Search

The printing press helped to spread literacy, civic discourse, and even political dissent in colonial America. Without paper, however, the invention of the moveable type printing press would have been insignificant. This crucial communication medium was hobbled by a critical shortage of the raw material needed for printed matter. Paper was in short supply in the colonies and in the new nation as it could only be made from rags, and there was constant difficulty in obtaining enough rags to keep the presses rolling. Pleas for this essential ingredient were constantly seen in the newspapers in early America and there were severe shortages of both paper and the rags from which it was made during the American Revolution. This article examines how desperate were the early Americans for the paper which was necessary both for firing the muskets and for spreading the rhetoric of Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The tale of 1939 voyage of the MS St. Louis has been retold in books, films, exhibits, and on the web. While researchers looking at U.S. newspaper coverage of the Holocaust have generally viewed its components as discrete pieces of evidence rather than as parts of a larger whole, this study reviewed coverage of the voyage in situ in the pages of thirty-nine newspapers from twenty-five American cities. The findings of the qualitative content analysis sorted those papers into four groups, based on how much coverage they gave the story and whether they supplemented wire copy with staff reporting, photographs, editorials, or cartoons. Neither a paper’s geographic proximity to the story nor the size of its city’s Jewish population appears to have been a good explanation of its coverage choices. Important distinctions were also found in how reporters, news services, and, thus, newspapers, told the refugee passengers’ story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interracial marriage and relationships were illegal in much of the United States in the early twentieth century. The black press devoted a great deal of attention to this topic, often connecting it to African Americans 'encounters with racism and their struggle for civil rights. Part of this coverage in the national black weekly newspaper the Baltimore Afro-American included short and serial fictional stories on interracial romance. These stories, however, were often a contested medium among readers. Thus, a public debate occurred over the question of interracial romance stories and their place in the Baltimore Afro-American over the course of four months in 1934. This article examines this debate. Ultimately, interracial romance stories brought readers into conversation with each other and the Baltimore Afro-American to create a discourse that tied interracial romance to the African American battle for equality in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chicago Defender is one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers in the U.S. Some called it radical and dangerous. That's because as early as 1920 it demanded racial equality, particularly in the South, in jobs, housing and transportation and preached black empowerment and black self-reliance. The paper published incendiary editorials with messages such as, "When the white fiends come to the door to kill you, shoot them down. When the white mob comes, take at least one with you." But did the Defender maintain this aggressive stance some forty years later, in 1968, for instance, at a time when the civil rights movement was spreading across the country? To gain a true sense of history one must study the lion in winter as well as in spring. Thus this research examines what editorial positions the Defender took in 1968 and how readers responded through letters to the editor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the 1844 presidential election, the United States was fully entrenched in a national two-party system that pitted Whigs against Democrats. Meanwhile, American newspapers were predominantly partisan organs that promoted their respective parties while attacking their opponents. Some special interest publications advocated for causes such as abolition. James G. Birney, a slaveholder turned abolitionist, entered the 1844 race as a third-party candidate. This article studied coverage of his race in Democratic, Whig, and Liberty papers from New York, Kentucky, Alabama, and Ohio to determine whether abolitionist newspapers acted as a party press as well as how the two major parties' newspapers treated the outsider. The two abolitionist journals became partisan organs for the Liberty candidate, advocating Birney and his platform while attacking the enemy. In the Democratic and Whig papers, coverage of the Liberty campaign consisted of linking Birney to the opposing party through rampant accusations of coalitions and forgeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that scholars of immigrant integration should pay more attention to immigrants' ‘civic visibility’ among local government officials, organisations and other residents. To document and analyse immigrants' civic visibility, we examine coverage of the Vietnamese and Indian communities in newspapers in San Jose, Boston, Vancouver and Toronto from 1985 to 2005. We ask (i) do local newspapers cover the lives of immigrants and their descendants and (ii) what explains variation in the amount of coverage devoted to different immigrant-origin communities in different places? We find little evidence that newspaper coverage is affected by the demographics of an area, newsroom factors or simplified models of the national political and discursive opportunity structures. Instead, we take an ‘embedded’ context of reception approach, which takes seriously the intersection between general discursive opportunity structures on immigration and particular discourses about certain types of migrants. Our findings suggest the need to complicate national opportunity structure frameworks by considering how their interaction with specific immigrant communities produces between-country and between-group variation. Our results also underscore the importance of immigrant agency; greater visibility in local media appears to link with immigrants' greater presence in domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Frank I. Cobb, chief editorial writer of the New York World from 1904 to 1923, was a transitional figure in the changing meaning of liberalism, both as a concept of government policy and as a measurement of journalistic independence. Although he recognized that some government involvement in the economy was needed to control the actions of malefactors of wealth, Cobb militated against an enlargement of federal power over economic affairs. He established a unique identity tied to the forcefulness of his rhetoric, the persistence of his causes, and the connections he made to public men. As a result, the World's editorial page attracted the attention of presidents, diplomats, business magnates, and academics, all of whom had a stake in the positions the newspaper took on domestic and foreign affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1950s, the American Society of Newspaper Editors became the site of an ideological struggle between the racial status quo and the new social order envisioned by the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. This article examines the all-white ASNE in the years after Brown as the racial exclusivity of the organization and the profession it represented were both questioned and reaffirmed. Using a variety of primary source documents, including ASNE publications, convention transcripts, and members' archival materials, this project isolates the ways in which the white prerogative reasserted itself through the exclusivity of the ASNE membership structure, the usage of regional history and identity by editors from the South, and the manipulation of the journalistic ideal of objectivity and First Amendment values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ben Hecht grew to personify the mix of cynicism, sentimentality and mischief of the Chicago newspaper reporter, a historical type that he immortalized in his stage comedy, The Front Page. Treating Hecht as an “ideal type,” this study looks at the antics and chicanery of Chicago crime reporters, and the extraordinary bonds that Chicago journalists forged with the city’s gangsters. It 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 the fascination with criminals and gangsters that Hecht shared with his fellow newspapermen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Reflector of Palmyra, New York, was an important contributor to the American Freethought Movement, a philosophical viewpoint informed by science, facts, and reason. The editor and publisher, Abner Cole, used the Reflector to promote the movement and its principles of mental improvement, equality of all citizens, and moral values informed by learning and a respect for life and nature. In so doing, he also advocated free speech, freedom of the press, and civil and religious liberty. Cole and other Freethought Movement editors tested and refined the limits of free-speech theory in its earliest American stages as they enhanced their local marketplace of ideas with alternative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 freewheeling craft. The convention movement soon led to formal associations of editors, a development that occurred significantly earlier than scholars generally have recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Privacy experts often trace the right to privacy to Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis's 1890 Harvard Law Review essay that called for judges to develop privacy law in the United States. Yet when those attorneys criticized the prying of newspaper journalists, they cited commentary by the Nation's Edwin Lawrence Godkin. Between 1880 and 1890, several periodicals published this leading nineteenth-century editor's press criticism, in which Godkin denounced the sensationalism and triviality of cheap newspapers that exposed domestic life to public scrutiny. This article argues that in his criticism can be found antecedents for American privacy law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of postal service during the Civil War is surprisingly underdeveloped, and little is known about the Confederate Post Office Department. It labored under a strict mandate to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency, to which all other service rationales were subordinate. This policy, in conjunction with a multitude of war-related privations, hampered the Department's ability to foster the substantive or reliable circulation of information, complicating the process of democratic nation-building in which postal services have historically played an important role. After examining reports of the Confederate Postmaster General, coverage of postal operations in Southern newspapers, scholarship in state and local historical publications, and the study of philately, the implications of the Confederacy's fixation on the economic performance of its postal service might well serve as a cautionary tale as the practices of modern media policymaking evolve along similar lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early years of the Penny Press, the concept of freedom of the press faced grave threats from government and citizens as journalism became more commercial and accessible. Horace Greeley, founder of the New-Yorker and the New-York Tribune and one of the most influential publishers of this era, stood up to these challenges in the 1830s and 1840s through numerous libel lawsuits, battles with the postmaster, and threats of physical violence from the public and political rivals. Greeley used his platform as a publisher and editor to link these dangers to press freedom as threats to American freedom and democracy that limited the ability of the press to serve as a watchdog and agent of social reform. This study, which examines Greeley's thoughts and actions when dealing with government and social constraints on publication in the pre-Civil War era, details Greeley's role in shaping modern understanding of press freedom in the formative years of the Penny Press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Above-ground atomic testing has long occupied an iconic place in twentieth-century history. The mushroom cloud was a symbol not only of the Cold War but also of promised advances in science and prosperity. An examination of 600 news articles and editorials from the early 1950s sheds light on how the tests were reported. Coverage of dozens of blasts at the Nevada Test Site reveals journalists struggling to make sense of a force that was simultaneously awe-inspiring, threatening, and routine. Accounts in national, state, and local newspapers convey a complex picture-some were enthusiastic boosters of nuclear testing, while others posed pointed questions about the health implications of radioactive fallout. The purpose of this research is to help understand reporting on atomic testing as a health and safety issue, not simply a political or military one. It complements earlier scholarship by suggesting that coverage was more influenced by news routines than by a reluctance to watchdog authority. It concludes that the forces that enable and constrain modern reporting on scientific health, or environmental issues might trace their roots back to the early atomic age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Wilkes was a radical British politician who was extremely popular with many American revolutionaries and provided a powerful example of why liberty of the press was so critical. Wilkes was arrested, thrown out of Parliament, put into prison, and accused of treason and seditious libel. His legal travails, his publications, and his every movement were covered with great interest by the colonial newspapers. While a blasphemous and pornographic publication eventually tarnished his reputation, he was nonetheless an important force behind many American constitutional protections. This article explores a connection not previously developed—how John Wilkes was a key inspiration for the first-ever constitutional protection for a free press. The conclusion here is that Wilkes should be remembered for his crucial influence upon the American ideal of press freedom; his battle against seditious libel charges was a notable precedent for attitudes against control of the media on this side of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that professionalization was being attempted in the nineteenth century by newspaper clubs and associations. For instance, the Missouri Press Association has been shown to have had a strong interest in the professionalization of journalism. However, the extent of this interest throughout the breadth of newspaper groups in the nineteenth century has not been previously investigated. There is evidence of a strong bohemian influence in nineteenth century Chicago newspaper clubs. However, the presence of non-bohemian newspaper clubs in other cities suggests Chicago newspaper clubs in the nineteenth century deserve closer examination. This research examined sources from the nineteenth century to better understand the essence of nineteenth century Chicago newspaper clubs and whether all Chicago newspaper clubs were bohemian as suggested by previous research or followed the lead of other newspaper organizations with an interest in professionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remembering and capitalizing on San Antonio's Spanish colonial empire became a pastime and a policy of the Alamo city and its dominant English-language newspaper during the Great Depression. While Spanish nostalgia had antecedents in the late nineteenth century's conservation sensibilities, it reached an apogee in San Antonio during the years 1929 through 1934. This period coincided with the deepest recessionary period of the Depression decade, a time when anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Mexican sentiment flourished. This article comparatively examines the way English- and Spanish-language daily newspaper coverage constructed the reality of San Antonio's Spanish-speaking founders at a time when their descendants, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, were often reviled and subject to repatriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the negotiation of a woman's place in the national pastime-and by extension greater American culture-in the pages of Sporting Life (SL) and other media outlets in the 1880s. Microfilm of a census of 348 SL issues from the publication's inception in March 1883 to December 1889 was scanned for any references to women, ladies, or females in baseball. Ninety-four articles were identified and examined through an interpretative textual analysis. The manuscript illuminates four modes through which SL addressed women's participation in baseball-pronounced skepticism, selective incorporation, backlash, and silence-and the overarching binary that emerged in the representation of female baseball enthusiasts. The piece also considers how debates over gender were shrouded in discourses about class and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines published correspondence and other news items regarding the 1791 outbreak of Haiti's slave revolt, Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave conspiracy, the 1811 Louisiana slave revolt, Denmark Vesey's 1822 slave conspiracy, and Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt. It finds that a racial panic discourse emerged in newspaper coverage of American slave troubles during the partisan press era, and it situates that discourse within a moral panic framework that suggests elites, including editors and white slave owners, consciously and unconsciously exacerbated or diminished the threat of slave revolt as a means to maintain power . White fears of slave violence intensified after the Haiti revolt, and references to the "horrors of Santo Domingo" (now Haiti) became shorthand for the frightening prospect of black on white violence. White newspaper readers encountering such in- formation may have believed an authoritative response was required. The research argues that this discourse has a legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969 was an iconic moment of the 1960s for a generation of young people. However, coverage of the breaking story by major newspapers and magazines did not emphasize the event's cultural significance, focusing instead on crowd size and related logistical problems and public safety issues. This study of breaking coverage by six daily newspapers and three magazines examines how prominently the story was displayed, the sources who were quoted, and to what extent the cultural angle was reported. A key finding was that each publication relied mostly on official sources and consulted few young festival attendees for their perspective. The breaking coverage thus focused on the negative aspects of the massive assembly, overlooking the cultural perspective that has come to characterize the event in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Brown's October 16, 1859, raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, created a flashpoint in the United States, sparking what can be called a "Crisis of Americanism." As this article shows, evidence of this discourse appeared frequently in extensive southern and northern newspaper coverage of his raid, trial, and subsequent hanging on December 2 as editors on both sides of the slavery issue accused one another as well as prominent Americans of disloyal, treasonous behavior. This unhealthy, often shrill, debate, which helped lead to the Civil War in 1861, hardly promoted democratic ideals or best served the nation's values and founding ideals. Instead, such incendiary rhetoric only added to the increasing division of two Americas, both of which laid valid claims to being rightful heirs to the legacy of the United States' founding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]