SHOULD AMERICAN JOURNALISM MAKE US AMERICANS?

by Jim Sleeper

The Joan Shorenstein Center

PRESS POLITICS Discussion Paper D-38 September 1999

PUBLIC POLICY John F. Kennedy School of Government Copyright© 1999, President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved

The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Telephone (617) 495-8269 • Fax (617) 495-8696 Web Site Address: www.ksg.harvard.edu/~presspol INTRODUCTION

Howard Ziff, former journalism professor at One such innovation is illustrated in the the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and recent history of the Miami Herald and its par- former city editor of the Chicago Sun Times, last ent company, Knight-Ridder. They have reshaped year addressed a retirement party with the words the paper to reach millions of residents of the that journalism in this country “is in a time of city for whom the language, the political culture, change.” He chided himself for the phrase, and the common guiding principles of local jour- remembering a long career of classes and nalism and politics are to some degree foreign speeches, during which he too often made the and uncomfortable—at least too uncomfortable point that journalism was in “a time of change.” for many of them to have bought the paper and But now, he said, replacing irony with des- supported its advertisers when it was in English. peration, “It really is in a time of change, pro- For the growing population of former Cubans found change.” and Latin Americans in the city, now the news There is indeed a culture of American from the Herald comes in Spanish, and often newspaper journalism. It has been shaped by the with a partisanship and effusiveness that Ameri- literature and structure of the English language. can reporters get wrung out of them within two Its legal boundaries have been set by hundreds of months of their first job. For Knight Ridder, it major legal decisions from the trial of John Peter seemed to be a reasonable step toward getting Zenger to the Pentagon Papers. Its standards and the paper back in the black while serving the ethics have been constructed story by story by diversity of its potential readership. generations of reporters, editors and publishers But for Jim Sleeper, it signifies a profound of newspapers and magazines. It has been col- and, one surmises, terrible change (even though ored by such forces of history as wars, presiden- the mitosis of the Miami Herald has achieved tial personalities, and movements for racial and neither financial nor editorial success by most gender equity. And it has been shaped by tech- measures). El Nuevo Herald in this essay seems nology, from cold type to the internet. Through to stand as the first block of an American Tower these forces, a simple, common, guiding princi- of Babel, an innovation that will result in a poly- ple in the trade has grown and still stands: to glot chaos brought on by worship to the false report the daily news accurately, fairly and, as is idol of consumer marketing. carved into the granite of This essay, in fact, belongs not to a field of building, “without fear or favor.” For reporters media criticism but to the growing body of work and editors in the post-World War II era, that on the anemic state of civic participation in the principle has had a religious force to it. So com- U.S. Here at the Kennedy School, Robert Put- mon is that culture among the press that one nam and his colleagues have been making long can generalize about “the media,” confident that lists of the factors contributing to a decline in they pretty much behave (or are supposed to) civic involvement, from the decline of social within a fuzzy but real set of norms. organizations to the dominance of television. To For those who toil in American journalism, this list, Jim Sleeper adds bilingual newspaper the freedom, culture, and ethics of the American businesses. What’s on and off these lists can, of system seem to comprise the best situation for course, be quite controversial. writer and reader in the world. Newspapers else- Jim Sleeper has long been a student of the where seem either to be more rowdy, loud and boomerangs of liberal intent. He is author of The partisan, or officious and bland than their main- Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics stream American counterparts. It is not unlike of Race in New York (1990) and Liberal Racism the comfort zone any American feels stepping (Viking, 1997). He has strenuously argued his back into the familiar deliberative process of the points from inside the tent at Harper’s, The New American government from visits to countries Republic, The New Yorker, The Washington that either have too much order from too much Monthly, The Nation, The New Democrat, In government or chaos from too little. These Times, and The New Leader. And he is But these are times of change in technol- capable of being formidable; he graduated Yale, ogy, politics, and government. Howard Ziff is holds a doctorate in education from Harvard, right on many fronts: “It really is a time of taught urban studies and writing at Harvard and change, profound change.” And change requires the Cooper Union. He was a Fellow at the innovation. Shorenstein Center.

Jim Sleeper 1 He is an integrationist who believes that homogeneity near or far from where Jim Sleeper American citizenship and civic culture should places his stake. Another question worth con- transcend issues like race and language and cul- sidering, however, is just how significant such tural peculiarities that don’t conform to the changes are. Can a newspaper’s actions in Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, adjusting to a city that speaks two languages the Constitution. He believes in a common nar- truly be the harbinger of profound negative rative of the American national story. He change for society as a whole? There is ample believes that anything that reinforces racial and evidence in this paper for both sides of that ethnic divisions is bad. Sleeper is in a league debate. that, by the conventions of liberalism and con- servatism, leaves one distrusted by one’s friends William B. Parent and embraced by one’s enemies. It takes some Executive Director guts to play here. Innovations in American Government That, one guesses, is how readers will react John F. Kennedy School of Government to this essay. The temptation is to focus on the Harvard University racial and ethnic issues—to place one’s beliefs about the country on some scale of desired

2 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? by Jim Sleeper

I. The News Media and New Citizens ropolitan-area economies and political jurisdic- tions? For that matter, isn’t the maintenance of “At the Miami Herald, a Strategic U- a national civic culture—and, indeed, of a vital Turn,” read a Wall Street Journal headline on national identity—critically important to poor November 3, 1998, signaling a new direction— immigrants, who can rely only on nation-states really an unprecedented convergence—in media to vindicate and enforce their human and civil marketing and news judgment.1 “The Miami rights, and some economic protections and sup- Herald Implodes!” cried The New Yorker in a ports? While I look briefly at Spanish-language headline on the outside “wrap” of its June 7, news marketing and other efforts by “main- 1999 edition. Under Herald publisher Alberto stream” newspapers to adapt to multicultural- Ibarguen, a mass-circulation Spanish-language ism, this discussion paper is an effort to think daily, El Nuevo Herald, has been separated from more clearly about journalists’ role in shaping its English-language parent, The Miami Herald, national identity. Since journalists play that role which has also shed “Miami” from its masthead whether we want to or not, we cannot escape in heavily “Anglo” Broward County, a prime responsibility for choices like those Ibarguen circulation area just north of the predominantly and other publishers are making. Hispanic center city. The name “Miami” now Certainly many residents of the 85 percent survives on only one Herald masthead, circulat- “Anglo” Broward County have sounded or ing to the English-language minority inside the heeded alarms like “A Miami Vision of our city limits. Future?”, a long, lurid, portrait of Hispanic-dom- Such seismic shifts may be good “niche” inated corruption, crime and ethnic hostility in marketing for the parent corporation, Knight- “the nation’s capital of multiculturalism” that Ridder, which has told its newspapers around ran in a magazine published by the conservative the country to increase profitability; the Her- Washington Times.4 In a retaliatory response, ald’s goal is a 22 percent profit margin by the some of Miami’s 1.2 million Hispanics (the once- year 2000.2 More problematic for newspaper dominant Cuban community is losing some reporting itself and, indeed, for democratic poli- ground in the Census to faster-growing immi- tics, may be decisions like Ibarguen’s to main- grant groups from elsewhere in Latin America) tain two newspaper staffs that make separate have little faith in political, cultural, or linguis- news judgments to produce ethnically distinct tic assimilation to the “Anglo” mainstream.5 journalism for separate readerships in the same The Herald can claim that it’s trying to metropolitan area. (While many articles are sim- tell a tale of two cities, but really it’s telling two ply translated from one paper to the other, on tales to what it has decided are two different some days the English and Spanish papers seem cities—a fateful decision, indeed. “You can’t to be covering different worlds.)3 treat [Broward and Miami] as one market,” “Broward County and Miami are like night explains the ad executive cited above,6 and, for and day,” explained an advertising executive to many newspapers, markets are precisely what the Journal. But should they be? Must they be? ethnic enclaves in large cities have become. Can a liberal, democratic polity thrive or even Ibarguen views “technology and economic survive if its daily storytellers abandon efforts forces as defining forces of community iden- to enrich a common civic language and culture tity,” as he wrote me from a plane on his way with compelling images and editorial exhorta- home from Uruguay. He added that “Miami is tions for people who live cheek-by-jowl in met- the central communication point for all of the Caribbean and much of South America. . . . Jim Sleeper was a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center in Television, ad agencies, banks, music recording the fall of 1998. He is a veteran newspaper columnist companies all have their Latin American head- and writer on urban politics and civic culture. He was quarters here.”7 a deputy op-ed page editor and editorial writer at It may indeed be good consumer market- Newsday, 1988–1993; and the political columnist of ing to treat Miami as the Latin American ana- the New York Daily News, 1993–1996. His e-mail logue to Asia’s entrepot in Hong Kong. Miami is address is [email protected]

Jim Sleeper 3 unique among American cities, “the northern- stimulate and assist that engagement. most city of Latin America,” as many observers By that standard, doesn’t the Herald’s frag- put it, some more ruefully than proudly. Miami mentation accelerate only the balkanization of a is also unique for its high concentration of region already dangerously divided? Won’t two fanatically anti-Castro, anti-Communist or three separate papers only deepen the linguis- Cubans, whose political and economic prefer- tic, ethnic and racial divisions? Shouldn’t a ences aren’t what most liberal advocates of strong metropolitan newspaper be helping read- “multiculturalism” want to cheer. But it would ers of many backgrounds to find common refer- be simplistic to attribute the Herald’s linguistic ence points, story lines, and political principles? and cultural bifurcation mainly to Miami’s If news and editorial judgments are evi- unusually bitter, well-funded ethnocentric con- dence, the answer is apparently not—even, flicts. For elsewhere in the United States, Span- increasingly, in regions where English remains ish speakers of radically different (often much the uncontested language of mainstream news- quieter, much less affluent) cultures are also paper publication. In July, 1998, for example, the becoming new “markets” to mainstream New York Times ran a series of news stories by papers. The has invested in reporters Deborah Sontag and Celia Dugger on Exito, a Spanish-language companion to the Tri- recent immigration patterns that showed how bune, since 1993, in a city 79 percent of whose new technologies and market structures cycle newcomers since 1996 are Mexican Americans. newcomers in and out of the country with an Not only has the bought ease unimaginable in the 1920s.8 The series L’Opinion; a large Spanish-language paper, reported no efforts to induct even the more set- reacting as well to criticism of its own coverage tled of these transients into the obligations and of California referenda on affirmative action, rewards of citizenship. immigration, and bilingual education, the A Times editorial on the series abdicated Times considered publishing its own special judgment: “This is the first immigrant genera- “Latino” section in English but shelved that tion that can connect back home instanta- idea in favor of a unit of reporters who will neously by cell phone, videotape, and the “vet” stories of special interest to Latinos. Internet,” it observed simply. “Cheap airfares The Arizona Republic has established a and relaxed rules on dual citizenship also help Spanish-language website and internet link with many people maintain lifelong relationships a Mexican paper in Sonora. On New York’s Long with their ancestral lands.” The editorial Island, Newsday is about to publish a separate reprised two of the series’ vignettes: A Pakistani Spanish-language newspaper for New York City’s immigrant to Brooklyn sees and talks with his borough of Queens and eastern suburbs. Report- family back home via commercial videophone; edly, the New York Times is eyeing El Diario/La immigrants from the Mexican village of Chi- Prensa for possible purchase. The Boston Globe nantla return annually for festivals while sup- has raised eyebrows by occasionally running sto- porting much of the town by working as waiters, ries in Spanish right alongside the English origi- garment workers, and mechanics in New York. nals in its main news pages; in December, the Some plan to retire to Chinantla, counting on Globe front-paged a story on a national survey their American-born children to keep working in indicating that Spanish has outpaced French and the United States to support them. German as the language of choice among college With apparent equanimity, the editorial students who study foreign languages. went on to note that while, earlier in the cen- Such shifts certainly do pose new chal- tury, “war or persecution often barred [new lenges to civic development and good journal- immigrants’] door back home,” a recent immi- ism: Spanish-speaking and English-speaking grant named “Jesus Galvis can serve on the cultures may seem “like night and day,” but, Hackensack, New Jersey, City Council while nights and days are comprehended by the same running for a Senate seat in Colombia.” Galvis, principles of astronomy and meteorology. Simi- a travel agent, lost his Senate race. But had he larly, essentially the same political and eco- won, Sontag and Dugger reported, “he would nomic principles drive the organization of have considered holding office simultaneously metropolitan regions, where political and busi- in Bogota and Hackensack.” What does the ness leaders and ordinary citizens need more Times think of that? Readers expecting an opin- than ever before to engage both “darkness” and ion had to settle for this: “New possibilities of “light.” Newspapers don’t have to be social mis- global commuting are emerging, and New York, sionaries to believe that people rely on them to appropriately enough, stands at the center of a

4 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? new transitional immigrant culture.”9 Neither stories of Americans’ sacrifices to build a com- in the news story nor the editorial did the mon culture. Not only the Daughters of the Times even air the venerable Progressive hope American Revolution have reason to be that immigrants who live and work here—and, aggrieved at this loss; as the political scientist like Jesus Galvis, govern here—should be ener- Noah M. J. Pickus notes, when the late Barbara getically inducted into a distinctive American Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immi- civic culture or ethos. gration Reform in 1995, “she called for a revival It’s a revolutionary, if quiet, shift. In the of new programs to Americanize new immi- early 1900s, when racist nativists pronounced grants, noting that Americanization ‘earned a most immigrants unworthy to become Ameri- bad reputation when it was stolen by racists and cans, Progressive advocates of Americanization xenophobes in the 1920s. . . . But it is our word retorted that, with intelligent assimilation, new- and we are taking it back.’” Surely she would comers could become as worthy as the natives feel aggrieved now, too. themselves. And the champions of assimilation But it is important to be clear about how prevailed. The idea caught on so well that, as the and why it has come to this. Jordan’s declara- political scientist Lawrence Fuchs recounts, in tion is all-but-forgotten not because publishers 1921 even the Daughters of the American Revo- and editors are captives to some leftist ideology lution published a manual for immigrants in or post-modern philosophical relativism. Nor, I English and seventeen other languages, saying: think, has her mission been abandoned because journalists fear demagogic charges of “insensi- To the men and women who come from far-off tivity” like those which Cuban exiles have lands to seek a new home in America and become rained down upon the Herald and which some its loyal supporters and citizens, the DAR extend a black and other ethnic leaders have ballyhooed cordial welcome. We ask you to make yourselves in other big cities. Few immigrants and mem- worthy to become a citizen of our country, to bers of disadvantaged minorities share the cer- study its history, to become acquainted with its tainties of a few self-proclaimed spokespersons literature, its traditions, and its laws. . . . It is a that using English and propounding some com- proud honor to have American citizenship con- mon political principles and civic virtues ferred upon you. It is more honorable to deserve amounts to Eurocentrism or racism. No, the such citizenship. . . . [T]his is a land of opportunity news media have shed Jordan’s mission mainly for all. We offer you these opportunities.10 because new economic and technological cur- rents are driving them almost unthinkingly to That declamation may prompt skepticism divide the world into ethnic markets and to sen- today (to whom, really, was the DAR promising sationalize racial and ethnic conflicts, even equal opportunity?), but it became a standard to when the latter are staged by opportunists, not which people struggling to prove themselves “the people.” “worthy” of full citizenship could appeal. Citi- Earlier in this century, technological break- zenship was understood not as an exclusive eth- throughs (telegraphs, railroads) and new eco- nic or economic club, but as noble participation nomic practices and entities (tariffs, in a great democratic project to integrate diverse continent-spanning trusts, expanding corporate identities into valuable endeavors, to enable prerogatives, and imperialism) strengthened Americans to know a good in common which American national identity, not necessarily in we could not know alone. By comparison the ways we like to remember. In turn, a strong recent Times editorial leaves uncontested the national state and “culture” facilitated those assumption, fashionable in some quarters, that breakthroughs and prerogatives. No wonder that assimilation into an American identity is mass-circulation newspapers told variants of a unworthy of immigrants’ attention. It is almost common national story line; after all, they as if the Times, the Herald, and other main- themselves embodied and stood to profit from stream media have discarded, without so much the latest technologies and corporate interests. as a fare-thee-well, any notion that Americans And news media had another incentive to be ought to nourish a trans-ethnic national civic nationalistic, this one based in their unique culture, open to those who are truly willing to capacity to update and reinforce national narra- give themselves to its unending creation. tives quickly, for millions of people, at critical And it is almost as if journalists are abdi- historical moments. cating a responsibility—and passing up a won- Many journalists gloried in that capacity, derful opportunity—to tell true and inspiring even as social reformers protested that media

Jim Sleeper 5 barons were abusing it by promoting imperial- media that are hostage to relentless consumer ism. But the economic and technological trans- marketing, which panders or titillates rather formations that were attracting unprecedented than educates. Many Americans who struggle to immigration convinced Progressive social build or revive a common culture, in local com- reformers and capitalist elites alike of the need munities and nationally, often at some eco- for national narratives and national unity: nomic cost or risk, are simply turning away Reformers sought a powerful state to direct from mainstream journalism, which poses the economic and technological change toward wor- wrong challenges and dodges the real ones they thy social ends; captains of industry saw in it a face. The nationalist media of the past also protector and a carrier of their investments. The posed challenges wrongly and dodged others media were central in these reckonings; not for greatly. But we are erring fatally in the other nothing did Lincoln Steffens’ muckraking boost direction. A comparison with the past might Progressive reform and did William Randolph prove instructive. Hearst virtually create the Spanish-American War. II. The Media and Assimilation, 1920 Today, in contrast, national identity is weakened by new technologies (as the Internet, America is not primarily a piece of land nor a language, videophones, and airline travel facilitate a rapid- nor a church, nor a race, but rather a high level of ity of contacts across barriers of time and space human attainment. —Des Moines Register editorial, June 1, 1918, and even language). Arguably, too, national iden- rebuking Iowans who sought to ban the tity is weakened by the reigning economic enti- German language in public schools and to limit ties and policies (multinational corporations, it in parochial schools and church sermons.11 “free” trade, new transnational entities and cur- Early in this century, as a deluge of more rencies such as the Euro). News conglomerates than 20 million immigrants from southern and such as CNN and national newspaper compa- eastern Europe brought unprecedented cultural nies such as the New York Times and Knight- diversity to Anglo-Saxon Protestant America, Ridder reflect and accelerate that weakening. newspaper editors trying to send clear signals They do so not ideologically, but functionally; about what the country should become strug- not fervently but dispassionately, like the Times gled to balance two irreconcilable demands. The editorial cited above and like linguistically first was made by working-class whites and elite bifurcated urban dailies that are courting ethnic writers such as Madison Grant, who feared that constituencies they otherwise don’t expect to inferior immigrant “races” (a term they applied absorb, as they might be able to do were the not only to nonwhites but also, and with great larger society making greater linguistic, cultural vigor, to whites from outside northwestern or political conformity a price of admission. Europe) would corrupt their communities and Today’s powerful economic and technological take their jobs. They wanted the undesirables forces drive news media to cater to sometimes- barred from the country or deported or con- fabricated ethnic markets and to sensationalize signed to hard, subordinate labor, as Chinese, conflicts—boosting demand through titillation, Mexican, and countless white-ethnic immigrant not socialization. workers were.12 The consequences imperil journalism and Against such nativism, a second demand this unusual country: A more coherent Ameri- came with heart-tugging eloquence from some can national identity needn’t be racist or other- immigrant leaders and American champions of wise oppressive or vapidly “white bread,” as ethnic pluralism, such as Horace Kallen and some claim in trying to rationalize our abdica- Randolph Bourne. Deploring not only nativist tions. On the contrary, in a world of failed leftist bigotry but much that they considered degrading ideologies and empty relativisms, a strong in the dominant business culture, the pluralists American civic culture may offer a unique well- defended an often-retaliatory ethnocentrism that spring of energies to advance human rights and prefigured militant strains in today’s multicul- the dignity that comes with meeting moral turalism. In their view, newcomers were prey to responsibilities to strangers across lines of color, the demeaning coercions and seductions of an creed, and sometimes even class. That argument industrial capitalism legitimated by the preten- about American identity is beyond the scope of sions of an Anglo-conformist elite. Instead of this paper, but I suggest that the civic culture straining to prove themselves worthy of such a upon which it depends is being newly and more culture, they argued, newcomers should defend deeply drained and distorted by publicly traded

6 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? ethnic identities they’d brought from abroad, Progressive journalists seldom doted on often in flight from oppression. newcomers’ distinctive cultural roots; they This pluralist argument and vision were demanded simply that immigrants be given eco- suppressed by the patriotic fervors of World War nomic opportunity. A New York Times editorial I and for more than a decade afterward. Ethnic of April 24, 1888 opposed the importation holdouts were disdained as “hyphenated Ameri- (often, the smuggling) of Chinese labor gangs cans” by nativist champions of a “100-percent into New York not because the paper was Americanism.” Yet a richer, more welcoming nativist but because it believed that civic virtue appreciation of national identity animated part depended on economic decency: “It is as impor- of the Americanization movement, which the tant that American citizenship should not be so journalist William McGowan describes as a downgraded by immigration as that the eco- “conscious drive to heat and stir the melting nomic needs of the country should be answered pot” and “a government-assisted civic crusade by it.”14 But with economic opportunity came to teach American civic values and the English an obligation to assimilate, because Progressives language.”13 believed that economic and political health— From the 1880s until the early 1970s, and workers’ health—depended on the latter’s champions of this enlightened Americanization internalizing some variant of the Protestant tried to reconcile ethnic pluralism with a com- ethic that had figured in capitalism’s own rise. mon national culture. Without that, they feared, Precisely because the country was becom- pluralism would become as divisive as nativism ing more diverse, in this view, it could prosper itself. So movement leaders such as the journal- only by inculcating values transcending those of ist and Progressive activist Frances Kellor insular, tradition-bound minorities. In 1902 the preached an enlightened assimilation as the Times warned that without more stringent natu- alternative both to nativist bigotry and to a ralization, “the assimilative powers of the great retaliatory, equally narrow ethnocentrism. They Republic shall not be equal to the task of weav- added that assimilation isn’t wholly a one-way ing all these threads of diverse races into a street; in smart assimilation, newcomers strug- homogeneous whole.” gling to claim an American destiny pour their Revealingly, the Times cautioned not only own cultural gifts into a dominant, democratic against racist nativism but also against a victim- ethos. status multiculturalism that bases cultural A two-tiered society is the result, in this “identity” on grievance: The nativist cry, Progressive pluralist view: On one tier, many “‘America for Americans’ is on the one hand as Americans would be raised in religious or ethnic short-sighted . . . as ‘America, the refuge of the subcultures, the best of which nurture universal oppressed of all nations’ [the multicultural cry] aspirations. On a higher level, many would grad- is on the other.” Illiterate peasants who uate into a national civic culture whose own dis- expected to prosper as factory workers (and ciplines, arts, and affections were drawn from union members) needed intensive socializa- the varied subcultures, yet transcendant of them. tion—guided by clear signals (from both captains Our national civic culture would be a rolling of industry and social reformers) that a common synthesis of demographic, technological, and eco- American national culture was the best guaran- nomic forces which the country itself was doing tor of prosperity and justice. so much to unleash. At best, the result would be Sending such signals wasn’t going to be what the Des Moines Register called “a high easy. By 1920 there were more than a thousand level of human attainment” that, like jazz, tran- daily and weekly foreign-language papers in the scends its racial and ethnic wellsprings to ride United States, reaching four or five million read- and ennoble strong currents of feeling and ers. More than a few were edited by ethnocen- change it can’t wholly control. A full citizen tric activists, refugees who hoped to return to would take pride in entering a jury room, for their homelands and were ambivalent about example, not as the delegate of a racial or ethnic America, even as they relied on its freedoms. group, but as an American, committed to judge But most of these journalists’ readers were more the evidence and the defendant by standards assimilation-minded. Capitalist elites, seeking shared with jurors of other backgrounds. Along productive workers, and Progressives, seeking a with politics, pedgagogy, and cultural perfor- national movement to curb corporate rapacity, mances, the news media, in this view, would wanted to draw them to different but sometimes play a vital role in driving “smart” assimilation’s compatible models of citizenship. From immi- production of a common American identity. grant-neighborhood settlement houses and

Jim Sleeper 7 churches to corporate boardrooms and factory Enter the American Association of Foreign managers’ offices, the consensus spread that Language Newspapers, an interesting “advertis- newcomers needed rigorous American instruc- ing agency” created by the elusive entrepreneur tion and uplift. Louis Hammerling in 1908 to exploit those pub- The industrialist Coleman I. Du Pont, who lishers.17 Advertising had already surpassed sub- chaired the Inter-Racial Council, a successor to scriptions as the chief revenue source for main the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Americaniza- stream American newspapers, but foreign-lan- tion Committee, remarked in 1919, guage papers struggled along with ads from local ethnic doctors and other service-providers who There’s a lot of good industrial light hidden under spoke readers’ languages. These papers were also a bushel that would tend to dispel this Bolshevism refuges for fraudulent ads, rejected by English- cloud and answer specifically and practically the language papers, for useless “patent medicines,” attacks on capital, if the people knew about it. . . . miracle cures, and quack doctors; in the 1920s, The businessmen of America are not afraid of the 45 percent of advertising in the San Francisco truth being told, but they want it to be the truth. Chinese daily Chung Sai Yat Po, was for patent So we said, is the [foreign-language] press which medicines.18 reaches these people telling both sides of the Hammerling’s genius was to make these story? Is America getting a square deal, or are the papers attractive to respectable national advertis- home countries and customs and traditions and ers by organizing the publishers to offer attrac- institutions holding the fort? Is the American gov- tive rates for multiple placements in several ernment getting a show or is it being knocked papers at once. As immigrant newspapers eternally?15 became dependent on his association for ad revenue (from which he took a commission), A more productive synthesis of capitalism Hammerling induced some to print articles sym- and social reform was articulated by Frances Kel- pathetic to their readers’ employers—who, lor, who headed the Progressive Party’s research thanks to him, were now advertisers in their and publicity department and, later American- own workers’ newspapers. That helped capital- ization programs at the federal Bureau of Educa- ists like Coleman DuPont “dispel the Bolshevist tion. Combining what William McGowan calls cloud” darkening workers’ minds. Hammerling “a reformer’s passion for social improvement personally mediated some labor conflicts with a nationalist’s insistence on assimilation,” between his association’s readers and advertisers, Kellor developed a powerful platform “to sometimes as an honest broker who helped ful- make all these people one nation.” One way fill DuPont’s noblest expectations of dialogue. she intended to Americanize the immigrant, But Hammerling also induced some papers the sociologist Robert Park noted in 1922, to run Republican and other political endorse- was ments, a strategy that foundered when, shortly before American entry into World War I, he co- to invite his co-operation and use his own institu- erced papers to publish “An Appeal to the Ameri- tions in the process. The immigrant press was use- can People” not to manufacture and sell muni- ful to the United States in winning the World War. tions to France, Britain, and other enemies of It should be quite as valuable, it would seem, in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Assumed to have time of peace....The foreign-language press, if it been paid by Austrian agents to design and circu- preserves old memories, is at the same time the late the ad, he was forced to testify before Sena- gateway to new experiences. For this reason for- tors investigating the industry. The charge was eign-language papers are frequently agencies of not proved, but he was induced to retire, where- Americanization in spite of themselves. They are upon Frances Kellor took over the association “to always Americanizing influences when they print carry on Hammerling’s business in a legitimate the news or even, as Miss Frances Kellor contends, manner,” as the sociologist Park put it drily. when they advertise American goods.16 Promoting assimilation not with the stick of nativist rage but with the carrot of civic and The idea wasn’t to pander but to co-opt, capitalist incentives to greater opportunity, Kel- and to do it for civic as well as commercial gain. lor recruited national advertisers—Mazola Oil, And if Americanizers like DuPont were willing Washington Crisps cereal—for the Italian Il Pro- to pay to reach immigrant readers, foreign-lan- gresso, the Greek Atlantis, the Yiddish newspa- guage publishers were more than willing to be pers, and others. “One million dollars . . . spent paid for running their ads. in selling American goods to the foreign born in

8 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? America will do more good than all the investiga- life here—if I can’t get my newspaper into your tions [of foreign subversion] ever set on foot, sim- hands. And I am far less likely to get it into your ply because the [foreign-language] publishers will hands if I insist on making you buy a pound of feel that America cares and is their friend, and English when all you can use is a quarter pound wants them to make good, and they will return of Spanish.” (Ibarguen is referring to the fact it,” she wrote. that when the Herald produced a limited Span- Kellor underscored an important truth: Even ish-language edition, tucked inside the English if exiles who wrote ethnocentric manifestos one, he watched Hispanic news dealers pull out thought the United States just a staging ground and sell the Spanish section but return the Eng- for projects back home, most of their readers lish-language husk for refunds.)20 were busy becoming Americans, and among their Actually, Ibarguen’s argument for a Span- bridges to this land of opportunity were ads for ish-language paper isn’t “as simple” as that. He American products offered in languages they also believes that advertising in Spanish is a could read. Whether through operators like Ham- great assimilator, at least when national adver- merling or stateswomen like Kellor, the United tisers are shepherded into print by news corpora- States at the start of the century assimilated tions that guarantee professional and broad immigrants less through outright repression—and distribution: “Try to remember the last time even less through pandering—than through coop- you saw a full-page ad for Bloomingdale’s, Amer- tation and seduction. ican Airlines or even Macy’s in El Diario/La To be sure, mainstream papers often Prensa or in the short-lived El Daily News,” he indulged a nativist hostility that found its way brags, contrasting his El Nuevo Herald with two into government programs during the war and of New York’s Spanish-language papers, the first into the 1920s. I could fill the rest of this paper a moribund local sheet with a circulation of with citations such as the following from a New 50,000, the latter a failed Daily News Spanish York Times editorial of 1880: “insert” like the old Miami Herald’s.) Ibarguen’s faith in top-of-the-line advertis- We know how stubbornly conservative of his dirt ing recalls the Progressive Kellor’s endorsement and ignorance is the average immigrant who settles of national advertising as a medium of smart in New York, particularly if he is of a clannish race assimilation. Indeed, today’s foreign-language like the Italians. Born in squalor, raised in filth and publishers want such ads just as much as their misery and kept at work almost from infancy, these predecessors of the 1920s did. But they resent wretched beings change their abode, but not their incursions by big “Anglo” publishers like habits, in coming to New York. . . . A bad Irish- Knight-Ridder, especially when the latter are American boy is about as unwholesome a product led by Hispanics such as Ibarguen, who some as was ever reared in any body politic . . .19 ethnocentrists accuse of siphoning profits from Hispanic media that are “independently owned” But to dwell on such views would be to and presumptively less assimilationist. miss their evolution into subtler, more enlight- Recently, Editor and Publisher reported that ened calls for assimilation as an antidote not just to balkanization but also to caste oppression In an apparent jab at the increasing number of that violated the Progressive vision. More mainstream newspapers and magazines fielding important, to dwell on past nativist excesses Spanish-language editions, . . . the National Asso- would be to miss a more pressing challenge ciation of Hispanic Publications is taking special today—the media’s abdication of its capacity to action to prominently identify Hispanic publica- sustain smart assimilation. tions that are actually owned by Hispanics. . . . In explaining the move, NAHP president Eddie Esco- III. The Media and Assimilation, 1999 bido said, “Hispanics are sick of being ignored and Return now, for comparison, to the ambi- negatively portrayed by the mainstream media for guities of today’s bilingual marketing. The Her- decades and are now being discovered solely ald’s Ibarguen doesn’t see any conflict between because of our rising purchasing power.” . . . ethnic-market segmentation and a stronger civic NAHP claims 115 member publications with a culture. “It’s as simple as this,” he told me. “[If combined audited circulation of 7 million . . . The you’re a new immigrant here,] I can’t help you total number of Hispanic and bilingual publica- assimilate—or even help you manage your tions in the U.S. is estimated at 300 and 400.21

Jim Sleeper 9 The NAHP hopes to hold off People en tions seem to be counting on this. “Somewhere Espanol and El Nuevo Herald politically and between editorial nativism [that is, white culturally, as well as economically. It has a web- “Anglo” supremacy] and cultural mosaic-speak, site to help advertisers reach several of its Span- American newspapers see that if they play it ish-language outlets at the same time; the plan right, the country’s newest arrivals could give is to offer advertisers enough combined circula- them a solid readership and base,” reports tion to win some ad revenues without the edi- Brandweek.22 Hispanic buying power has risen tors having to “mainstream” their editorial at three times the rate of inflation, reaching content. But this protest, or pose of it, is partly $348 billion a year, up 65 percent since 1990, a reaction to a civic impoverishment that would according to the University of Georgia’s Selig have been unthinkable to Kellor, who expected Center for Economic Growth.23 foreign-language ads to draw immigrants into a The question is why such purchasing full, English-language citizenship that tran- power should remain segmented as “Hispanic” scended consumption. Even if Spanish advertis- at all, especially by editors who exercise news ing in Ibarguen’s hands today is a canny first judgment, not just marketing judgment. Seg- step in a dance of immigrant seduction and menting may add ethnic diversity to the shop- absorption, it is not accompanied by efforts like ping mall, but it adds little to the “public the Progressives’ to couple economic lures with square” of political life. Civic virtue doesn’t just English-language instruction and civic inspira- take care of itself, and here, I think, the media tion. Today’s media managers seek to “assimi- have responsibilities which public schools can’t late” newcomers only to markets. Politically, shoulder alone. and in the deepest sense culturally, they pander When I posed this challenge to Ibarguen, he to consumers; they don’t summon them as new did not really respond. He noted only that El citizens upon whose contributions and sacri- Nuevo Herald runs “a daily section called ‘Open- fices the republic depends. ing Paths’ that deals with basic, 101 stuff: how Recently the New York Times reported to dress for an interview, how to do a parent/ that U.S.-based corporations have achieved “jaw teacher conference.” Otherwise, he keeps refer- dropping success” by marketing Spanish ver- ring to the Miami area as a market: As we have sions of Readers Digest, National Geographic, seen, Knight-Ridder saddled him with a 22 per- Glamour, and People not only in Latin America cent profit goal by the year 2000. He was widely but in the United States. On the bright side, criticized for shutting down the Herald’s Sunday such publications make few concessions to nar- magazine, “Tropic,” which was justly popular row ethnocentrism; they may draw Spanish- with Sunday readers but expensive to produce speaking readers closer to mainstream and was losing the Herald $2 million annually. American celebrities and styles. Even those Apparently there is more ad revenue to be had offering articles written expressly for Hispanic from shifting the paper’s resources to cater to readers reinforce the mainstream consumer Spanish speakers. But is there better, more cre- aspirations that draw upscale advertisers to ative journalism for everyone—or anyone? their pages. “Our spending [on advertising to Not according to Pete Hamill, who, as edi- Hispanics] is running ahead of our general-mar- tor of New York’s Daily News in 1997, began a ket budget,” a spokesman for Ford’s Lincoln- different approach to immigrants. A newspaper Mercury division told Mediaweek, “because we writing for both newcomers and older Ameri- realize there are some top-quality magazines. cans in English has two roles, he has insisted. There’s been a maturing of the medium”—the “One is to explain the city to newcomers; the kind of maturing that angers the NAHP but other is to explain newcomers to the rest of the would have disappointed Progressive American- city. Let’s say there are a large number of people izers, too. who don’t speak English and get their news cov- “Mature” Spanish-language publications in erage from Spanish-language TV or Korean the United States seem to have been predicated newspapers. But their kids are going to use on the assumption that Spanish-language read- these [English-language] papers as guides to the ers are here to stay, not because new immi- U.S., and, on that level, it’s very important to grants keep coming but because a critical mass get their attention.”24 By reaching out to such of their upwardly mobile children are staying youngsters in terms of their interests, not their out of the linguistic mainstream—even as they parents’ tongues, a newspaper helps the whole become model consumers. A growing number of family build a bridge to the larger culture. major dailies publishing Spanish-language edi-

10 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? Hamill left the Daily News before this passion IV. How the News Media Mediate for bridge-building could be grounded in a new National Identity format. And it is not clear that any other The news media’s importance comes from national newspapers have enough civic passion the fact that, as the scholar of nationalism Bene- left to sustain such a project. Economically, dict Anderson has argued, only the invention of Daily News explains Delbert Sperlock, a execu- mass printing made nations possible.26 A great tive, newspapers can move from targeting ads nation may be defended (and projected) by pow- for language-specific markets such as Latinos to erful armies and it may encompass vast territo- promoting “crossover” sports heroes and celebri- ries and dazzling cities, but ultimately it is little ties such as Ricardo Montalban, who advertise more than what Anderson calls an “imagined Chrysler to a general market even while holding community,” united by a story line which most a special appeal for Hispanics.25 That, more of its people have agreed to treasure and share. than Lincoln-Mercury’s advertising in Spanish, “Contracts between us are not enforced by laws represents Frances Kellor’s dream of assimilation or economic incentives,” explains the sociolo- through advertising. If what Sperlock sees is the gist Alan Wolfe; “people adhere to social con- wave of the future, then outreach such as Ibar- tracts when they feel that behind them lies a guen’s may indeed be a first step on a journey credible story of who they are and why their not toward balkanization, as conservatives fear, fates are linked to those of others.”27 Without but toward absorption. such a story, no nation has been sustained. That may be so even in politics, as seemed Yet not before mass printing could any likely in November, 1998, when the Herald story besides mythical and religious narratives broke its tradition of endorsing Democrats and be told more or less simultaneously to multi- backed Jeb Bush, the Republican candidate for tudes, through the medium of church sermons Governor, who won. The endorsement editorial and liturgy. Only thanks to printing could narra- praised Bush’s opponent, Lieutenant Governor tives be disseminated widely enough, and re-told Buddy McKay, and acknowledged that the Her- often enough, to bind hearts and minds in a sec- ald’s positions on major issues were closer to ular, historical destiny to create a nation. For McKay’s. But Bush speaks Spanish, spent sev- the first time, thanks to print, millions who eral years in Venezuela, and is married to a spoke such languages could learn and treasure Mexican-American; the Herald praised him as non-religious stories that bound them to others “bi-lingual and bi-cultural.” Counterintuitive they didn’t know personally. though it may seem, the Herald’s choice in this By the sixteenth century, Anderson reports, case may strengthen a bridge toward assimila- millions felt driven to share the vivid literary tion: Bush is no ethnocentric politician, after and political imagery which only books could all, but a grandson of Connecticut Yankees and deliver to multitudes at once. That was so the son of an American President; his children because capitalism not only transformed manu- are no more Mexican-Americans than they are script production but also uprooted the feudal WASP. To many Hispanics, the Bush family can and religious “status” hierarchies that had fixed be an emblem of proud assimilation, not defiant the moral coordinates of individual lives. The ethnocentrism. replacement of “vertical” (divinely sanctioned) Still, if one sets aside Bush’s ethnic experi- identities by “horizontal” contractual agree- ence and examines his politics against the Her- ments among independent individuals deepened ald’s traditional liberalism—and if one thinks of a hunger for new explanations of people’s social the Miami-Dade area less as a U.S. city and roles, worth, and aspirations. more as a quasi-international entrepot like Hong Since newspapers are more instantaneous, Kong—then the Herald’s endorsement seems ubiquitous, and ephemeral than books, they can more a bid for an ethnic market beyond the focus a vast population’s attention on roughly United States than a push for assimilation to the same thing at the same time, making it pos- American civic culture. If so, the editorial policy sible to imagine a national identity and commu- subordinates civic coherence to transnational nity moving through history. Think of the effect profit, and a major American news organization of Tom Paine’s American revolutionary pam- abdicates its power to shape national identity phlet “Common Sense” on the hundreds of through the kind of storytelling we need to thousands of British colonists who read it, appreciate now more than before. knowing that others were doing so at virtually

Jim Sleeper 11 the same time. Paine awakened an “imagined format of the newspaper assures them that some- community” to a destiny its members could try where out there the ‘character’ Mali moves along to fulfill. Newspapers can provide such awaken- quietly, awaiting its next reappearance in the plot. ings. Anderson explains how: The second source of imagined linkage lies in the relationship between the newspaper . . . and the The obsolescence of the newspaper on the morrow market. . . . [T]he newspaper reader, observing exact of its printing . . . creates this extraordinary mass replicas of his own paper being consumed by his ceremony: the almost precisely simultaneous con- subway, barbershop, or residential neighbors, is sumption (“imagining”) of the newspaper-as-fiction. continually reassured that the imagined world is We know that particular morning and evening edi- visibly rooted in everyday life . . . [F]iction seeps tions will overwhelmingly be consumed between quietly and continuously into reality, creating that this hour and that, only on this day, not that. . . . remarkable confidence of community-in-anonymity The significance of this mass ceremony—Hegel which is the hallmark of modern nations.29 observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers—is paradoxical. It is This is not the place to reprise great news- performed in silent privacy. . . . Yet each communi- mediated triumphs of nationalism that have cant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is substantiated Anderson’s analysis. In print, one being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or thinks of the virtual foreign-policy making of millions) of others. . . . What more vivid figure for Walter Lippman or, in a darker vein, of the the secular, historically clocked, imagined commu- immense, paranoid power wielded by Walter nity can be envisioned?28 Winchell and McCarthyism. There was also the muckraking of Lincoln Steffens (who, inciden- What more vivid figure, indeed, unless it be tally, discovered that immigrant political television evening news programs in the 1960s, “machine” bosses were more trustworthy and when huge audiences with few viewing options statesmanlike than reformers). In radio, one could be shepherded into three networks’ elec- need only mention Roosevelt’s fireside chats and tronic pews to watch anchors and correspon- Winston Churchill’s voice in laying down dents officiate at what the veteran foreign national story lines so engaging that people gave correspondent and Shorenstein Center Fellow their lives for them. It goes without saying that Jonathan Randal dubs the “high mass” of Amer- Hitler and Mussolini had that power, too. And it ican public journalism. is no less true for being too-often repeated that Anderson’s explication of “the newspaper- television news interrupted triumphalist, Cold as-fiction” takes us to the heart of the media’s War American story lines with narratives of fateful role in generating national story lines: reform and rebellion when it showed Southern sheriffs fire-hosing black workers and brought If we were to look at a sample front page of, say, the Vietnam War and its opponents into Ameri- the New York Times, we might find there stories can living rooms. These story lines could exist about Soviet dissidents, famine in Mali, a grue- at all only thanks to the processes Anderson some murder . . . the discovery of a rare fossil in describes. Zimbabwe, and a speech by Mitterand. . . . What V. Rethinking the Media’s Civic Role connects them to each other? Not sheer caprice. Yet obviously most of them happen independently, Anderson’s phrase “community in without the actors being aware of each other. . . . anonymity” has a more troubling resonance The arbitrariness of their inclusion and juxtaposi- today, when, “as a result of . . . the weakening of tion (a later edition will substitute a baseball tri- traditional social structures like the extended umph for Mitterand) shows that the linkage family and the local community, the mass between them is imagined. media have become increasingly important This imagined linkage derives from two shapers of political orientations,” according to obliquely related sources. The first is simply calen- Prof. Diana Owen of Georgetown University.30 drical coincidence. The date at the top of the news- Families don’t sit around the hearth absorbing paper, the single most important emblem on it, their cultural history and values from grandpar- provides the essential connection. . . . The sign for ents; their members sit individually before a this: if Mali disappears from the pages of the New television or computer screen, absorbing what York Times after two days of famine reportage, for one variant or another of the media shows and months on end, readers do not for a moment imag- tells them about the society beyond their front ine that Mali has disappeared. . . . The novelistic doors.

12 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? On the one hand, as Owen notes, media capitalist print production itself. In conse- penetrate our lives more incessantly and inti- quence, news media are losing their capacity mately than when their only presence at home and authority to frame culturally authoritative was a newspaper thrown on the front doorstep. accounts of our national life. On the other hand, as Marvin Kalb notes, the Early Progressive reformers such as Lincoln “news” itself is more distorted than ever by the Steffens condemned immigrant political “fictions” and marketing imperatives of com- machines for corrupting cities’ politics and eco- mercial entertainment—a radical departure from nomic development with “crony capitalism.” the less-fictional storytelling Anderson finds in a Steffens would be dismayed by the vast Cuban- responsible newspaper’s daily selection of stories. American political corruption in Miami and by And the news media are indeed more frag- Marion Barry’s plundering of the District of mented. In 1977, it was common to find dozens Columbia’s government. Yet his would-be suc- of passengers reading the city’s two or three cessors in the press often must overcome their newspapers in a subway car. The market was own editors’ resistance to expose among blacks segmented then, too, of course, as it has been and Hispanics what Steffens found among white since not long after Paine wrote “Common ethnics. In neither period can racism explain Sense”: If you rode a New York City IRT line such necessary investigative reporting and civic toward Wall Street at 6:30 A.M., most passengers crusading. Nor can fear of racism justify the were blue-collar workers, many reading the recent entrenchment of racial caucuses of Daily News; if you rode at 8:45, more were reporters who, at some papers, are virtually white-collar professionals, reading the New York empowered by market-sensitive editors to “vet” Times or . stories about people of the same color. The root But recently even such predictable divi- of such caucuses is the weakening of a common sions have undergone not just more fragmenta- culture strong enough to sustain real crusades tion (more people reading varied “lifestyle” for justice, racial or otherwise. The loss of such publications, new immigrants reading foreign- a culture revives racial consciousness on its own language ethnic papers), but also a shift that has anti-assimilationist terms. rattled the print market itself and even Ander- As Louis DeSipio and James Richard Hen- son’s other source of news coherence, time: At son explain the origins of the problem, once the 6:30 A.M. in 1998, one sees fewer newspaper civil rights movement had induced public offi- readers of any kind than in 1977 and more cials to “allocate some resources based on ethnic “walkman” wearers listening to favorite music and racial group membership,” government or tapes of instruction, not to the day’s news as “sought simplified [racial] classification systems” editors have “imagined” it for daily communal to facilitate those allocations and other forms of instruction. racial redress. “We call this process—which has In effect, the shared national story line and roots both within ethnic communities and in the even the sense of a public timeline have been society as a whole—“racialization,” they write. loosened by the more individualized triumphs of In response to clear racial signals from the state, consumer marketing. This amid a deluge of ethnic elites have stepped forward, designating immigrants bearing languages and story lines themselves through a complex dance to “play an that lack a shared American locus. If they’re incalculable role in helping [minorities] . . . make here just to make money and return home, demands on the state based on these newfound they’re unlikely to learn how to talk with others or reinvigorated identities.” of different backgrounds except to facilitate the Similar racial signals are sent by private all-important commercial transactions that are managements, including those at newspapers, rearranging their lives, the lives of their home pursuing ethnic markets and workforce “diver- countries, and the life of the host country—”our sity” that eases access to those markets. Some country,” as newcomers of all kinds used to of these newfound “identities” seem concocted want to call it, a community of citizens who’d to respond to those signals and to racially dis- sacrificed to make it their own. tributed rewards—as when, for example, the The same forces that uproot families, label “Asian” is adopted by a caucus of Ameri- neighborhood institutions, and stable work situ- can journalists descended from Japanese,Chi- ations are uprooting the media’s own organiza- nese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Indian, tion. They are dispersing the “high mass” into Pakistani, and other nationalities. If the Asian profit hunts in “niche” markets under pressures American Journalists Association represents an and incentives unprecedented since the rise of “imagined community,” and if Pacific Bell

Jim Sleeper 13 underwrites the group’s “Asian-American Media nation to be and then set in motion every Handbook,” which instructs editors and journal- resource and agency to achieve this result intel- ists how to portray members of this “commu- ligently.” Immigrant readers want papers that nity,” harm is done a civic culture that thrives orient them to what is most challenging and on enlightened assimilation. rewarding in their new society by telling them Not surprisingly, though, our creepingly stories about it. They want to be shown the post-nationalist media support and cover such principles and rules of engagement. They want groups as bearers of deep cultures, elevating as to know what they can contribute that others spokesmen those advocates who promoted the will value enough to moot their grievances. dubious racial classifications and color-coding in It’s a daunting challenge, and the news the first place. But DeSipio and Henson find that media’s reluctance to meet it is a tragedy in the most members of the groups for and about making. The United States never was rooted whom ethnic-advocacy journalists claim to convincingly in pre-capitalist, pre-Enlighten- speak do not use the “approved” same ethnic ment myths of “blood and soil.” Its national labels to describe themselves, nor do they hold identity and the civic commitments that flow the predictable political opinions. For example, from it rely unusually on sound news judg- elites’ preference for a census-and-media driven ment—sound “fictions” of the factual sort “Hispanic” pan-ethnic identity conflicts with Anderson describes. American citizenship is most ordinary Hispanics’ preference to be desig- grounded in countless, conscious individual nated by their nation of origin—Mexican, decisions, mediated by news stories at any Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, etc. moment in time—decisions to participate or not The United States will never be a strong in a great “imagined community.” Many more and truly noble nation, Kellor warned eighty Americans than the Daughters of the American years ago, “until the people entrenched in posi- Revolution think of the country this way. Do tion, power, and prosperity assume the burden editors and publishers? and responsibility of the wedding of that nation, until the Americans define what they want that

14 Should American Journalism Make Us Americans? ENDNOTES

1. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 1998. 17. Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Con- trol (Harper and Bros. Publishers, 1922), p. 452. 2. St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 21, 1998. 18. Park, op cit., p. 450. 3. Letter to Marvin Kalb, Oct. 27, 1998, and conversa- tion with author, Nov. 10, 1998. 19. Park, op cit. Hammerling’s story is recounted on pp. 376–411. 4. Insight on the News, Sept. 28–Oct. 5, 1998. 20. Park, op. cit., 121. 5. Herald and El Nuevo Herald website reader “chat rooms.” 21. Simon, op. cit. p. 186. 6. Wall Street Journal, op cit. 22. Alberto Ibarguen, letter to author, Nov. 20, 1998; his observations of news dealers recounted in Wall 7. Letter from Alberto Ibarguen to author, Nov. 20, Street Journal story, Nov. 3, 1998. 1998. 23. “Hispanic Publishers Zap Ethnic Rivals,” Editor 8. “The New Immigrant Tide: A Shuttle Between and Publisher, April 18, 1998, p. 40. Worlds,” three news stories in the New York Times, July 19–21. 24. “American Publishers Add Readers in Booming Latin America,” by James Brooks, New York Times, 9. New York Times editorial, July 22, 1998. May 11, 1998, p. 1. 10. Manual of the United States: For the Information 25. “Spanish Spoken Here,” by Lisa Granatstein, of Immigrants and Foreigners, a pamphlet by The Mediaweek, April 13, 1998, pp. 25–26. National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, cited by Lawrence H. Fuchs, in American 26. “Naturalizing Readers,” by Valerie Burgher, Kaleidescope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture, Brandweek, July 21, 1997. (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 27. Editor and Publisher, op. cit. p. 63. 28. Hamill, quoted in Brandweek, op cit. 11. Barbara Jordan, “The Americanization Ideal,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 1995, A15, cited in Noah M. J. 29. Delbert Sperlock, interview with author, Dec. 3, Pickus, Immigration and Citizenship in the 21st Cen- 1998. tury (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. xvii. 30. Author’s survey of coverage and interview with a 12. William G. Ross, Forging New Freedoms: observer knowledgeable about the Herald, who Nativism, Education, and the Constitution, requested anonymity. 1917–1927. (Nebraska University Press, 1994), p. 143. 31. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: 13. Fuchs, op cit., p. 61. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso Press), pp. 9–12. 14. Randolph Bourne, “Trans-National America,” Atlantic Monthly, July, 1969. Horace Kallen, 32. Alan Wolfe, Marginalized in the Middle (Univer- “ versus The Melting Pot: A Study of sity of Chicago Press, 1996). American Nationality,” The Nation, Feb. 10, 1915. Both men’s contributions are reviewed in Philip Glea- 33. Anderson, op cit., p. 35. son, “American Identity and Americanization,” in 34. Anderson, op cit., p. 33. William Petersen, Michael Novak, Philip Gleason, Concepts of Ethnicity, Harvard Belknap Press, 1982. 35. Prof. Diana Owen, “Mass Communication and the Making of Citizens,” unpublished ms., George- 15. William McGowan, Coloring the News, ms. of a town University, Dept. of Government. forthcoming book. 36. Louis DeSipio and James Richard Henson, “Cuban 16. This and subsequent Times editorials in this sec- Americans, Latinos, and the Print Media: Shaping tion are cited in Rita J. Simon, Public Opinion and Ethnic Identities,” Harvard International Journal of the Immigrant: Print Media Coverage, 1880–1980 Press/Politics, Summer, 1997. (Lexington Books, 1985), pp. 185–210.

Jim Sleeper 15 OTHER PUBLICATIONS FROM THE SHORENSTEIN CENTER

DISCUSSION PAPERS 1912–2000: Knowing the Rules of the Game,” Kath- “Pragmatic News Objectivity: Objectivity with a leen E. Kendall. June, 1998. Research Paper R-19. Human Face,” Stephen Ward. May, 1999. Discus- $2.00 sion Paper D-37. $2.00

“Whither the Civic Journalism Bandwagon?” “Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Charlotte Grimes. February, 1999. Discussion Paper Media Effects According to Type of Military Inter- D-36. $2.00 vention,” Steven Livingston. June, 1997. Research “The Enemy Within: The Effect of ‘Private Censor- Paper R-18. $3.00 ship’ on Press Freedom and How to Confront It – “The Wisdom of the War Room: U.S. Campaigning An Israeli Perspective,” Moshe Negbi. November, and Americanization,” Margaret Scammell. April, 1998. Discussion Paper D-35. $2.00 1997. Research Paper R-17. $3.50 “The Rise of the ‘New News’: A Case Study of Two “Framing Identity: The Press in Crown Heights,” Root Causes of the Modern Scandal Coverage,” Carol B. Conaway. November, 1996. Research Paper Marvin Kalb. October, 1998. Discussion Paper D-34. R-16. $3.00 $2.00 “Busted By the Ad Police: Journalists’ Coverage of “The Rise and Fall of the Televised Political Con- Political Campaign Ads in the 1992 Presidential Cam- vention,” Zachary Karabell. October, 1998. Discus- paign,” Michael Milburn and Justin Brown. July, 1995. sion Paper D-33. $2.00 Research Paper R-15. $3.00 “Pressing Concerns: Hong Kong’s Media in an Era of “The Media, the Public and the Development of Can- Transition,” Stephen J. Hutcheon. September, 1998. didates’ Images in the 1992 Presidential Election,” Discussion Paper D-32. $2.00 Dean Alger. October, 1994. Research Paper R-14. $2.50 “Prepared for War: Ready for Peace? Paramilitaries, “The Future of Global Television News,” Richard Politics, and the Press in Northern Ireland,” Tim Parker. September, 1994. Research Paper R-13. $2.75 Cooke. July, 1998. Discussion Paper D-31. $2.00 “Ownership of Newspapers: The View from Positivist “Ijambo: ‘Speaking Truth’ Amidst Genocide,” Social Science,” C. Edwin Baker. September, 1994. Alexis Sinduhije. July, 1998. Discussion Paper D-30. Research Paper R-12. $2.75 $2.00 “Transmitting Race: The Los Angeles Riot in Televi- “The Spokesperson-In-the-Crossfire: A Decade of sion News,” Erna Smith. May, 1994. Research Paper Israeli Defense Crises from an Official Spokesper- R-11. $2.75 son’s Perspective,” Nachman Shai. July, 1998. Dis- cussion Paper D-29. $2.00 WORKING PAPERS “The Business of Getting ‘The Get’: Nailing an Exclusive Interview in Prime Time,” Connie “Discourse and Its Discontents,” Frederick Schauer. Chung. April, 1998. Discussion Paper D-28. $2.00 September, 1994. Working Paper 94-2. $10.00

“Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meanings of “Real-Time Television Coverage of Armed Conflicts News Coverage of the Holocaust,” James Carroll. and Diplomatic Crises: Does It Pressure or Distort For- October, 1997. Discussion Paper D-27. $2.00 eign Policy Decisions?” Nik Gowing. June, 1994. Working Paper 94-1. $12.50

RESEARCH PAPERS Please direct any publication inquiry or request to: “Tensions of a Free Press: South Africa After The Joan Shorenstein Center Apartheid,” Sean Jacobs. June, 1999. Research Paper on the Press, Politics and Public Policy R-22. $2.00 John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University “The Perpetuation of Prejudice in Reporting on 79 John F. Kennedy Street Gays and Lesbians—Time and : The First Cambridge, MA 02138 Fifty Years,” Lisa Bennett. September, 1998. ATTN: Publications Research Paper R-21. $2.00 Telephone: (617) 495-8269 “Talking Politics on the Net,” Sara Bentivegna. Fax: (617) 495-8696 August, 1998. Research Paper R-20. $2.00 Web Site Address: www.ksg. “Communication Patterns in Presidential Primaries harvard.edu/~presspol