journalism

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/8/2021
  

  The Discursive Power of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Black Press

  by Adam Lee Cilli

  The influential Black newspaper's publisher Robert L. Vann has been criticized as a self-promoting tribune of the Black bourgeoisie. A historian argues he should be reconsidered as a pragmatist building alliances in a time of upheaval for Black America. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  8/11/2021
  

  Did Cartoonist Billy Ireland Really Push the KKK out of Columbus, Ohio?

  by Eliya Smith

  Local lore held that Columbus Dispatch cartoonist Billy Ireland's merciless taunting of the KKK forced it to leave town in the 1920s. Could newspaper cartoons really do that? 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/16/2021
  

  Post's Margaret Sullivan: After 20 Years of Afghan Debacle, Media Fixed Blame in 2 Hours

  The tendency to filter a complex and historically deep story through the perspective of short-term political advantage has been on full display this week, says the Post's media columnist. 

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• SOURCE: Harper's
  8/17/2021
  

  Selling the Story of Disinformation

  Today's concern with "disinformation" has roots in the postwar advertising industry, but do programs to fight it repeat faulty ideas about information and persuasion that admen created to persuade companies their ads would work? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Black Reporter Exposed Official Lies about the Atomic Bomb

  Charles Loeb's reporting defied the official government line that radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan was harmless, and resonated with Black readers who suspected a racist motive in dropping the new weapons on Japanese cities. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Star Times Reporter was Paid by Government Agencies He Covered

  Historian Alex Wellerstein's book is one of two that exposes the self-dealing of reporter William Laurence and his complicity with propaganda about the effects of nuclear weapons. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/10/2021
  

  How White Newspapers Helped Keep Down Black America

  White-owned newspapers – northern, southern, midwestern or western – frequently inflamed racial tensions and contributed to racist political violence and disenfranchisement. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  6/10/2021
  

  How the George Floyd Uprising Was Framed for White Eyes

  Some of the most iconic news photographs of the Civil Rights Movement told a particular story to white liberals – that Black protesters were passive victims needing their help, instead of actively fighting for freedom. Those photos today help define the mainstream limits of "acceptable" protest. 

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• 5/30/2021
  

  The War Beat, Pacific: How the American News Media Went to War Against Japan

  by Steven Casey

  Censorship, technological limitations, and competition with news from Europe in World War II made the early part of the Pacific theater a "shrouded war," but not for lack of effort by war journalists. 

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• 5/30/2021
  

  Review: Lesley Blume's “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World”

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Journalist Lesley Blume's book "Fallout" ably tells the story about how John Hersey and the New Yorker navigated government censorship and political opposition to publish Hersey's "Hiroshima," a foundational work in later movements to prevent nuclear war.

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• 5/16/2021
  

  Historians' Perspective on Media Bias: Where it Came from, and What Can be Done?

  by Walter G. Moss

  Historical perspective shows that media bias is nothing new, but the stakes for democracy are high today. Can historians teach and practice better ways of reading and debating to fight polarization and misinformation?

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  5/10/2021
  

  On the Life and Legacy of Black Journalist Louis Lomax (Review)

  by Joshua Clark Davis

  Louis Lomax was a provocateur, and was comfortable writing critically about both moderate and militant participants in the Black freedom movement; Thomas Aiello's new biography examines the complicated figure in African American journalism. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  5/1/2021
  

  On Popular History: Rebecca Traister

  by Alexis Coe

  Historian Alexis Coe interviews writer and essayist Rebecca Traister on the historical research informing her work and the links between popular and academic audiences for historical knowledge. 

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• 5/2/2021
  

  Elijah Lovejoy Faced Down Violent Mobs to Champion Abolition and the Free Press

  by Ken Ellingwood

  In 1837, Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob in Illinois, and the press he used to publish his abolitionist newsletter was thrown into the Mississippi River. Lovejoy's championing of both abolition and the free press should inspire us today. 

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• SOURCE: Reason
  4/27/2021
  

  Elegy for Op-Ed

  by Michael J. Socolow

  The decision by the Times to rebrand its outside commentaries reflects its failure to fight consistently over the years for the open exchange of ideas and to differentiate the views it published from its own official positions. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/19/2021
  

  American Journalism’s Role in Promoting Racist Terror

  by Channing Gerard Joseph

  American journalism profited from the sale of advertisements for the slave trade and stirred up lynch mobs. When will the industry acknowledge its role in American racism? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/21/2021
  

  He Redefined ‘Racist.’ Now He’s Trying to Build a Newsroom

  Ibram X. Kendi's new venture, inspired by reflection and argument among journalists about the role of the press in covering movements for change, will update the mission of the Willam Lloyd Garrison and abolitionist press of the nineteenth century. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/8/2021
  

  Latinos: The LA Times' 1983 Pulitzer Prize Winning Series Now Available

  The LA Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on Latinos in Southern California. Now this important journalistic primary source is available online. 

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• SOURCE: Columbia Post and Courier
  2/16/2021
  

  Veteran Journalist Donates Trove of Civil Rights-Era Research to University of South Carolina

  “I think that’s what I find amazing. Even in terms of the curriculum in the state of South Carolina, that those kind of moments are not necessarily common knowledge, where you have an Orangeburg Massacre,” Crump said. “No pun intended, it’s almost like an educational blackout.”

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/14/2021
  

  James Ridgeway, Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalist, Dies at 84

  The journalist James Ridgeway exposed malfeasance by corporate polluters and politicians, but dedicated his greatest energy to his last crusade, to end the practice of solitary confinement in prisons.