Teaching Essay – Journalism History journal

Teaching Essay: Frontier Values vs. Environmentalism in News Coverage of Colorado River Dams

26 Jun 202324 Jun 2023

Imagine a massive federal proposal to transform large parts of the United States. The plan would alter (some say destroy) wilderness areas, but its backers argue that the economic benefits…

Teaching Essay: The “Showbiz Politics” of Copyright Reform

11 Jul 20227 Jul 2022

As a Southern governor with presidential ambitions, Jimmy Carter “had treated multimillionaire [Capricorn Records co-founder Phil] Walden like a good ol’ boy—with respect.” So wrote Rolling Stone reporter Art Harris…

Grieve Essay: A Woman Journalist on the Labor Beat

23 May 202223 May 2022

Agitate, Educate, Mobilize, and Confront “Advocacy Journalism, Labor Feminism, and the Timber Worker, 1936-1940” (Journalism History, March 2022) analyzes labor journalist Julia Bertram’s combination of union activism and advocacy journalism…

Boling Essay: Cultural Significance of a Black Public Affairs Program

7 Feb 20224 Feb 2022

In 1965, WIS-TV in Columbia, SC, hired their first African American employee. A recent college graduate, Isaac Washington was excited for the opportunity, even if it meant he would be…

Quinn Essay: Reporting on Political Candidates and Elections

Nineteenth-century political candidates rarely campaigned for office. More gentlemanly it would be to stay in the background, to accept the nomination out of duty rather than out of desire. But…

Sumpter Essay: The Mutual Life Insurance Scandal

Making Public Opinion My study of the 1905 Armstrong Committee’s investigation of fraudulent practices in the life insurance industry incorporated an interesting debate about what constituted legitimate public relations practices…

Teaching Essay: An Embattled Terrain

5 Apr 202128 Jun 2021

Women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants at the Margins in U.S. Newspaper Stories, 1820-1860 Historian Barbara Welter imagined a Cult of True Womanhood[i] in the 19th Century that idealized…

Walck Essay: Teaching Journalism By and For Women

10 Feb 202111 Feb 2021

In an era when the pinnacle of American womanhood included a doting husband, a house with a white picket fence and the sound of children’s feet pattering about, the Pittsburgh…

Hirshon Essay: Exploring the Complicated History of Advertising

13 Oct 20206 Oct 2020

Long before Ritz became America’s favorite cracker, there was Uneeda Biscuit. At the turn of the century, Uneeda benefited from one of the first national campaigns to brand a food…

Roessner Essay: Recovering the Voices of the People

30 Jun 202024 Jan 2022

Answering continued calls for a cultural approach to the study of women’s history, “The Voices of Public Opinion: Lingering Structures of Feeling about Women’s Suffrage in 1917 U.S. Newspaper Letters…