Teaching Essay – Journalism History journal

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 202025 Jun 2020

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…

Greene-Blye Essay: Finding Sources to Amplify Native-American Voices

7 Apr 20202 Apr 2020

“Great Men, Savages, and the End of the Indian Problem” (Journalism History, March 2020) uses historical examples to examine some of the reasons that our nation’s contemporary news media often…

Shemberger Essay: Education Reporting in the Civil Rights Era

11 Feb 20205 Feb 2020

“Southern Education Report: An Examination of a Magazine’s Contribution to Education News in the Civil Rights Era” (Journalism History, December 2019) sheds light on how one of journalism’s most important…

Bedingfield Essay: Roy Wilkins, Journalism History, and Law-and-Order Rhetoric

Roy Wilkins is best known as an activist who led the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement and its aftermath. But my recent article, “The Journalism of Roy Wilkins and…

Smith Essay: Women Journalists, Hard News, and Newsroom Diversity

16 Sep 201917 Sep 2019

“‘Raising Unshirted Hell’: The Journalism of Norma Fields, State Capitol Correspondent for the Northeast (MS) Daily Journal” (June 2019) examines the career of the first woman to cover state politics…