American Journalism

AMERICAN JOURNALISM WINTER 1991 Published by the American JoumaUsm Historians Association «^7 . A M E R ICAX JQIRXALISM WINTER 1991 DEPARTMENTS ARTICLES .4. RESEARCH NOTES • The Search for Strategic Silence How Journalism Historians Can Learn to Read News and the Search What the Press Does Not Print. for the Present Richard Lentz 10 The First Question- Answer Newspaper • Visual Silences Interview, Redux What Photography Chooses Not to Show Us. •62» Kent Brecheen-Kirkton 27 BOOK REVIEWS • Ellipsis and Eclipse As Indicators of Bias Review Essay: A Case Study of How the Miami Herald Photojournalism Covers Cuban Issues. and the Historians Fran R. Matera 35 Pundits, Poets, and Wits • Interview Mark Twain's Letters The End of an Era at CBS Bill Leonard Talks about the Making The House and Unmaking of CBS Television News. the Berrys Built Michael D. Murray 48 Freedom under Fire Art for The Masses The Autobiography of William Allen White Communication Satellites American Mass-Market Magazines and more . EDITOR EDITORIAL PURPOSE. Anyone who wishes to John J. Pauly American Journalism publishes review books iorAmerican Tidsa articles, research notes, book Journalism, or to propose a ASSOCIATE EDITORS reviews, and correspondence book for review, should con- Pamela A. Brown dealing with the history of tact Professor Nancy Roberts, Rider College journalism. Such contribu- Book Review Editor, American Richard Lentz tions may focus on social, Journalism, School of Journal- Arizona State economic, intellectual, p>ohti- ism and Mass Communica- BOOK REVIEW EDITOR cal, or legal issues. American tion, University of Miimesota, Nancy Roberts Journalism also welcomes ar- Minneapolis, Minnesota Minnesota ticles that treat the history of 55455. DESIGN communication in general; the American Journalism is pro- Sharon M.W. Bass history of broadcasting, ad- duced on a Macintosh com- Kansas vertising, and public relations; puter, using Microsoft Word ADVERTISING the history of media outside and Pagemaker software. Au- Alf Pratte the United States; and theo- thors of manuscripts accepted Brigham Young retical issues in the literatiire for publication are encour- ASSISTANT EDITOR or methods of media history. aged, but not required, to Barbara Buckley submit their work on a EXDS- Tulsa SUBMISSIONS. All articles, based or Macintosh disk. FORMER EDITORS research notes, and corre- Wm. David Sloan spondence should be sent to ADVERTISING. Information Alabama ftofessor John Pauly, Editor, on advertising rates and Gary Whitby American Journalism, Faculty placements is available from Spring Hill College of Communication, Univer- Professor Alf Pratte, Adver- sity of Tulsa, 600 S. College tising Manager, American AMERICAN JOURNALISM Avenue, Tulsa, Oklahoma Journalism, Department of HISTORIANS 74104. Authors should send Conununications, Brigham ASSOCIATION four copies of manuscripts Young University, Provo, submitted for publication as Utah 84602. PRESIDENT articles. American Journalism Leomard Teel follows the style require- SUBSCRIPTIONS. American Georgia State ments of The Chicago Manual Journalism (ISSN 0882-1127) is VICE-PRESIDENT of Style. The maximum length published quarterly by the Nancy Roberts for most manuscripts is American Journalism Histori- Minnesota twenty-five pages, not includ- ans Association, at the Uni- SECRETARY ing notes and tables. versity of Tulsa. Subscriptions Donald Avery All submissions are blind to American Journalism cost Southern Mississippi refereed by three readers, and $25 a year, $10 for students, BOARD OF DIRECTORS the review process typically and include a one-year mem- Perry Ashley takes about three months. bership in AJHA. Subscrip- South Carolina Manuscripts will be returned tions mailed outside the Roy Atwood only if the author has includ- United States cost $25 for sur- Idaho ed a self-addressed stamped face mail, $30 for air mail. For Sherilyn Bennion envelope. further information, please Humboldt State Research notes are typically contact the Editor. Elaine Prostak Berland three- to six-page manu- Viebster scripts, written without for- COPYRIGHT. © American Edward Caudill mal documentation. Such Journalism Historians Asso- Tennessee notes, which are not blind ciation, 1991. Articles in Carol Sue Humphrey refereed, may include reports American Journalism may be Oklahoma Baptist of research in progress, dis- photocopied for fair use in Alf Pratte cussions of methodology, an- teaching, research, criticism, Brigham Young notations on new archival and news reporting, in accor- Barbara Straus Reed sources, commentaries on is- dance with Sections 107 and Rutgers sues in journalism history, or 108 of the U.S. Copyright James Startt suggestions for future re- Law. For all other purposes, Valparaiso search. Authors who wish to users must obtain permission contribute research notes are from the Editor. invited to query the editor. REFEREES. Thanks to the following editorial board members, who have recently i. • read manuscripts for FROM THE EDITOR American Journalism. I ONCE HEARD Kenner speak eloquently of Craig Allen HUGH Arizona State thespaces in James Joyce's novels. Not the physical or Gerald Baldasty geographic or psychic spaces, but simply the spaces Washington (or lack of them) between Joyce's words. In early Eleanor Blum Western manuscripts, Kenner reminded the audi- Urbana, Illinois EdCaudill ence, one word typically ran into the next, in imita- Tennessee tion of the endless, copious flow of speech. Printers, Thomas Connery however, inserted spaces between the words, in order St. Thomas to visualize speech for their audience. Centuries later, Harold Davis Kenner said, after spacing had long since Atlanta, Georgia become John DeMott routine, Joyce deliberately removed the spaces, Memphis State thereby calling attention to the gaps printers had in- Edward Dreyer serted, and recreating his own literary analogue of Tulsa the oral tradition. Ralph Engelman Long Island In a sense, all the modern media of communication Donald Fishman have followed the printers' lead. By industrializing Boston College cultural production, the media fill the traditional si- Jean Folkerts lences enforced by censorship, primitive equipment, George Washington and the scarcity of professional communicators. Ted Classer Mass Stanford media create a surfeit of reality, a "jabbering real," in ArtKaiol Michel de Certeau's phrase, in which we struggle Southern Mississippi against information overload rather than scarcity. Lauren Kessler But mass media also create new forms of silence. Oregon Peggy Kreshel Indeed, silence has become the very totem of social Georgia and political power. In a world awash in information, Linda Lawson silence implicitly identifies who is allowed to speak Indiana and who is not, as well as what it is possible to say. Greg Lisby As Richard Lentz, Kent Brecheen-Kirkton, Fran Georgia State and Jack Lule Matera argue in this issue, journalism's silence may Lehigh even be strategic, a calculated voicelessness on the William Matsen part of those most accustomed to hearing themselves Bemidji State speak. These new strategic silences pose special Edward Nickerson Delaware problems of interpretation for historians. How, after Darwin Payne all, do we leam to hear what somebody decided not Southern Methodist to say? Sam Riley The authors offer no easy answers to that question, Virginia Tech but they do begin to describe politics Nancy Roberts the of silence Minnesota that governs any society that devotes itself to "infor- Norman Sims mation." Like Joyce, the authors see the spaces that Massachusetts were there all along but that the rest of us have Mitchell Stephens learned to ignore. New York Harold Stensaas -J.P. Mankato State Betty Winfield Missouri . RESEARCH NOTES NEWS AND THE SEARCH garden." But no fence en- was always within reach," FOR THE PRESENT closes this garden; it is not Paz writes. "The beyond a "sharply marked-off" was here, all was here; a WINS, AN ALL-NEWS space. "Our garden is the valley, a mountain, a dis- station in New York, puts world, in the angle at tant country, the neigh- it this way,"You give us which it touches our own bor's patio." Picture books twenty-two minutes; we'll manner of being," Dewey supplied images of distant give you the world." Or as writes. By accepting that lands and heroic battles, a chorus hired by Time we find ourselves in the all vividly present to the used to sing in TV ads: "corporate and industrial child: "In the summer the Throughout yovir world world," we "who are also green branches of the fig Throughout your land parts of the moving pres- trees would sway like the Time puts it all ent, create ourselves as we sails of a caravel or pirate Right in your hand . create an unknown fu- ship. High up on the mast, As a product to be mar- ture." With this thought swept by the wind, I could keted, the news resembles the book concludes. make out islands and con- Raymond Williams's de- My interest is in the no- tinents, lands that van- scription of advertising as tion of an "angle" at which, ished as soon as they be- a "magic system." For the according to Dewey, the came tangible." promise of the news-as- world touches each of us, The spell was broken product is to deliver the creating the field in which when an older child gave world magically, the way we might cultivate a self. Paz a photograph from a a shampoo delivers a new The Mexican poet Octavio news magazine, showing boyfriend. In "twenty-two Paz has considered news soldiers marching along a minutes" the world shall in this light. In his 1990 broad avenue, most likely arrive, placed "right in Nobel lecture, "In Search in New York. 'They've re- your hand" by the news. of the Present," he tells of turned from the war," Paz These slogans may seem an early encounter with remembers being told. He like harmless advertising the news, which had the recalls how this handful of ploys, but they describe effect of announcing the words disturbed him quite well an experience existence of the world to a greatly, implanting the that modern journalism of- child who had constructed knowledge "that some- fers us: a simulated feeling his own enclosed universe.

Load more