A Preliminary Overview of the Early History of High School Journalism in the U.S.: ~1775-1925 Bruce E. Konkle, Ed.D., associate professor School of Journalism and Mass Communications University of South Carolina- Columbia 803.777.3312
[email protected] Accepted for presentation at the Scholastic Journalism Division Research Paper Sessions for the AEJMC summer conference, Washington, D.C., August 2013, and also awarded the division’s Laurence R. Campbell Research Award High School Journalism: ~1775-1925 2 A Preliminary Overview of the Early History of High School Journalism in the U.S.: ~1775-1925 Abstract Mainstream journalism has its synoptic history books, but to find a succinct history of high school journalism one must secure information from multiple sources: journal articles, theses and dissertations, scholastic journalism textbooks, state department of education curriculum archives and scholastic press association publications, among other resources. This project consolidates and updates fragmented information concerning the early years of scholastic journalism (~1775-1925) to begin creating a preliminary overview of student publications and journalism courses in America’s high schools, an initial step towards writing an in-depth history. High School Journalism: ~1775-1925 3 A Preliminary Overview of the Early History of High School Journalism in the U.S.: ~1775-1925 Introduction Mainstream journalism in the United States has its historical summaries of early newspapers– including Frank Luther Mott’s American Journalism, among many others1 – and magazines– Mott’s A History of American Magazines, among others2– but neither high school or collegiate journalism education has a definitive written history summarizing its informal beginnings before John Ward Fenno advocated college training for professional newspaper editors in The Gazette of the United States in 1789 (Wolseley & Campbell, p.