Andie Tucher, professor at Columbia University, has a new book, Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History (Columbia University Press). Fake news has been part of the American media landscape for as long as there’s been an American media landscape. No history of American journalism is complete without an accounting of the many ways that the information system of democracy—the critical but unsecurable infrastructure of civic life–has been invaded and exploited over the years. But it’s not just the hoaxers, humbuggers, propagandists, puffers, partisans, blusterers, scandal-mongers, and fraudsters who have peddled fake news; it’s also the fake journalists, who appropriate the outward forms of journalism in an explicit effort to lend credibility to their falsehoods. The relationship between journalism and truth has always been more fragile than many of us realize.
Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho, recently published a chapter on the history of high school student newspapers in a new volume on the history of the high school. Drawing on early journalism textbooks, education journals, and student newspapers themselves, this chapter discusses the early structure of these publications—their production process, place within the curriculum, and acceptance within the high school.
Teri Finneman (Kansas), Meg Heckman (Northeastern) and Pamela Walck (Duquesne) recently had the article “Reimagining Journalistic Roles: How Student Journalists Are Taking On the U.S. News Desert Crisis” accepted in Journalism Studies. All three advised online publications created to serve news desert communities. They are also having a webinar at 11 a.m. Eastern Feb. 4 to discuss the opportunities and challenges of running a news desert publication with students. Register here.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism, edited by Gregory A. Borchard of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is set for publication this month. Journalism permeates our lives and shapes our thoughts in ways that we have long taken for granted. Whether it is National Public Radio in the morning or the lead story on the Today show, the morning newspaper headlines, up-to-the-minute Internet news, grocery store tabloids, Time magazine in our mailbox, or the nightly news on television, journalism pervades our lives. The Encyclopedia of Journalism covers all significant dimensions of journalism, such as print, broadcast, and Internet journalism; U.S. and international perspectives; and history, technology, legal issues and court cases, ownership, and economics. The encyclopedia will consist of approximately 500 signed entries from scholars, experts, and journalists.
The first recipient of Journalism History‘s Tom Reilly Award is Raymond McCaffrey of the University of Arkansas. His article, “From Baseball Icon to Crusading Columnist: How Jackie Robinson Used His Column in the African-American Press to Continue His Fight for Civil Rights in Sports,” was the most-read Journalism History article in 2021.
McCaffrey’s study explores how Jackie Robinson continued his fight for civil rights in sports using his newspaper column in the New York Amsterdam News and syndicated in African-American newspapers during the 1960s. A review of those columns reveals a side of Robinson not typically seen in official histories depicting him as too conciliatory and restrained in his approach to race relations. Robinson came to take almost militant stands, challenging oppression by calling for boycotts of sporting events and event sponsors years before such strategies were adopted by a younger generation of athletes.
Maddie Liseblad, an assistant professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been selected as an Alumni Spotlight Award recipient by Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, Calif. The award represents one of the highest honors presented to graduates on behalf of PLNU. Recipients are alumni who make a difference in unique and creative ways, and they are selected through news updates and recommendations from PLNU faculty and staff. Liseblad, the first journalism student to graduate with distinction from PLNU, will be honored at a ceremony during homecoming in February.
Several history division members are featured in the latest online issue of the journal Historiography in Mass Communication, which includes a roundtable discussion entitled “Reconceptualizing Journalism in an Age of Misinformation.” The panel comprises several esteemed journalism historians, raises questions about risks to democracy associated with attacks on the press, and considers brainstorming ideas built around Media Reform legislation.