native language and thereby curtailed their First Amendment rights of speech and self-expression.
“Only a Brave Man Would Have Dared to Put It in a Book” Using More Communications Theory to Teach and Frame Media History • Alf Pratte, Brigham Young University • This survey suggests strategies to exploit theory in media history. In addition to nationalist, romantic, developmental, cultural, progressive and consensus interpretations, it encourages “grand theories” such as advertising, economic, feminist, functional, frontier, mass society, propaganda, social roles and technological determinism to frame presentations, raise questions and provoke interest and ways of knowing inside and outside the classroom.
Conjunction Junction, What Was Your Function? The Use of Schoolhouse Rock to Quiet Critics of Children’s Television • David S. Silverman, Missouri-Columbia • This paper examines the debate surrounding advertising and the purpose of children’s television in the early 1970s, focusing upon the “series-as-commercial” Schoolhouse Rock. Through examination of both the governmental-records, as well as the recollections of those involved in the production of Schoolhouse Rock, I found a duality in the motives of the those responsible for airing Schoolhouse Rock, ultimately questioning the educational value of what was deemed a “win-win” situation for children’s educational television.
The New York Times Perpetuates a Madman Stereotype of Charles Guiteau: A Qualitative Content Analysis • Don Sneed, Florida International University and Elizabeth Sneed, Boyd Anderson High School, Florida • This study deals with press performance by The New York Times before and during the trial of President James A. Garfield’s assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. The study focuses on how The New York Times – in news stories, headlines and editorials – covered the event during this emotionally charged time in American history.
Murrow Squares Off Against McCarthy: Not Many Brickbats or Bouquets • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois University • The legend portrays the struggle between two men as the equivalent of a televised heavyweight title match. The fight took place March 9, 1954. Surprisingly, it has been reported that the smaller man, a former high school cheerleader named Egbert, won by a knockout. One historian said the stakes were nothing less than the future of democracy in the United States of America. The victor, Edward R. Murrow, was a highly respected broadcast reporter.
Darkness and Light: Shifting Visual Depictions of Cuba in a Time of Crisis • Christopher A. Vaughan, Rutgers University • Seldom has the United States witnessed so sharp a turnabout in the dominant images used to portray a foreign entity as Cuba’s iconic fall from fair-skinned maiden to racialized caricature in the pictorial world of 1898. Illustrative of the significance of images of race and gender in the construction of an imperial order resonant with popular prejudices, Cuba’s passage from attractive white womanhood to darkened and infantilized object of rejection had many authors, but the links between political power and popular iconography were not entirely diffuse.
Repositioning Radio: NBC & the “Kitchen Radio Campaign” of 1953 • Glenda C. Williams, Alabama • The “Kitchen Radio Campaign” was a major Christmas promotion campaign designed to rebuild the daily “Housewife” audience. Using clever jingles set to Christmas carols, the spots urged families to buy a radio for Mom to use while she did her chores. Using letters, memos, and scripts from the NBC archives at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, this paper examines NBC’s Kitchen Radio Campaign and its attempt to reposition radio’s place in the American culture.
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