American Journalism

Volume 42   Number 4  
Fall 2025

EDITOR’S NOTE
Lori Amber Roessner

ARTICLES  

Publishing Power and Cultural Work: Foundations of critique in Sing Out!’s First Decade
Michael Buozis (FREE ACCESS ARTICLE) Link Pending

The Magnate and the Muckraker: Understanding the 1924 Meetings between John D. Rockefeller Jr and Ida Tarbell
David O. Dowling & Frank D. Durham

Functioning as the custodian of his father’s memory, John D. Rockefeller Jr, solicited the advice of muckraking reporter Ida Tarbell in 1924 regarding whether and when he should publish a commissioned biography of his father. This surprising gesture occurred two decades after Tarbell’s investigative series for McClure’s and book, The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), helped to expose Rockefeller’s father for monopolistic practices that violated the public trust. Through historically informed textual analysis of Tarbell’s transcripts of her two 1924 meetings with Rockefeller Jr and related documents, this study demonstrates that although Tarbell respected Rockefeller Sr’s philanthropy, his illicit business practice continued to be a major concern for her.

Louis Stark and the New York Times: Pioneering the Labor Beat in Mainstream Journalism
Raymond McCaffrey

In the 1920s, Louis Stark, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter for the New York Times, pioneered a relatively new mainstream journalism beat—coverage of the increasingly powerful US labor movement—that quickly became a staple in many newspapers in the United States. Stark, who won the Pulitzer in 1942, became a mentor for mainstream reporters assigned to cover labor in the 1930s as it became intertwined with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies during the Great Depression. In a message celebrating his move from reporting in Washington to writing editorials in New York, President Harry Truman called Stark the “dean of all reporters on the labor scene.” A look at Stark’s career provides insight into not only the rise of labor coverage in mainstream journalism but also its eventual decline

“A More Roaring Holocaust”: Holocaust, Holodomor, and Atrocity Propaganda in Soviet American Communist Media|
Henry H. Prown

This essay analyzes the use of what the controversial author Arthur Koestler called “atrocity propaganda” by American Communist media to advance the interests of the Soviet government in the 1930s as part of the transnational political framework of the Communist International (Comintern). Specifically, the newspaper Daily Worker is examined through its deployment of the term “holocaust,” its denial of the Holodomor, and its justification of the Great Purge to understand how such propaganda can serve authoritarian states and their proxies.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Cambridge Companion to US First Ladies
Maurine Beasley (Free access review)

Accidental Anchorwoman: A Memoir of Chance, Choice, Change, and Connection
Wayne Dawkins

The Brazil Chronicles
David O. Dowling

Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
Izzy Wollfarth

The Ultimate Protest: Malcome W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph that Stunned the World
Keith Greenwood

The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason, Dispatches from the Front
Joel Moroney

DIGITAL MEDIA REVIEWS

Mr. Jones, Produced by: Stanisław Dziedzic, Andrea Chalupa Klaudia and Śmieja-Rostworowska, Amazon Prime
|Maria Villarroel (Free access review)

ENDNOTES
Lori Amber Roessner