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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 367 975 CS 214 204 TITLE Proceedings of the American Journalism Historians' Association Conference (Salt Lake City, Utah, October 5-7, 1993). Part I: Newspapers and Journalism. INSTITUTION American Journalism Historians' Association. PUB DATE Oct 93 NOTE 608p. PUB TYPE Collected Works - Conference Proceedings (021)-- Historical Materials (060) EDRS PRICE MF03/PC25 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Civil War (United States); Colonial History (United States); *Freedom of Speech; Health Education; Journalism Education; Journalism History; Libeland Slander; *Mass Media Role; *Newspapers; Peace; Periodicals; Reconstruction Era; *Sex Role; WorldWar II IDENTIFIERS Atomic Bomb; Canada; Chinese Revolution (1911); Journalists; *Media Coverage; Professional Concerns; Utah ABSTRACT The Newspapers and Journalism section of the proceedings of this conference of journalism historianscontains the following 22 papers: "'For Want of the Actual Necessariesof Life': Survival strategies of Frontier Journalists in theTrans-Mississippi West" (Larry Cebula); "'Legal Immunity forFree Speaking': Judge Thomas M. Cooley, 'The Det,oit Evening News,' and 'NewYork Times v. Sullivan'" (Richard Digby-Junger); "The Dilemma ofFemininity: Gender and Journalistic Professionalism in World War II" (Hei-lingYang); "'An American Conspiracy': The Post-WatergatePress and the CIA" (Kathryn S. Olmsted); "Female Arguments:An Examination of the Utah Woman's Suffrage Debates of 1880 ane. 1895as Represented in Utah Women's Newspapers" (Janika Isakson); "BackChannel: What Readers Learned of the 'Tri-City Herald's' Lobbying forthe Hanford Nuclear Reservation" (Thomas H. Hettterman); "The CanadianDragon Slayer: The Reform Press of Upper Canada" (Karla K. Gower); "TheCampaign for Libel Reform: State Press Associations in the Late1800s" (Tim Gleason); "Partisan News in theNineteenth-Century: Detroit's Dailies in the Reconstruction Era, 1865-1876" (RichardL. Kaplan); "Pikadon (The Flash-Boom)': A Study of PressCoverage of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 6-12 August, 1945" (ThomasWilliam McCaskey); "A Preliminary Profile ofthe Nineteenth Century U.S. Peace Advocacy Press" (Nancy L. Roberts); "A Receiptagainst the Plague': How Colonial Newspapers Presented Diseasesand Their Remedies for Their Readers" (David A. Copeland); "A GrimElation: Press Reaction to the Atomic Bomb, August 1945" (CaraD. Runsick); "Sun Yat-Sen, the Press, and the 1911 Chinese Revolution"(Xuejun Yu); "Walter M. Camp: Reporter of the Little Big Horn" (WarrenE. Barnard); "Captive Audiences: HandwrittenPrisoner-of-War Newspapers of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition and the War Between the States" (Roy Alden Atwood); "An Applied Social Science: JournalismEducation and Professionalization, 1900-1955" (Brad Asher); "Savannah'sLittle Watchdog Weekly: The 'Georgia Gazette,' 1978-1985" (FordRisley); "Exposing ne Foundation: The Cultural Underpinningsof the Hutchins Commission" (Jane S. McConnell); "The Truthabout What Happens': Katherine Anne Porter and Journalism" (Jan Whitt);and "The Joint Operating Agreement between the Daily Newspapersin Knoxville, Tennessee--A Unique Situation" (Susan R. Siler). (RS) PI PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN JOURNALISM HISTORIANS' ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE (Salt Lake City, Utah, October 5-7, 1993). Part I: Newspapers and Journalism. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educe Ifonel Research end ImprovemenI "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY CENTER (ERIC) TIThm dOCument has been reproduced es received horn the person or organtrahon n c t.r- origunating Minor changes have been made 10 Improve reproduction quality Pornts of yrs* 04 OP4010413 staled 0 this docu- ment do nol necMartty represent Oficial TO THE EDUCKI: 'AL RESOURCES OETII Domtfon or policy INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) r BF %IT 46'" Cs "For Want of the Actual Necessaries of Life": Survival Strategies of Frontier Journalists in the Trans-mississippi West. Larry Cebula College of William and Mary 3 Editorial Cares.--The editor of a Texas paper gives the following figures of a statistical memorandum of his every day life, and still people will think that editors have but few cares to disturb their slumbers and start into the newspaper business to enjoy life: Been asked to drink 11,392 Drank 11,392 Requested to retract 416 Didn't retract. 416 Invited to par Les and receptions by parties fiAling for puffs 3,333 Took the hint 33 Didn't take the hint 3,400 Threatened to be whipped 174 Been whipped 0 Whipped the other fellow 4 Didn't come to time 170 Been promised whiskey gin &c., if we would go after them 5,610 Been after them 5,000 Been asked what's the news 300,000 Told 23 Didn't know 200,000 Lied about it 99,977 Been to church 2 Changed politics 32 Expect to change still 50 Gave to charity $5.00 Gave for a terrier dog 25.00 Cash on hand 1 00 Source:Unidentified clipping found in an 1867R. H.Hoe&Co. printer's catalogue. 1 In 1866, James J Ayers was surprised to meet his friend hark Twain in Honolulu. They had last seen each other in San Francisco, where Ayers had sold his interest in the Morning Call newspaper, for which Twain covered the police beat as a city reporter. "How in thunder, Mark, does it happen that you have come here?" Ayers asked.' "Well, you see," Twain explained in his trademark drawl, "I waited six months for you fellows to discharge me--for I knew that you did not want me--and getting tired of waiting, I discharged myself." There was "more truth than poetry" in his friend's assessment, Ayers thought to himself. He and his partners had indeed been carrying Twain, who'd been unable to adapt to the gentrification of journalism as San Francisco moved past the frontier stage of development. "However valuable his services had proven to a Nevada paper, where he might give full play to his fertile imagination and dally with facts to suit his own fancy, that kind of reporting on a newspaper in a settled community, where the plain, unvarnished truth was an essential element in the duties of a reporter, could hardly be deemed satisfactory," Ayers reflected.2 In fact, Twain hadn't "discharged himself."He was fired.3 The frontier style of invective and exaggeration that Twain had learned in Missouri and Nevada was unwelcome in increasingly cosmopolitan San Francisco. Unable to conform to the new standards of journalism that were coming into vogue, and sick of the "accursed homeless desert" of Nevada, Twain was attempting a new career as a free-lance travel writer.4He had published a few stories in some eastern magazines and contracted to write a series of letters about his experiences in the islands. Ayers, too, was in search of opportunity. After numerous unsuccessful newspaper enterprises, he had struck gold by founding the Morning Call, one of San Francisco's most successful newspapers. But Ayers became ill and sought a more healthful climate in Hawaii. His health recovered quickly, and he cursed having sold his interest in the Call. Now he began a daily newspaper in Honolulu, "directed to spreading and intensifying the pro-American sentiment . and to discouraging by every argument possible the growth of the pro-British feeling," in the imperial clash for control of the Sandwich Islands.5But Ayers failed to win the patronage he had hoped for from the pro- American faction, and his Daily Hawaiian Herald suspended publication. Ayers and Twain were survivors of the rough-and-tumble world of frontier journalism. They had scratched out editorials and set type in mining camps and farming communit3.es, and watched one newspaper after another fold. The economics of publishing on the frontier were always precarious. But as the frontier began to close after the Civil War, the print economy underwent changes and contractions that forced out men like Ayers and Twain. Now they stood at the western extent of the American empire, 2 C 3 searching for another frontier. The frontier editor is a favorite stock figure from the gallery of pioneer types. Strong willed, hard-drinking, and perhaps a little anti-social, he was (the story goes) a fearless crusader for the truth, smiting his enemies with a venomous pen and defending his own person with ready fists and a Colt Revolver. Publishing his newspaper under tremendous difficulties, he worked both to promote and to reform his town. Later he might go down to the Long Branch Saloon for a drink with Miss Kitty. The image is in no small part the work of the journalists themselves, who reveled in self-promotion. They advertised their doings in the pages of their newspapers, recounting hardships and fights and drinking bouts. Such accounts were "clipped" and reprinted by newspapers in the east, which used such western shenanigans as human interest pieces.6 Also contributing to the image was the army of travel writers produced by the late nineteenth-century explosion in travel literature. Hundreds of such authors scoured the West for exotic impressions to stuff into their notebooks and pour onto the printed page, andmany became fascinated by the western journalists.7Finally, some of the editors themselves--Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Bill Nye anda few others--became nationally known authors and mined their Western experiences for stories and lectures. Such is the stuff of which myths are made. 4 So it is no wonder that the heroic editor loomed large in the minds of two generations of western historians. Writers of history-as-literature like Bernard DeVoto composed biographical sketches of "the fraternity of goodfellows," who carried their presses into the wilderness, while antiquarians like Douglas C. McMurtrie compiled sterile lists of printing "firsts" for every state and county.8 Since the 1960s a new historiography of western journalism has emerged. Daniel Boorstin elevated frontier journalists to the center stage of western development; his editors called new towns into existence with promotion and publicity. Other historians have emphasized the editors' role in promoting social order and defining social hierarchy in new towns.9In both interpretations, the frontier editor comes across as a pivotal figure.

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