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The printing press helped to spread literacy, civic discourse, and even political dissent in colonial America. Without paper, however, the invention of the moveable type printing press would have been insignificant. This crucial communication medium was hobbled by a critical shortage of the raw material needed for printed matter. Paper was in short supply in the colonies and in the new nation as it could only be made from rags, and there was constant difficulty in obtaining enough rags to keep the presses rolling. Pleas for this essential ingredient were constantly seen in the newspapers in early America and there were severe shortages of both paper and the rags from which it was made during the American Revolution. This article examines how desperate were the early Americans for the paper which was necessary both for firing the muskets and for spreading the rhetoric of Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1917, after the United States joined the war in Europe and was no longer politically neutral, on the American front, the German ethnic press became a target for censors and critics. The general assumption was that German language papers bred disloyalty among German immigrant communities and posed a threat to the United States' war efforts. This study explores the editorial and political views of the German-language press during the summer of 1917 by assessing the tone of a sample of German language mainstream newspapers during July 1, 1917 through September 30, 1917. The findings show that the overall coverage was less loyal to Imperial Germany than had been argued by U.S. officials and censors. In an effort to assimilate, German immigrant newspapers widely published the U.S. government's official position, showed support for the American war effort, and focused on cultural affairs of the immigrant community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late nineteenth century American mass circulation press developed a style of ‘new journalism’ that gave rise to celebrity journalism. It is widely accepted that this new approach to reporting replaced news values with entertainment as a consequence of the need to cater to the tastes of a mass readership and this is seen to explain the incredible innovations that occurred in the press in the US at the time (Ponce de Leon; Roggenkamp; Tebbel; Turner; Schudson Discovering the News). This article questions this version of American press history by arguing that those papers also had to appeal to the politics of poor immigrants and the working class and that the conventions associated with celebrity overlapped and often coincided with a ‘radical’ populist campaigning style of reporting that was as important (and at times, more important) to building and sustaining mass readerships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Points out that 'The Black Panther' newspaper, born in the tumult of the 1960s black power movement, refuses to die. Official closure in the early 1980s; Efforts to bring it back to life; Purposes of the resurrection of 'The Black Panther' newspaper; Blank Panther's emphasis on public communication; Modern black nationalism.

The business reasons behind the decision to start the BBC television service in 1936 remain unclear despite the volume of literature on the subject. Additionally, controversy has persisted regarding foreign involvement in what has been considered a fully British system. What is apparent from the literature is an emphasis placed on the technical development, generally under-representing other aspects of television. A new multi-disciplinary approach is proposed and applied here to explore the circumstances around the emergence of the service, together with hitherto neglected industry aspects: the business and commercial issues relating to broadcaster and suppliers. This paper highlights the primacy of the BBC television service as providing the first instance of what became a common template for live television creation whilst illustrating, with new evidence, foreign influence on British engineering development for the BBC service. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the reproduction of the foundational terrain of media work as composed of amateur and professional realms through the youth movement of amateur journalism in the late 19th-Century United States. Amateur journalists wrote, typeset and printed journals of essays, commentary, word puzzles and stories, which were circulated primarily among themselves in subcultural networks of reciprocity. A broad cultural analysis characterizes how debates about social change due to industrialization shaped definitions and valuations of amateurism and professionalism. A critical political-economic analysis examines how these changes and debates as refracted and reproduced through the commercialization of literary industries and printing technologies spawned amateur journalism. A critical analysis of surviving autobiographical works by amateur journalists of the day explores the on-the-ground cultural production of amateurism and professionalism through amateur journalism's ascendance, peak and decline. The article concludes by reflecting on the value of these findings for understanding today's media terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international appeal of Hollywood films through the twentieth century has been a subject of interest to economic and film historians alike. This paper employs some of the methods of the economic historian to evaluate key arguments within the film history literature explaining the global success of American films. Through careful analysis of both existing and newly constructed data sets, the paper examines the extent to which Hollywood's foreign earnings were affected by: film production costs; the extent of global distribution networks; and also the international orientation of the films themselves. The paper finds that these factors influenced foreign earnings in quite distinct ways, and that their relative importance changed over time. The evidence presented here suggests a degree of interaction between the production and distribution arms of the major US film companies in their pursuit of foreign markets that would benefit from further archival-based investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edwin Howard Armstrong is commonly remembered as the inventor of frequency modulation (FM). There are those, however, who dispute this claim and assert that Armstrong's legacy is a work of fiction rather than history. This study examines the extensive public relations campaign on behalf of both FM and Armstrong from 1940 until after his death. This thesis is a case study of this campaign for the purpose of understanding the narrative presented to the American public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the discursive struggle engendered by the widespread revival of the occult in America during the Second World War. It begins by analysing middlebrow press reports, which used this interest in the occult to spread patriotic messages whilst simultaneously dismissing it as a symptom of women's wartime anxieties. The paper moves on to argue that this complex engagement with 'popular occultism' also manifested in 'escapist' forms such as literature, radio and cinema. It focuses particularly on a cycle of 'serious' ghost films which-like the Ouija board-provided a medium that addressed women's feelings of uncertainty and loss, whilst drawing attention away from the violent eradication of bodies. However, analysis of the production and reception of Paramount's The Uninvited -'the first serious story of spirit influence'-highlights counter-hegemonic strategies within these films, evinced by complaints to the studio and industry regulator over The Uninvited's 'dangerous' influences on women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on women who worked at Bell Telephone Company in the USA during 1930s and 1940s as telephone operators, and the training programmes they went through. Transmission of information depended on their actions because they had to facilitate the switchboards, and therefore held a crucial position as part of the communication channel. Thus, Bell felt they should tune their ‘bad’ behaviour which embodied noise in their systems. In order to maintain equilibrium, Bell enmeshed Michel Foucault’s disciplinary and biopower forms of governmentality and developed a hybrid form. This combination was seen in their flagship training programme, A Design for Living, where Bell penetrated operators’ bodies and minds, inside and outside work. When the operators revolted, Bell realised power should be exercised through automated dial machines. This would then become an inspiration for cybernetics who aimed to control communication systems that constructed information’s correct behaviour, and consequently users. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines representations of urban domestic sphere and communication technologies in Playboy during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that Playboy carved out a space for a seamless relationship between work (production) and leisure/free time (reproduction) in the domestic sphere, specifically the bachelor pad, which contributed to current notions of the live–work lifestyle. Combining work, consumption, and leisure through technology within the home permits the erosion of boundaries between work and free time. Consequently, advances in communication and entertainment technologies, consumerism and Playboy's celebration of the urban bachelor pad contributed to current definitions of the good life and reflected the paradigm shift to the post-industrial economy and the subsequent emergence of the knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a series of nineteenth century court cases involving the failed delivery of telegraphic ‘death messages.’ In these cases, friends or family members of a deceased or dying person failed to receive a telegram announcing the death or illness, and thus either missed their loved one's funeral or were unable to see them before they died. The intended recipient of the telegram then sued the telegraph company over the emotional suffering they experienced as a result. Those cases that were decided on behalf of the presumably emotionally wronged party offered a complex understanding of the public responsibilities of telecommunications companies. In the view of the courts that made these decisions, these companies were not simply responsible for transmitting messages. They also had an empathetic duty to the feelings of their customers. These court decisions have much to teach media historians about nineteenth century communications law and the emotional implications of new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores links between the debates that surrounded the introduction of television in Australia, and parallel controversies in Britain, the USA and Canada. Richard Boyer, chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), looked for evidence of how these other places had experienced television to support his case for an Australian public television monopoly financed without advertising. For Boyer and many ABC colleagues, British regulatory practices and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television were the model for emulation. Boyer also hoped that public broadcasting would sustain Australia's Britishness, and deter broader American cultural influences. Canada potentially showed how British and American approaches might be reshaped to suit Australian circumstances. However, as the strength of US broadcasting influence became apparent, as the limits of the response of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to the television challenge were revealed, and as Britain itself adopted a 'dual system' of public and commercial broadcasting, the ABC found its position in the Australian television debate progressively and inexorably undermined. Transnational connections thus failed to serve the ABC's particular national agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stars and Stripes is a unique newspaper with a distinctive mission, ownership and journalistic staff unlike any in the USA. Despite its parentage in the US Department of Defense, directives give the newspaper editorial independence. Still, military commanders and Pentagon overseers have challenged and interfered with those rights since the newspaper's First World War beginnings in Europe. This study examines the published accounts of that struggle, finding that despite the newspaper's journalistic successes, the military has periodically engaged in control and interference, particularly because of the newspaper's logistical dependence upon the Department of Defense. Stars and Stripes' achievements have largely been dependent upon having the support of various military commanders in charge of US overseas military forces, having military editors or publishers who were resolute against military intrusion, or having the involvement of Congressional oversight committees and other news media willing to expose military news management at the newspaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As president of the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, Louis N. Hammerling accumulated substantial power over some 800 newspapers in 33 languages. As advertising, public relations and journalism emerged as professions in the 1900s, Hammerling functioned as a translator, advertising agent, public relations man and go-between for ethnic-language newspapers when they flourished. With his trade magazine, The American Leader, he extolled the virtues and hardships of immigrants, and offered editorial proposals for legislative changes. In response to his widespread influence, federal officials called him to testify in 1918 about his First World War-era propaganda for Germany, the USA and alcoholic beverages industries. This historical, biographical case study highlights the potential corruptibility of the boundaries of news, advertising and circulation sides of the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on how Alex Cox, a British filmmaker based in U.S., co-opted Hollywood in a bid to assemble one of the fiercest single cinematic assaults on the U.S. foreign policy during the second cold war through his movie "Walker." The film, a serial biopic of a forgotten American who shortly ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, is said to be worthy of detailed study not only because of its highly original take on the historical film genre but also because of its timing and subversive political message. Its release also coincided with the furore of the Iran-Contra affair, one of the biggest U.S. foreign policy scandal in the late cold war.

Seeks to begin an historical excavation of interpretive frameworks used to make sense of alternative media as it has been thought and written about in prominent or paradigmatic works by scholars in the United States and Great Britain. U.S. literature and the American Revolution; Role of media in the American Revolution; Role of media in the programs of assimilation in the American Revolution.

Points out that Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was a canny propagandist who promoted images of himself in the United States with considerable force and suasion by manipulating the popular press. Creation of charisma through such media coverage; Seductive image of Villa in the popular press; Ability to speak more directly to an American reading audience.

From the 1940s to the mid-1960s, America's ‘true adventure’ pulp magazines offered a cocktail of action, adventure and lurid sleaze. Titles such as Male, Man's Life, Men Today, Stag and True Men brimmed with stories and features dealing with combat, crime, hunting, exploration and sport, alongside an array of pinups and prurient exposés. This article chronicles the history of the ‘true adventure’ genre, and relates its development and characteristic form to broad shifts in gendered identities in America after the Second World War. Beneath these magazines’ elaboration of an exaggerated form of robust and virile manhood, it is argued, there lurked a sense of unease and anxiety rooted in broader concerns about the trajectory of social and cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nineteenth-century telegraphy had a vital integrative role in the intersecting and mutually constituted developments of American industrialization, urbanization, and mediatization. Previous work by Tarr, Finholt, and Goodman1 focused on the internal activities of business, fire, and police institutions in American cities. Here, I move beyond their approach in relating telegraphy to broader infrastructural developments of national-level urban industry and modern mass media in the late nineteenth century and the rise of dominant, networked urban commercial, industrial, financial, and media centers. By radically accelerating the mobility of information and capital, telegraphy significantly reduced barriers of distance to industry, commerce, news and advertising, and state and military interventions. Owing to its commercial ownership in the USA, telegraphy privileged business over public use in comparison to Western Europe. Its enduring effects were its integrative functions in the development of a large-scale, urban-centered, largely private system of mass production, mass media, mass culture, and mass consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical research describes the strategies used by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and several other periodicals to discuss the incorporation of Lucille Ball's pregnancy into her television sitcom, I Love Lucy. This important media event occurred in the early 1950s and marked the first time that an image of pregnancy and childbirth would be depicted on national television. Although the inclusion of sexual content in the mass media was highly controversial at the time of Ball's pregnancy, this analysis concluded that the press was generally favorable in its treatment of the topic. Journalists highlighted the popularity of the event, praised I Love Lucy creators for their sensitive treatment of the topic, and drew comparisons between characters' on-screen and off-screen lives. This research elucidates the emergence of representations of pregnancy and childbirth on television that are now commonly featured in modern broadcast programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the mechanisms of early television censorship from 1947 to 1952, looking at the restrictions placed on content, and the process that shows and advertisements went through before being broadcast. This article focuses on the inner workings of the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) censoring arm, the Continuity Acceptance Department, and takes into consideration the medium-specific qualities of television and the challenges presented to those who had the task of regulating broadcast content. In addition to a general discussion of regulations, this article examines the censorship of homosexual characterizations in early television, looking specifically at the use of 'swish' routines (which make use of stereotyped gay mannerisms) in comedy shows. While networks and the National Association for Radio and Television Broadcasters established codes to govern their censorship apparatuses, the process of censorship was less an enforcement of hard and fast rules than a constant negotiation over content and allowable material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a discussion of the group of journalists working in and around Virginia City during the 1860s and 1870s, when the area became the world centre of the silver mining industry. The so-called Sagebrush writers reported on mining prospects for readerships locally and internationally, as well as writing anecdotes and stories about the life of the highly transient local communities generated by the search for silver. Theirs is writing characterised both by caution in responding to the mining industry and by an aggressive humour in depicting the local life of a cosmopolitan instant city. These newspaper writers have been considered in the local context of the Nevadan frontier. Here, I discuss their engagement with a complex and internationally networked industry, and also their address to the collectivities of the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the Second World War, news-flow between the US and Australia was constrained by the lack of a direct submarine cable or wireless telegraphy link between the two countries and by the fact that Australian coverage of international news largely emerged out of an ‘imperial press system’ centred in London. ‘Imperial preference’ in news was facilitated by global cartel arrangements amongst international news agencies whereby the London-based agency, Reuters, was given priority access to the Australian news market. This article examines these constraints on the development of US-Australian news links prior to the Second World War. It also looks at the way the Second World War transformed the situation as the strategic interests of the two countries became aligned. The article demonstrates the importance of news agencies and news-flow in the history of international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The end of the Second World War saw global telecommunications governance renegotiated. The dominant British Imperial (later Commonwealth) network experienced multiple changes: the tightly integrated and collaborative imperial governance system fell away as the governing partners increasingly pursued their own, rather than a collective agendas and as the ‘imperial’ company, Cable and Wireless', dominance gave way to a competition and interconnection based regime as American firms and their networks entered markets hitherto closed to them. Though key elements of the Bermuda Telecommunications Agreement 1945 were soon to be renegotiated, the Bermuda Conference, at which the imperial partners and the new hegemonic power, the USA, bargained, was the fulcrum transitional event. Drawing on archival sources (notably in Canada and the UK) the author tells of the tensions within the fragmenting Imperial partnership, of an American mix of interest and idealism and of this episode in telecommunications liberalisation foreshadowing later changes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on archival sources from the BBC Written Archives Centre, including programming and scheduling policy files and on the Radio Times television edition, this article seeks to contribute to historical work on the way Anglophone cultures interacted in the early days of television broadcasting. The influence of American programming and culture has generally been assumed to begin with the introduction of commercial television in 1955. This article notes the interactions of the BBC and its transatlantic cousins, then surveys the way America was integrated into the schedules (including both BBC productions and, more significantly, American-produced films and series). Placing these in the context of British cultural strength in the English-speaking world, it argues that rather than Americanising viewers, it reinforced the resilience of British culture and its ability to absorb and interact with other cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The War-Time Communications Project (WTCP), conducted during the Second World War, was a major event in the evolution of communication science. A prominent place in it was occupied by Professor Harold D. Lasswell's study on Hitler's speeches, in which the 'speech model' was examined in reference to its vocal components and non-verbal communication elements - in terms of 'how spoken', rather than of 'what said', with an emphasis on audience feedback. This approach formed part of Lasswell's innovative idea: quantification of the word domain. The study was of one of a series of content analysis research works undertaken at the Library of Congress at that time, part of an attempt at 'keeping an eye' on world peace. The present article, the first exposition of Lasswell's opus, highlights one of his central concepts - linguistic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the surrender of Germany in World War II but before the defeat of Japan, the first US full-fledged science writer, William L. Laurence, while on the payroll of both The New York Times and the US government, was given exclusive journalistic access by the US War Department to operate behind what he calls the 'Atomic Curtain' and to write news articles that were then disseminated for free worldwide for the lay public. This research article is based on analyzing for the first time about 250 pages of typed carbon copies of Laurence's drafts that were marked up by US government censors before publication, thus establishing early on the US monopoly over information that was spooned out so as to control and shape public knowledge and awareness about this revolutionary weapon, both domestically and internationally. These carbon copies were stamped TOP SECRET in red ink at the time, but decades later were declassified and housed in the US National Archives in a file marked 'Laurence Stories'. In this analysis, five conspicuous themes are discussed, including minimizing the existence and dangers of radioactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the use of oral histories, this study looks at the social impact of television's arrival in the Appalachian Mountains of the USA. Given the oral traditions of rural Appalachia, oral history is particularly well suited for this topic. Despite electrification delays and reception problems, the arrival of television, like radio before it, reinforced the community ties of many of the participants and families in this study. Most of the participants spoke about their memories of TV from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. However, few programmes during that period included characters or performers that spoke to the Appalachian culture, leaving mountain residents seemingly marginalized from 'mainstream' TV audiences. Yet early television's underrepresentation or misrepresentation of Appalachia did not exclude these interviewees from participating in TV's arrival, nor did marginalization make their experiences insignificant. Participants' oral histories give enthusiastic voice to their communities' welcoming of television, and at the same time reveal their own individual agency and personal reflection in creating Appalachian TV audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the domestic and global dependence of United States news agencies. It mentioned a comparison between the United States Associated Presses(AP) and the European news agencies and cited some instances wherein U.S. news cartel dominated the global news field thus achieving equal status with that of Europe's Havas, Wolff and Reuters. Domestic competition between American news cartel also contributes to AP's success while European agencies such as Havas, fail to satisfy local clients.

Examines the interplay between wartime propaganda and advertising discourse depicting war worker women during the Second World War in the U.S. Approach of the federal government in attracting women for war work; Omission of African American women from government propaganda materials and mainstream media; Manner by which women's role was depicted in wartime product and recruitment ads placed in women's magazines.

This article discusses the shift in the focus of American cinema. In recent years, the focus of inquiry into the history of the American cinema has shifted from anecdotal accounts of the lives of stars, directors and studio moguls to serious analysis of Hollywood's industrial machinery as a producer of mass entertainment. Particular note has been paid to the intricate interrelationships between the three distinct branches of industrial activity: production, distribution and exhibition. From the late 1910's until a consent decree in the late 1940's, just eight studios dominated all three branches of activity, an oligopoly that was more collusive than it was competitive. Despite the depth of detail and rigour in "the new film history," it has, thus far, dealt primarily with one product line, albeit the most important in terms of revenue that is the feature-length picture.

This article focuses on American journalism. The American press's remarkable performance as chief governmental propagandist and flag-waver in the "war against terrorism" provides with insights into the real nature and identity of American journalism. Beyond a presentism that reads one's most fervent hopes and most ardent beliefs back into history, the press's performance in striking back at terrorism allows to explore a new and with opened eyes, the central dynamics and historical workings of the news media. Anyone tuning into the 24/7 headline machine of cable news during the last months of 2001, stretching from the attack on September 11 through the October and November war against the Taliban on into 2002, would see that the press moved within a fairly restricted range of views and information. Such parameters resulted from a mix of forces that doubtlessly included the patriotic fervour of the populace.

Since its introduction, television (TV) has largely, though not exclusively, been regarded as a disruptive force in American culture and critics have blamed it for the erosion of dominant American institutions like the family, religion and the educational system. However, since the 1970s, TV has also been considered as an important component of American culture. Since society understands so much of the present through and as media, it is not surprising that past media are often offered as stand-ins for the past. Writers connected the very familiarity of TV, into the emerging national narrative of the entire post-World War II era.

Examines three films from the Hal Roach Studios in an effort to exploe the treatment of independent films by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America (MPPDA). Describes how the three films encountered difficulty with the censorshiop establishment; Further illustrates aspects of the censorship agencies.

Investigates the changes in the content of women magazines in the United States. Implication of the television on the magazine sector; Decision of publishers to change magazine contents from feature to fiction; Impact of fiction columns on the readership status of magazines.

Discusses the implications of a song about parricide on the popular culture in the United States. Distinction between folklore and popular culture; Development of the privacy law; Circulation of public entertainment.

Focuses on the impact of writing articles for women's magazines in the United States. Criticism on the columns; Disadvantages of the articles on the female gender; Morale of the write-ups.