Volume 36, No. 1, 2019
These issues are available through Communication and Mass Media Complete on EBSCOHost.
Articles
Historiography: Woman Suffrage and the Media
By Linda J. Lumsden
Scholars began to study the periodicals and people who shaped the suffrage press in the early 1970s. Since 2000, suffrage media history has expanded to follow three main interdisciplinary strands that embrace a broad range of media including film, literature, and cartoons: a trend toward cultural approaches; the retrieval of black women’s voices and a scourging of racism within the movement; and a celebration of suffrage in art and as spectacle. The field awaits an analysis of the symbiotic relationship between suffragists and mainstream media and a comprehensive look at suffrage print culture. American journalism historians might look to British cultural scholars for models that address how suffrage media drew women into the public sphere and changed them both.
Fiction and Poetry in the Revolution and the Woman’s Journal: Clarifying History
By Amy Easton-Flake
The literary works that appeared in almost every issue of the Revolution, the organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and in the Woman’s Journal, the organ of the American Woman Suffrage Association, enrich our understanding of these two organizations. Contextualized readings of the fiction and poetry reveal that these pieces played an integral, polemical role within the journals as they articulated and advocated each organization’s particular view of new womanhood and the changes needed to advance women. These literary works also elucidate how the two group’s disparate views on divorce, and the reforms most needed to improve women’s position within marriage, were crucial in defeating a call for union in 1870.
Legacies of Belle La Follette’s Big Tent Campaigns for Women’s Suffrage
By Nancy C. Unger
In countless speeches and articles in La Follette’s Magazine, Belle Case La Follette urged that women needed the vote to secure “standards of cleanliness and healthfulness in the municipal home,” and because “home, society, and government are best when men and women keep together intellectually and spiritually.” This range of often mutually exclusive arguments created an inclusive big tent. However, arguing that women were qualified to vote by their roles as wives and mothers, while maintaining that gender was superfluous to suffrage, also contributed to an uneasy combination that would continue the conflict over women’s true nature and hinder their activism for decades to come.
Differently Radical: Suffragist Issues and Feminist Ideas in the Crisis and the Masses
By Linda M. Grasso
The 1915 women’s suffrage issues of two periodicals, the Crisis, the NAACP magazine, and the Masses, an irreverent outlet for left-wing political eclecticism, compel a reassessment of what constitutes feminist radicalism. Given that a bedrock principle of 1910s U.S. feminism was the valuing of all women and girls as human beings—then a radical claim—both periodicals circulated differently radical feminist messages in their suffrage issues. The Crisis insisted that black and white women were equally entitled to voting rights. The Masses promoted white women’s emancipation and regarded women’s suffrage as part of that crusade. Comparing the contents of both issues makes clear that considering race in gendered radicalism and gender in race radicalism are essential when examining suffrage media rhetoric.
Mediating Political Mobility as Stunt-Girl Entertainment:
Newspaper Coverage of New York’s Suffrage Hike to Albany
By Tiffany Lewis
In December 1912, a group of women calling themselves suffrage pilgrims left New York City on foot and hiked 170 miles to Albany to urge the Governor-elect William Sulzer to pass a woman suffrage amendment. At a time when women’s mobility was restricted and transgressive, their hike sparked public condemnation and the media’s fascination. This research examines the newspaper coverage of their hike and argues that reporters tamed and ordered the threat of the suffragists’ political mobility by featuring their protest as entertainment that conformed to the popular genre of stunt-girl serials in the 1910s. Journalists domesticated the transgressive protest by serializing the political pilgrimage through episodic coverage that captured the hikers at moments of stasis and made the hike more legible for potentially threatened readers. The numerous articles de-politicized their hike and constructed the women’s feat as palatable entertainment and an impressive stunt that merited a just reward.
Covering a Countermovement on the Verge of Defeat:
The Press and the 1917 Social Movement Against Woman Suffrage
By Teri Finneman
In the critical year of 1917, the suffrage movement gained the momentum it needed to secure a federal amendment granting women the right to vote. During this turning point, the mainstream local and regional press covered opponents of woman suffrage. Examination of the press portrayals of this countermovement, by means of social movement theory, reveal that most coverage situated the anti-suffrage debate in the context of World War I. News reports provided limited framing of anti-suffragist arguments that centered on negative, emotional rhetoric, while suffrage supporters were framed as providing researched arguments that emphasized their opponents’ contradictions. An emphasis on episodic rather than thematic framing diminished the complexity of the suffrage debate, creating a divide of public fear versus progressive advocacy that illustrates the challenges and shortfalls in news coverage of countermovements.
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Volume 36, No. 2, 2019
Articles
Journalism Versus the Flying Saucers: Assessing the First Generation of UFO Reportage, 1947-1967
By Phillip J. Hutchinson and Herbert J. Strentz
Stories of flying saucers and Unidentified Flying Objects reflect one of the most expansive and enduring news topics of the twentieth century. A historical analysis of UFO reportage over its first two decades indicates that American news organizations were deeply implicated in hyping and often obfuscating the UFO phenomenon. Journalists not only created and perpetuated the label “flying saucers,” news organizations also thrived upon a synergistic relationship with the entertainment industry. Consequently, germane issues related to UFOs, science, national security, and culture often became lost in the seams that delineated news values and reporting traditions from entertainment. When judged against the professional standards of the era, UFO coverage often was superficial, redundant, silly, and poorly coordinated.
Unveiling the “Sick Elephant”: CIA Public Relations and the Soviet Economic Forecast Controversy of 1964
By Matthew Cecil
In 1964, when CIA officials held the agency’s first news conference since its founding, Director John McCone hoped for a public relations triumph. Instead, the event backfired as the news media and others roundly rejected a public role for the secretive agency. While the CIA boasted a public affairs office soon after its founding in 1947, that office was charged with providing friendly reporters with unattributed background information. The goal of McCone’s decision to hold a news conference was to feature the agency’s “analytical brains” in part to distract the public from the CIA’s other, more problematic mission, covert operations. Unlike the FBI, which thrived in the realm of public relations around its domestic criminal justice activities, the CIA had no non-secret mission to promote.
A Forgotten Pioneer in Sports Television: Phillies Jackpot Bowling (1959-1960)
By Nicholas Hirshon
Phillies Jackpot Bowling, a television series broadcast on NBC in 1959 and 1960, played a historic role in transforming the image of bowling and precipitating an era of unprecedented popularity for the game. Professional bowlers competed to roll six consecutive strikes in nine throws and hit a jackpot that reached tens of thousands of dollars. Winning contestants made more money in just a few minutes on the lanes than many baseball and football stars earned over an entire season. In an era when bowling was dismissed as the dull hobby of gamblers and drinkers, Phillies Jackpot Bowling cast the game as exciting and wholesome. The show also marked little-known chapters in the careers of its three famous hosts, Leo Durocher, Mel Allen, and Bud Palmer.
Stoicism and Courage as Journalistic Values: What Early Journalism Textbooks Taught About Newsroom Ethos
By Raymond McCaffrey
Discussion of a “newsroom ethos” that may direct journalists into harm’s way and also impede their ability to receive help in coping with the after effects of their work experiences has become more common as researchers have focused on the mental-health risks faced by reporters and photographers. Journalism textbooks covering a period from 1913-1978 were found to have encouraged detachment and discouraged the displaying of emotions in what was depicted as a macho profession. Aspiring journalists were taught that courage was an important attribute because taking risks was part of the job and that some of the most influential journalists had died heroic deaths in their pursuit of the truth. Textbook writers helped developed a true mythology around journalists, one replete with heroes and legends.
Professional Notes
Trust and Verify: Myths and Misinformation in the History of Women War Correspondents
By Carolyn Edy
Book Reviews
Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice
Lori Amber Roessner, and Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, eds.
Reviewed by Gwyneth Mellinger
Reporter: A Memoir
By Seymour Hersh
Reviewed by Gerald L. Fetner
Fumbled Call: The Bear Bryant-Wally Butts Football Scandal That Split the Supreme Court and Changed American Libel Law
By David E. Sumner
Reviewed by Pat Farabaugh
Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White
By Charles Delgadillo
Reviewed by Joe Mirando
Print News and Raise Hell: The Daily Tar Heel and the Evolution of a Modern University
By Kenneth Joel Zogry
Reviewed by Kaylene D. Armstrong
Sports Makes You Type Faster: The Entire World of Sports by One of America’s Most Famous Sportswriters
By Dan Jenkins
Reviewed by Joe Marren
Publisher for the Masses: Emanuel Haldeman-Julius
By R. Alton Lee
Reviewed by Jean Folkerts
Digital Media Reviews
Digital Newspaper Collection
Reviewed by Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen
Audio Description Project
Reviewed by Rachael E. Vacanti
Dreams Rewired
Reviewed by Patrick G. Wilz
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Volume 36, No. 3, 2019
Articles
The Mysterious Mr. Maxwell and Room M-1:
Clandestine Influences on American Postal Censorship during World War I
By Alexander S. Leidholdt
Infrequently examined archival sources raise the possibility that British press mogul Lord Northcliffe and his country’s intelligence agents enabled America’s purging of journalistic dissent during World War I. William Maxwell—Northcliffe’s representative in the United States and a liaison with a British-funded spying ring—performed a pivotal role in suppressing America’s foreign-language press. He displayed a remarkable ability to install himself as the spearhead of the Post Office’s wartime monitoring and censorship activities in New York. The information he gathered also served the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Intelligence, the Military Intelligence Section, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Maxwell later became a key advisor to the Post Office and lobbied to expand his responsibilities to include surveilling all of the country’s foreign-language publications.
Terry Pettus and the 1936 Seattle Newspaper Strike:
Pivotal Success for the Early American Newspaper Guild
By Cindy Elmore
The American Newspaper Guild was struggling for life when Tacoma, Washington, journalist Terry Pettus wrote his 1935 letter requesting to join. Once on board, Pettus then successfully recruited journalists throughout the Northwest to the Guild. He launched, then advised the Seattle Newspaper Guild throughout its successful 1936 strike against William Randolph Hearst’s Post-Intelligencer. Archival records show that Pettus’ actions were pivotal to Guild successes, as the Seattle labor victory ushered in a tripling of Guild contracts with publishers nationwide in just a year. When Pettus’ own Tacoma newspaper closed soon thereafter he was unable to land a new general interest newspaper job, probably because of publisher blacklisting. However, the experience led Pettus toward decades of subsequent political and labor activism in the Northwest.
The “Sound of an Extra”:
Representing Civil War Newsboys by Pen and in Print
By Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray
By the time the Civil War began, newsboys had become fixtures of America’s urban landscape. Many people who bought their daily newspaper on the street wrote about newsboys in their diaries and letters. Their writings shed light on the lived experience of wartime journalism. Newsboys were the only representative of newspapers that most readers encountered in person. With their shouts about the latest news, newsboys created a collective listening/reading experience. This meant that the popular urban reception of war news was not only generated individually but in public as well. Reception of the news was greatly influenced by the newsboys who put their own spin on events and generated mass reaction from street crowds.
Westbrook Pegler and the Rise of the Syndicated Columnist
By Philip Glende
The syndicated political columnist emerged as a fixture of American newspapers in the 1930s. By the end of the decade, the partisan views of a few journalists were placed before millions of potential readers. Columnists offered readers an alternative to the event-based, source-driven reporting style of the day. They offered publishers an inexpensive source of politically sophisticated content that they could use to advance their ideological interests or to demonstrate fairmindedness on the opinion pages. Conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler was among the best known and most divisive newspaper writers of the day. He was a sharp critic of the Roosevelt administration, organized labor and liberals, and his work as a regular contributor to daily newspapers was followed by supporters and detractors alike.
“Fully Conscious of Their Power”:
Nineteenth Century Michigan Editors Search for Journalistic Professionalism
By Stephen A. Banning
Recent studies suggest some nineteenth century editors had an elite professional identity, while others progressed further, actively attempting to professionalize with codes of ethics and university education. Michigan Press Association proceedings were examined from the nineteenth century to better understand concepts of journalistic personal identity. Findings show the Michigan Press Association, while existing in a remote section of the United States at the time, was sophisticated in its operation and aims, and valued being seen as professionals in the mold of doctors, lawyers, and clergy. This reveals nineteenth-century journalism professional interest was more widespread than has been previously realized.
Book Reviews
Bad News Travels Fast: The Telegraph, Libel, and Press Freedom in the Progressive Era
By Patrick C. File
Reviewed by David J. Vergobbi
Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
By Joe Hagan
Reviewed by James Aucoin
Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists
By Joseph Dalton
Reviewed by Mary Saracino Zboray
Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1870-1914
By Brian Shott
Reviewed by Mohammed Alrmizan
Fear and Loathing Worldwide: Gonzo Journalism Beyond Hunter S. Thompson
Robert Alexander and Christine Isager, eds.
Reviewed by Kevin Lerner
Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement
By D’Weston Haywood
Reviewed by Brian Carroll
Justice in Plain Sight: How a Small-Town Newspaper and Its Unlikely Lawyer Opened America’s Courtrooms
By Dan Bernstein
Reviewed by Kenneth Ward
Dear Courier: The Civil War Correspondence of Editor Melvin Dwinell
Ford Risley, ed.
Reviewed by Leighton Wingate
Digital Media Reviews
Europeana Newspapers
Reviewed by Elisabeth Fondren
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
Reviewed by Connor Harrison
Google Dataset Search
Reviewed by Syed Ali Hussain
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Volume 36, No. 4, 2019
Articles
Prejudice and the Press Critics: Colonel Robert McCormick’s Assault on the
Hutchins Commission
By Stephen Bates
Many publishers responded negatively to A Free and Responsible Press, the 1947 report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, but none more negatively than Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. Convinced that the report was “part of a plot” to destroy the First Amendment, McCormick underwrote a 642-page rebuttal, Prejudice and the Press: A Restatement of the Principle of Freedom of the Press with Specific Reference to the Hutchins-Luce Commission, by Tribune reporter Frank Hughes. The story behind Prejudice and the Press represents an unknown chapter in the midcentury battle between conservative publishers and liberal press critics. Although Prejudice and the Press is meandering, snide, and suffused with red-baiting, it effectively rebuts a key foundation of A Free and Responsible Press
Divided Loyalties: The Chicago Defender and Harold Washington’s Campaign for
Mayor of Chicago
By Jon Marshall and Matthew Connor
Congressman Harold Washington campaigned in the1983 Democratic primary to become Chicago’s first African-American mayor against two white opponents. The Chicago Defender hesitated to endorse him despite its history as a leader of the black press. Unlike some of its competitors in the black media, the Defender was slow to recognize that a progressive African American movement was gaining political momentum. The Washington campaign cared deeply about the Defender’s endorsement because it relied heavily on the city’s black media to strengthen its grassroots efforts in African-American neighborhoods. The Defender finally endorsed Washington only after his campaign put intense public and behind-the-scenes pressure on owner John Sengstacke and it became clear that Washington could actually win the primary.
Making China Their “Beat”: A Collective Biography of U.S. Correspondents in China, 1900-1949
By Yong Volz and Lei Guo
What was the social composition of the U.S. correspondents in China during the first half of twentieth century? Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital and adopting the collective biography approach, this study analyzed the demographic characteristics and career paths of 161correspondents to illustrate the opportunity structure and its historical variations in the largely unstructured field of foreign correspondence during its formative years. Being a missionary kid, having a journalism education, especially from the Missouri School of Journalism, or being raised in the northeast region with an Ivy League education, were among the kinds of valued social and cultural capital that conferred an advantage in becoming a China correspondent.
President Ford’s Personal Watergate: The Undermining of the Public Sphere During the Mayaguez Incident
By Michael Sweeney, Michael DiBari, Edgar Simpson, and William Schulte
In May 1974, Cambodian troops captured the U.S. container ship SS Mayaguez and her crew off the Cambodian coast, igniting a clash between the new Khmer Rouge regime and a U.S. president dealing with aftermath of Watergate. The Mayaguez incident was initially reported as a successful rescue mission, with the administration of President Gerald R. Ford keeping silent about the forty-one U.S. military personnel who died. For five days, the Pentagon insisted that one American had been killed. This incident highlights key communication steps in the life cycle of a politically constructed falsehood meant to mislead and limit information reaching the public sphere.
Professional Notes
Election Symbols: The Language of the Heart, Veil over the Mind?
Paulette D. Kilmer
Book Reviews
Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789
By Joseph M. Adelman
Reviewed by Julie Hedgepeth Williams
Provoking the Press: (MORE) Magazine and the Crisis of Confidence in American Journalism
By Kevin Lerner
Reviewed by Roy J. Harris Jr.
The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street
By Benjamin T. Smith
Reviewed by Ana Lourdes Cárdenas
Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet
Richard R. John and Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, eds.
Reviewed by Dean Jobb
The Miami Times and the Fight for Equality: Race, Sport, and the Black Press, 1948-1958
By Yanela G. McLeod
Reviewed by Stephen Siff
The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson
Lori Harrison-Kahan, ed.
Reviewed by Vanessa Murphree
Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist
By Julien Gorbach
Reviewed by Norma Fay Green
Digital Media Reviews
The Vault at Pfaff’s
Reviewed by Samantha Peko
Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana’s Digital Historic Newspaper Program
Reviewed by Melissa Greene-Blye
Fresh Air Archive
Reviewed by Bailey Dick