History 2014 Abstracts
Prejudice and the Press Critics: Colonel McCormick’s Assault on the Hutchins Commission • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • When the Commission on Freedom of the Press published A Free and Responsible Press in 1947, Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick detected a conspiracy to destroy the First Amendment. He underwrote Prejudice and the Press, a 642-page attack on the Commission. The story casts new light on the Commission on Freedom of the Press, Colonel McCormick, the antipathy between newspaper publishers and President Roosevelt, and the evolution of First Amendment doctrine.
Sports, scribes and rhymes: Poetry in black newspapers, 1920-1950 • Brian Carroll, Berry College • This paper seeks to recover poetry written and published by black press sportswriters of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the period during which these writers crusaded for desegregation and equal opportunity for black athletes in professional baseball and a period coincident with the Harlem Renaissance. Though much attention has been paid poetry appearing in mainstream newspapers by the likes of Grantland Rice and Heywood Broun, virtually ignored is verse written by black press writers, who continued with the form long after it was dropped by the mainstream press. Read today, verse such as Wendell Smith’s well-known snatch about Jackie Robinson’s seat-filling first season in Brooklyn (“Jackie’s nimble, Jackie’s quick, Jackie’s making the turnstiles click”) can be seen as an important source for and contributor to later art forms such as rap and hip hop. In addition, the poetry of black sportswriters has not previously been researched, a silence or omission that highlights how under-appreciated by history these writers have been. Writers in this recovery include Fay Young and Edward A. Neal of the Chicago Defender; from the Pittsburgh Courier, Wendell Smith and Russ J. Cowans; and from the New Amsterdam News, Dan Burley and Romeo Dougherty.
Tracking the Blizzard: Justifying Propaganda Leaflet Psyop during the Korean War • Ross Collins, North Dakota State University; Andrew Pritchard, North Dakota State University • During the Korean War the United States built a propaganda operation in an effort to counteract Communist ideology. This required the military to mount a leaflet campaign in Korea. But skeptics demanded evidence that the propaganda was effective; psyop staff responded by gathering documentation. Leaflet campaigns seemed to have had limited effect, however. Authors conclude that psyop staff found it challenging to design leaflets faced with an unclear mission, anti-Asian bias, and weaknesses in measurements.
Cat Tales in the New York Times • Matthew Ehrlich, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Cat stories seem to be everywhere in contemporary media, but they are not a new phenomenon, not even in the staid New York Times. This paper qualitatively analyzes the Times’s cat tales from the nineteenth century to the present. The stories have helped the newspaper adjust to changing journalistic fashions and market itself to a changing readership. They also have displayed running themes depicting cats as heroes, villains, victims, women’s best friends, and urban symbols.
The Paternalistic Eye: Edwin Johnson and the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, 1949-1952 • Jim Foust • This paper examines Edwin Johnson’s tenure as chair of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Using archival material, contemporary press accounts and government documents, it seeks to show how the senator used the power and prestige of his position to influence the broadcast industry and the FCC. Specifically, this paper examines Johnson’s efforts to fight monopoly control, to speed the lifting of the television “freeze,” and to encourage broadcasters to provide informative, family-friendly programming.
Hoyt W. Fuller, Cultural Nationalism, and Black World Magazine, 1970-1973 • Nathaniel Frederick II, Winthrop University • This research is a historical account of Hoyt Fuller’s role as Editor-in-Chief of Black World magazine. Fuller shaped the content of Black World and used the magazine as a platform to promote the Black Arts Movement and African culture. Hampering his efforts were consistent conflicts with the publisher of the magazine, John H. Johnson over economic support. This study entails a textual analysis of Black World and examines its content over a three-year period.
Josiah Gregg’s Vision of New Mexico: Early Othering about Mexicans in Commerce of the Prairies • Michael Fuhlhage, Wayne State University • Josiah Gregg wrote one of the earliest long-form journalistic descriptions of Mexican people and culture in the nineteenth century. Commerce of the Prairies (1844) remains a classic work of exploration at the boundary of American and Mexican culture. This paper uses social identity theory and framing to assess how Gregg portrayed Mexicans and the interaction between the cultural influences that surrounded him and his way of seeing the people of New Mexico. Gregg’s Quaker faith shaped his highly critical view of Mexican Catholicism, which he believed relied too much on sacramental objects and rituals, and its priesthood, which he saw as con men and not as people whose mission was to bring believers closer to God. He found Mexicans’ lack of material progress to be evidence of backwardness. However, Gregg did not share other Americans’ belief that Mexicans were cowardly soldiers.
Listening to pictures: Converging media histories and the multimedia newspaper • Katie Day Good, Northwestern University • In light of recent research on digital newspapers as sites of media “convergence,” this paper revisits the 1920s as a period of forgotten media mixing in newspapers. Comparing a short-lived audiovisual form of journalism—the Radio Photologues of the Chicago Daily News—with contemporary audio slideshows, it argues that newspapers have long been meeting grounds for experimental combinations of old and new media, offering a historical backdrop to contemporary discussions of “convergence” in digital journalism.
The Journalist and the Gangster: A Devil’s Bargain, Chicago Style • Julien Gorbach, University of Louisiana at Lafayette • Ben Hecht grew to personify the mix of cynicism, sentimentality and mischief of the Chicago newspaper reporter, an historical type that he immortalized in his stage comedy, The Front Page. This study argues that the temptation of the Mephistophelean bargain, the proposition that rules are made to be broken, explains both Hecht’s Romanticist style, emblematic of Chicago journalism, and a fascination with criminals and gangsters that he shared with his fellow newspapermen.
The Many Lives of the USP: A History of Advertising’s Famous and Infamous Unique Selling Proposition • Daniel Haygood, Elon University • The Unique Selling Proposition has been one of the most successful but polarizing advertising philosophies in the history of the advertising profession. Created by Rosser Reeves at the Ted Bates agency, the USP focused on generating a unique product characteristic or benefit that consumers would find compelling. USP-based advertising generated sales gains for clients but criticism from agency professionals and consumers for its repetitive claims and support points. This research looks at the volatile story of the USP, including is creation and uneven use and promotion by the Bates agency and tries to identify reasons why this philosophy has endured.
Why the Internet Cannot Save Journalism: A Historical Analysis of the Crisis of Credibility & the Development of the Internet • Kristen Heflin, Kennesaw State University • This paper historicizes journalism’s present crisis of credibility and explores how the Internet, as the most compelling solution to this crisis, developed to meet very different needs than those of mainstream journalism organizations. The paper concludes by asserting that the Internet cannot be heralded as the solution to the crisis of credibility, largely because the crisis is not a technical one of information delivery, but an epistemological conflict at the heart of journalism practice.
The Past as Persuader in The Great Speckled Bird • Janice Hume, University of Georgia • This study examines journalistic uses of history in the underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird during its first five years, 1968 to 1972, based on Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest K. May’s categories of the uses of history by political decision makers. The Bird used history for context, nostalgia and analogy, to promote values, and to challenge past assumptions, all to bolster a point of view for its readers, the hippie community in Atlanta, Ga.
“Magnetic Current” in the New York Times • Vincent Kiernan, Georgetown University • This paper examines the concerted efforts by William L. Laurence, science writer at The New York Times, to publicize the research of maverick Austrian physicist Felix Ehrenhaft in 1944-45. Laurence wrote multiple sensational articles to counter mainstream physicists’ dismissal of the research, triggering pack news coverage of the researcher, while mainstream scientists criticized the newspaper and blocked grants for Ehrenhaft. The escapade illustrates tensions among journalists, unconventional scientists, and the scientific establishment that persist today.
Collective memory of Japanese colonial rule • Hwalbin Kim, University of South Carolina • This study explores how the South Korean television drama “Eye of Daybreak” helped to shape collective memory of Japanese colonial rule. The drama highlighted the experiences of “comfort women,” Korean women forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. This study examined how newspapers reported the “comfort women” issue. This study argues that the drama generated greater public awareness of, discussion about, and controversy over the place of “comfort women” in South Korean historical narratives.
Senator Joe McCarthy and the Politics of the 1960s • Julie Lane, Boise State University • This study examines four books about Senator Joseph McCarthy published during the 1950s to determine why one of the four – Senator Joe McCarthy by New Yorker Washington correspondent Richard Rovere – prompted the most vociferous reaction. It concludes that the book’s appearance at a critical juncture in the developing ideological divide meant it served as a bridge from the McCarthy era to the new conservatism that shaped national politics in the 1960s.
Promulgating the Kingdom: Social Gospel Muckrakers Josiah Strong and Hugh Price Hughes • Christina Littlefield, Pepperdine University • This paper addresses a major gap in journalism history by showcasing how social gospel leaders used the power of the pen to promote social reform. Many social gospel leaders in England and the United States edited newspapers to educate the masses on key social issues in hopes of ushering in the kingdom of God. This paper compares the muckraking efforts of two evangelical leaders: British Methodist Hugh Price Hughes and American Congregationalist Josiah Strong.
SOCIALIST MUCKRAKER JOHN KENNETH TURNER: A Journalist/Activist’s Career a Century Ago • Linda Lumsden, U of Arizona • Socialist muckraker John Kenneth Turner not only went undercover to expose oppression of Mexican peasants a century ago but also ran guns for Mexican rebels who invaded Baja California in 1911. This paper argues that questions raised by Turner’s nearly forgotten career are relevant to those posed by today’s digital activism. The paper analyzes several aspects of Turner’s career: as an investigative journalist who covered the 1910s’ labor movement for the popular Socialist weekly Appeal to Reason; as author of the controversial 1909 “Barbarous Mexico” exposé; as an abettor of Mexican revolutionaries in the United States; and as an advocate against U.S. intervention in Mexico throughout the 1920s. The subject is important because advocacy journalism such as Turner practiced—fact-based reportage in support of a cause—is a genre that has expanded along with digital media, citizen journalism, and online social movement media. Activism figures prominently in the current debate on the definition of a journalist. An analysis of Turner’s career may illuminate larger questions about today’s evolving forms of journalism. Further, an examination of Turner’s career in the Southwest borderlands sheds light on the history of American journalism in that region, which remains tumultuous and contested journalistic terrain. His criticisms of the mainstream press remain relevant in light of current debates on the elusive ideal of “objectivity” in journalism. Finally, Turner should be recognized for his contributions to journalism history and his role in U.S.-Mexican relations.
The “eloquent Dr. King”: How E. O. Jackson and the Birmingham World Covered Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott • Kimberley Mangun, The University of Utah • This qualitative study analyzes how Emory O. Jackson, editor of the Birmingham (AL) World, covered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King Jr.’s rise to fame, and the ramifications of court rulings on bus segregation. More than one hundred fifty articles, editorials, and columns published in the biweekly newspaper between December 1, 1955, and December 21, 1956, the duration of the boycott, were studied using historical methods and narrative analysis.
Press Freedom in the Enemy’s Language: Government Control of Japanese-Language Newspapers in Japanese American Camps during World War II • Takeya Mizuno, Toyo University • This article examines how the federal government controlled the Japanese-language newspapers in Japanese American “relocation centers” during World War II. Camp officials were facing a dilemma; while they knew Japanese news media would promote effective information dissemination, no one understood the language. As a result, they limited Japanese items to verbatim translations of official English releases. Press freedom inside barbed wire fences was conditional at best; it was even more so in the enemy’s language.
Summer for the Scientists? The Scopes Trial and the Pedagogy of Journalism • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • A main goal of supporters of John T. Scopes during his 1925 trial for teaching evolution in Tennessee was to educate the public on evolution science. This paper argues that, though journalists, lawyers, and scholars expected newspaper coverage to make Americans smarter about evolution, little effort was devoted to that aim. Rather, a preference for conflict and an emerging professional objectivity resulted in more confusion than clarity, just as news coverage of evolution does today.
The Strange History of the Fairness Doctrine: An Inquiry into Shifting Policy Discourses and Unsettled Normative Foundations • Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania • The Fairness Doctrine, one of the most famous and controversial media policies ever debated, suffered a final death-blow in August 2011 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permanently struck it from the books. The doctrine continues to be invoked by proponents and detractors alike, suggesting that the policy will live on long past its official death at the hands of liberal policymakers who had hoped to quietly remove it from the nation’s political discourse. The following paper attempts to demystify the Fairness Doctrine by historically contextualizing it while also drawing attention to how it continues to be deployed. Tracing how ideologies and discourses around the Fairness Doctrine have shifted over time serves as an important case study for how political conflict shapes the normative foundations of core media policies. The paper concludes with a discussion of positive freedoms as fundamental principles for American media policy.
Southern Values and the 1844 Election in the South Carolina Press • Erika Pribanic-Smith, University of Texas at Arlington • This exploration South Carolina newspapers in the 1844 presidential election demonstrates that most editors assumed a sectional tone when discussing campaign politics. Furthermore, it shows that newspapers actively supported presidential candidates even though the state’s electorate did not vote for president. Finally, this paper argues that the tariff was the primary campaign issue for South Carolinians, contrary to prior historians’ assertions that Polk won the South based on his support for the annexation of Texas.
The Sabbath and the ‘Social Demon’: Sunday Newspapers as Vehicles of Modernity • Ronald Rodgers, University of Florida • This paper looks at the decades-long conflict between the traditions of religion and the modern juggernaut that was the Sunday newspaper. Within that discursive elaboration leading to the general acceptance of the Sunday newspaper as a vehicle of modernity were issues surrounding the tension between the secular and the sacred as an armature of the societal struggle between the forces of modernity and those opposed to the destabilizing of traditions.
Rhetorical Repertoires of Puerto Rican Anarchist Journalist Luisa Capetillo in the Early 20th Century • Ilia Rodriguez, University of New Mexico; Eleuterio Santiago-Diaz, University of New Mexico • This research focuses on the writings of Puerto Rican feminist and anarchist writer Luisa Capetillo (1873-1922), a journalist for the Spanish-language labor and community newspapers in Puerto Rico and the United States. Capetillo’s texts were selected as a site to explore the structural factors and political climate that shaped the production of anarchist discourse in the United States in the early 20th century. Through a discourse analysis of texts published in 1913 and 1916, the research aims to elucidate thematic structures and particular forms of argumentation through which anarchists editors and writers constructed their contestatory views of the nascent U.S. industrial society. Capetillo’s writing was selected as a rich site in which to examine the discursive practices through which a non-U.S. citizen radical, facing censorship and persecution in the early 1900s, used her writing to contest some of the dominant assumptions about the exceptional character of the U.S. polity.
Newspaper Editorials on Marijuana Prohibition During the Early War On Drugs, 1965-1980 • Stephen Siff, Miami University of Ohio • This study examines editorials regarding marijuana law and enforcement in four major U.S. newspapers between 1965 and 1980, a period during which both marijuana use and arrests increased dramatically, and during which time the federal government overhauled both anti-marijuana laws and the approach to combatting drug use more generally. During this time, the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times published a combined 126 editorials dealing with marijuana, approximately one-third of which called for reduction in criminal penalties for possession of the drug. The calls to reduce penalties for marijuana possession were nearly always explained in strictly pragmatic terms, without addressing the underlying moral or health justifications for the legal prohibition of the drug. Differences in editorial stances between the newspapers are also discussed.
The Journalist Who Knew Too Much: John W. White’s Tumultuous Tenure as The New York Times Chief South American Correspondent • Kevin Stoker, Texas Tech University; Mehrnaz Rahimi, Texas Tech University • Few foreign correspondents understood the cultural differences between the United States and Latin America better than John W. White. A former U.S. diplomat to Argentina, White spent more than 15 years living in the country before joining The New York Times. But White was still an American journalist, practicing American journalism and looking out for American interests in Latin America. Though adept at circumventing government censorship, but he could not circumvent controversy. He had a knack for scoops that discomforted South American political leaders, the State Department, and his own publisher. For ten years, his publisher Arthur Sulzberger scolded White and assured him of his confidence in him. But finally Sulzberger betrayed him, telling the State Department to call him home.
Wine, Women, and Film: Drinking Femininity in Post-Prohibition American Cinema • Annie Sugar, University of Colorado-Boulder • This textual analysis of female drinking portrayals in four films, Depression-era comedic romps The Thin Man (1934) and The Women (1939) and two World War II tales of duty, dignity, and identity Now, Voyager (1942) and Since You Went Away (1944), demonstrates how post-Prohibition American culture established a drinking femininity for white, affluent American women and how the dominant discourse manipulated that femininity for two generations to suit the nation’s social, political, and economic needs.
A Rainbow of Hope – The Black Press’s Engagement with Entertainment Culture, 1895-1935 • Carrie Teresa, Temple University • Black press journalists writing in the Jim Crow era viewed entertainment culture as an important component in the lived experience of their readers. Through a narrative analysis of entertainment coverage during the period 1895 through 1935, this paper shows how black journalists framed entertainment culture as a tool in the fight for civil liberties, arguing that the black press used discussions about entertainment to help community members define their own roles as free citizens.
The Untold Story of An American Journalism Trailblazer: Carr V. Van Anda’s Methods as Contemporary Guidance • Wafa Unus, ASU • While study and discussion of American journalism is abound with accounts of The New York Times, the emergence of this newspaper as an American institution never has been fully told. Little is known of Carr V. Van Anda, who from a career as a typesetter in Cleveland rose to become The Times pre-eminent managing editor. He served in the post from 1904 to 1932, the newspaper’s formative and most celebrated period. Since his retirement in 1932 and his passing in 1945, Van Anda has been relegated in the literature mostly to footnotes and index entries. Yet even from brief references, it has remained that Van Anda’s contribution was substantial. Of particular interest to contemporary scholars was Van Anda’s role as a harbinger of modern times. Van Anda worked in an era not dissimilar to contemporary times, and an understanding of his methods may serve as guidance for modern journalism. Through study of his reportage, and employing additional original sourcework of his life and career, this study provides the first historical account of Van Anda and his work at The New York Times. That Van Anda’s past contributions are of much contemporary relevance will be seen in the study’s analysis of his coverage of science and technology, as well as his use of technology in reporting. In discussing Van Anda’s contributions, the study concludes with suggestions on how understanding of this input, journalism can further be advanced.
Evolve or Die: Early Industrial Catalysts that Transformed Frontier Journalism • David Vergobbi, University of Utah • This study delineates journalism on Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene mining district frontier in 1893 and 1894—after a violent 1892 union versus owner war and subsequent martial law—as ten newspapers dealt with a national economic depression and renewed labor/management tensions. The study provides 1) a key to understanding the complex evolution of Western journalism from pioneering sheets to commercial press and 2) a conceptual framework to ascertain if similar developments existed on other early industrial frontiers.
Legitimizing news judgments: The early historical construction of journalism’s gatekeeping role • Tim Vos, University of Missouri; Teri Finneman, University of Missouri • This study analyzes journalistic discourse about news judgment, news selection and newsworthiness in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The intent is to understand how the notions of newsworthiness, news selection or news judgment came to be expressed in normative terms in the journalistic field. The study finds discursive strategies that explained news judgment in terms of a special skill that journalists possessed, that downplayed judgment while shifting focus to the external qualities of events, and that explained news judgment in terms of the social and economic value of the information provided.
Newspaper Food Journalism: The History of Food Sections & The Story of Food Editors • Kimberly Voss, University of Central Florida • This paper documents the early years of newspaper food sections from the 1950s and 1960s. This paper also examines what the food editors covered at their annual weeklong meetings where food companies introduced new food products and food news was presented. Approximately 125 women attended these meetings and reported from them daily. A selection of newspapers was used in this study including the Boston Globe, Milwaukee Journal, Miami News, Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Omaha Evening World-Herald.
The “Sound of an ‘Extra’”: Representing Civil War Newsboys by Pen and in Print • Ronald Zboray, University of Pittsburgh; Mary Zboray, University of Pittsburgh • This paper examines the American Civil War-era newsboy, generally overlooked by historians, through comments ordinary citizens penned and the stories newspapers printed about him (or her). It reconstructs his business and leisure activities, analyzes the responses of urban dwellers to the newsboy’s cry, and compares these to newspaper portrayals of newsboys. It is based upon extensive research into over 5,000 Civil War manuscript and published diaries and letters, as well as newspaper databases.
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