History 2013 Abstracts
Professional Identity: Wisconsin Editorial Association Records Show Members Self-Identified as Professionals Before the Civil War • Stephen Banning • An examination of the minutes of the Wisconsin Editorial Association in the mid nineteenth century revealed some journalists self-identified as professionals much earlier than previous research indicated. This research reveals the earliest reference to journalism as a profession by a journalist, an instance which occurred well before the Civil War. This has implications in regard to understanding roots of journalistic identity, journalistic education and journalism codes of ethics, all of which stemmed from an interest in professionalism in the nineteenth century.
From Researcher to Redbaiter: The Odyssey of the Hutchins Commission’s Ruth Inglis • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • Ruth Inglis worked effectively with the New Deal liberals on the Commission on Freedom of the Press. After the job ended, though, her life took a different path. She helped ghostwrite a book for Senator Joseph McCarthy, researched for William F. Buckley Jr., befriended Ayn Rand, and got called a fascist by Paul Lazarsfeld. In 1951, four years after publication of her Commission book Freedom of the Movies, Inglis added names to the Hollywood blacklist.
From Switchboard Operator to City Editor: Agness Underwood’s Historic Rise in Los Angeles Journalism • Stephanie Bluestein, California State University, Northridge • Desperate to help support her struggling family, Agness “Aggie” Underwood took a job at the Los Angeles Record newspaper in 1926, filling in for a vacationing switchboard operator. Although it was intended to only be a two-week position, it was the beginning of a legendary 42-year career that culminated with her becoming the country’s first woman city editor of a major metropolitan newspaper. Underwood’s editorship generated coverage by national news magazines that published articles about the historic promotion, and her current newspaper, the Evening Herald-Express, touted her in promotional material as “Newsroom’s Lady Boss” and “America’s only Major Newspaper with a Lady City Editor” (Battelle, 1955). Underwood became a source of inspiration for women journalists wanting to break away from the women’s section and become front-page reporters covering crime, politics, and other stories of importance. This study aims to explore Underwood’s career and personal life to help explain her unlikely success as a female city editor commanding an all-male newsroom. This study is significant because the majority of the research was gathered through recent interviews with her colleagues and children, all of whom are elderly. Their detailed recollections of Underwood contribute to the field of journalism history by explaining how she was able to break through gender barriers, which in turn, paved the way for women to enter the field and helped other women journalists to have more meaningful careers.
Universal Invitations and Inexhaustable Resources: Portrayals of Rural Life in Popular Magazines of the Late 1800s • Michael Clay Carey, Ohio University • This exploratory study examines the descriptions of rural situations, people and places that appeared in three popular magazines – Munsey’s, McClure’s, and Cosmopolitan – in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During the Progressive Era, industrial and financial growth were rapidly reshaping the American social landscape, contributing to the growth of large cities, increasing transportation opportunities, and widening the gap between the rich and the poor. This work suggests that three dominant frames emerge to orient coverage of rural America. A fourth frame, less common than the others but still relevant, is also discussed. The paper argues that the frames present an interesting and at times conflicting view of America’s rural communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Rural areas were presented as lands of financial opportunity – places where, with the aid of cosmopolitan sophistication and science, wealth could be found and modern society could thrive. Stories also depicted rural America as a place to be admired, consumed, and sometimes disdained. Its traditional values were lauded while its backwardness was chided. The paper argues that the dichotomies present in those frames – old and new, tradition and progress, work and leisure – are not unlike those evident when one considers the state of the magazine publishing industry, and in fact society as a whole, in the early 1900s.
Murrow and Friendly’s Multimedia Maturation: How Two Non-Visual Communicators Created A Groundbreaking Television Program • Mike Conway, Indiana University School of Journalism • CBS’s See It Now, with Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, is one of the 20th Century’s most celebrated news broadcasts. But how could two men with little visual experience create a landmark 1950s television program? This project explores the thoughts, ideas, and decisions made to blend existing news formats. Murrow’s fame did not guarantee See It Now’s success. Instead it was a willingness to learn from experts in all news media.
Our Voice and Our Place in the World: African-American Female Columnists Discuss Diaspora Politics, 1940-1945 • Caryl Cooper, University of Alabama • This study uses the historiographical method to analyze the themes Charlotta A. Bass, editor and columnist for the California Eagle, Rebecca Stiles Taylor, women’s columnist for the Chicago Defender, and Marjorie McKenzie, columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, used in their columns to inform their readers about the politics and events of Africa and the nations of African Diaspora during World War II, 1940 through 1945. These three women stand out for their contribution to the wartime discourse about U.S. segregation, colonialism and the meaning of the war. Although Bass, Taylor and McKenzie maintained their column throughout the war years, the specifics of what they wrote about diaspora politics have not been explored. This study seeks to add to the body of knowledge about the role of the black press during a time of national crisis by infusing the female voice into an otherwise masculine body of knowledge.
“To Exalt the Profession”: Association, Ethics and Editors in the Early Republic • Frank Fee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This research demonstrates that by the 1830s editors in America were coming together to talk about ethics and raising journalistic standards. Fearing that the excesses of partisanship had made their business “a vehicle of ribaldry and personal defamation,” antebellum editors in nearly every state and territory met to try to tame their free-wheeling craft. The convention movement soon led to formal associations of editors, a development that occurred significantly earlier than scholars generally have recognized.
A Confederate Journalist Held Captive in the North: The Case of Edward A. Pollard • Michael Fuhlhage, Auburn University; Julia Watterson, Auburn University • This project examines how Richmond Examiner editorialist Edward Pollard turned his captivity in the North into Confederate propaganda during the Civil War. Pollard’s journalism aimed to lift Southern spirits by arguing the South could win if only it held out a little longer because the North lacked the resources and will to continue fighting. He argued gallantry and bravado would lead to Confederate independence and the continuation of slavery. Primary sources: newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, books.
The past, present, and future of newspapers: Historicity, authority, and collective memory in four that failed • Nicholas Gilewicz, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania • This article analyzes self-authored histories published in final editions of four United States newspapers that failed between 1978 and 1982. Problematizing the newspaper’s status as an historical document, journalists inscribed historic weight to the closing of their newspapers. This article discusses how journalists shade their histories through hagiography and appeals to collective memory, and how at moments of existential crisis, seams in the interpretation of reality, and journalists’ roles in that interpretation, are made manifest.
Blogging Back Then: Annotative Journalism in I.F. Stone’s Weekly and Talking Points Memo • Lucas Graves, UW – Madison • This article develops the concept of “annotative journalism” with a review of two muckraking investigations, fifty years apart, by the newsletter I.F. Stone’s Weekly and the website Talking Points Memo. Both cases highlight a fragmentary, intertextual style of newswork that unsettles the practices and assumptions of objective journalism, producing dramatic breakthroughs despite little original reporting. This history argues that as a form of reporting annotation works through, not despite, a wider political and media critique.
“The day Eunice Kennedy Shriver Came to the Iron Range” (…and rode a snowmobile) • John Hatcher, University of Minnesota Duluth • This manuscript recounts how it came to be that Eunice Kennedy Shriver came this mining town of less than 6,000 people on Minnesota’s Iron Range, less than 100 miles from the Canadian border, in the dead of winter and rode a snowmobile. Her visit was the culmination of an effort that brought together Veda Ponikvar, a newspaper publisher, with John A. Blatnik, the region’s congressman to rally support at the local, state and national level for the construction of what was touted as one of the first day treatment centers for children with developmental disabilities in the state. This manuscript presents in narrative fashion the story of how the national issue of the deinstitutionalization of the developmentally disabled became a local issue in the community of Chisholm.
“This Has Been a C. D. Chesley Production:” The Story Behind the Early Broadcasting and Sponsoring of Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball • Daniel Haygood, Elon University • Most college sports fans recognize the enduring success of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball teams. Yet, few know that the early television broadcasts of conference games helped set the stage for that success. This research captures the story behind the producing, broadcasting, and sponsoring of ACC basketball from 1958 to 1981. This is when Castleman DeTolley Chesley brought ACC basketball to area fans via television broadcasts, helping to popularize the conference and establish the ACC brand.
“Reagan or Carter? Wrong Questions for Blacks”: Race and 1980s Presidential Politics in the Black Press • Justin Hudson, University of Maryland, College Park • This project analyzes the coverage of racial politics during the 1980s presidential campaigns in two prominent African American newspapers, the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Philadelphia Tribune. Both the Sentinel and Tribune became frustrated by the lack of attention given to black issues by both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and pushed for alternative solutions, such as backing civil rights activist Jesse Jackson’s bid for presidency, as a means to politically empower the black community.
Arguing for Abolition in “American Slavery As It Is” • Paula Hunt, University of Missouri • This paper uses the theoretical framework of field of discourse to examine how Theodore Dwight Weld’s American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839) communicated to different communities in antebellum America to persuade them to join the abolitionist cause. It suggests that a close reading of historical texts like this one can help illuminate how the discursive strategies of social movements contributed to shaping of public opinion on critical issues.
Media Archaeology and Digitized Archives: The Case of Great White Hopes • Phillip Hutchison, University of Kentucky • This case study demonstrates how digitized media archives can help journalism historians better contribute to the rubric of media archaeology. The case study traces usage of the media tagline “great white hope” to reveal overlooked insights about this moniker. The findings indicate that contemporary research often uses these idioms nebulously or inaccurately. Of note, white-hope phrases predate Johnson by at least a century; furthermore, the boxing moniker Great White Hope does not directly relate to the original Jack Johnson controversy. Instead, it reflects 1960s phraseology that was interposed onto a historical artifact. This approach highlights the utility of these databases to media archaeologies in general, and it also illustrates how journalism historians can capitalize on searchable media archives to develop more precise and culturally informed histories.
Great Hopes Forgotten: A Narrative Analysis of Boxing Coverage in Black Press Newspapers, 1920-1930 • Carrie Isard, Temple University • The following paper analyzes the overriding narrative that emerged during the 1920s in discussions of pugilism in the black press, arguing that the boxing ring served as a microcosm of Jim Crow segregation for many sports writers, who connected the color line with larger issues of critical citizenship; that the coverage focused largely on the biggest story of the decade, Harry Wills’ unsuccessful pursuit of Jack Dempsey; and finally, that within that narrative, the black press was actively negotiating the construction of a historical narrative of the boxing color line, with Jack Johnson as its main focus.
The WUSC shutdown: Exploring the reasons the University of South Carolina shutdown its radio station • Joseph Kasko, University of South Carolina • In the early 1990s WUSC-FM in Columbia, SC was considered one of the most prestigious college radio stations in the country. However, for several weeks beginning in late 1995 between the fall and spring semesters the station was taken off the air and its student staff was dismissed for reasons that have never truly been explored. This paper will examine the events and circumstances that ultimately led the university to take this course of action.
‘Mr. Justice Everyman’s Far-Reaching Legacy: Transforming Corporate Political Media Spending into Free Speech, 1978-2010, in Terms of Carl Becker’s Theory of History • Robert Kerr, University of Oklahoma • This paper utilizes an analytic approach grounded in Carl Becker’s “Mr. Everyman” theory of history to consider the manner in which Justice Lewis Powell understood the societal role of corporate political media spending and effected that understanding so as to transform it into protected First Amendment “speech.” It suggests the continuing relevance of Becker’s thesis in illuminating what he called “history that does work in the world.”
Ghost Trains: Past Legends and Present Tragedies • Paulette D. Kilmer, University of Toledo • Ghost trains evolved from the archetype of phantom conveyances, like carts and wagons. Long hours, treacherous working conditions, and horrific accidents, which maimed or killed railroaders encouraged belief in apparitions. This essay analyzes the role of storytellers, newspapers, and songs in these legends about ghosts foretelling catastrophes, bringing death, and reenacting the carnage. Today, few fear phantom expresses, but some die playing the ghost train game.
The Writer, The Artist, And The Gentleman: Key Ideas Of News Values From S.S. McClure • Claudia Kozman, Indiana University • This study is an examination of news values from the perspective of S. S. McClure, the editor of McClure’s magazine. Basing this research on S.S. McClure’s papers in the archives of the Indiana University Lilly Library, the author constructs three themes that constitute the news values practiced by McClure. This study also places McClure’s thoughts in the era they functioned in, discussing how they fit and differ from the prevailing ideas of his times.
From Colonial Evangelism to Guerilla Journalism: A Public Sphere History of the Nigerian Press • Farooq Kperogi • This paper traces the history of the press in Nigeria and show how the form and character of the government of the day (colonial governments, military dictatorships, and constitutional democracies) defined the editorial temperaments and public sphere debates in the country. This is important because existing media historiographies of Nigeria often fail to connect the historical dots between the emergence of the first newspaper in Nigeria and the current editorial complexion of the Nigerian press.
“Bright and inviolate:” the growth of business-newsroom divides in the early twentieth century • Will Mari, University of Washington • This paper examines growth of the supposed divide between business and news spaces in American newspapers in the twentieth century, relying on a close reading of business-management textbooks published between 1901 and 1946. These texts were intended to transmit journalistic norms and values across generations of news workers. They were aspirational texts for how newspapers should be run as both businesses and as community trusts, and show some of the struggles and tensions between the different functions of a newspaper, and how their operating principles either advanced or conflicted with one another.
Tributes to Fallen Journalists: The Evolution of the Hero Myth in Journalistic Practice • Raymond McCaffrey, University of Maryland • An analysis of New York Times tributes to fallen U.S. journalists who perished while at work from 1854 to 2012 revealed that articles were written about 87 percent of the 223 journalists who died on foreign assignment compared to coverage of about 58 percent of the 139 journalists whose deaths were in the U.S. Foreign correspondents were often depicted in heroic terms, while those dying in the U.S. were largely portrayed as the archetypal victim.
The Rosie Legend and Why the Ad Council Claimed Her • Wendy Melillo, American University • Since 2002, the Ad Council has used the iconic “We Can Do It!” poster – also known as the Rosie-the-Riveter poster – to showcase its well-known “Womanpower” public service advertising campaign done for the federal government during World War II. This paper explores why the Ad Council claimed the poster and the recruitment campaign’s symbolic representation of female empowerment as part of its history and public image when the historical record reveals both claims to be fiction.
Authorizing the Nation’s Voice: American Journalism, the Department of State & the Transition to Peacetime International Broadcasting • Emily Metzgar • After the end of World War Two, American political leadership sought passage of legislation to authorize peacetime, government-sponsored, international broadcasting that would teach the world about the United States. This article tells the story of disagreement between the Department of State and American journalists in the period between the war’s end in 1945 and the 1948 passage of authorizing legislation, known today as the Smith-Mundt Act.
The 1929 Torches of Freedom Campaign: Walking “into obscurity” or “publicity stunt of genuine historic significance”? • Vanessa Murphree, The University of Southern Mississippi • This paper examines how newspapers responded to Edward Bernays’ Torches of Freedom campaign, which included carefully selected cigarette-smoking women marching in the 1929 New York City Easter Parade with the purported goal of encouraging women to smoke in public. The evidence indicates that Bernays was not particularly successful in getting significant newspaper support and that coverage of the parade event was never as extensive or persuasive as some historians have long suggested.
Institutionalizing Press Relations at the Supreme Court: The Origins of the Public Information Office • Jonathan Peters, U of Missouri Columbia • At the Supreme Court, the press is the primary link between the justices and the public, and the Public Information Office (PIO) is the primary link between the justices and the press. This paper explores the story of the PIO’s origins, providing the most complete account to date of its early history. That story is anchored by the major events of several eras—from the Great Depression policymaking of the 1930s to the social and political upheaval of the 1970s. It is also defined by the three men who built and shaped the office in the course of 40 years.
Partisanship in the Antislavery Press During the 1844 Run of an Abolition Candidate for President • Erika Pribanic-Smith, University of Texas at Arlington • This study of antislavery newspapers during the 1844 presidential campaign concludes that although the antislavery press claimed to be singularly focused on the abolition of slavery, its editors were largely distracted by the election and mirrored the partisan press of that era in their treatment of the various candidates. Furthermore, Liberty Party editors and their Garrisonian counterparts addressed each other with the same level of disdain that they directed at the Whigs and Democrats.
“A World in Perilous Disequilibrium”: Marquis W. Childs and the Cold War Consensus • Robert Rabe, Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications • This paper is a study of the newspaper columnist Marquis Childs and his role as part of the emerging Cold War consensus in the late 1940s. It examines his writings about defense spending, American-Soviet relations, the United Nations, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and other early aspects of Cold War policy-making. It also looks at his involvement with the liberal ideas and organizations that made up the left end of the political spectrum of the era.
“Modern Joan of Arc”: Coverage of Ida Wells-Barnett and the Alpha Suffrage Club • Lori Roessner, UTK; Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, University of Tennessee, Knoxville • Known most prominently as a daring journalist and anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) also worked tirelessly throughout her life as an advocate of women’s rights.The piece not only grapples with the transformation of Wells-Barnett’s portrayal as women’s rights advocate in the press, it also considers how through Wells-Barnett’s involvement the Alpha Suffrage Club was promoted as a site of united womanhood and as a site of resistance and empowerment for African-American women in the Chicago Defender.
The Voice in the Night Unheard by Scholars: Herb Jepko and the Genesis of National Talk Radio • Miles Romney, Arizona State University • Radio scholarship is an emerging field of study among broadcast historians and much remains unexplored. There exists little investigation into how early FCC clear channel radio stations provided the first platform for national radio communication. Much of historical scholarship recognizes Larry King’s satellite-distributed program as the pioneering stride in national overnight talk radio. This study examines new archival evidence that reveals Herb Jepko used clear channel signals to broadcast the first national overnight talk radio program
Arthur J. Goldberg on Freedom of Expression • Thomas Schwartz • Arthur Goldberg had an unusual impact on the development of constitutional theory on freedom of expression while he briefly sat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962-64, but his contributions exceeded those while he was on the bench. His early life and experience as a labor lawyer and labor secretary fed his strong interest in maximizing freedom of expression. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he promoted freedom of expression as an international value. Later, he wrote and spoke extensively about the significance of freedom of speech in a variety of contexts, seeing it as the essence of democracy. This research uses his Supreme Court record and materials from his papers to demonstrate his intensive and extensive thinking and application of First Amendment principles.
‘An Offense to Conventional Wisdom:’ Press independence and Publisher W.E. Chilton III, 1960 to 1987 • Edgar Simpson, Central Michigan University • Over more than two decades as owner/publisher of West Virginia’s largest daily newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, W.E. “Ned” Chilton III established a legacy of independence that serves as an apt framework to discuss today’s core issues surrounding the meaning of a free press. Through the prism of a public sphere invigorated by an independent press, this case study examines Chilton’s insistence on journalism as a seeker of truth – or at least his version of truth – and a hammer for change rather than a “neutral” purveyor of information. This paper, which uses Chilton’s archives, interviews, existing literature, and more than 200 articles of the time period, focuses on three episodes: His battle for the Gazette’s file compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which revealed to the nation for the first time that the FBI had investigated news organizations in addition to individual journalists; the run-up to the Vietnam War, in which the Gazette was cited as one of the first in the nation to challenge the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as a rationale for military action, and his long association with West Virginia U.S. Senator John Rockefeller, which eventually forced him to choose between friendship and independence. Overall, this study found and the author argues two essential elements for the concept of press independence: the ability to make decisions and a loyalty to ideals that reach beyond business or personal concerns.
A History of the Watchdog Metaphor in Journalism • Tim Vos, University of Missouri; Christopher Matthews • This cultural history of the watchdog-journalism metaphor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries uses rhetorical and metaphorical analysis to examine how journalists themselves articulated the public service function of journalism in terms of the watchdog metaphor. The study shows how the metaphor evolved alongside cultural changes, from personal relationships with dogs to the political reforms of the Progressive era. The study illustrates how the cultural capital of journalism is rhetorically constructed.
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