History 1997 Abstracts
History Division
An Early Hostile Corporate Takeover: The Split of the Scripps Newspaper Empire, 1920-1922 • Edward E. Adams, Angelo State University • In July 1996, the Scripps League consummated a deal with the Pulitzer Company to sell its sixteen daily and thirty non-daily newspapers for $216 million. Although trends in corporate media mergers, splits, and consolidation continue to occur, little information is known about early historical events and developments in this area. This paper examines an early corporate split and consolidation within the Scripps newspaper empire, one that would lead to the organization of the Scripps League and Scripps Howard. It also examines reasons for the split and the effects upon employees, management, stockholders, and the corporate structure. It further provides an illustration of E.W. Scripps disintegrating power and his attempts to retain power.
Shipboard News Nineteenth Century Handwritten Periodicals at Sea • Roy Alden Atwood, University of Idaho • The eight handwritten shipboard papers examined here demonstrate that the vast oceanic communication system in place by the l9th century included the production of news publications at sea. These shipboard periodicals certainly provided entertainment (not unlike many of their land-based contemporaries) for long and monotonous journeys, but they also chronicled the stories of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of passengers and crew (the equivalent population of many villages or towns of their day) and covered the events and activities on their floating communities that imputed meaning, value, and significance to their odyssey. These handwritten papers at sea varied little from those printed on shore. By the l9th century the newspaper form had become such a deeply entrenched component of Western culture that the passengers and crews on board ships independently reproduced that journalistic form from Boston to San Francisco to Australia to the Arctic. In that context, these shipboard papers were natural extensions of the vast system of oceanic communication that reached as far as ship and sail could carry.
The International Institutional Press Association 1966-1968 • Constance Ledoux Book, North Carolina State University • A research project examining the role of a patient run newspaper at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, uncovered the newspaper’s affiliation with an organization known as the International Institutional Press Association (IIPA). Only one document affiliated with this organization was available through the Library of Congress, a 1968 Directory of Members. The Editor of the Directory was located in Bremerton, Washington. Several oral and written interviews, along with the Editor’s personal collection of materials, established a history of the International Institutional Press Association. This paper is a first step toward documenting the IIPA’ s existence, purpose and ideology for media historians.
Upholding the Womanhood of Woman by Opposing the Vote: The Countermovement Rhetoric of the Remonstrance, 1890-1920 • Elizabeth V. Burt, University of Hartford • This paper examines the anti-suffrage rhetoric and structure of The Remonstrance, the publication of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. By examining the content of the publication as well as the records of the MAOFESW from 1890 to 1920, the author demonstrates that because it was a countermovement publication, The Remonstrance was principally reactive, that is, driven to respond to suffrage claims and strategies. Basic themes illustrated the ideology of the anti-suffrage movement: woman’s place was in the home, woman suffrage was a burden, and women did not want the vote. Further, the ideology of the anti-suffragists was reflected in the organizational structure of both the MAOFESW and the publication. Although both the association and its publication changed with the passage of time, they failed to keep step with the broad social and cultural changes that affected women’s lives in the early twentieth century. Although they might have reflected the mainstream rhetoric of nineteenth century prescriptions for women’s behavior in 1890, they no longer did in 1920.
Public Relations Enters the Space Age: Walter S. Bonney and the Early Days of NASA PR • Ginger Rudeseal Carter, Georgia College and State University • Gaining public support was the Herculean task that the NASA’s public affairs office faced after its creation in 1958. This paper examined the genesis of the NASA public affairs office in 1958 and its operation for the next six years, predating existing articles on NASA public relations by more than seven years. Using primary source documents from the NASA archives and oral history interviews, this paper traced the development of policy as America prepared to send a man into outer space.
Of Heathens and Heroines: Constructions of Gender and Empire in the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Press, 1869-1895 • Janet M. Cramer, University of Minnesota • Using themes derived from colonial discourse theory, this research examines the role of women’s missionary publications in the construction of ideas of womanhood and of imperialism, defined as ideas of one nation’s superiority over another. Publication content conformed to these themes and projected an image of moral and influential womanhood: this ideology was exported to women in other countries and used to support the missionary endeavor, thus suggesting a link between ideas of gender and empire as constructed by these publications.
Goodly Comforts and Honest Enjoyments: The Life and Death of the Chicago Press Club, 1880 -1987 • Richard Digby-Junger, Western Michigan University • Press clubs have played an important, yet neglected role in the development of the reporting profession and the creation of the stereotype of journalists as do anything for a story hard drinkers. Based on records destined to be thrown away, this paper examines the history of the largest press club in the world, how it helped foster the stereotype in reality and fiction, and why it and many other big city, full service press clubs have failed in recent years.
Edward H. Butler of the Buffalo News: The Ascent and Corruption of a New Journalism Pioneer • Michael J. Dillon, SUNY-New Paltz • Edward H. Butler, who founded the Buffalo News in 1873, was an important pioneer of the reformist and socially conscious New Journalism that swept America after the Civil War. Even as it created an inclusive public forum in an impersonal age, however, the New Journalism created vast new wealth for its practitioners. The rise of big money eventually corrupted its democratic possibilities. This paper traces this transformation of journalism by synthesizing key episodes in the career of Butler, an emblematic figure of his age who changed from populist social reformer to conservative elite as his Buffalo News prospered.
Change on Tap for Nashville: The Telegraph and News Content, 1860 • Frank E. Fee Jr., University of North Carolina • Case study of the Nashville (Tennessee) Daily Gazette in 1860 expands analysis of how the early telegraph affected news coverage and presentation. Findings suggest that on the eve of the Civil War, with a technology about a dozen years old, telegraph use for news reporting was not intuitive or preordained by the technology. Editors removed from Eastern urban centers can be seen experimenting with the telegraph’s potential, reshaping and redefining news as a consequence.
Wisconsin and the Fight for States’ Right in Radio: The WHA-WLBL Merger Case, 1929-1931 • Andrew Feldman, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Recent studies have focused on the part that the Federal Radio Commission’s (FRC) reallocation of broadcast frequencies under General Order 40 played in the marginalization of public broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s. This paper argues that scholars have neglected to consider the role of state politics in the disenfranchisement of the public sector of the fledgling interwar broadcast industry. To illustrate, the study here examines the controversy that arose when the University of Wisconsin attempted to merge its station, WHA, with WLBL, the outlet licensed to the State Department of Agriculture and Markets. The dispute ignited rural-urban tensions, became embroiled in gubernatorial politics and assembly races and ultimately led University and state officials to abandon the project. The failure of the merger also had national implications. University officials presented a case to the FRC that provided a precedent for channel reservations for noncommercial stations.
Enlisting the Black Press: The War Department’s Editors Conference of 1918 • Hal Foster, University of North Carolina • Worried that blacks, who were smarting from repression, would refuse to support World War 1, the War Department held a conference with 31 of the nation’s leading black editors in June of 1918. The gathering was a seminal event in the relationship between the black press and the U.S. government in wartime. It led to President Woodrow Wilson making a public denunciation of lynching and commuting the sentences of 10 black soldiers who had been sentenced to death for rioting.
Convicts and Clerics: The Role of Emancipists and Religion in the Infancy of the Press In Sydney, 1803-1840 • Victoria Goff, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay • Recognizing the paucity of historical research on Australian journalism in this country and in Australia, this study fills in the holes in our knowledge of Sydney’s colonial press from its founding in 1803 until 1840. Due to unique social, political and economic conditions in colonial Sydney, the paper focuses on the role of religion and Emancipists (ex-convicts) in the development of the infant press and examines ownership, audience, content, and the interconnections and interactions between competing newspapers and between rival journalists. The following newspapers were examined: The Sydney Gazette (1803-1842); The Australian (1824-1848); The Monitor (1826-1841); The Gleaner (1827); The Sydney Herald (1831-present); and The Colonist (1835-1840). Although a lot of research remains to be done, the study will hopefully be a significant contribution to the wider context of Australian press history and will aid general historians of Australia, who sometime use information in newspapers piecemeal without understanding newspaper history.
The Hindu-German Conspiracy: An Examination of the Coverage of Indian Nationalists in Newspapers From 1915-1918 • Karla K. Gower, University of North Carolina • During the World War I era, nativistic attitudes flourished in the United States. People who advocated un-American ideas were routinely prosecuted. But Indian Nationalists who sought to overthrow the British Government in India received relatively benign treatment. This paper examines how a newspaper’s frame of a minority group may help determine how Americans view that group. The framing of the Indian Nationalists in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle from 1915 to 1918 is examined. The time period analyzed includes the coverage of the Hindu-German conspiracy trial, in which the Indian Nationalists were convicted of violating the United States neutrality laws by conspiring on American soil with Germany to overthrow the British Raj. The paper concludes that by framing the Indian Nationalists as fools who were not to be morally condemned, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, with the assistance of the Indians themselves, helped to create an atmosphere of tolerance for the Indian Nationalists and their movement.
The Publications of the Carlisle Indian School: Cultural Voices or Pure Propaganda? • Beth A. Haller, Towson University • This study of publications such as the Eadle Keatah Toh, The Arrow, The Morning Star, and The Red Man and Helper at the Carlisle Indian School explores whether these publications fit with other historic forms of dissident and disenfranchised media or whether they could be more accurately described as the propaganda arm of the school. This paper investigates a paradox as reflected in the publications: The school tried to uplift and educate Indian children, yet this help was imbedded with an overt assimilationist agenda. The findings illustrate that the school publications may have allowed the voices of American Indian children to be heard, but only in an European-American context, in which they were forced to express disdain for their own families and cultures.
Julia Collier Harris at the Columbus Enquirer-Sun: Contributions Toward, and Consequences of, The Pulitzer Prize • Marie Myers Hardin, University of Georgia • Julia Collier Harris was the daughter-in-law of the famous Southern storyteller Joel Chandler Harris, and wife of Pulitzer award-winning editor Julian Harris. Yet Julia Harris herself was an accomplished journalist and author of three books. This paper explores the tenure of Julia Harris at the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, 1920-1929, and focuses on her contributions toward the winning of the Pulitzer by the paper in 1925. Julia Harris wrote hundreds of editorials for the publication, some of which were submitted for Pulitzer competition. She also contributed to the overall development of the paper as a critical success throughout the South. Explanations for Julia’s relative lack of prominence during this time period, and her lack of recognition for the paper’s attainment of the Pulitzer, are discussed. Julia’s decision to work from her home, and without an official capacity during her early years at the paper, are two reasons her name quickly fen into relative obscurity in Southern journalism, despite her accomplishments.
China’s Political Transformation and Television Development in the Mao Era (1958-1976): A Critical Analysis • Xu Yu and Yu Huang, Hong Kong Baptist University • Attaching great importance to primary materials and original sources, this paper explores the use of television as a political instrument in the Mao era by tracking down important events in the early development of China’s television and by analyzing the political implications of those events. It also investigates the structural patterns, operational models, program changes, and role in intra-Party power struggle of China’s television in the Mao era. It is argued that television in Mao’s China was more a political creation than a technological imperative and that development of television in China was unique with typically Maoist characteristics in pursuit of his radical political transformation.
Private Lives, Public Virtues: Remembered Values of Women’s Lives in Suffrage-ERA Obituaries • Janice Hume, University of Missouri School of Journalism • As the United States moved from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, the nation’s social structures shifted, affecting the lives and the very character of citizens. And with the new century came a dramatic, substantive change in the democracy as ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 finally affirmed woman’s right of access to the nation’s political franchise. Battles over who was worry of full citizenship had become gender based, challenging long-held beliefs about woman’s role in the democracy and her duty to family. Scholars differ in their interpretations of just how this new political role affected women in the decade following the amendment. To provide one small piece of the puzzle, this study examines newspaper obituaries published in mass circulating newspapers before and after this 1920 turning point as reflectors of changing culture and American public memory. The purpose is to determine if new ideas about citizen inclusion had an impact on the socially agreed-upon value of the lives of individuals, especially women, in early twentieth century America.
Issues of Openness and Privacy: Press Coverage of Betty Ford’s Breast Cancer • Myra Gregory Knight, North Carolina • Although the state of the President’s health had been scrutinized by the press for years, First Ladies generally were accorded more privacy. In the wake of Watergate, however, Betty Ford’s mastectomy suggested a new direction. This article examines factors that figured in the change, the newspaper coverage that ensued, and the public’s reaction. The event was found to influence future White House news coverage, the range of subjects suitable for public discussion and the development of medical journalism.
War Stories: Coverage of U.S. Military Operations in Vietnam by Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report, 1965-1973 • James Landers, University of Wisconsin-Madison •Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report provided sustained coverage of U.S. military operations during the Vietnam War. The interpretive journalism of the weekly newsmagazines offered readers of each a distinct perspective on the war at different times. Newsweek and U. S. News & World Report were skeptical, for different reasons, about war strategy and tactics by early 1966; Time by late 1967. This wariness about the prospects for victory preceded similar editorial treatment by the television networks by many months. Each news magazine described combat realistically, although from an American perspective that ignored civilian casualties caused by aerial bombardment and artillery. All three newsmagazines overwhelmingly portrayed U.S. military personnel positively throughout the war: of the 893 editions with military-related articles, only twenty-three had articles about mistreatment of civilians by American troops, or drug use, discipline and morale problems. Most of these were not published until 1970-1971.
John Shaw Billings The Demons that Drove Time/Life’s Editor’s Editor • Michael F. Lane, University of South Carolina • No Abstract available.
Selling Cable Television in the 1970s and 1980s: Social Dreams and Business Schemes • William J. Leonhirth, Florida Institute of Technology • Development of the cable television industry in the 1970s and 1980s included two phases of promotion with arguments that cable television could provide more television services than broadcasting and an information revolution with narrowcasting and two-way services. Federal government policy promoted cable television in preservation of community and democracy. By 1984, industry and government officials acknowledged that cable profits were to come from delivery of traditional broadcast-like fare and not home interactive services.
The Japanese-Language Press and the Government’s Decision of the Japanese Mass Evacuation During World War II: Three Japanese Newspapers’ Reception of the War, the Japanese Americans’ Wartime Status, and the Evacuation • Takeya Mizuno, University of Missouri-Columbia • The present research attempts to explore how the Japanese-language press in the United States covered World War II and subsequent Japanese mass evacuation and how it fulfilled the major functions of the ethnic press. This study conducted a qualitative content analysis of three Japanese papers Ñ the Rocky Nippon, Doho, and Utah Nippo Ñ between early 1941 and mid 1942 and concludes that each paper assumed particular roles but all similarly accepted evacuation with little resistance.
Down with Fiction and Up with Fact: Publishers Weekly and the Postwar Shift to Nonfiction • Priscilla Coit Murphy, University of North Carolina • An exploration of the postwar shift in book publishing to nonfiction from fiction. The industry’s choices and perceptions are investigated through editorials and yearly reviews in its trade journal, Publishers Weekly. The nature of the shift is discussed using production statistics. Historical and economic factors are discussed, including the impact of changes wrought by other media, and aspects of the industry culture affecting ideas about publishing’s mission are explored, toward understanding what drove the changes and how publishing saw them.
Duff Green’s Political Crusade Through the Press, 1827-1830 • William Greg Newsome, Georgia State University • As literacy grew in the early nineteenth century, so did the need to transform the press into an effective political organ. A newspaper named the United States Telegraph was efficient in retaliating against slanderous claims that would influence negative public opinion towards a candidate. To try to alleviate any doubts the common man might have on election day the editor, Duff Green, molded the U.S. Telegraph around developing a positive image of Andrew Jackson. Knowing the ramifications of losing the 1825 election, Jackson made a major effort to reach the people by financially supporting the Telegraph to achieve presidential victory.
Free at Last? Religious Contradictions in the Origins of the Black Press • Allen W. Palmer, Hyrum Laturner, Brigham Young University • The rise of the black press in the early l9th Century can be linked to the incongruity of a Christian liberation theology taught to black slaves based on the religious doctrine that promised blacks a spiritual, but not secular, freedom. In this cultural history, the work of influential black editors, particularly Frederick Douglass, are reviewed for clues to their religious roots; and then extended to the experience of their era. Although religion was taught by slaveholders to encourage temporal self restraint, it produced the patience necessary for the editors of the black press to become the voice for the anti-slavery movement, and to play a key role in the rise of the abolitionist movement.
Rod Serling’s Hegemony Zone • Bob Pondillo • This research paper traces the changes of a 1956 teleplay by Rod Serling entitled Noon On Doomsday. Serling based his television script on a true-life event of the mid-1950s, the killing of Emmett Till, a black youth who was lynched in rural Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. The paper seeks to understand and explain the ideological and extra-media forces that vitiated this powerful drama because it challenged the sensibilities and hegemony of the time.
Bombastic Yet Also Insightful: The Newspaper Correspondence of Georgia Soldiers During the American Civil War • Ford Risley, Penn State University • This paper examines the Civil War journalism of the soldier correspondents from Georgia. Soldier correspondents provided a significant portion of the news that appeared in the newspapers of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Yet their contributions to the literature have been overlooked. The worst correspondents wrote in a bombastic style, had no concept of what constituted news, and were only interested in glorifying war or their regiment. The best, however, wrote in a straight-forward manner, recognized what was newsworthy, and provided insights into the tragic war.
Why Did They Leave the Newsroom? Stories of Quitting by Twentieth Century Women Journalists • Linda Steiner, Rutgers University • This paper examines the lives and careers of seven women who sought careers in journalism and but then left the newsrooms, in the mid-twentieth-century: Marie Manning, known as advice columnist Beatrice Fairfax; New York World staffer Elizabeth Jordan; Mary Margaret McBride, who eventually turned to radio; Ellen Tarry, who wrote for African American weeklies; and Kathryn Windham, who covered the civil rights movement for Alabama newspapers; and two foreign correspondent. The major basis for the research is their autobiographies, which are an excellent resource for studying the nature of the journalism workplace, including whose voices or ways of doing things have been excluded. The research contradicts a dominant notion of the time, which was that women left journalism jobs happily, in order to devote themselves to their families.
Seeking the Editorial High Ground: E.W. Scripps Experiment in Adless Journalism • Duane Stoltzfus, Rutgers University • This paper examines The Day Book, published in Chicago from 1911 to 1917 and regarded as the nation’s first sustained adless daily newspaper. E.W. Scripps wanted to create a paper supported entirely by circulation revenue and committed to a higher threshold of editorial integrity and independence than he regarded as possible with advertising-subsidized journalism. Eighty years later, The Day Book remains largely a forgotten experiment. An analysis of The Day Book’s content suggests that the paper did succeed in covering department stores and other businesses in a way that expanded the boundaries of news and held advertisers accountable. In so doing, Scripps laid the groundwork for a new model of public-interest journalism that can inform present debates on public policy for the Internet.
The Price of Iconoclasm: The Correspondence of E.W. Scripps and Frank Harris Blighton During Arizona’s Pursuit of Statehood • Michael S. Sweeney, Utah State University • This paper is the first historical examination of an iconoclastic, pro-labor newspaper, Voice of the People, which circulated in Tucson, Arizona, during 1910 and 1911, contributed to the passage of a progressive state constitution and until recently was believed to have no surviving copies. The author draws upon the correspondence between the paper’s editor, Frank Harris Blighton, and newspaper chain-builder E.W. Scripps, which has been preserved in the Scripps Manuscript Collection at Ohio University. Although Scripps was notorious for being tight-fisted, he gave Blighton $1,500 and free access to Scripps’s wire services. The author analyzes the letters and the few remaining copies of the newspaper and concludes that Scripps and Blighton formed a mentor-protege relationship that ultimately failed because of the extramedia and ideological-level pressures that Blighton’s iconoclasm produced in his community.
Extinction of the Panther: A Study of the Black Panther Newspaper’s Reports of FBI Subversion • John C. Watson, University of North Carolina • This paper is a study of the Black Panther Party’s weekly newspaper from 1968 until 1971 to assess how it reported the effects of the FBl’s subversive actions against the party. The study indicates that the newspapers coverage was greatly affected by the fact that its primary purpose was to serve as the public face of the party and advance its goals.
Dorothy Day and the Early Days of the Catholic Worker-Social Action Through the Pages of the Press • Sheila Webb, University of Wisconsin-Wisconsin • The Catholic Worker was a product of its time, a period of intense idealism and great crisis. During the early 1930s, the paper battled with the Daily Worker for the allegiance of the working-class poor. This intense struggle accounts for the paper’s tone, concerns, themes, and coverage. In order to explicate the ways in which the Catholic Worker’s passionate desire to define itself, its mission, and its audience took shape in 1933, this paper looks in detail at the very early years of the paper. To place this analysis historically, this paper examines the prevailing norms both in mainstream press and in the radical press.
A Labor from the Heart: Lesbian Magazines from 1947-1994 • Jan Whitt, University of Colorado Boulder • This study chronicles the origin, growth and disappearance of four significant lesbian publications Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus, Journal for Lesbians and Sinister Wisdom from 1947 to 1994. Secondly, the study examines their raison d’etre and traces their achievements, placing them in a broader cultural context. Finally, although a few gay publications profoundly influenced public policy (especially during the 1960s), this study argues that lesbian newsletters and magazines, although often tied to politically active organizations, existed primarily to help individual lesbians come to terms with a homophobic world and to provide social connections and essential support systems. Less financially secure than their counterparts in the gay male magazine industry, lesbian publications were labors of love and rarely survived.
Publicity or Espionage?: The Scripps Newspapers Fight To Stop Income Tax Evasion, 1915-1916 • Dale Zacher, Creighton University • This study looks at the Scripps Newspaper chain’s efforts to force the Wilson administration to champion the publication of income tax returns. Long a populist cause, E.W. Scripps pushed his newspapers to begin an editorial campaign for the tax publicity after the new tax raised less money than expected. Scripps also tried to withhold political support for Wilson unless the President agreed. This study relies heavily on primary source materials ignored by earlier research.
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