Journalism 1002 final

Ben Franklin and the American Press

1690: an American newspaper tries publishing •Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences •Shut down and banned after one issue •A little too blunt for the English government •Royal governor of Massachusetts exerted power to censor the press "Called the Iroquois Indians "those miserable Salvages, in whom we have too much confided."Wrote that French King Louis XIV was having sex with his daughter-in-law. All from Daly, 14. 1704: first American newspaper to publish more than once) •John Campbell •The Boston News-Letter •A conventional paper, "Published by Authority" (of British) •Aimed at businessmen 1719: a second paper in Boston •The New England Courant •Published by James Franklin •It is here that Ben Franklin was printer's apprentice to his brother •1722, Franklin started writing under pen names 1723: "Rules for the New-England Courant" •Ben Franklin wrote a satirical commentary after his brother was briefly jailed. But he apparently followed these rules for journalists, including: •"... be very tender of the Religion of the Country. • "... Do not cast injurious Reflections on the Reverend and Faithful Ministers of the Gospel.... •"By no means cast any Reflections on the Civil Government.... •"... and when you condemn any Vice, do not point out particular Persons." So Ben Franklin was cautious, avoiding politics.But his brother basically fired him, so he left for other cities. Timeline •1729 Ben Franklin bought part interest in a Philadelphia newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette •1731 Franklin wrote "one of the bedrock statements" of journalism philosophy, "Apology for Printers," in the Pennsylvania Gazette. •Franklin published first issue of Poor Richard's Almanack. Advice, wise sayings. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0093 •1735 Recent immigrant printer John Peter Zenger was jailed for "seditious libel" for criticizing the (British-appointed) New York governor. From Ben Franklin's "Apology for Printers," 1731 •7. "That it is unreasonable to imagine Printers approve of every thing they print, and to censure them on any particular thing accordingly; since in the way of their Business they print such great variety of things opposite and contradictory. ... •8. "That if all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed." Seditious libel •Lying in print •Doing so as "a challenge to authority and, ultimately, to the social order itself." •Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that Zenger had printed the truth. A jury acquitted him. Most papers were published by printers during the colonial period •Religious books, psalm books, sermons •Almanacs for farmers •They published any news they could find, including very old information from abroad •Stories about oddities "such as lightning strikes, baby goats born with two heads, meteor showers, and the like." (Daly, 20.) Ben Franklin's legacy to journalism •Journalism is a business that presents controversial views •Believed printers (and therefore, journalists) should present as many sides of the story as possible •Newspaper should be a marketplace of ideas, a neutral repository •Individual journalists could hold strong views

Lecture 15 Industrial America

2nd Industrial Revolution •1867ish: Typewriter invented and takes its place in business •1869: First transcontinental railroad finished •1876: Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone •1879: Thomas Edison perfected the incandescent lightbulb •1903: The Wright brothers flew an airplane with people inside for first time Timeline •1850: 254 daily papers in the United States •1850s and 1860s: Rotary presses sped up newspaper printing •1858: First telegraph line laid under the Atlantic Ocean •1860: 387 dailies •1867: New York AP and Western AP shared stories •1870: 574 dailies •1876: Telephone invented •1880: 971 dailies •1880s: Reporters began using phones. "Leg man" reported on the ground and called on the phone to "rewrite man" New states •California, 1850 •Minnesota, 1858 •Oregon, 1859 •Kansas 1861 •West Virginia, 1863 •Nevada, 1864 •Nebraska, 1867 •Colorado, 1876 •North Dakota, 1889 •South Dakota, 1889 •Montana, 1889 •Washington, 1889 •Idaho, 1890 •Wyoming, 1890 •Utah, 1896 •Oklahoma 1907 Samuel Clemens, pen name Mark Twain •Born in Missouri, became a journalist after the Civil War •Wrote travel books, articles in addition to his fiction •Tom Sawyer, (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1885) based on his life in Missouri and as a riverboat captain •Twain was the first writer in America to use vernacular speech •Lived in Connecticut later in life. From 1888 essay, "The American Press" •"Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old-world quality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that this is so. With its limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is fairly and properly matter of light importance to us." Twain valued his early career in newspapers •1866: Twain reported about two brothers from Stamford. They attended Trinity College. Their ship caught fire and washed up on Hawaii, where Twain interviewed him for the Sacramento Union. A retrospective, 65-year-old Twain wrote in that essay that the pivotal story of his career was not, in his mind, the sprightly humorous tale "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," but rather a piece he wrote from Hawaii, involving "two young gentleman from Stamford, Connecticut." Henry and Samuel Ferguson, 18 and 28 respectively, were natives of Stamford and attended Trinity College in Hartford. Samuel Ferguson, a thin-cheeked, bearded young man, was suffering from tuberculosis, and the brothers set out for California in January 1866 to seek a better climate for his health. Their ship, the Hornet, caught fire May 3 off the coast of South America. The crew, Capt. Josiah Mitchell and the Ferguson brothers piled supplies into three boats, two of which were eventually lost forever. The Fergusons' longboat survived 43 days on the open ocean, with only 10 days' ration of food and the rumblings of mutiny; in the last days before the boat touched on the beach near Honolulu, the men had begun to chew strips of their boots. When news of the Fergusons' survival washed up on Hawaiian shores, Twain was laid up with "saddle-boils," which made it difficult for him to walk or sit. He persuaded U.S. Minister to China Anson Burlingame to carry him in a stretcher to the hospital where the survivors were treated, and he spent a frenzied night writing the article, tossing the finished product onto the deck of a departing ship just in time for it to reach the Sacramento Union. The story became a nationwide sensation, burning across the pages of newspapers throughout the country -- including the Stamford Advocate, which didn't name Twain as author or the brothers as local residents, but called the story "one of the most touching narratives on record." "Think of this, ye who daily sit down to your several courses and find fault if everything is not done exactly to please your dainty appetites," the paper wrote. "That was really one of the most interesting pieces Twain ever wrote," said David Bradley, author and associate professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon, "They telegraphed it back to the east, and that was really Twain's debut in the East Coast consciousness." Despite the success of the article -- and considering Twain's doubts on the merit of newspaper fame -- true recognition came with a subsequent article published in the December 1866 issue of Harper's New Monthly magazine. "It was really an important thing for his career because it really takes him out of being a journalist and into being a nonfiction writer," Bradley said. Twain boarded a ship to California with Mitchell and the Ferguson brothers. For the duration of the voyage, Twain pored over their journals of the 43 days at sea -- Samuel Ferguson in particular kept an astonishingly full account -- and talked to the men of their experience. In the article he sent to Harper's, Twain quoted extensively from the brothers' journals: "The plain, matter-of-fact journal of the elder Ferguson was as interesting to me as a novel, notwithstanding I knew all the circumstances of the desperate voyage in the open boat before I read it." Immigration •Chicago was home to many immigrants and their newspapers. •For example, it became an important center of the Swedish American press. •Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey later catalogued newspapers in dozens of languages between the Civil War and 1938. Annihilation/herding of American Indians in the Dakotas and West

Lecture 13

First Amendment tested: remember that it is constantly tested. For example... •Using the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918), the Woodrow Wilson administration "engaged in an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment." (Daly, page 178) •Schenk vs. United States 1919: antiwar leaflet •Eugene Debs, who appealed a lower court ruling against him for giving an antiwar speech. He was imprisoned until 1921. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union •1997 •Janet Reno was the Attorney General of the United States. The Communications Decency Act, which attempted to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet, was struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. Freedom's Journal The first black paper in America Founded on March 16, 1827 as a four-page, four-column standard-sized weekly, Freedom's Journal was the first black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States, and was established the same year that slavery was abolished in New York State. Begun by a group of free black men in New York City, the paper served to counter racist commentary published in the mainstream press. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm served, respectively, as its senior and junior editors. Freedom's Journal was similar to other ante-bellum reform papers in that its pages consisted of news of current events, anecdotes, and editorials and was used to address contemporary issues such as slavery and "colonization," a concept which was conceived by members of The American Colonization Society, a mostly white pro-emigration organization founded in 1816 to repatriate free black people to Africa. Initially opposed to colonization efforts, Freedom's Journal denounced slavery and advocated for black people's political rights, the right to vote, and spoke out against lynchings. From PBS "Founded on March 16, 1827 as a four-page, four-column standard-sized weekly, Freedom's Journal was the first black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States, and was established the same year that slavery was abolished in New York State. Begun by a group of free black men in New York City, the paper served to counter racist commentary published in the mainstream press. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm served, respectively, as its senior and junior editors. Freedom's Journal was similar to other ante-bellum reform papers in that its pages consisted of news of current events, anecdotes, and editorials and was used to address contemporary issues such as slavery and "colonization," a concept which was conceived by members of The American Colonization Society, a mostly white pro-emigration organization founded in 1816 to repatriate free black people to Africa. Initially opposed to colonization efforts, Freedom's Journal denounced slavery and advocated for black people's political rights, the right to vote, and spoke out against lynchings." Founded by a Presbyterian minister, Samuel E. Cornish, and John Brown Russwurm, an abolitionist originally from Jamaica. Russwurm had graduated from Bowdoin College the year before. 90% of the slave population was illiterate in 1860.It was against the law by the 1830s to teach slaves to read and write. Some slaveholders disobeyed the law and allowed the Black parents living on their properties to teach children to read. Freedom's Journal closed after two years •"We consider it a waste of mere words to talk of ever enjoying citizenship in this country." —Russwurm Prejudice was deep in society •"The real battleground between liberty and slavery is prejudice against color." —Cornish

Lecture 17 Origins of two feature genres

Ladies Home Journal •Developed in 1883 by Louisa Knapp (whose husband was Cyrus Curtis, Saturday Evening Post publisher) •Edward Bok became editor in 1889 •1904: Circulation reached 1 million. •1912: Nearly 2 million readers. •It influenced Curtis in how he built the Saturday Evening Post Ladies' Home Journal specialized in the topic of womanhood... how it ought to be. •Edward Bok crafted the collection of articles around both: •modern innovations like appliances •and the old-fashioned thrifty housewife making do. •LHJ was a venue for advertisements selling home goods. •The magazine influenced dozens of other, later women's magazines Timeline: Some women's magazines •McCall's: 1873-2001 •Harper's Bazaar: 1867-present. Mary Booth, first longtime editor •Good Housekeeping: 1885-present. Bought by Hearst chain 1911. •Cosmopolitan: 1886- •Ladies' Home Journal: 1889-2014 •Redbook: 1903- •Vanity Fair 1913- These women would reinvigorate homemaking with new understandings of the meaning of thrift, which would include a commitment both to the home and to the employment of new consumer practices. They would embrace a culture of consumption that increasingly appealed to and relied on American women —Jen Scanlon Sports journalism timeline •1850s and 1860s: "Henry Chadwick, writing for The Clipper in New York City in the 1850s and 1860s, is widely considered to be the first full-fledged American sports writer." •1883: The New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, started the nation's first newspaper sports page. •1895: The New York Journal, owned by William Randolph Hearst, introduced the first section devoted entirely to sports. •1920: Sports took up 12- 20 percent of a newspaper's total news hole. Henry Chadwick and baseball •"He had never considered how this rudimentary game played with a ball and a bat was so adapted to the unique character of his adopted country. [H]e became convinced that baseball, fast-paced and rugged--a style that suited the American temperament--was good for Americans, that it would inspire them to take to the outdoors and to exercise." —Andrew Schiff •In the fall of 1856, a New York Times cricket journalist spotted a fascinating game of "base ball" being played across the field. Henry Chadwick knew baseball well enough but was now seeing the game in a new light as if for the first time." —Andrew Schiff writing for the Society for American Baseball Research

Lecture 20 Public relations: the birth of promotional writing

PR timeline •1890s: Secretaries working for President William McKinley conducted nightly press briefings. •1904: Ivy Lee and George F. Parker formed a public relations counseling agency and issued a "declaration of principles" in how they would release promotional information about their clients. •1905: The first head of U.S. Forest Service Gifford Pinchot started a press bureau that promoted natural resource conservation. •1913: Ivy Lee took on John D. Rockefeller as a client. •1917: President Woodrow Wilson formed Committee on Public Information (remember that?) Ivy Lee did publicity for business clients •1904: Started a public relations "counseling agency" with a partner (George F. Parker) •1905: "In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply the press and the public... prompt and accurate information...." •Said they would not hide who paid them and would not pay newspapers for placement of their stories. •1913: Parker went to work for a big Episcopal church and Ivy Lee went on his own Ivy Lee believed people were influenced by both facts and feelings. •He emphasized openness in dealing with the press, even though he did not always tell the press everything he knew. Ivy Lee's "declaration of principles" in 1906 •"This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. This is not an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do not use it. Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. Upon inquiry, full information will be given to any editor concerning those on whose behalf an article is sent out. In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about. Corporations and public institutions give out much information in which the news point is lost to view. Nevertheless, it is quite as important to the public to have this news as it is to the establishments themselves to give it currency. I send out only matter every detail of which I am willing to assist any editor in verifying for himself. I am always at your service for the purpose of enabling you to obtain more complete information concerning any of the subjects brought forward in my copy What early public relations meant •It seemed to annoy newspaper reporters •The public and government began to expect corporations to talk about their plans, earnings, and their image. In 1913, Lee took on John D. Rockefeller, richest man in the U.S. and subject of criticism by the muckrakers. Lee would transform Rockefeller's public image. In 1913, Ivy Lee managed the public voice of Rockefeller's company, Colorado Fuel and Iron. Miners had staged a strike for better conditions and wages. They camped out for weeks. The company hired the militia to subdue them. Public relations recast the company's approach to the strike •Ivy Lee issued a "series of fact sheets" (with some errors) about the strike designed to make Rockefeller's intentions look good. •The massacre and effort to quell it was, according to historian (and politician) George McGovern, the first time modern PR was used in a labor struggle •"Everything was done to discredit the miners." (wrote McGovern) How to rehabilitate Rockefeller's image •"Ivy Lee invited newsreel reporters into Rockefeller's once-hidden, private world. The cameras captured him at his estates in New York and Florida, playing croquet, hugging his grandchildren, even giving away dimes to indigent kids." •"And Lee began regularly issuing announcements to the press about Rockefeller's philanthropy." •Jared Meade, in: https://www.prnewsonline.com/ivy-lee-crisis-history/ Edward R. Bernays •Worked for the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in World War I as a press attache. •Met President Woodrow Wilson in France. He remembered that Wilson had become a "Godhead symbol" of peace. •Bernays said (in a documentary), "They didn't call it opinion making. They called it information." •After WWI, Bernays started a public relations firm, representing businesses. He coined the term "public relations." The conscious shaping of opinion. •He staged events for President Calvin Coolidge, like an actors' breakfast at the White House. Staging of events: a key part of skillful public relations. •If the event happens, the press will come. •PR events became news, therefore. This is very common today. Promotions become news through athletics, entertainment, press conferences, campaign stops, etc. etc. •Bernays staged an event with actors having breakfast with President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. The New York Times reported, "President Nearly Laughs." Edward Bernays and his wife Doris Fleischman hatched campaign to promote women smoking •Fleischman was a key partner who worked on, among other things, a major campaign with a tobacco company.

Early Press

Rome, 59 B.C.E.- c. 100 A.D. •The first known news poster: Acta Diurna •... which meant, "Daily Events" in Latin •Chiseled on stone or metal tablet and posted in public Roman Empire fell, the year 476 •Romans had perfected book publishing •Barbarian invasians •News got out through people crying out: criers. •Religious figures, especially monks, took over teaching people how to read. •Books were hand-copied by monks too—until the 1200s. Gutenberg Bible, mid-1400s •Johann Gutenberg •Mysteries about his actual life •Upper-class resident of Mainz, Germany •Created individual cast-metal letters (instead of an entire page plate)... •These letters could be moved around and set in place with thin strips of lead •Roll ink on the letters and then press it against paper Moveable type •That is: each letter could be placed wherever the printer wanted. •William Caxton started printing books in London: 1476 King Henry VIII of England •1509 took power •Required the press to be licensed and censored •First king to place press under state control. This continued into the 1600s. •Henry VIII died in 1547 Aeropagitica •First news magazine, Diurnal Occurrences: 1641 •John Milton defended freedom of discussion in Aeropagitica: 1644 •John Locke argued that individuals have the right to establish representative government: 1689-1690 King James version of the Bible, 1611 •Note: the Bible is not one book - it is many, from many authors and compilations of authors (early crowd sourcing). Followers of Judaism and Christianity made the choices of what would go into it during the first century AD. •The Bible is an early example of offering multiple viewpoints. • The King James version shaped the English language significantly and is the source of an astonishing number of metaphors and phrases. Phrases: •A man after his own heart •A stumbling block •At their wit's end •Bottomless pit •Death, where is thy sting •Fallen from grace •Fell flat on his face Fight the good fight •From strength to strength •Give up the ghost •God forbid •Holier than thou •Out of the mouths of babes •Suffer fools gladly •The blind lead the blind •The powers that be •Woe is me

Lecture 21 Television and Joseph McCarthy

Television timeline •1939: Television exhibited at the World's Fair in New York (TRK-9 see photo) •1945: FCC authorized 12 channels •1948: 1 million TV sets sold •1949: RCA sells 2 million of a new tabletop TV •1950: 1 out of 10 households had a TV •1959: About 9 out of 10 households had a TV •(At right, Dwight Eisenhower watching the Republican convention in 1952. He would become the nominee and win presidency. Library of Congress photo.) TV relied on sponsors and subsidized its news shows •Viewers paid only for the set. The signal came free. •FCC prohibited opinion journalism on TV until after World War II. •Even then, FCC said TVs must only report all the sides without comment ... like Colonial-era printing with its free-for-all of points of view. •TV news limped along like an insurance policy (Daly said) proving that the stations were trying to serve the public. But the cameras often caught history as it happened. This is one key to how TV helped stop a reckless witch hunt by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin first elected in 1946. Feb. 9, 1950: McCarthy gave a speech to the Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia that started his notorious hunting of anyone associated with communism. February 9, 1950 •"While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205." •... he had no list. The sheet was blank. •He had come up with the figure based upon a review of employees that said nothing about their political affiliation. •He changed the number often in later speeches. •He was, in other words, lying. Anti-communism was not new in America. •Since the Russian Revolution in 1917, Americans had feared infiltration by collective politics. •1917: U.S. Post Office used the Espionage Act to halt socialist publications •1919: Seattle shipyard strike, called a communist plot, caused hysteria •1947: President Truman signed an executive order, the Loyalty-Security Program. Federal workers must take a political test. •1947: U.S. House voted 346- 17 for "contempt citations" against the "Hollywood 10," filmwriters who refused to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee. (SEE PHOTO) Newspapers mostly failed to portray McCarthy's lies •They reported each new accusation, day after day, but failed to cover the whole. •McCarthy understood how to manipulate the deadlines and press runs... he made new accusations just before the press ran, so reporters had no time to get other points of view. •The quest for objectivity, therefore, backfired. •Local stories went on day by day, such as the persecution of a public school teacher in Wayland, Mass. Army-McCarthy hearings, spring 1954 •McCarthy turned his accusations about communist infiltration to U.S. Army security. •Welch was the lawyer representing the Army. •McCarthy accused Welch of hiring a lawyer (for his firm in Boston) who had been a communist. (Turned out, the man as a student had gotten involved briefly in a communist-front organization.) •"The word McCarthyism has become synonymous with the practice of publicizing accusations of treason and disloyalty with insufficient evidence." (Wrote the editors of History.com, https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/army-mccarthy-hearings) "Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." —Joseph Welch, special counsel to the Army Journalistic legacy of McCarthy episode •Television news exerted new authority with Murrow's shows discrediting McCarthy •Murrow became synonymous with integrity •The media played a role in ending McCarthy's reckless accusations: he was censured in 1954. He died of alcohol-related liver disease in 1957. •Note: A 1957 Supreme Court decision, Yates v. U.S., protected radical speech unless it was a "clear and present danger."

Freedom of the press

Thomas Jefferson in 1787 •"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." The First Amendment to the Constitution •Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. •Ratified December 15, 1791. •(The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights.) •"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." •1919 Schenck v. United States (249 U.S. 47) •Freedom of speech is not absolute and must be considered in context; in wartime, that can mean restrictions on speech that poses a "clear and present danger." • because of the Espionage Act of 1917 •1919 Debs v. United States (249 U.S. 211) Under the Schenck standard, the Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs could be jailed for giving an anti-war speech in wartime. (summary via Christopher Daly •New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964 In the early 1960s, a full-page ad appeared in The New York Times that claimed the arrest of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for perjury in Montgomery, Ala., was part of a campaign to destroy King's integration efforts. Montgomery City Commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the paper and the four ministers who had endorsed the ad. The Court held that the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements -- even those later proven false -- about the conduct of public officials unless they're made with actual malice. •(summary via How Stuff Works) •1978 FCC v. Pacifica (438 U.S. 726) Ruling on the "Seven Dirty Words" skit by comedian George Carlin, the Court upheld the FCC's power to regulate speech that is broadcast over public airwaves. •1980 Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia (448 U.S. 555) The right of the public to attend criminal trials is guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. •1991 Masson v New Yorker Magazine (501 U.S. 496) Prompted by the lawsuit of a psychiatrist against journalist Janet Malcolm, claiming she had misquoted him. Court ruled in favor of the magazine. Under the First Amendment, journalists enjoy a certain amount of leeway in the accuracy of quoted materials, and the court declined to step in as an ultimate editor. •1997 Reno v. ACLU (No. 96-511) Most of the Communications Decency Act, which had attempted to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet, was struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. Only remaining provision was one protecting reposters of material, saying anyone reposting is not the publisher. •2012 U.S. v. Manning In a court martial, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, later Chelsea Manning, was found guilty of espionage for her role in leaking a vast trove of classified material about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Facts and Case Summary - Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Facts and case summary for Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988) The First Amendment rights of student journalists are not violated when school officials prevent the publication of certain articles in the school newspaper. Decision Date: January 13, 1988 Background Students in the Journalism II class at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis, Missouri wrote stories about their peers' experiences with teen pregnancy and the impact of divorce. When they published the articles in the school-sponsored and funded newspaper The Spectrum, the principal deleted the pages that contained the stories prior to publication without telling the students. Claiming that the school violated their First Amendment rights, the students took their case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis. The trial court ruled that the school had the authority to remove articles that were written as part of a class. The students appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which reversed the lower court, finding that the paper was a "public forum" that extended beyond the walls of the school. It decided that school officials could censor the content only under extreme circumstances. The school appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Decision and Reasoning In a 5-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the principal's actions did not violate the students' free speech rights. The Court noted that the paper was sponsored by the school and, as such, the school had a legitimate interest in preventing the publication of articles that it deemed inappropriate and that might appear to have the imprimatur of the school. Specifically, the Court noted that the paper was not intended as a public forum in which everyone could share views; rather, it was a limited forum for journalism students to write articles, subject to school editing, that met the requirements of their Journalism II class. •1997 •Janet Reno was the Attorney General of the United States. The Communications Decency Act, which attempted to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet, was struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. •1983: Hustler, a pornographic magazine, parodied the Rev. Jerry Falwell in a crass liquor ad. •Falwell sued Hustler. •The U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously in 1988 to overturn a $200,000 judgment awarded to the Falwell for his emotional distress at the parody. In doing so, it reversed both a jury award against Flynt and a ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that had backed Falwell's suit. •In its 8-0 ruling, the highest court defended Hustler's right to satirize Falwell as a public figure. •Although Hustler's parody was judged to be in poor taste, the court nevertheless held that it fell within the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and the press. •Falwell, who died in 2007, a well-known religious conservative and founder of the Moral Majority, a political advocacy group, had sued Hustler and its publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel. •(From a Politico article)

Lecture 14

Timeline •1830: U.S. population, 12.9 million •1831: William Lloyd Garrison brought out his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator •1845: Former slave Frederick Douglass published his autobiography showing "the bare face of slavery" (See Daly textbook, page 95) •1848: The Associated Press formed. •1850: 12,000 miles of telegraph wire in operation •1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin •1860: U.S. population, 31.4 million. Associated Press negotiated special rates with both Union telegraph operators •1860: 50,000 miles of telegraph wire crisscrossing the nation (see Sloan textbook "The Press and the Civil War" opening page) The press influenced public thought leading to the Civil War William Lloyd Garrison, militantly abolitionist newspaper editor Garrison served a jail term for articles he wrote for a paper called The Genius. See Sloan page 145. Garrison was first a printer's apprentice. Editor and pub of the Free Press in Newvuryport, Mass. Edited Boston's national philanthropist, a temperance paper. Garrison was always "a firey writer" (writes Bernell Elizabeth Tripp, author of the Sloan chap on the Antebelleum Press) Garrison started The Liberator, first abolitionist paper, 1831 •A slave, Nat Turner, led a bloody rebellion in Virginia same year; some blamed the paper for it. •State of Georgia offered $50,000 for capture of Garrison. •Garrison admired Thomas Paine and often quoted the Declaration of Independence •Garrison founded two anti-slavery societies •He was mobbed and almost lynched in Boston in 1835 Frederick Douglass •Garrison helped Douglass publish his autobiography in 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave •Douglass established a paper in Rochester, New York, The North Star •The motto was: "Right is of no sex —truth is of no color — God is father of us all, and we are Bretheren." Garrison and Douglass fought over whether the Constitution supported slavery or abhorred it:* Douglass said Constitution was "in its letter and spirit an anti-slavery instrument."* Garrison said Constitution was (as Daly writes on p. 96) "formal expression of a corrupt bargain ... designed to protect slavery as a permanent feature of American life." Virginia outlawed journalism calling for the end of slavery •March 1836, "An Act to suppress the circulation of incendiary publications" •"Garrison and other abolitionists were having an impact" •Pro-slavery U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun joined with President Andrew Jackson to make it harder for the U.S. Post Office to deliver papers Timeline •November 1860: Abraham Lincoln elected president with less than a majority of the vote •December 20, 1860: South Carolina seceded from the United States •April 12, 1861: Bombing of Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War •Lincoln administration began censoring the news and telegraph dispatches •Reporting thus became chaotic. Reports sounding favorable to Union Army would get past the censors. "The emphasis on speed led, in many cases, to inaccurate, shoddy reporting. ... Reporters transmitted everything they learned; but editors, particularly in the North, seldom deleted the information that could aid the enemy. The concept of press responsibility in wartime had failed to keep up with the speed of the telegraph."—journalism professor Dianne Bragg (in "The Press and the Civil War," in William David Sloan, The Media in America 10th Edition. Vision Press, 2017,161-175.) Lincoln at AntietamLook at the composition of this photo. The president is on the warfront. He is posing. He is in a camp - with the soldiers. He is checking out what's going on ...23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after twelve hours of savage combat on September 17, 1862. The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion into the North and led Abraham Lincoln to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. (National Park Service) Civil War's northern journalists •Henry Villard witnessed 12,000 Union casualties at Fredericksburg. Lincoln called him to the White House for eyewitness account. •George Alfred Townsend of the NY World wrote vivid battlefield accounts: "I hear the sobs and howls of the weary, and note, afar off, among the pines, moving lights of burying parties...." Telegraph system was key to speed •Confederate telegraph system was "rotting on the poles" (as Bragg writes in Sloan book), falling victim to the Union forces. •By contrast, mail service was slow and crude Legacy of Civil War journalism •Reporters used the telegraph. This sped up and changed the way information got out to the public. •Therefore, journalists started working faster - getting the story out quicker because they could. •Censorship: President Abraham Lincoln ordered dispatches censored, perhaps the strongest control of the press ever. •Photography:

Lecture 18 Langston Hughes

Timeline •1901: Born in Joplin, Missouri •Not long after: His parents separated and father went to Mexico •Until about 1920: Lived mostly with his grandmother in Kansas. She took him to hear intellectual and business leader Booker T. Washington speak •1919: Met his father. "My father hated Negroes. I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro." •1920: Published poem at 18, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." •1923: Visited Africa. 1920s: Embraced intellectual and artistic community in Harlem 1926: Published 1st volume of poetry, The Weary Blues 1931 Upset by the Scottsboro incident, when nine Black teenagers were falsely accused of raping a white woman. Wrote poems about the outrage. 1932: Visited the Soviet Union on a film project. Stayed a year. Became interested in communism and its policies against racism 1937: Addressed the 2nd International Writers' Congress in Paris, speaking against fascism 1937: Covered the Spanish civil war for the Baltimore Afro-American 1942-1962: Wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Defender. From 1942 to 1962, Hughes wrote columns for the Chicago based weekly newspaper The Chicago Defender. It was in his column there that he introduced the comic character Jesse B. Semple, a poor man living in Harlem. Often misspelled Simple, it went on to be widely popular. •"'I had rather sit at the counter,' I said, 'because I am in a hurry and must catch a train.' ... She led me into the dining at the back ... into the farthest corner to the last table beside the kitchen door." •"I turned and walked back to the counter with her trailing along behind me. There were many empty seats at the counter, so I sat in the middle. The hostess tapped me on the shoulder. ... I got up and followed her again. She led me to the very end of the counter, again passing many empty seats, and put me at the end in a corner against a pillar." •Compared this to his year in the Soviet Union, where "not one single restaurant refused me service. The same was true in France, in Japan, in Italy, in Loyalist Spain. Not until I come home to the U.S.A. does anybody say, 'Sorry, no can serve.' " •"In Moscow ... I was told that the whole theory of the Communist state was opposed to the separation of peoples on religious or racial grounds, and that workers had no strength divided up into warring camps. ... if a person persists in his racial prejudice, he is put in jail for a long time." "Our White Folks: Boo" •1948 in the Chicago Defender •Said white people should not fear communism and that nothing the Soviet Union could do to prisoners was as bad as how whites treated Blacks in the United States. •(One wonders if he was just uninformed about Stalin's purges.) •"Who hollered, 'Boo' at our white folks?" he wrote. "Maybe they are scared and jumpy because they have guilt in their souls." Legacy of Langston Hughes on journalism •He brought a unique and bold voice to the problem of racial discrimination during a particularly volatile period •His prose was plain and critical. •He asked his readers if current conditions must last. •But he believed in better times ahead.

Lecture 23 Going digital

Timeline •1989: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web •1992: Mark Andreesen invented Mosaic, the first graphical interface browser that could merge text and images •1994: Software professional Dave Winer expanded a mass email list into an online newsletter called a Web log, soon to be blog. •1995: Salon launched. •1996: Slate launched. •Late 1990s: Blogs took off. Some thought blogs were amateur.... Then along came Matt Drudge. •1998: Matt Drudge broke a story about a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, reported to be in a relationship with President Bill Clinton. Matt Drudge •Worked in a 7-11 in the Washington D.C. area. His father gave him a computer. •The Drudge Report, looked like something typed in haste on an old typewriter •But its content is anything but offhand. Breaking news joins dozens and dozens of links to a standing list of major outlets, all live links. "A young clerk in a dead-end job, Matt started pulling Nielsen ratings out of CBS wastebaskets and posting them on the Internet. Soon, his mailing lists involved hundreds of people in the entertainment industry, many of which began giving him inside scoop on other things."—Ken Cook, customer review of Drudge's 2000 book The Drudge Manifesto on Amazon Legacy of early blogger Matt Drudge •Sped up the news cycle •He was the first (or the first big) aggregator •He curated print and online articles and presented them all together •"Visitors to his site effectively come for Drudge's judgments on what's worth knowing in the news. His understanding of the mass market's tastes and interests is his singular contribution." (Paul Farhi in the Washington Post, April 20, 2020) •... in other words, what Drudge chose to link to, and the headlines he wrote about those articles to which he linked, influenced how people perceived their news.

Lecture 19 Radio

Timeline: Radio •1901: Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist experimenting with radio waves, sent a wireless morse code signal from England to Canada. •1906: Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden transmitted Christmas music by radio from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. •Also 1906: Lee de Forest perfected transmission by vacuum tube. •Wireless Ship Act, 1910 •Radio Act of 1912: first big law covering how radio should function, inspired by the sinking of the Titanic, which lacked proper radio equipment. •1920: KDKA, a station in Pittsburgh, does election broadcast using information the Pittsburgh Post agreed it could read. Calvin Coolidge's voice on the radio is a reminder of how different speech patterns were back in the 1920s. Herbert Hoover radio conferences •He was the U.S. secretary of commerce •Conferences met four times during the 1920s over the problem of assigning airwaves. •Zenith Corp. challenged government's oversight of radio and courts ruled in Zenith's favor. This meant that radio stations could use whatever wave-lengths they wanted, at will. 1930s: Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his "fireside chats" to Americans by radio. How should the government regulate the air waves? •Radio Act of 1927 clarified: • that the public, not companies, owns the airwaves. •that broadcasting is expression which the First Amendment protects. •the government can regulate the radio stations. •but those powers are not absolute. William S. Paley •Used radio to boost sales of his father's cigar business. •In 1928, he bought the struggling Columbia radio network for $1 million. (Would build it into the giant CBS radio and TV network later.) •See Daly, page 213 Communications Act of 1934 •Created the FCC - Federal Communications Commission. It had been called something similar. •Expanded the commission to seven members. •Gave them probably extraordinary power over the airwaves. "One-two punch of newsmagazines and radio" •Starting in the 1920s, print magazines like Time and the radio airwaves together became "the media." •Big media companies organized into for-profit big corporations. •See Daly, page 216... end of chapter 7. Edward Murrow Radio journalist stationed in London early in World War II Waited for approval from British censors before he could broadcast His dispatches probably swayed the American public toward getting involved in the war

Trump Documentary

Trump: An American Dream episode 1: Manhattan This first episode in a four-part British documentary made for that country's Channel 4 offers a unique perspective on Donald Trump through people who knew him in the 1970s and 1980s. Note especially that from the perspective of 2017, just when Trump took office as president, journalists from those early years had now become primary sources for history. They were eyewitnesses to a period that we now realize can offer clues to the man Trump would become later. Everything in this documentary is filtered through that lens: Trump is now president of the United States: these people knew him long ago. What do they have to tell history now? Journalists who tell their personal stories of knowing Trump in the 1970s and 1980s here include: George Arzt, a reporter for the tabloid The New York Post 1969-1986 Rona Barrett, a Hollywood gossip columnist who by the 1980s was already an institution in Hollywood and had written a memoir Ms. Rona. She was a celebrity interviewing Trump as a young 20-something. She was more famous than her subject. Ken Auletta, who at the time this documentary covers was a political columnist for the New York Daily News. He later went to the New Yorker. Nikki Haskell, a television personality who also was a personal friend of Trump. Barbara Walters, television journalist known then for her hard-hitting interviews. She had been a cohost of NBC's "Today" show. The documentary interviews the Trump Tower engineer, others who worked on Trump projects, and some political figures like former City Councilwoman Ruth Messinger, who sparred with Trump in the 1970s over his development plans.

Lecture 22 The 1960s and 1970s: Vietnam and Watergate

Vietnam: an undeclared war that challenged journalists. Reporters had to get creative. •They found no "front line" of the war in South Vietnam. So following the action had a chaotic element. •Remarkably little censorship in Vietnam... •But the U.S. government issued "guidelines" on covering the war. •President Kennedy and then Johnson "tried to have individual reporters fired" when they disliked their coverage. •But it was mayhem: from the earliest days, in 1963, South Vietnam soldiers killed President Ngo Dinh Diem, and from then on the journalists were reporting on combat that seemed more like raids on civilians than traditional battle of soldiers. Reporting the story seemed to demand analysis and use of anonymous sources. •In these examples, notice the analysis in the highlighted words: •"The vanity of an ambitious young general, Ton That Dinh appears to have been a key factor in the train of events that led to the overthrow of the Ngo family regime and the deaths of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu." •"According to extremely reliable sources, about two weeks before the coup, after several weeks of working on Ton That Dinh, the generals said to him, in effect, 'You should carry out the coup. It is time to save your country.'" •—David Halberstam in the New York Times Sarcasm as survival •Reporters called the daily U.S. embassy briefing in Vietnam "the Five O'Clock Follies" because it was full of hyperbole and lies about how well the U.S. forces were doing (said Halberstam). •"The military was ... losing its reputation for knowing the score. ... The long-standing partnership between the military and the press was breaking up. Gone was the candid exchange of information and views between the officer corps and the press corps of the World War II era. The two groups were no longer on the same team." (Christopher Daly, page 335) Vibrant work, forerunners of (second) New Journalism •Daly says reporting was boring in general in the early 1960s... but he then lists several outliers like Rachel Carson (Silent Spring... next lecture) and Michael Harrington (who wrote about poverty) who wrote compelling stories. See page 341. •In other words, Daly misproves his point: in fact, journalism was thriving. •Betty Friedan questioned why women had so few choices in The Feminine Mystique (1963). •Truman Capote used novelistic techniques with his investigative book about a family's murder, In Cold Blood (1966). More vibrant experimental journalism •Gay Talese wrote long profiles mostly for Esquire magazine, such as a famous one of Frank Sinatra, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," in which he used scenes to describe his character. (The classic showing, not telling.) •Tom Wolfe, who profiled boxer Cassius Clay and the Kustom Kars craze in California with sound effects. See Daly, 343. •Editor Clay Felker worked with Jimmy Breslin and Gloria Steinem Woodward and Bernstein: the Watergate stories 1973: Watergate reporters Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein with their editor Ben Bradlee in the Washington Post newsroom. The Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its reporting on Watergate. Decades later, Woodward remembered the words he most hated to hear from a skeptical Bradlee during the Watergate investigation: "You don't have it yet, kid." Photo by Mark Godfrey. I got this photo from the Washington Post story, "The Ben Bradlee We Knew," October 28, 2014. Timeline, Watergate •June 17, 1972: Police arrested five burglars breaking in to the office of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. •One of those arrested was the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect President Richard Nixon. •The next day, the President's press secretary Ron Ziegler said Nixon had no comment on the "third-rate burglary attempt." •Nixon was re-elected by a landslide in November 1972. •"Many thought the story would die, but instead, repercussions from the break-in continued. In January 1973, the five Watergate burglars and two former White House employees who directed them, Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were convicted for the break-in." •April 1973: Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post, and other papers and TV, plus the Senate, "were all focused on discovering what knowledge, if any, Nixon had of the Watergate burglary." •April 30, 1973: "Due to the mounting evidence of their personal involvement, Nixon's Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst all resigned and Presidential Counsel John Dean was fired. •May 1, 1973: White House Press Secretary Ziegler apologized to Woodward, Bernstein, and the Washington Post for his previous criticism, admitting to the validity of their stories. •May 1973: Woodward and Bernstein began writing their book All the President's Men. •July 1973: The Senate investigating committee uncovered the taping system Nixon used to to record meetings in the Oval Office. •February 1974: the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings. •May 1974: "A federal grand jury indicted seven of Nixon's top aides in the Watergate cover-up and informed the judge that there was enough evidence to indict Nixon, but they did not have the legal authority to charge the President." • June 1974: All the President's Men was published. It revealed their background source, whom they called Deep Throat. •August 9, 1974: Nixon resigned.

Lecture 12

Well... the same thing happened to newspapers earlier ... from the 1830s on •Steam-powered printing presses could print thousands of copies •Paper was cheaper than it had been •More people could read. •NOTE: statistics about literacy are murky. •91% of white men over age 20 could read (but what about everyone else?) •More people were living in the cities, where easy to buy a paper. Benjamin Day and the New York Sun •"The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for advertising." •Crime stories, including account of a suicide in his first issue •"New Yorkers snapped up copies of the Sun, with its breezy local news about ordinary people." (Daly, p. 63.) •"The Sun was what we would now call a tabloid. The brash publication served up fires, murders, and other scandals for a working class and immigrant readership. And the paper really hit the big time, and quickly became the most widely read newspaper in the world (circulation: 19,360!) when it started reporting that the Moon was inhabited. By man-bats." •—Matthew Willis, Jstor Daily. •https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-sun-conned-the-world-with-the-moon-hoax/ James Gordon Bennett, New York Herald •1835 •"We shall support no party ... and care nothing for any election or candidate from president on down to constable. We shall endeavor to report facts, on very public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and coloring ...." •(See Daly, page 65) Competition and speed motivated Bennett to publish some strange copy •Bennett (and others): extensive stories of a prostitute's murder, 1836. •Stories of other grisly murders •Personals column •"Moral War" of 1840. Opponents to Bennett and his New York Herald •News stories published as soon as possible - immediacy was his invention. Horace Greeley, New York Tribune •Also a fan of Benjamin Franklin •New England born, came to New York, became a printer •Published two party papers •Tribune debuted 1841... supported Whig party and high tariffs •Called New York with its high unemployed population "the metropolis of beggary" •Hired brilliant Boston writer Margaret Fuller Margaret Fuller •She was an established journalist and editor before Horace Greeley hired her •Our two textbooks barely mention her. Many accounts of her go on too long about the way she died, in a shipwreck •She was a vital link in the intellectual dialogue of the late 1830s and early 1840s •Founding editor of The Dial, a groundbreaking magazine ... one big reason Margaret Fuller is forgotten is a volume of her heavily edited (by Ralph Waldo Emerson) and strangely presented Memoirs Legacy of the "Penny Press," the cheap newspapers of 1830-1850 •Tabloid journalism started: sensational stories about crime •Deadline journalism became the practice: get that news out to the people fast •Publishers and editors like Benjamin Day used the paper as a creative joke (the person-bats of the moon hoax, for example) - this kind of ploy would come and go for years •News for the masses

Lecture 24 Rachel Carson

\ Rachel Carson was a biologist and writer •Born in Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, in 1907 •At age 11, she won a prize for a story she wrote for a children's magazine. •Won a scholarship to college. •At Pennsylvania College for Women (later Chatham) in Pittsburgh, she changed her major from English to biology at urging of a professor she admired. Rachel Carson Timeline •1932: Earned master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins. •Summer 1932: Field work at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts. •1935: Hired to work for the federal government as an aquatic biologist and writer. Later called the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service •1936 onward: Published articles and books that include: •Under the Sea Wind (1941) •The Sea Around Us (1951) Includes chapter about climate change. •The Edge of the Sea (1955). Silent Spring (1962).Shocked the public with call to control pesticides "For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death."—Rachel Carson, opening lines of chapter 3, "Elixirs of Death," in Silent Spring •"Silent Spring was a chilling indictment of DDT and other pesticides that until then had been hailed as safe and wondrously effective. It was Carson who sifted through all the evidence, documenting with alarming clarity the collateral damage to fish, birds, and other wildlife; revealing the effects of these new chemicals to be lasting, widespread, and lethal." —William Souder, author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring (Broadway Books, 2013) •Silent Spring shocked the public and forced the government to take action, despite a withering attack on Carson from the chemicals industry. It awakened the world to the heedless contamination of the environment and eventually led to the establishment of the EPA and to the banning of DDT. By drawing frightening parallels between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive fallout from nuclear testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism." —William Souder But critics also attacked Rachel Carson after Silent Spring came out.In an article (2004) for Environmental History, Mary Hazlett makes some sense of it. "The $300,000,000 pesticides industry has been highly irritated by a quiet woman author whose previous works on science have been praised for the beauty and precision of the writing."John Lee in The New York Times, July 22, 1962 Carson did not want to ban all chemicals •"It is not my contention that chemical insecticides should never be used," she wrote. "I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potential for harm... I contend, furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effects on soil, water, wildlife, or man himself." —As reported by Frank Graham Jr. in an article in 2012 in YaleE360 Rachel Carson died in April 1964 of breast cancer. She was 56. Environmental movement took off 3 million gallons of oil erupted from an offshore well, Santa Barbara, California, February 1969 President Nixon visited the cleanup. Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson called for a nationwide environmental movement. •June 1969: Near Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River, caught on fire from chemicals and oil on the surface. •1970: Nixon gave a 37-point speech on improving environment •1970: First Earth Day. •1970: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formed. •(For much of this, see https://www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa) Legacy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring •It pushed people to think hard about widespread chemical use •Every one of the chemicals it mentioned were banned in the U.S. •It sparked a movement and formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency •Inspired a standard of environmental writing that combines science with poetic use of words

Lecture 16 Magazines for the Middle Class

\The Saturday Evening Post aimed itself at the ordinary person... the editor's idea of the ordinary person. George Horace Lorimer, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, 1899-1937. George Lorimer said (quoted by The New York Times in an obituary in 1937): George Lorimer, editor of the Saturday Evening Post •Edited it for 38 years: 1899-1937 •Focused on the craft of writing: fiction stories and often in serial form •Also factual articles •Celebrated big business and the virtues of the middle class •The magazine had 2 million readers by 1917 •In the Saturday Evening Post and in its rival magazines Literary Digest and Collier's, "readers were tempted by a host of new electric-powered products: refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, fans, coffee percolators, washing machines, sewing machines, irons, toasters, and radios. Americans were learning how to become consumers of mass production." (Christopher Daly, in our textbook Covering America, chapter 7, page 192.) The Saturday Evening Post under Lorimer •A conservative magazines that disagreed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. •Lorimer believed that the New Deal went against the tradition of individualism in America. •thought the New Deal would lead to "moral and physical disaster," as the New York Times obituary writer put it. Therefore, the article and stories in the SEP mirrored Lorimer's views Getting a sense of the Saturday Evening Post's politics •January 13, 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II, Garet Garrett, a regular SEP writer, published an article (which you will see on the next slide) ... •... in which he claimed that American business wanted nothing to do with a war and that war made no economic sense. •Garet, who later wrote editorials for the Post, argued in much of his work that Roosevelt's plan was to "back into" war. Reader's Digest •Dewitt and Lila Wallace founded it in 1922. •Dewitt Wallace got his start as a promotion writer for a textbook company. •Initially failed to find a publisher for his "digest" idea. •Found stories they liked from other publications and condensed them. Analysis of Reader's Digest during the 1950s •"Just as Americans had triumphed over the wilderness of the continent during the frontier experience, so the continuing narration of American destiny necessitated triumph over other threats. A central threat to the continued unfolding of American destiny has of course been the specter of global communism, a new articulation of barbarism set to test the resolve and dynamism of the American ideas of freedom and democracy. " —Joanne P. Sharp [In early part of 20th century]..."Popular magazines were geared economically toward the American middle class and both embodied and reproduced the consumerist beliefs of this social group. In short, these magazines helped to perpetuate middle-class subjects as consumer-citizens." —Joanne P. Sharp, in a chapter about magazines in the book Condensing the Cold War (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) "In tune with the general trend of the new magazines at the turn of the century, Reader's Digest spoke to its readers as American citizens. Its demarcation of specifically American concerns, the American state's role in world society, and the citizen's role in American society has helped mold a sense of national cohesion among its readers." —[again] Joanne P. Sharp Readers would enter a specific geographic destination in Reader's Digest... because the magazine was an mindset, almost like a place.... not just a platform for writers. Every story was curated carefully. Placed carefully. Illustrated carefully. The editors worked their butts off. Wallace spent lots of time trimming, trimming, trimming. Lorimer worked all the time. Choosing and editing and presenting stories. Key points about these mass-market magazines •They projected a vision that could be defined as: "All is well when Americans live upright, wage-earning lives." •The stories and illustrations celebrated simple homey values. •They celebrated the power of the United States and democracy. •Their strong editors catered to their readers but also molded them. •Entering their pages was like entering a specific geographic destination.