History 2018 Abstracts
The Amateurs’ Hour: South Carolina’s First Radio Stations, 1913-1917 • John Armstrong, Furman University • This paper provides evidence that South Carolina’s first civilian radio stations appeared in 1913, not 1930, as has been suggested in histories of the state. Based on primary sources, it also provides a case study in how a poor, highly rural state made its first contact with radio broadcasting and radio networking through the efforts of amateur radio operators.
“Your paper saved Seattle”: E.W. Scripps, a man of contradictions, responds to the Star’s coverage of the General Strike of 1919 • Aaron Atkins, Ohio University • In February 1919, unionized workers across trades joined shipyard laborers in Seattle in an effort to raise stagnant shipyard wages, frozen for two years during U.S. involvement in World War I. The joint effort resulted in the country’s first labor action recognized with a general strike designation. Newspaper mogul E.W. Scripps built his media empire on a business model championing the working class and supporting labor unions. He owned the Seattle Star, one of the pillar daily newspapers of Scripps’s organization. Following the conclusion of the strike, Scripps was informed that Byron Canfield, editor of the Seattle Star, had turned the Star into a mouthpiece for the city’s mayor leading up to and during the strike, and used it to vilify the workers and call repeatedly for the strike to end. This paper examines the Star’s coverage of the strike and Scripps’ response through original copies of his personal letters, essays, and disquisitions, housed in a special collection at the Ohio University library. It determines whether Scripps supported his editor and newspaper when doing so would help his paper turn a profit, or whether he held fast to his pro-working class business model at a time when the actions of the working class directly and negatively affected one of his pillar news operations.
Elmer Davis and His Anti-McCarthyism Broadcasts on ABC Radio • Ray Begovich, Franklin College • Using primary sources from the Library of Congress, this study examines how broadcaster Elmer Davis, of ABC Radio, challenged the anti-communism tactics of Joseph McCarthy. The study shows how Davis was an early McCarthy critic, and that Davis’ challenges to McCarthy were years ahead of Murrow’s famous See It Now TV takedown of McCarthy. The study provides examples of how Davis repeatedly called for common sense in the first month after the beginning of McCarthyism.
“We matter”: The launching of a counter-narrative Black public affairs program in Columbia, S.C. • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina • Through oral history interviews and archival documents, this article examines how African American public affairs shows, like Awareness, played an integral role in the Civil Rights Movement by presenting a counter-narrative to what was seen on mainstream news. Through this counter-narrative, Awareness had the unique ability to elevate the conversation beyond protests and demonstrations, and deeply discuss issues that could potentially alter the Southern mindset of stereotypical Blacks and improve race relations in the South.
Pulpit and Press Pioneer: Samuel E. Cornish, the Minister, before founding Freedom’s Journal • Kenneth Campbell, University of South Carolina • Before becoming a founding editor of Freedom’s Journal, America’s first African American newspaper in 1827, Samuel E. Cornish trained in Philadelphia to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church. It was an interesting choice given that black religious denominations were being formed, a number of other white denomination had black congregations, and the Presbyterian Church supported African colonization of blacks. Cornish, who became the second African American licensed as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (1819), began his ministry preaching in rural Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania (1819-1821). He moved his ministry to New York and established the first African American Presbyterian Church in the city (1821-1823). This first-time detailed examination of this aspect of his background shows his decision to join the Presbyterian Church resulted in coverage in newspapers and magazines and exposed him to contacts with white leaders who might have influenced him as he helped found Freedom’s Journal.
The War Council: Editors’ Publicity Campaign for Louis D. Brandeis’s 1916 Supreme Court Nomination • Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University; Elisabeth Fondren, Louisiana State Univeristy; Joby Richard, LSU • This study reveals ways “publicity friends” sought to influence public opinion during the Supreme Court nomination of Louis D. Brandeis in 1916. Editors of The New Republic, Harper’s Weekly and La Follette’s Weekly coordinated publicity for Brandeis, their friend, fellow progressive, and political ally. The analysis of archival sources shows that these advocates strategically used publicity to support Brandeis, consciously engaging in agenda building to shape public opinion and persuade senators to support Brandeis’s appointment.
Constructing (“Typhoid”) Mary Mallon: How Public Health and Journalism Criminalized the Healthy Carrier • Katie Foss, Middle TN State University • In 1907, health officials blamed Mary Mallon for transmitting typhoid fever, forcing her to live in quarantine for 26 years. Newspaper coverage analysis of what would become the case of “Typhoid Mary” demonstrates how her intersectionality as a woman and immigrant of low socioeconomic class in this unique cultural moment immortalized Mary as the public health scapegoat. Moreover shifting models in journalism and medicine highlight the growing acceptance of public health authority over personal autonomy.
Walter Lippmann and the Follies of Detachment • Julien Gorbach, University of Hawaii at Manoa • This study examines Walter Lippmann’s fraught relationship with his American Jewish heritage, and the implications that had for his ideas and practice of journalism. Lippmann has been touted by journalism historians—most notably Michael Schudson—as “the most wise and forceful spokesman for the ideal of objectivity” during the years when objectivity became adopted as the foundational standard for the profession. But Lippmann has also been roundly criticized as a self-hating Jew for columns about Jewish assimilation and the rise of Hitler, columns that, like all his writing, were shaped by a belief in journalistic detachment. Lippmann’s mishandling of what was then called “the Jewish question” highlights the dilemma of weighing a journalist’s professional commitment to detachment against the contrary dictum that the best journalism “comes from somewhere and stands for something,” as National Public Radio’s Scott Simon once put it. The imbroglio is a story worth revisiting, not only because it yields fresh insight into objectivity by focusing on a key challenge for its most famous champion, but also because it offers clarity about Lippmann’s nuanced ideas of reporting and news that remain poorly understood, despite the extraordinary attention that already has been paid to his work.
The German-American Press and Anti-German Hysteria during World War I • Kevin Grieves, Whitworth University • During World War I, the German-American press became a lightning rod for anti-German sentiment in the U.S. New rules required German-language papers to supply English translations, and many publications faced bankruptcy. Some of the most strident attacks came from English-language journalists. This study examines how editors of German-language newspapers positioned their publications during World War I, responded to attacks from other journalists, and how they articulated their professional stance in relation to loyalty to the government.
Henry Luce’s American & Chinese Century: An Analysis of U.S. News Magazine’s Coverage of General Chiang Kai-shek from 1936 to 1949 • Danial Haygood, Elon University; Glenn Scott, Elon University • Time magazine founder Henry Luce was accused by his critics of using his media empire to support and promote General Chiang Kai-shek and his ruling Chinese Nationalist party during the pre-war, World War II, and Chinese Civil War eras. This research reviews the U.S. news magazines’ coverage of Chiang to determine how the general was presented and if these portrayals were different. The research also determines whether a Luce agenda was included in Time’s coverage.
Driving and Restraining Forces Toward the Marketization of Broadcasting in the UK in the 1990s • Madeleine Liseblad, Arizona State University • Broadcasting evolved rapidly in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. All aspects of the television newscast changed and broadcasting became properly marketized. This case study examined societal driving and restraining forces, using change theory and force field analysis. Driving forces included competition, technology, and American consultants, while restraining forces included a resistance to change, money, unions and a fear of Americanization. The ITV franchise auction and privatization were both driving and restraining forces.
Retreat from the Golden Age: Russian Journalists & Their World, 1992-2000 • Rashad Mammadov; Owen V. Johnson, Indiana University • The overall processes in the first decade of independent Russian media can be described as the path of the media from its golden age of political independence in early 1990s, to the establishment of partial government control along with increased proximity to the ruling elites by the presidential elections of 1999 and transfer of power to Vladimir Putin in the year 2000. We argue that although understanding of professionalism among Russian journalists may differ from western standards, primary reasons why Russian media gave up much desired independence were complicated economic realities of transitional society, raising interest of the new financial elites-oligarchs in media and re-asserted political influences.
“Songs of the Craft:” poetry in 20th-century U.S. newsrooms • Will Mari, Northwest University • Throughout the twentieth century, reporters and other news workers not only wrote about the news, they wrote about each other, their bosses, their daily grind in the newsroom and journalism itself in the form of poetry. This occupational verse was a way to relieve workplace tension, vent about controlling editors and annoying readers, and fulfill a playful impulse (and kill time between assignments). Written by practicing journalists for their newspapers and trade publications, it also occasionally appeared in memoirs and dedicated collections of workplace poetry. More prosaically, it was written on scraps of notepad paper or typed up to be posted to newsroom bulletin boards. Newsrooms were not known as centers of reflection—loud, busy, swirling with immediate concerns (primarily deadlines, but also editors)—but reporters nonetheless found space for poetry. This paper explores how occupational poetry, sometimes called “doggerel” by critics but even by its own creators (who were often self-deprecating), was part of American journalism’s professionalization project and reflected changing newsroom values, priorities and a broader white-collar consciousness among news workers. Ephemeral by nature, newsroom poetry nonetheless survives into the present as an important commentary on the occupation.
Winning Women’s Votes: Dotty Lynch and the Gender Gap in American Politics, 1972-1984 • Wendy Melillo • Dorothea “Dotty” Lynch became the first female pollster to head the polling unit for a presidential campaign. As the chief pollster for Gary Hart’s 1984 race for the Oval Office, she developed the first women focused strategy to be used in a presidential campaign. Based on a decade of work tracking a phenomenon in American politics known as the “gender gap,” Lynch’s work is significant for the contribution she made to help explain why the gender gap existed. She also pioneered the way for women in public opinion polling to work on presidential campaigns in a field heavily dominated by men.
Textbook News Values: A Century of Stability and Change • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This paper examines the historical contingency of news values as evidenced in journalism historiography and more than a century of journalism textbooks dating to 1894. Textbooks are important distillers and (re)constructors of journalists’ conceptions of news and not-news. Findings suggest that while key news values such as timeliness, proximity, conflict, and impact have held stable since the early 1900s, the way those values are applied to reporting depends on the socio-cultural context of the era.
Mortimer Thomson’s Witches: Undercover Reporting on the Fortune-Telling Trade • Samantha Peko, Ohio University • In 1857, the New-York Tribune hired a “stunt boy ” Mortimer Thomson to go undercover to have his fortune read for a series titled The Witches of New York. The series was launched in response to a number of advertisements for clairvoyants who offered services from matchmaking to curing illness. Thomson’s satirical accounts of his adventures at the “witches'” homes were a popular read for audiences as it sought to expose the clairvoyant’s deceptions.
Voices on Woman’s Suffrage: Lingering Structures of Feeling in 1917 U.S. Letters to the Editor • Lori Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee • Following the cue of cultural studies scholars Raymond Williams and James Carey, this study attempts to recover the cacophony of voices chiming in on woman’s suffrage that echoed across America through published letters to the editor in fourteen mid-sized and mass-circulating newspapers in 1917, a pivotal year in the battle for woman’s suffrage. Overall, a census of 386 letters to the editor related to woman’s suffrage were analyzed through a discourse analysis.
Newspapers as Quasi-Stationery in Nineteenth Century America: The Economic Role of the Letter-Sheet Price-Currents • Bradford Scharlott, retired; Matthew Baker, Westminster College, UT • Letter-sheet price-currents appeared in at least 22 American cities between 1819-1869. These publications were newspaper/stationery hybrids, with at least half of their space filled with commercial information, and the rest left blank for writing a letter on. Middlemen merchants used these for communicating with their customers, often paying to have their firm’s “business card” information prominently displayed, thus personalizing the publications. Advances like telegraphic services and interregional trains killed off the letter-sheets by the 1890s.
Southern Education Report: An examination of a magazine’s contribution to education news in the civil rights era • Melony Shemberger, Murray State University • The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) is one of the most pivotal ever rendered by the highest court. The monumental ruling ended a segregated system in education and affected education news. This paper explores the Southern Education Report, a bi-monthly magazine (1965-69) published by the Southern Education Reporting Service, and argues that it contributed the kinds of education news that mainstream news media failed to cover.
‘More news space:’ Money and Publisher W. E. ‘Ned’ Chilton III, 1953-1984 • Edgar Simpson, Central Michigan University • The owner/publisher of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, spent his time in an oak-lined office in the newsroom, exhorting his editors and reporters to uphold his philosophy of sustained outrage. This study, using the theory of the public sphere, examines this philosophy and how it related to his unusual approach to business, including his own advertisers.
The Rationales for Public Relations: The Engineering of Human Interactions • Burton St. John, Old Dominion University • The field of public relations has long attempted to signify the value it offers to societal discourse, deliberation, and decision making. This work finds that public relations, in its attempts to establish itself as a field, has articulated four rationales that all focus on engineering human interactions. This work ends by pointing to how public relations needs to moderate its four rationales so that it can more adequately address the concerns of multiple publics.
Journalism with the Voice of Authority: The Rise of Interpretive Journalism at The New York Times, 1919-1931 • Kevin Stoker, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • This study examines that early evolution of interpretive journalism at The New York Times from 1919 to the 1931, when the newspaper’s Sunday edition began to devote an entire section to interpretive reporting and commentary. Based on Richard V. Oulahan’s reporting and an examination of the business correspondence of The New York Times, this paper chronicles the evolution of interpretive reporting from a type of reporting unique to a particular journalist to an institutionalized style of reporting appearing in the Sunday Times. This study shows that the emergence of interpretive reporting at the Times coincided with Oulahan’s tenure in Washington, the expansion of international coverage, editorial innovations in the Sunday paper, and response to interpretive commentary in a competing newspaper.
Race and Rhetorical Choices: Newspaper Coverage of Detroit’s Twelfth Street Riot • Brandon Storlie, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The July 1967 riot in Detroit, Michigan, was one of the most violent race-related conflicts in American history. Common themes developed in both local and national media coverage of the event, including widespread use of wartime imagery. This study examines the frames and techniques used by three major newspapers when covering the riot and ultimately questions whether local news outlets are those best equipped to cover violent events within their own communities
Making China Their “Beat”: A Collective Biography of U.S. Correspondents in China, 1900-1951 • Yong Volz, University of Missouri; Lei Guo • This study examines the social composition of the U.S. correspondents in China during the first half of twentieth century. Borrowing Bourdieu’s concept of capital and adopting the collective biography approach, this study analyzed the demographic characteristics and career paths of 161 such correspondents to illustrate the opportunity structure and its historical variations in the largely unstructured field of foreign correspondence in China during its formative years.
The Delphian Society and Its Publications: A Historical and Cultural Analysis of a Primer for Middle-Class Women’s Education • Sheila Webb, Western Washington University • The Delphian Society was founded in Chicago in 1910 to educate women in the great ideas of Western society so they could become productive and knowledgeable citizens at a time when women were reconceptualizing their roles in public and civic life. This study examines the publications of the Society; describes the historical backdrop in which the Society was founded; analyzes the importance of the self-education and self-culture movements; and places the publications within the Progressive milieu. At the forefront of exploring adult education, the Society dovetails with other efforts at middle-class edification as the Book of the Month Club and such magazines as Life, which attempted to shape and elevate the taste and discernment of its middle-class readers. The Society partook of the same energy as the newly formed correspondence courses and drew members from the well-established women’s clubs. Each of these venues helped define what was worth knowing. However, the Delphians were unique: no other texts, institutions, or organizations were devoted to women’s education at the highest level or fostered deliberative social interaction and civic advancement. No scholarly work has been done on the publications. This study considers two themes, both related to women’s and cultural history. The first is an analysis of the Society itself, which reflected the growing interest in women entering public life fully prepared with a foundation in the history, art, literature, and politics of the Western world. The second thread considers the Society as fulfilling the role of cultural intermediary in the formation of taste publics, and argues that the role of cultural intermediaries was performed by the editors and writers of the Delphian publications, who could be considered missionaries of culture to their readership. Reader response theory informs the interpretation of how members benefited; the concept of imagined communities is applied to the national conversation in which members engaged.
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