News consumers made cynical by sensationalist banners--"AMERICA STRIKES BACK," "THE TERROR OF ANTHRAX"--and lurid leads might be surprised to learn that in 1690, the newspaper Publick Occurrences gossiped about the sexual indiscretions of French royalty or seasoned the story of missing children by adding that "barbarous Indians were lurking about" before the disappearance. Surprising, too, might be the media's steady adherence to, if continual tugging at, its philosophical and ethical moorings. These 39 essays, written and edited by the nation's leading professors of journalism, cover the theory and practice of print, radio, and TV news reporting. Politics and partisanship, press and the government, gender and the press corps, presidential coverage, war reportage, technology and news gathering, sensationalism: each subject is treated individually. Appropriate for interested lay persons, students, professors and reporters. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Jan Whitt tells the stories of women who have been overlooked in journalism history, offering an important corrective to scholarship that narrowly focuses on the deeds of men like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. She explores the lives of women reporters who achieved significant historical recognition, such as Ida Tarbell and Ida Wells-Barnett, as well as literary authors such as Joan Didion, Susan Orlean, Willa Cather, and Eudora Welty, whose work blends influences from both journalism and literature. This study shows how numerous women broadened the editorial scope of newspapers and journals, transformed women's professional roles, used journalism as a training ground for major literary works, and led breakthroughs in lesbian and alternative presses.

The American Journalism History Reader presents important primary textsâe"news articles and essays about journalism from all stages of the history of the American pressâe"alongside key works of journalism history and criticism. The volume aims to place journalism history in its theoretical context, to familiarize the reader with essential works of, and about, journalism, and to chart the development of the field. The reader moves chronologically through American journalism history from the eighteenth-century to the present, combining classic sources and contemporary insights. Each century's section begins with a critical introduction, which establishes the social and political environment in which the media developed to highlight the ideological issues behind the historical period.

American Media History is the story of a nation and of the events in the long battle to disseminate information, entertainment, and opinion in a democratic society. It is the story of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and struggles shaped the nation and its media system and fought to keep both free. The text is organized chronologically and emphasizes the role the press played in the American Revolution to the present. Each chapter presents a story about media development, featuring a colorful and impressive cast of characters that includes, among others, James Franklin, Ida Tarbell, Bob Woodward, Margaret Bourke-White, Walter Cronkite, and Tarana Burke. Some of the players set standards for aspiring media professionals and others reveal tales of triumph, deceit, and the undeniable importance of freedom of speech and a free press. The fourth edition features new chapters that cover women's rights, civil rights movements, significant moments in media history (such as 9/11 and the 2020 pandemic), fake news, bias news, and the social media presences of Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. The text includes a streamlined introductory chapter, expanded coverage of women journalists during the Civil War, new American Media Profiles and timelines, new chapter opening quotations from famous communicators, and probing History Matters boxes that relate historical events and effects to the present day. At once an enjoyable and highly compelling text, American Media History is ideal for introductory courses in journalism, mass communication, and media history.

The Year that Defined American Journalism explores the succession of remarkable and decisive moments in American journalism during 1897 – a year of significant transition that helped redefine the profession and shape its modern contours. This defining year featured a momentous clash of paradigms pitting the activism of William Randolph Hearst's participatory 'journalism of action' against the detached, fact-based antithesis of activist journalism, as represented by Adolph Ochs of the New York Times, and an eccentric experiment in literary journalism pursued by Lincoln Steffens at the New York Commercial-Advertiser. Resolution of the three-sided clash of paradigms would take years and result ultimately in the ascendancy of the Times' counter-activist model, which remains the defining standard for mainstream American journalism. The Year That Defined American Journalism introduces the year-study methodology to mass communications research and enriches our understanding of a pivotal moment in media history.

American journalists who covered China during the thirties and forties discuss how they pooled information, evaluated sources, and avoided bias