History 1999 Abstracts
History Division
In Search of African-American Identity: A Comparison of the Early Black Press with the Oral Tradition • Bill Anderson, Georgia • The early black press was first designated by historians as exclusively abolitionist newspapers. Later historians argued that the early black press covered more diverse issues than just slavery. This paper argues that these diverse issues, when examined through the class prism, further understanding of the early black press as an exclusive vehicle for middle-class, elite, issues.
The Roots of Academic News Research: Tobias Peucer’s De relationibus novellis (1690) • R.A. Atwood, Idaho and A.S. de Beer, Potchefstroom University, South Africa • Probably the first graduate study of news reporting was a doctoral dissertation, De Relationibus Novellis (On News Reporting), written in Germany in 1690. A history and analysis of 17th century news reporting, it anticipated major themes of news research not fully explored until the latter half of the present century. Peucer’s research contributes to our understanding of early news reporting and offers scholarly insights still relevant today.
An Editor’s office is a Thankless One: Reassessing the Journalism Career of John Brown Russwurm • Carl Patrick Burrowes, Howard • John Brown Russwurm (Oct. 1, 1799-June 9, 1851) is well known for his role as Co-founder of Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American newspaper This paper examines his life after the Journal. It also challenges four claims made by historians regarding his tenure as editor of Freedom’s Journal. These myths regarding Russwurm have remained unchallenged due to an uncritical reliance on abolitionist sources, as well as a failure to transcend certain logical fallacies.
Journalism Revolution or Evolution?: The Bangor Daily Whig & Courier Covers the American Civil War • Crompton B. Burton, Ohio • While significant research has been conducted chronicling the experience of major metropolitan dailies during the Civil War, little exploration of the challenges and practices of less well-known newspapers has been produced. Exploits of famed correspondents and their editors at the New York Tribune, The New York Times, Baltimore American, Boston Journal and even the Cincinnati Commercial are well-documented suggesting the conflict ignited a revolution in American journalism. While this may hold for more established and noteworthy newspapers of the day, it is not symbolic of the entire press experience during the war.
Not Likely Sent: The Remington-Hearst ‘Telegrams’ • W. Joseph Campbell, American University • This paper examines the purported exchange of telegrams between Frederic Remington and William Randolph Hearst in 1897, in which the latter is said to have promised, “I’ll furnish the war.” The paper concludes it is exceedingly unlikely that the messages were ever sent, and discusses several reasons why. Among those reasons is that the sole original source of the colorful anecdote, James Creelman, only could have learned about it second hand. Moreover, Hearst’s pithy reply to Remington appears uncharacteristic of Hearst’s telegrams.
The Embryo, Birth, and Renaissance of Advertising in China: A Historical and Institutional Analysis of Its Seedbed • Hong Cheng, Bradley University • Seeing advertising as a social communication, this paper examines the social forces that have influenced and shaped the growth of advertising in China. Taking historical and institutional approaches, it provides an in-depth review and analysis of the embryo of Chinese advertising in distant history, its birth early this century, and its renaissance since 1979. This study strongly supports that only a properly functioning market economy can be a fertile seedbed for advertising.
Peggy Charren: A Bohemian Activist • Naeemah Clark, Florida • This paper is one in a series dealing with the history of the regulation of children’s educational television. The series begins in 1968 and ends in the early 1990s. For this paper, biographical information of Peggy Charren, founder of advocacy group Action for Children’s Television is used to depict the early days of the organization and the grass roots efforts to change children’s television regulation. This paper uses Federal Communication Commission information materials from magazines and industry publications in order to gather the correct information for the research.
The Shameful Delay: Newspapers’ Recruitment of Minorities Employees, 1968-1978 • Lori Demo, North Carolina • Ten years after the Kerner Commission admonished the nation’s media for being “shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring, training, and promoting Negroes,” the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopt its Year 2000 goal, which called for minority employment in newspapers newsrooms to mirror the US. population by the year 2000. This paper explores why it took editors ten years to make a definite and public commitment to racial parity.
Political Elites, the Press, and Race Relations: Insights From the Late Nineteenth Century • David Domke, Washington • In public discourse about race relations, social and political actors interact with the press with the goal of shaping the picture of social reality accepted by policy-makers and citizens. In a departure from research focusing on how elites shape news coverage, this research examines what policy-makers do – in a strategic sense- with discourse about race in news media. Evidence linking press content and/or journalists’ comments about race with advocacy by elites of certain legislative policies would be suggestive of how mass communication has been “used” in public discussion about race relations.
Passion And Reason: Mississippi Newspaper Writings Of The Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 • Nancy McKenzie, Loyola University • For 130 years, historians and writers have presented a view that pro-secession forces achieved hegemony in the South just before the Civil War. However, an examination of the newspapers of Mississippi, the second states to secede, shows a lively discussion on what course the state should take in response to Abraham Lincoln’s election. Although the state had its share of fire-eating, pro-secessionist editors, it also featured other editors who advocated alternatives to immediate secession.
The Naked Truth: Gender, Race, and Nudity in Life, 1937 • Dolores Flamiano, North Carolina • The establishment of Life magazine in 1936 marked a turning point in the history of photojournalism. Henry R. Luce’s weekly picture magazine was an important source of visual communication before television, providing news and entertainment for millions of Americans. Lift is best known for its contributions to the news-oriented photographic essay, but it also provided plenty of frivolous fare. For example, a cheesecake feature called “How to Undress” created controversy in 1937 and continues to raise questions about photojournalism’s affinity for sex and sensation.
The Big, Not-So-Bad Wolf: Cultivating A New Media Image • Richard Gross, Missouri • The author examines historical literature regarding the wolf’s negative image in Europe and America. Using the cultivation theory of media effects, which considers exposures over time, the author examines recent periodical writing about the wolf. The author discusses the more favorable recent print media imagery, particularly in most areas where wolves were reintroduced. The author concludes that continued favorable imagery may cultivate a more balanced view of the animal vis-à-vis humankind.
Launching the Radio Church, 1921-1940 • Tona J. Hangen, Brandeis University • This essay explores the struggle among religious groups for access to the radio airwaves for religious broadcasting from 1921 to 1940, and the broader context of that struggle: a deepening divide between modernism and fundamentalism, the ongoing debate over religion’s role in democracy, and the commercialization of radio itself. An examination of various religious groups and their radio strategies sheds new light on radio’s cultural impact in its first two decades.
The Forgotten Battles: Congressional Hearings on Television Violence in the 1950s • Keisha L. Hoerrner, Louisiana State University • Although Congress has been interested in television violence for over four decades, little scholarly attention focuses on its first actions. This paper looks at the 1952, 1954, and 1955 hearings, which laid the foundation for every subsequent congressional hearing on the issue as well as legislation passed in the 1990s. The paper utilizes historical methodology as well as legal analysis to expand the discussion beyond a simple summary of these first-yet so important-hearings.
Mediated U.S. Foreign Policy Rationales in the Cold War’s Early Years • Emily Erickson Hoff, Alabama• Historians and political scientists have generally portrayed the first decade of the Cold War as one in which virtually all foreign policies were based on the goal of “containing” the Communist threat to democracy. Was this period so simple? Traditionally, there have been other forces driving American foreign policy-from mundane economic self-interest to the rather heady notion of “manifest destiny.” Were these buried in the threat of nuclear war and Communist imperialism, or could careful analysis yield more foreign policy rationales than simply those pertaining to containment?
Making a Pitch for Equality: Wendell Smith and His Crusade to Integrate Baseball • Chris Lamb, College of Charleston • Pittsburgh Courier sports editor Wendell Smith has been called the most talented and influential of the black journalists” of the 1930s and 1940s. In his personal crusade to end baseball’s color barrier, he not only wrote emotionally about the need to integrate the national pastime, he worked behind-the-scenes with progressive baseball executives such as Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey, who ended segregated baseball by signing Jackie Robinson. Ultimately, Smith became Robinson’s confidante and biographer.
John Miller: A Forgotten Soldier in the Fight for Freedom of the Press • Patricia G. McNeely, South Carolina • This paper is a study of John Miller, printer of at least six major London newspapers, who was caught up in freedom-of-press battles in England between 1770 and 1783. This paper examines Miller’s role as one of the principal characters in five cases involving freedom of the press in England and his subsequent efforts to begin a new career in America where he established the third daily newspaper in the new republic.
Ruth Gruber, Arctic Journalist, Carves a Northwest Passage Through the Ice of the Red Scare, With Coverage of Alaska and Soviet Russia • Beverly G. Merrick, New Mexico State University • Ruth Gruber was a lecturer, journalist and foreign correspondent who was fascinated with other cultures and whose operative word was brotherhood. In 1935, at the age of 23, she became the first foreign correspondent, male or female, to obtain permission to enter the Soviet Arctic and the Gulag during Stalin’s iron-fisted presidency, interviewing party members in Moscow and reporting on the frontier of the Soviet outposts. Gruber obtained the Arctic assignment through a traveling fellowship awarded her by the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs.
The East Coast vs. Middle America: Cultural Geography, Authoritarian-Populism and Early PBS • Laurie-Rutgers Ouellette, Rutgers • In 1972, Richard Nixon vetoed an important funding bill for the newly-operational U.S. public television service. While provoked by the politics of a few PBS programs, the Nixon White House expressed its opposition in cultural and geographical terms that spoke to the resentments of local affiliates and the “silent majority.” Nixon’s advisors formulated an “authoritarian-populist” discourse that aligned the president’s vision for public television with Middle America against a “liberal East Coast aristocracy.”
Ambivalent Colleagues Of the Kansas Black Press: B.K. Bruce And S.W. Jones, 1890-1898 • Aleen J. Ratzlaff, Florida • In the late-nineteenth century, black editors were influential in shaping public opinion through their newspapers, which acted as unifying mechanisms to draw their readers together by providing a particular point of view about events, topics, and issues. This study examined newspapers edited by Blanche K. Bruce of Leavenworth and Samuel W. Jones of Wichita. The journalists’ ideological positions and differing backgrounds affected how their newspapers addressed political advocacy, racial uplift, and lynching.
Charles Osborn, Elihu Embree and the Tennessee Manumission Society: How Pioneers of the Abolitionist Movement Conceptualized Free Speech • Amy L. Reynolds, Miami University-Ohio • This paper details the abolitionists’ early reliance on and views about free speech rights by focusing on one of the earliest abolitionist societies, two of its members and the first abolitionist newspapers. Specifically, this paper focuses on the importance of the Tennessee Manumission Society, founding member Charles Osborn, and Elihu Embree, a prominent member of the Tennessee society who published the first abolitionist newspaper (Manumission Intelligencer in 1819) and subsequently published the Emancipator in 1820.
Exotic Americana: The French-Language Magazines Of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans • Sam G. Riley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University • Listed and described in this paper are 42 non-newspaper periodicals that were published in French during the 1800s in this most exotic of American cities. These magazines are separated into the following categories: miscellanies, humor and satire, medical, literature and the arts, club organs, women’s, and other. Attention is given to how these periodicals fit into the social history of their city.
“Tuning” the Wireless World from 1906-1912: The Six Turbulent Years it Took to Solidify the Berlin Proposals in London • Darrell L. Roe, Marist College • The nations attending the Second International Conference on Wireless Telegraphy in Berlin, 1906, strove for cooperation and standardization of maritime radio protocols. The United States delayed approving the resolutions because of political disputes. Nevertheless, the validity of the Berlin concerns was soon borne out by frequent shipping disasters which influenced the framing of the U.S. Wireless Ship Act of 1910 and led to the revival of the 1906 concerns at the Third International Conference in London in 1912.
The Pre-Brown Black Press in the 20th Century: A Historiographical Exploration • Wim Roefs, South Carolina • From the 1920s to the 1940s, the black press came of age in terms of circulation, exposure and professionalism. Still, the amount of research about the black press in these decades is remarkably limited, both in terms of volume and the degree to which it systematically explores issues such as the press’s general development, role, content, and influence. This historiographical paper discusses the treatment of these issues in the literature while identifying unexplored questions.
Sex Could Sell A Lot Of Soap: Popular Formulas Of Magazine Advertisements, 1920-1929 • Juliann Sivulka, Bowling Green State University • Although various critiques of advertising have emerged over the years, useful studies of “critical” methods to analyze the “meanings” of advertisements are remarkably few. This study of advertising history, then, illustrates how formula can be used as a method to examine advertisements in a social-historical context. Like popular entertainment, formulaic conventions are also present in advertising, and ads can be analyzed in similar terms of story formula • settings, plot, characters, theme, and props.
What’s a Fish Among Friends? Victorian Cartoonists Mock a Two Century Old Border Dispute • David R. Spencer, Western Ontario • From almost the beginning Canada and the United States have enjoyed friendly international relations. However, among all good friends disputes arise. One, over fishing rights in the waters shared by these two nations, has been continuous since 1783. These disputes impacted on both nations as they tried to find their respective places in North America during the turbulent and expansive l9th century. Canadian-American relationships dominated the pages of Canada’s newest press, the literary and humour magazines.
Fighting for the Rights of American Labor • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • The earliest labor newspaper published in America appeared during the late 1820s with the beginnings of industrialization. This paper looks at three of those newspapers, the Mechanic’s Free Press (1828-31) in Philadelphia and the Free Enquirer (1828-35) and Working Man’s Advocate (1829-49) in New York City. Based largely on the content of the three publications, this paper identifies and discusses some of the major issues of concern to the early labor press.
President Nixon’s China Initiative: A Publicly Prepared Surprise • Zixue Tai, Minnesota • President Nixon’s announcement to normalize relations with China on July 15, 1971 took the world by surprise and marked a dramatic turning point in U.S. media coverage of China. The media were caught unprepared and generally deplored the lack of information about Nixon’s moves in U.S. policy shifts toward China prior to the sudden announcement. However, Nixon himself called his China initiative “one of the most publicly prepared surprises in history.”
Humbug, P.T. Barnum and Batmen on the Moon: Editorial Discussion of the Moon Hoax of 1835 • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois University • The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 is presented in journalism history texts as a colorful newspaper fraud that caused little comment among readers and editorial writers. But the moon hoax has more to teach us about journalism standards of the day when examined within the context of the anti-slavery movement and the rise of the flamboyant promotional genius of P.T. Barnum. This paper examines letters to the editor and editorials before, during, and after the hoax in four leading New York City daily newspapers.
Designing Difference: Business Concerns and Turn-of-the-Century New York Newspaper Buildings • Thorin Tritter, Columbia • In the period between 1890 and 1905 New York City’s newspapers began to move away from the traditional newspaper center on Park Row. This paper explores the motivations for this shift and the architecture of the buildings that resulted. It argues that the decentralization of the industry was not only due to the growth of the city but also due to changes in the way news was produced and marketed.
Communicating With the Folk: Mark Twain’s Journalistic Storytelling • Betty Houchin Winfield, Missouri and Cathy M. Jackson, Norfolk State • If ever one writer had his work analyzed, that person is lark Twain. Scholars have long noted Twain’s uses of folklore in his fiction. Yet, few studies have examined his journalism for the language of the “folk”. This paper attempts to marry orality to narratology through Twain’s journalistic techniques of folklore. As the consummate nineteenth century storyteller, Twain’s journalism offers a clue to his national success and later writings.
Print friendly
