history book reviews — AEJMC Hot Topics

Book Review[s] – Pen and Sword & Evaluation and Stance in War News

Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898-1975. Mary S. Mander. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 188 pp.

Evaluation and Stance in War News: A Linguistic Analysis of American, British, and Italian Television Reporting of the 2003 Iraqi War. Louann Haarman and Linda Lombardo, eds. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. 256 pp.

Both these books concern an increasingly vexing contemporary issue: the role of a free press during wartime. They use cultural history and analysis to examine the subject, and this approach will be frustrating to some journalists or historians seeking a treatment that might tell the story of the challenge of war reporting or shed light on its chronological development. Nor are the authors firsthand witnesses, having neither worked as journalists nor served in the military. [Read more...]

Book Review – When News Was New

When News Was New. Terhi Rantanen. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 154 pp.

The clever title of this brief historical study harks back to earlier times as changing technology provided a constantly renewed window through which to view what was happening in the world. Ranging from medieval storytellers through nineteenth-century news agencies to the bloggers of today, the book’s theme is that “news” has meant very different things at different times.

Director of the global media and communications master’s program at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and long a student of news agencies, Terhi Rantanen provides a brief but insightful survey of how technology has helped to shape our perception of what “news” is and means. [Read more...]

Book Review – War and the Media: Essays on News Reporting, Propaganda and Popular Culture

War and the Media: Essays on News Reporting, Propaganda and Popular Culture. Paul M. Haridakis, Barbara S. Hugenberg, and Stanley T. Wearden, eds. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009. 265 pp.

A collection assembled under such a broad title might invite doubts as to coherence. Yet the editors, all of Kent State University, have meaningfully coordinated a thoughtful, critical volume of twelve U.S.-focused case studies. Part I focuses on images of war from music, photography, film, and animation, World War I to Vietnam. The theme of Part II is institutionalized propaganda of both world wars, covering advertising, comics, government discourses, and public relations. And Part III considers the effects of news coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. [Read more...]

Book Review – The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst. Kenneth Whyte. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009. 546 pp.

Why yet another biography (and a partial one at that) of the long-dead press titan? you ask. Surely we have enough already, for what could possibly be new or different in this one?

To begin with, this long biography focuses entirely upon a very short but crucial period—1895-1898, when Hearst moved from San Francisco to the news cauldron of New York City to compete fiercely with Joseph Pulitzer in what has come to be pejoratively known as newspapers’ period of “yellow” journalism. For another, Kenneth Whyte’s view is quite different from the accepted account, which dates to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane of 1941, W.A. Swanberg’s best selling Citizen Hearst (Scribners, 1961) published two decades later, and several more recent and well-received biographies. [Read more...]

Book Review – Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method

Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method. Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren, eds. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 283 pp.

Offering twenty original scholarly essays, this anthology provides a solid collection of recent surveys of various media industries, melding description, analysis, and even some predictions. Collectively, they provide a sense of how “media industries” is fast becoming a recognized field of study in its own right—along with an idea of some of the work still necessary to make that happen. [Read more...]

Book Review – The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900

The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900. David E. Sumner. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010. 242 pp.

Magazines today are in trouble—some venerable titles have changed hands, others have disappeared entirely. For most, ad pages are down (often sharply) as are circulations. The periodical publishing industry is clearly seeking a new viable business model for the increasingly competitive digital world of the twenty-first century. Fewer than 20% of new titles survive for as long as three years.

That dour outlook recedes a bit as one reads this retrospective survey of a century when magazines ruled, or so it seemed. As the author, David E. Sumner of Ball State University, makes clear in his opening remarks, however, the very number of magazines that have been launched over the past century is daunting—as Sumner notes, the number of magazines grew by nearly 600% between 1900 and 2000. [Read more...]

Book Review – Globalizing Ideal Beauty: How Female Copywriters of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency Redefined Beauty for the Twentieth Century

Globalizing Ideal Beauty: How Female Copywriters of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency Redefined Beauty for the Twentieth Century. Denise H. Sutton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 224 pp.

Denise H. Sutton’s Globalizing Ideal Beauty: How Female Copywriters of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency Redefined Beauty for the Twentieth Century is founded upon the notion that one cannot separate the creator from the creation. With this in mind, advertisements are not just a reflection of client requirements, but also belief and value systems of those who create the campaigns. [Read more...]

Book Review – America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC’s Stockton Helffrich

America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC’s Stockton Helffrich. Robert Pondillo. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. 255 pp.

A member of the media faculty at Middle Tennessee State University, Pondillo relates the story of probably the best known (though today, largely forgotten) man who was the prime gatekeeper over what could appear or be discussed on NBC’s television network during its first dozen years. From the network’s start in 1948 until 1960, Helffrich’s word was law concerning the broad acceptability of program or advertising content. [Read more...]

Book Review[s] – Abolition and the Press & Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune

Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery. Ford Risley. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. 248 pp.

Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune: Civil War-Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor. Adam Tuchinsky. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. 336 pp.

The Civil War era continues to be one of the most prolific fields of study in journalism history. These two books significantly advance scholarship and teaching—one with a compact survey of the abolitionist press, a crucial early success in the history of American advocacy journalism, and the other with a detailed research monograph about Horace Greeley’s socialism, an often glossed-over facet of one of the most influential U.S. editors. [Read more...]

Book Review – America’s First Network TV Censor

America’s First Network TV Censor (2010). Pondillo, Robert. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 254.

Federal Communications Commission regulation of sexual and other content has been limited, confusing, and often without resolution. Against this backdrop, one may argue that self-regulation within broadcast organizations is worthy of careful examination. Robert Pondillo is an associate professor of electronic media communication at Middle Tennessee State University. As a film writer and director, he recognized the value of analyzing the papers of Stockton Helffrich, NBC’s first manager of censorship. Pondillo utilized the papers, interviews, and other primary sources to paint a picture of how early censorship developed within one organizational context. He has interpreted this through a cultural and historical lens and argues that this period influenced future media. [Read more...]