History 2012 Abstracts
Independent Woman: How a World War I Recruiting Effort Gave Rise to a Feminist Magazine • Jane Marcellus, Middle Tennessee State University • In 1918, the US War Department authorized federal funds to organize the nation’s businesswomen. As a result, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs was founded. Their bulletin, Independent Woman (IW), soon became a magazine. This paper examines IW from 1919 until its name changed in 1956, using textual analysis to discover how IW negotiated its role as club publication and activist magazine, arguing that as a feminist “crossover,” it anticipated Ms. Magazine.
From Crisis to Consensus: Advertising Practitioner Responses to the Trust Consolidation Era, 1898-1902 • Stewart Alter, McCann Worldgroup • The trust consolidation period at the turn of the twentieth century reshaped American industry in ways that had significant implications for the practice of advertising as it was then developing. An examination was conducted of the editorial coverage of these corporate consolidations in five major advertising-trade journals during the peak merger years of 1898-1902.
The Contradictions of Herbert Hoover: Positive and Negative Liberty in American Broadcasting Policy • Seth Ashley, Boise State University • As Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover helped create the regulatory framework for early American broadcasting policy. His theoretically negative approach to liberty and preference for market-oriented solutions actually took the form of government intervention in practice, helping the emerging commercial broadcasting industry to gain control of the ether. Through an historical institutionalist approach, this paper examines primary documents and secondary literature related to Hoover’s legacy, which still can be felt today.
Polemics and Pragmatism: James J. Kilpatrick’s Shifting Views on Race between 1963 and 1966 • Elizabeth Atwood, Hood College • Between 1963 and 1966, the way newspaper editor and columnist James J. Kilpatrick wrote about racial issues changed remarkably. The former segregationist editor toned down his racist rhetoric and urged blacks and whites to work together.
Print Ads in Post-World War II Publications: An Analysis of Humor • Adam Avant, The University of Georgia • In the days following World War II, advertising in the mass media reflected a new era that saw sharply-defined gender roles return. Advertisers often employed humor to highlight this emerging cultural shift toward a traditional suburban lifestyle. This study utilized a content assessment of humorous advertisements in popular publications between 1945 and 1955. The findings suggest humor was primarily aimed at women while using narrative structures to provide an uplifting and lighthearted look at a future in the home.
The Evolving Bride in Godey’s Lady’s Book • Emilia Bak, University of Georgia • Today media are obsessed with the bride, but this paper examines the mediated bride in a time when women were expected marry, the 19th century. The top-circulating magazine of the time was Godey’s Lady’s Book, and as a publication targeted at women, it offers insights about the societal importance of being a bride. This examination of the bride is filtered through a feminist media studies lens and seeks to add to the history of women.
Free at last: Media framing and the evolution of free agency in Major League Baseball • Brett Borton, University of South Carolina • This study analyzes the dominant narrative about the evolution of free agency in Major League Baseball in 1976, when the game‘s long-standing reserve clause was struck down and unsigned players could offer their services to the highest bidding teams. The author seeks to determine if the portrayals of free agent players during this period departed from the hero-myth depictions of professional baseball players employed by print journalists since the early twentieth century.
Literary journalism “tinctured with magic”: The subjectivity of William Bolitho • Brandon Bouchillon, Texas Tech University; Kevin Stoker, Texas Tech University • William Bolitho’s name remains suspiciously absent from the modern journalism lexicon. This study presents an in-depth analysis of Bolitho’s life and work, distinguishing what made him such a uniquely gifted writer. The inherent subjectivity of Bolitho’s vision and his ready acceptance of death’s inevitability color his prose. His literary talents preceded the work of writers like Tom Wolfe, and his unique sense of adventure may have influenced Hemingway’s own.
On Finding Dorothy Shaver: First Lady of Retailing and Public Relations Innovator • Sandra Braun, Mount Royal University • Dorothy Shaver was the CEO of Lord & Taylor Department Store from 1945-1959. She rose through the ranks as a communications executive. By the end of her career, she had garnered numerous awards and honorary degrees for her public relations and promotional skills. This paper traces her origins, her rise through the corporate ranks, and three key campaigns that led to her election as president of a multi-million-dollar corporation at a time when it was uncommon for women to hold such positions.
The Afro’s Ollie Stewart: Looking at American Politics, Society and Culture from Europe • Jinx Broussard, LSU; Newly Paul • This article examines the writings of Ollie Stewart, the Paris-based foreign correspondent for the Afro-American newspaper from 1949 to 1977. Articles and lively columns this expat wrote provided his and foreigners’ views about events that were shaping America. He continually addressed race, U.S. foreign policy, politics and the achievements and activities blacks abroad, thereby providing information that was not in the mainstream media and filling an important void press and American history.
On the Front Page in the ‘Jazz Age’ in Chicago: Ione Quinby, ‘Girl Reporter’ • Stephen Byers, Marquette University; Genevieve G. McBride, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee • Building a career in 1920s Chicago was hard for a woman journalist who wanted the front page, not the society page. This paper follows the career of Ione Quinby, who entered journalism in the “Jazz Age” as a “stunt girl” and “sob sister” – termed a “girl reporter” by her newspaper – but who became famed for her coverage of “murderesses” and mob molls.
American OGPU: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and the ‘Smear Campaign’ of 1940 • Matthew Cecil, South Dakota State University • In 1939 and 1940, the FBI’s ongoing use of illegal wiretapping and its employment of “third degree” tactics in making a series of arrests in Detroit prompted critics to charge the Bureau had become too powerful. Even before the controversies of 1939 and 1940, the dramatic growth of the Bureau’s physical footprint and legal jurisdiction during the 1930s had heightened concerns about the agency’s power.
Seize the Time: How the Black Panthers’ Early Media Strategies Shaped the Party’s Image • Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, University of Wisconsin, Madison • Mass media was integral to the rise of the Black Panther Party, and the party’s leaders developed media strategies that used militant rhetoric, brash visuals and media events to attract the attention of mainstream media outlets. This paper analyzes newspaper coverage in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and examines the role mainstream California newspapers played in shaping the public image of the Panthers. Influenced by the protest paradigm, journalists created an anti-authority, anti-white and militaristic image. The Panthers’ inability to control their media portrayal ultimately limited their effectiveness.
“A Slogan of Mockery”: Never Again and the Unnamed Genocide in Southern Sudan, 1989-2005 • Sally Ann Cruikshank, Ohio University • This study examines how eight U.S. media outlets framed the conflict in southern Sudan from 1989 through 2005. A textual analysis revealed that, contrary to previous studies concerning U.S. media coverage of Africa, southern Sudan received steady coverage. Three dominant themes emerged: famine, slavery, and oil. Despite the details of the civil war being a veritable checklist for genocide, the media failed to report it as such. The implications of these findings are discussed at length.
‘Ask what you can do to the Army’: The underground G.I. press during Vietnam • Chad Painter, University of Missouri; Patrick Ferrucci, University of Missouri • This study examined the roles of a radical press during wartime, and how the underground G.I. press served those roles during the Vietnam War. The researchers used as primary sources 22 underground G.I. newspapers published between 1967 and 1973. They found that the underground G.I. press published unreported or underreported stories, used an anti-establishment tone, attempted to build communities within the military and with civilians, and provided a forum for soldiers’ dissention and dissatisfaction.
“To End the Racial Nightmare”: James Baldwin and the Kennedys • Kathy Forde, University of South Carolina • This study explores how James Baldwin’s New Yorker essay, “Letter from a Region of My Mind,” later published as the book The Fire Next Time, shaped a national reckoning with the black freedom struggle—its meanings, realities, and policy demands—during a critical moment of the civil rights movement. Baldwin’s “readers” included ordinary American citizens and the most powerful political leaders in the United States in 1963.
A New York Tribune Reporter’s Correspondence, Captivity, and Escape During the American Civil War • Michael Fuhlhage, Auburn University • New York Tribune war correspondent Albert Deane Richardson escaped a Confederate prison after nineteen months in captivity during the Civil War. He immediately embarked on a journalistic and activist campaign to reveal Southern mistreatment and pressure the Union government to secure relief for military and civilian prisoners of war held by the Confederacy. Richardson’s memoir, articles, letters from the battlefield and prison, and testimony reveal a prominent but overlooked reporter’s experience of news work during wartime.
Mary Garber: A Woman in a Man’s World • Ashley Furrow, Ohio University • Mary Garber was one of the first full-time sportswriters at a daily newspaper in the country and became the oldest living female sportswriter. Her work earned her over forty writing awards and countless Hall of Fame inductions. But her greatest achievement is that she paved the way for other women sportswriters, who are no longer denied entrance to press boxes and no longer have to miss out on key post-game interviews because they are now allowed in locker rooms.
An Uneasy Encounter: Global Perspectives and American Journalism Ideals on Town Meeting of the World • Kevin Grieves, Ohio University • In the early 1960s, communication satellites provided a new forum for global discourse via live, international television. The Town Meeting of the World programs were the first designed specifically for this technology, and enabled live interaction between world leaders and studio audiences. The format drew on American journalistic ideals of an open exchange of viewpoints. By the late 1960s, those viewpoints from overseas had become increasingly critical of the United States, much to Americans’ consternation.
The Shenandoah Crash As Seen Through the National Magazines of the 1920s • Thomas J. Hrach, University of Memphis • The crash of the Shenandoah, a 1920s era dirigible, over rural Ohio in 1925 brought a clash of cultures that highlighted how national magazines of the time framed the issues of poverty and tragedy. At the time, the dirigible was viewed as the future of long-distance air travel, and the American military was actively pursuing the technology after seeing it successfully used by the German government in World War I.
Media, memory, and a sense of place: The nation’s first Washington • Janice Hume, University of Georgia • The tiny town of Washington, Ga., is steeped in historical memory. It was the first U.S. town named for George Washington, its citizens fresh from winning a significant Revolutionary War battle. The town’s memory and identity are products of a complex negotiation of remembrances fostered by media, scholars, Patriot descendents, historical organizations, town boosters, and citizens. This study considers that negotiation, noting how newspapers and magazines contributed to the collective memory of the “first Washington.”
Out of the Mists of Time: Newspaper Coverage of Travel to Lithuania 1988-1993 • Kerry Kubilius, Ohio University • This paper traces the trajectory of newspaper travel coverage from 1988, prior to Lithuania’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, to 1993, the year the last Russian troops were recalled from Lithuanian territory. Travel coverage initially revealed the difficulties visitors faced during political instability; Lithuania was treated as an exciting destination for the curious. After independence, journalists described it as an obscure travel frontier, not the political hotspot it had recently been.
When a Doctor Became a Whistleblower: Dr. Henry K. Beecher and the Press, 1965-1966 • Amy Snow Landa, University of Minnesota • Dr. Henry K. Beecher’s landmark 1966 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine criticized medical experiments performed without patients’ informed consent. This paper examines Beecher’s decision to become a public whistleblower and his development of a press strategy to maximize the impact of his message. Primary sources include Beecher’s correspondence with reporters, archived with the Beecher papers at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard.
Lasting Scars of the JFK Assassination: The Tragedy and PTSD-like Trauma of Merriman Smith • Young Joon Lim, Ohio University; Michael Sweeney, Ohio University • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been documented at high rates among war correspondents. This paper answers a call by PTSD expert Anthony Feinstein, who urged more investigation of PTSD-like symptoms among domestic journalists exposed to the trauma of covering news routines that include violence. Using primary documents, this paper posits that Merriman Smith, UPI White House reporter who observed the assassination of John F. Kennedy, suffered PTSD-like symptoms that culminated in his suicide.
Awarding a Revolution: The Penney-Missouri Magazine Awards during second-wave feminism • Dayne Logan, University of Missouri • The present research explores the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and ’70s and magazines’ reactions to it via the Penney-Missouri Magazine Awards program, the only contest designed to honor American women’s magazine journalism during the period. It also examines the program itself and concludes that it exhibited a dynamism some scholars contend is atypical of journalism awards programs by shifting from a mere reflection of common industry ideologies to a champion of progressive journalistic practice.
For ‘the cause of civil and religious liberty’: Abner Cole and the Palmyra, NY, Reflector (1829-1831) • Kimberley Mangun, University of Utah; Jeremy Chatelain, University of Utah • This paper is the first to analyze the (Palmyra, NY) Reflector through the lens of the Freethought Movement, a philosophical viewpoint informed by science, facts, and reason. Sixty-six issues of the literary newspaper published between September 2, 1829, and March 19, 1831—the paper’s entire run—were examined using discourse analysis and narrative analysis. The newspaper advocated free speech, freedom of the press, and civil and religious liberty and contributed to the marketplace of ideas.
Congress Needs Help: The Story of NBC’s Extraordinary 1965 Documentary Critique of Legislative Inefficiency • Thomas Mascaro, Bowling Green State University • The 1965 NBC News documentary, Congress Needs Help, represents a noteworthy departure for network documentaries. NBC commissioned an external study of the U.S. Congress to assess its efficiency and recommend solutions to improve congressional effectiveness and accountability. The documentary directly influenced legislation in the House of Representatives. Congress Needs Help offers an overlooked historical benchmark of the congressional reform movement of the 1960s and of documentary examinations of the legislative body of the U.S. government.
Tributes to Fallen Journalists: The Role of the Hero Myth in Journalistic Practice • Raymond McCaffrey, University of Maryland • An analysis of New York Times tributes to fallen U.S. journalists who perished while at work from 1980 to 2012 revealed that articles were written about 82 percent of the 60 journalists who died on foreign assignment compared to coverage of about 33 percent of the 55 journalists whose deaths were in the U.S. Foreign correspondents were largely depicted in heroic terms, while those dying in the U.S. were often portrayed as the archetypal victim.
American Wartime Newsreels and Press Reaction during WWII • Stephen McCreery, University of Georgia • The WW2 American newsreel represents a media innovation that could not be ignored by the American public. The combination sight, sound, and motion in tightly packaged narratives was neither entirely representative of overseas events, nor timely. The American press’ reactions to these censored films presented them as more of a novelty than a rival. An analysis of U.S. wartime newspaper articles on newsreels reveals how little was regarded for this innovation that would eventually become a main competitor for news audiences.
The Struggle for Men’s Souls: Tracing Cold War Liberation Strategy in the Crusade for Freedom Campaign • Wendy Melillo, American University • This essay considers Cold War liberation strategy themes, promoted by Eisenhower protégé and political warfare specialist Charles Douglas Jackson, in the Ad Council’s Crusade for Freedom public service advertising campaign. Liberation was a grand strategy in the Cold War using psychological warfare to encourage revolution in Eastern European countries under Soviet rule. The Crusade campaign was a propaganda tool directed at Americans to gain domestic support for the liberation strategy, and sell democracy at home.
An Enemy’s Talk of Justice: Japanese Radio Propaganda against Japanese American Mass Incarceration during World War II • Takeya Mizuno, Toyo University • This article examines how Japanese short-wave radio propaganda, as known as “Radio Tokyo,” commented on mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during the first year of World War II. As the Army began to execute the policy, so did Tokyo’s serial criticism begin. Japanese propagandists accused mass incarceration as evidence of American hypocrisy revealing the actual hollow nature of the nation’s “democratic” ideals.
RCAism: The Roots of a Rationalized Broadcasting System • Randall Patnode, Xavier University • While conventional histories treat of radio broadcasting as an outgrowth of technological development, this article decouples broadcasting from technology and connects it with the principles of rationalization that emerged in the late 19th century. The bureaucratic organizations behind broadcasting were seeking greater social control through the same industrial management techniques found in Taylorism and Fordism.
To plead our cause” and make a profit: The competitive environment of the African American press during World War II • Earnest Perry, University of Missouri School of Journalism • In an undated speech given sometime after what general historians call the modern Civil Rights Movement, John Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago Defender discussed the role of the African American press. He did not fawn over the militancy of the press during World War II or speak glowingly of the journalists who risked their lives to cover the trials, marches and sit-ins of the 1950s and 1960s.
Framing of Women Pharmacists in Mainstream and Trade Press During Second-Wave Feminism • L. Michael Posey, University of Georgia • This study analyzes framing of the feminization of medicine and pharmacy during the feminism’s second wave and how trade media framed women’s emergence in pharmacy (1963–87). News articles, research, editorials, and special reports were analyzed. Both media presented similar frames, changing over time. These included stereotyping (gender roles, antifeminism, economic rights); role modeling and networking (feminism); and social/structural changes. Mainstream media largely missed the rapid emergence of women pharmacists in a male-dominated profession.
A New Medium at War: The Importance of Foreign Radio Reports in Portugal during World War II • Nelson Ribeiro, Catholic University of Portugal • The article describes the importance of radio reporting by the Reichs Rundfunk Gesselschaft (RRG) and the BBC in Portugal during World War II. After a brief contextualisation explaining the reasons that led these foreign broadcasts to become the main source of war news in Portugal, the article analyses the distinct strategies implemented by the German and the British stations to mould the Portuguese public’s perception of the war.
“A Strange Absence of News”: The Titanic, The Times, Checkbook Journalism, and the Inquiry Into the Public’s Right to Know • Ronald Rodgers, University of Florida • This study explores the controversy around allegations the Titanic’s surviving wireless operator and the operator aboard the rescue ship held back news detailing the disaster so they could sell their stories to The New York Times. Those allegations and a Senate inquiry into news suppression as part of the Titanic investigation raised questions about the ethics and/or the propriety of the then-accepted practice of journalists paying for news – an issue with resonance a century later.
“Just Plain Jimmy”: Magazine Coverage of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Campaign • Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee; Natalie Manayeva, University of Tennessee • On January 19, 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated early presidential favorite Birch Bayh in the Iowa caucus. In doing so, he captured the attention of America’s media. Over the next 42 weeks, Time, Newsweek, and the U.S. News & World Report, the nation’s three leading newsmagazines, chronicled Carter’s rise from semi-obscurity. This study takes a closer look at more than 200 articles to consider how the three publications portrayed Jimmy Carter throughout the 1976 campaign.
Young Guns: How firearms advertisers targeted children in magazines of the early 1900s • Marshel Rossow, Minnesota State University, Mankato • This study examined techniques firearms dealers used to sell guns to children in the early 20th century. Millions of tiny “boys’ rifles” aimed at a child market were manufactured between 1900 and World War II. These were not toys but potentially lethal weapons. An examination of more than 150 ads from the early 1900s found at least seven major categories of “sales pitches” used in the marketing of these firearms to children and their parents.
Raised on the Radio: The 1920s and America’s First Media Generation • Annie Sugar, University of Colorado-Boulder • America’s print media both documented and promoted youth participation in radio in the 1920s. The endorsement of the new broadcast medium influenced social acceptance of radio in the family-centered culture of the post-Progressive Era decade. As a result, radio created America’s first generation to shape the media as much as the media shaped them in return and a youth cohort with a newly elevated status in both the family and society at large.
“Not Exactly Lying”: The Life and Death of the “Fake” in Journalism and Photography, 1880-1910 • Andie Tucher, Columbia Journalism School • Around the turn of the 20th century, at the high tide of American realism, a lively discourse arose concerning “faking” in newspapers and photography. Advocates defined the practice as the harmless embellishment or improvement of minor details and insisted that a fake could actually be truer to life than anything that was mindlessly accurate.
Bringing Politics to the Living Room: The Kefauver Hearing and the Debate on the Democratic Potential of a New Medium • Bastiaan Vanacker, Loyola University Chicago • This article studies the debate on the use of cameras in government proceedings in the wake of the Kefauver Crime Hearings of 1950-51. The live broadcasts of some of these hearings were an unprecedented success and brought life to a virtual stand still in the cities were they were broadcast. As a result, these hearings produced a society-wide debate on the use of cameras during government proceedings.
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