Lamme, Margot Opdycke, and Lisa Mullikin Parcell. Promoting Hershey: The Chocolate Bar, The Chocolate Town, The Chocolate King. 198-208.
Before the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar debuted in 1900 at five cents, chocolate bars had been a luxury known only to those Americans who could afford imported “eating chocolate” from Europe. By 1906 Hershey’s chocolate bars were so popular, Milton Hershey proclaimed that Hershey dominated the market and redirected his promotional efforts away from consumer advertising. Raised in the Mennonite faith, Hershey identified with Mennonite principles that, in part, taught their followers to help others and to abhor self-promotion and obvious signs of commercial wealth. Thus, he focused on promotional strategies that conveyed deeper and more complex ideas to employees, consumers, and visitors about the value of quality, community, harmony, purity, and social compassion, which, in turn, reflected back upon the company, the brand, the town, and the man.
Gerl, Ellen J., and Craig L. Davis. Selling Detroit on Women: Woman’s Day and Auto Advertising, 1964-82. 209-220.
From 1964 to 1982, automotive journalist Julie Candler’s monthly column in Woman’s Day helped readers navigate the male sphere of driving with useful tips from purchasing to maintaining a car. The popular women’s magazine published the “Woman at the Wheel” column to attract auto advertising, but it never did. This paper examines the representation of the woman car driver and themes present in the “Woman at the Wheel” column and reasons for its failure to attract auto ads. Textual analysis, interviews, and archival research show that Detroit automakers’ gendered bias of the female car buyer kept them from advertising in women’s periodicals such as Woman’s Day.
Journalism historians specify 1903 to 1912 as an era of muckraking when national magazines crusaded for economic, political, and social reforms. The era began when McClure’s devoted its entire January 1903 issue to exposé articles. Soon, several other monthly periodicals informed readers about numerous examples of bribery, price fixing of consumer products by corporations, and other corrupt practices. For a variety of reasons, magazines had ended their muckraking efforts by the time Hearst’s Magazine began its exposé serials during 1912. Hearst’s standards of muckraking differed considerably from those of other magazines, however, featuring a lack of documentary evidence, melodramatic storytelling, and outright fabrication of information. Also, publisher William Randolph Hearst used some exposé articles to attack his political enemies. Hearst’s continued these serials until 1914.
Melillo, Wendy. “A Keg of Dynamite and You’re Sitting On It”: An Analysis of the Ad Council’s Atomic Energy Campaign. 233-242.
In 1946, the scientists who worked on the federal government’s Manhattan Project requested that the organization then known as the War Advertising Council prepare a public service advertising campaign to educate Americans about the need to establish an international authority to control atomic energy. An analysis of this campaign, which failed because the fractious scientists couldn’t agree on the best way to achieve the campaign’s aim, has implications for current concerns. Like the atomic physicists who could not agree on the best approach to achieving international control of atomic energy, today’s scientists lack a cohesive voice in the debates about climate change and intelligent design. It is not enough to assume, as the scientists do, that all people will act rationally if given enough information.
Babington, Stuart. “I’m Going to Introduce Them Again and Again”: Morris Udall’s Attempts to Protect Independent Newspapers, 1975-1982. 243-252.
From 1975 to 1981, Congressman Morris K. Udall of Arizona led a legislative fight to save the independent, family-owned newspaper at a time when there was still an opportunity, however small, to confront the industry trend of group ownership. Though initially unsuccessful in his attempts to garner support, Udall finally drew an attentive audience when he focused his efforts on a tax structure that he believed was responsible for an all-too-common scenario: Newspaper groups’ demand for additional properties was driving up the real market value of newspapers, therefore increasing the state and federal estate tax burden for owners wishing to leave their properties to their heirs. This research explores the debate that accompanied the nation’s strongest attempt to preserve the independent, family-owned newspaper. Volume 39, No. 1 Spring 2013
Carey, Michael Clay. Community Journalism in a Secret City: The Oak Ridge Journal, 1943-48. 2-14.
In 1943 the federal government approved publication of the Oak Ridge Journal, a weekly sent to residents at one of three secret towns created to develop the Manhattan Project. This in-depth review of the Journal’s content reveals that early issues focused mainly on government propaganda aimed at workers, but over time the publication grew to look and read more like a traditional community newspaper. Even as it evolved, government censorship was still evident. This study suggests that, despite propaganda and censorship, the Oak Ridge Journal helped develop a sense of community among the residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Watts, Liz. AP’s First Female Reporters. 15-28.
As of 1926, the Associated Press had not hired women to work as reporters. With the appointment of Kent Cooper as general manager, the first woman reporter was hired in that year, followed by the hiring of seven more women who worked at either the AP’s New York or Washington, D.C., bureaus between 1928 and 1931. These women reporters provided American readers with numerous stories of women’s activities, their style of dress, and other social news. They covered women athletes, women active in politics, and wives of officials, but they did not cover the most important assignments because that territory was claimed by their male counterparts. For the first time, AP assigned women to cover the wives of the presidential candidates, women at the political conventions, and women in the presidential inaugurations.
Pressman, Matthew. Black and White and Red All Over?: Reassessing Newspapers’ Role in the Red Scare of 1919. 29-39.
Most historians writing about America’s 1919 Red Scare have claimed that the press, by exaggerating and sensationalizing the threat from radical leftists, helped foment a national hysteria. This article, focusing primarily on New York City’s top three morning newspapers, argues that the press in 1919 did not irresponsibly stoke public fear. While most papers supported the government’s crackdown on suspected radicals and took management’s side in labor disputes, the overall sense they conveyed was that the radicals were ineffectual and the authorities firmly in control. Some newspapers, moreover, such as the New York American (the flagship of William Randolph Hearst’s powerful chain), covered strikes fairly and downplayed the unrest roiling the country. Examining the circumstances and pressures under which each newspaper operated, this article explores what shaped their coverage and argues that their greatest impact was not on the public, but on politicians.
DeBrosse, Jim. “Four Dead in Ohio”: How the Media Ignored the Threat of Deadly Force at Kent State University May 4, 1970. 40-49.
When Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on protestors at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, killing four students and injuring nine others, many students, if not most, thought the shots were blanks until the wounded and dying began to fall around them. Why the use of live ammunition surprised both students and faculty members has been largely unexplored in media history research, even though state officials warned repeatedly in a press conference the day before the shootings that they would use “any means necessary” to maintain order on campus. Based on oral histories, archived audio files, extensive interviews with eyewitnesses and assigned reporters, and an examination of the news media available to the Kent State community at the time, this paper argues that the guard-dog theory of the press and Chomsky’s propaganda model help explain the failure by the local media to warn victims of the imminent threat of deadly force.
Murray, Michael D. In the Storm of the Eye: A Conversation with Dan Rather. 50-57.
Volume 39, No. 2 Summer 2013
Cronin, Mary. “The North Is to Us Like the Grave”: Albert D. Richardson’s and Junius Browne’s Confederate Prison Letters. 66-81.
In May 1863, New York Tribune correspondents Albert D. Richardson and Junius Browne, along with Richard Colburn of the New York World, were captured as they attempted to run the Confederate batteries near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on a Union military flotilla. While Colburn was paroled almost immediately, Richardson and Browne were not. The two Tribune correspondents were held for almost twenty months in a series of seven Confederate prisons. The men’s letters to family members and colleagues illustrate and illuminate the human toll that resulted from the imprisonment of civilian non-combatants as authorities on both sides of the conflict regularly suspended prisoner exchanges. The letters also demonstrate that the social construction of the reporter began in earnest during the U.S. Civil War years.
Fuhlhage, Michael. “The Most Solemn and Impressive Duty”: New York Tribune ReporterAlbert Deane Richardson’s Post-Captivity Campaign to Relieve Suffering Prisoners during the Civil War. 82-93.
New York Tribune correspondent Albert Deane Richardson followed his December 1864 escape from a Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina, with a campaign to relieve the suffering Civil War POWs he left behind. Through testimony to Congress, articles in newspapers and magazines, and lectures on the lyceum circuit, Richardson marshaled public outrage to pressure the U.S. government to resume prisoner exchanges or use the threat of retaliation to force the Confederates to treat their prisoners humanely. Richardson’s letters reveal he carefully coordinated his testimony and publication of evidence about abuses at Salisbury. Analysis of his public communication reveals he tapped the power of a storytelling genre whose history stretched from the Civil War back to the nation’s origins: the captivity narrative.
Mizuno, Takeya. An Enemy’s Talk of “Justice”: Japanese Radio Propaganda against Japanese American Mass Incarceration during World War II. 94-103.
This article examines how a Japanese short-wave radio propaganda network, as known as “Radio Tokyo,” commented on mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during the first year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As the Army began to execute mass incarceration, so did Radio Tokyo begin its serial propaganda attacks. Japanese propagandists branded the policy as evidence of American hypocrisy revealing the actual hollow nature of the nation’s “democratic” ideals. They used a variety of methods such as referring to famed political figures and issues in American history, citing neutral sources, and borrowing dissenting opinions from major American mass media. Radio Tokyo utilized fictitious programs, too. Japanese broadcasters proclaimed the moral superiority of Japan and even threatened to mistreat American captives, which certainly affected the minds and deeds of government officials in charge of mass incarceration. These findings demonstrate that mass incarceration was not only a serious violation of basic human rights, but also a problematic measure in terms of international propaganda warfare.
Gallon, Kim, “How Much Can You Read about Interracial Love and Sex without Getting Sore?”: Readers’ Debate over Interracial Relationships in the Baltimore Afro-American. 104-114.
Interracial marriage and relationships were illegal in much of the United States in the early twentieth century. The black press devoted a great deal of attention to this topic, often connecting it to African Americans’ encounters with racism and their struggle for civil rights. Part of this coverage in the national black weekly newspaper the Baltimore Afro-American included short and serial fictional stories on interracial romance. These stories, however, were often a contested medium among readers. Thus, a public debate occurred over the question of interracial romance stories and their place in the Baltimore Afro-American over the course of four months in 1934. This article examines this debate. Ultimately, interracial romance stories brought readers into conversation with each other and the Baltimore Afro-American to create a discourse that tied interracial romance to the African American battle for equality in the early twentieth century.
Mislan, Cristina. An “Obedient Servant”: Internationalizing and Capitalizing on Blackness in Marcus Garvey’s Negro World. 115-125.
Throughout its history, the black press called for the liberation of communities of color worldwide and strived to establish an image of blackness that was counter to notions perpetuated in the mainstream media and society. In the early twentieth century, the Negro World, the official organ of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association, played a crucial role in fostering black internationalism as a movement that had political, economic, and social implications for black communities worldwide. This article examines editorials published in Garvey’s Negro World from 1924 through 1926 and argues that the newspaper called for the destruction of white capitalism and Western colonialism while simultaneously embracing Western ideals of advancement and applying those to communities of color around the world. Such messages provide insight into how a black newspaper embraced both a radical and pro-Western ideology (even while the newspaper’s editorials condemned Western colonialism) in relation to the development of an early twentieth-century black internationalist movement. This study, therefore, contrasts with previous literature on the Negro World that positions Garvey’s newspaper as an anticolonial media tool. Furthermore, it illustrates how black journalism in the early twentieth century promoted global solidarity among black people throughout the black Atlantic world. Volume 39, No. 3 Fall 2013
Roessner, Amber. “The ‘Ladies’ & The ‘Tramps’: The Negotiation of a ‘Woman’s Place’ in the National Pastime in Sporting Life.” 134-44.
This study considers the negotiation of a woman’s place in the national pastime—and by extension greater American culture—in the pages of Sporting Life (SL) and other media outlets in the 1880s. Microfilm of a census of 348 SL issues from the publication’s inception in March 1883 to December 1889 was scanned for any references to women, ladies, or females in baseball.Ninety-four articles were identified and examined through an interpretative textual analysis. The manuscript illuminates four modes through which SL addressed women’s participation in baseball—pronounced skepticism, selective incorporation, backlash, and silence—and the overarching binary that emerged in the representation of female baseball enthusiasts. The piece also considers how debates over gender were shrouded in discourses about class and religion.
Simpson, Edgar. “‘Predatory Interests’ and ‘The Common Man’: Scripps, Pinchot, and the Nascent Environmental Movement, 1908 to 1910.” 145-55.
Gifford Pinchot was the chief promoter of a new plan to shepherd the United States’ natural resources for future generations. But when his primary supporter, President Theodore Roosevelt, left office, Pinchot found himself embroiled in a fight with the new Taft administration. Battles included clandestine meetings on a rolling yacht off the coast of California, charges of treachery from both sides, and a vitriolic U.S. Senate investigation. The result would decide not just Pinchot’s future but also the fate of the nascent environmental movement. E.W. Scripps stepped into the fray to shield Pinchot, putting his massive news empire—at the time the largest in the nation with access to as many as 24 million readers—at Pinchot’s disposal, including the efforts of his most prominent reporter, Gilson Gardner. This study, which used microfilm versions of newspapers of the period, the E.W. Scripps Archive Collection, and existing scholarship, addresses this episode where journalism intersected with American environmental history. Further, this study examines Scripps’ willingness (at times insistence) on using his empire to advance his personal agenda, years before World War I, the era most previous scholarship has addressed.
Dowling, David. “The Nineteenth-Century Weekly Press and the Tumultuous Career of Journalist Leon Lewis.” 156-67.
The weekly press of the nineteenth century constituted a vigorous presence in journalism history often overshadowed by the partisan and penny presses. Typically seen as an instrument of progressive social change, the weekly press was also a commercial powerhouse that attracted profit-seeking publishers and editors such as Robert Bonner and flashy sensationalist journalists like Leon Lewis. Bonner’s New-York Ledger (1855-1898), which employed Lewis, was the best selling American paper of the nineteenth century, second in the world only to the London Journal. Lewis’s journalistic career—which met with fraud, extortion, and even attempted murder—reflects the underworld of weekly press business strategy, practice, and ethics.
Pribanic-Smith, Erika. “Partisan News and the Third-Party Candidate: Press Coverage of James G. Birney’s 1844 Presidential Campaign.” 168-78.
By the 1844 presidential election, the United States was fully entrenched in a national two-party system that pitted Whigs against Democrats. Meanwhile, American newspapers were predominantly partisan organs that promoted their respective parties while attacking their opponents. Some special interest publications advocated for causes such as abolition. James G. Birney, a slaveholder turned abolitionist, entered the 1844 race as a third-party candidate. This article studied coverage of his race in Democratic, Whig, and Liberty papers from New York, Kentucky, Alabama, and Ohio to determine whether abolitionist newspapers acted as a party press as well as how the two major parties’ newspapers treated the outsider. The two abolitionist journals became partisan organs for the Liberty candidate, advocating Birney and his platform while attacking the enemy. In the Democrat and Whig papers, coverage of the Liberty campaign consisted of linking Birney to the opposing party through rampant accusations of coalitions and forgeries. Volume 39, No. 4, Winter 2014
Garza, Melita M. “Sword and Cross in San Antonio: Reviving the Spanish Conquest in Depression-Era News Coverage.” 198-207.
Remembering and capitalizing on San Antonio’s Spanish colonial empire became a pastime and a policy of the Alamo city and its dominant English-language newspaper during the Great Depression. While Spanish nostalgia had antecedents in the late nineteenth century’s conservation sensibilities, it reached an apogee in San Antonio during the years 1929 through 1934. This period coincided with the deepest recessionary period of the Depression decade, a time when anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Mexican sentiment flourished. This article comparatively examines the way English- and Spanish-language daily newspaper coverage constructed the reality of San Antonio’s Spanish-speaking founders at a time when their descendants, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, were often reviled and subjected to repatriation.
Gamache, Ray. “Breaking Eggs for a Holodomor: Walter Duranty, the New York Times, and the Denigration of Gareth Jones.” 208-18.
The purpose of this article is to delineate the circumstances and contexts within which the denigration of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones occurred by offering a detailed chronology of the events surrounding the publication of his first Russian famine article on March 31, 1933, also the date of Walter Duranty’s famine-denying article that denigrated Jones by name. The article also analyzes the sources that chronicle the reactions by Western news media, journalists who were involved, and official responses by political leaders. Lastly, the article unpacks the representations of stakeholders who historicize Jones and his coverage of the famine, illustrated in two complementary campaigns: to commemorate Jones as a Hero of the Ukraine and to strip Walter Duranty of his 1932 Pulitzer Prize.
Lumsden, Linda J. “The New York Call: Challenges of Sustaining Socialist Identity in the Daily Newspaper Market, 1908-1923.” 219-30.
As the East’s premiere socialist daily newspaper in English, The New York Call represented an important if struggling slice of a rich print culture that spread the socialist creed and sustained the faithful. This article uses the prism of The Call to consider functions of social movement media that, in contrast to mainstream media, promote collective action instead of products. It raises the question of whether the notion of a successful social-movement journal in the mass media market is oxymoronic. Besides considering The Call’s contributions to the socialist movement, it analyzes the challenges the socialist daily faced in the capitalist-driven mass media market; examines the relationship between The Call and the mainstream press; and probes its relationship to the socialist movement, which it not only reflected but also shaped. The article concludes The Call provided a robust challenge to hegemony and played an important role as a forum for socialist discourse and as a record of New York’s labor and socialist movements. Its inability to thrive, however, reflects divisions among socialists and labor as well as financial problems and governmental repression.
Hutchison, Phillip J. “Usually White, but Not Always Great: A Journalistic Archaeology of White Hopes, 190-2013,” 231-40.
The social presence of African American boxing champion Jack Johnson reflects one of the most controversial social and media issues of the early twentieth century. Accordingly, the journalistic taglines “white hope” and “great white hope” stand out among the most socially significant legacies of the Johnson controversy. This study traces the genesis and use of these idioms from 1908 through today. Its findings illustrate how these historical phrases have become clouded with misunderstanding, and contemporary usage often is inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading. Most significant, white-hope phraseology predates the Johnson controversy by more than a century. Moreover, the boxing moniker “Great White Hope” was not emphasized during Johnson’s era; rather, it reflects 1960s phraseology that journalists interposed onto a historical artifact. The study’s archaeological orientation offers historians a more complex understanding of how, for more than a century, news and commercial interests have exploited these phrases to advance troublesome agendas.