During my second year of doctoral studies at Ohio University, I had the fortune of enrolling in the History Department’s Contemporary History Institute (CHI) certificate program. For two glorious semesters, I was introduced to how historians are trained in the discipline of historiography—which basically means in part reading. A LOT. I usually would finish my assignment an hour before that week’s class began. Then a half-dozen of us would gather around a large, wooden conference table in the Brown House, located on a far corner of the College Green, and dissect our impressions of the readings for three hours with the assistance of our history professor. My brain would be mush by the end of most nights.
It is not hyperbole to say that we read nearly twenty books that first semester—all largely focused on the Cold War and post-World War II. I recall thinking my cohort and I were getting off “easy” with only fifteen books (plus journal articles) the following semester. And while I struggled to keep up with the reading load (as a 16-year veteran of the newsroom it seemed impossible NOT to read every word an author wrote), I also found myself considering ideas I would never have encountered if not for these two CHI seminar classes.
I would never have dove into how Winston Churchill churned out England’s first drafts of World War II history, if not for reading David Reynolds’ In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. I would never have considered John Lewis Gaddis’ The Landscape of History (which I am still likely to quote here and elsewhere). Nor would I have encountered the enraging counterfactuals of Jeff Greenfield’s If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second terms of President John F. Kennedy. And that was just in my first semester.
Along the way I learned that reading mid-century American history is a challenging proposition. Some of the authors tested political ideologies I held close from my childhood, largely influenced by family members I loved and revered. Other topics forced me to reconsider historic events in a new light. Every single tome challenged me in a new way. Every week. It was hard mental lifting. And yet, these two classes still stand out among five years of graduate-level studies. In fact, I still remember these two classes with a great level of nostalgia, and have even been tempted to audit a few seminars my colleagues in Duquesne University’s history department teach, if for no other reason than to learn something new and push myself out of my historical comfort zone.
Not even a decade later, there is a movement sweeping this country that wants to take many of the documented facts and truths of the last century—or more—and spin them into counterfactuals for their own political gain. They want us to believe that books, whether fiction or non-fiction, simply because they are hard to read or challenge our very beliefs are better off banned. Censored. Some would even enjoy seeing those volumes burned. Fear of the unknown—and the personal work it takes to understand a different position or life experience—is best silenced. Unconsidered. Shuttered.
This self-imposed dark age is the stuff of Orwell and Bradberry. And it strikes me as very unAmerican. Any student of history knows that the men (and women behind them, whispering in their ears) who founded this country were heavily influenced by the European Enlightenment. It represented the greatest heights in man’s knowledge. These men and women read the classics. They debated ideas and ideologies. They understood that what they were trying to create in the New World was something different and worth their very lives. Many paid that ultimate price. Willingly.
At the same time, every student of history also knows that nations and eras always have difficult events and leaders to reconcile with. The cognitive dissonance that comes with ideals not matching reality is what it means to be human. But we cannot ignore those painful pasts. We cannot wish away reality. We must not embrace counterfactuals that would willingly mislead generations of future leaders.
Sitting through the American Journalism Historian Association’s board meeting prior to our annual conference, I kept hearing respected colleagues working at state universities express concerns about the dangers of telling the truth to students about historical events. The fears of being fired, silenced, or untenured for teaching the truth was both palpable and deeply disconcerting. Hearing them talk about the challenges they face teaching topics steeped in primary documents and verified facts, especially in some Southern states was disturbing. It made me wonder how much longer until these same fears spread north?
At the same time, just hearing these colleagues express their concerns made me mad. This is not the experiment in democracy I grew up believing in. When did self-inflicted ignorance replace that city of light on a hill? When did we abandon that independent streak of free-thought to be replaced with group-think and partisan body politick—a problem that swings to the extremes in both parties? When will this pendulum swing back to a more reasonable, intellectual, fact-based approach? What if it never swings back to reason? Is my life in danger because of the vocation I have found?
Even as I reflect on these thoughts, I am struck by two things: First, that I am incredibly privileged to work at a private, northern university where instructor autonomy is both valued and protected. Concerns about a student voicing concern about the truths of the past and placing my employment in jeopardy does not exist—yet.
Second, it reinforced to me the idea that those of us in the humanities must do a better job explaining why history matters to our students—and society. Our very existence might depend on it. Yes, the modern lens might obscure some of the common themes of the past. But that does not mean the lessons of yesterday cannot help us today. Because censorship is not the answer. Nor is silence. Or fear.
So in this final issue of 2023, we will boldly examine the past to consider how there truly is nothing new under the sun. Yes, absentee voting dominated headlines in 2020 as some politicians sought to discredit Biden’s presidency. But this modern argument is an old one, as Erika J. Pribanic-Smith reveals in “Debate over Civil War Soldier Voting in California’s Partisan Press, 1863-1864.” Her article examines the partisan press’s coverage of California’s fall 1863 election, which marked the first time the state attempted any sort of non-traditional voting. Republicans asserted that Civil War circumstances necessitated extending suffrage to soldiers stationed away from home, while Democrats argued that absentee voting both violated the state constitution and opened the door for fraud. In this examination, Pribanic-Smith offers historical context for these recent arguments surrounding absentee balloting.
Meanwhile, Ulf Jonas Bjork turns our attention to the technological advancements in 1848 that forever changed how the press reported political revolutions across Europe. In “Foreign Correspondence in the Early Telegraphic Era: The Herald, the Tribune, and the 1848 Revolutions,” Bjork reveals how these technological advancements had a profound impact on news gathering practices abroad, including the publishing of foreign correspondences and eyewitness accounts in newspapers such as the New York Tribune and the New York Herald—and how the two papers shared this breaking news to out-scoop other competitors.
And rounding out this issue, Daniel DeFraia’s “Into the State: How American Reporters Came to Work For the US Government” examines just what it is a reporter is and does and how the integrity of that idea has been unsettled when one considers the blurred, unregulated borders between journalism and the state. DeFraia demonstrates—through the careers of two reporters, Sylvester Scovel in Cuba and William Bayard Hale in Mexico—how the US press negotiated this nebulous terrain of high-stakes reporting during wartime in ways that tested and tried unstable journalistic norms and reporters’ connections to state work.
Lastly, wrapping up American Journalism’s fortieth essay series, Jason Lee Guthrie, in his essay “Revising the First Rough Draft: On Journalism, History, and Journalism History,” challenges us to consider how pervasive media has become in our lives and as such, media historians form one of the final bulwarks of fact-based research in a world awash with false claims and fake news. His essay speaks directly to those who conduct historical research in the areas of journalism, media, and communication and who make their disciplinary homes in schools of journalism, media studies, and mass communication and argues that such scholars are uniquely positioned to help address issues of conflict between journalists and historians. Meanwhile, Ashley Walter, in “Forging a Path Toward Accessibility: Rethinking How We Collect and Share Stories,” urges journalism historians to rethink how they collect and share stories in an increasingly digital world, especially regarding oral history interviewing. By pushing back on assumptions and centering access, Walter argues for reassessing whose stories get told, who tells these stories, and offers a timely primer on conducting oral histories remotely.
My hope is that as you read these offerings, you consider how you might answer the question: Why does media history matter? And how can I help spread the word to those around me?