Editor's Note

For far too long, television news has been an understudied area of media history. American Journalism and other journals dedicated to publishing scholarship on media history publish few articles about television news compared to other subjects. This is not news to anyone who spends time with the journals, but Mike Conway, a member of American Journalism’s editorial board and a historian of television news, has compiled figures showing just how long this has been an issue. For more than thirty years, television has been the focus of journalism history research in fewer than one of every ten articles. As he writes in “Professional Notes,” there are various reasons for this lack of scholarship, some understandable and some not. He makes a compelling argument for why more historical research on television news is needed.

We are pleased to publish in this issue research of just the kind that Mike calls for in his essay. Tracy Lucht and Chunyu Zhang explore the career of Mary Jane Odell, a pillar of Midwestern television for decades. Odell's talent was evident to anyone who knew her for long. One of her first jobs was as a secretary at a Des Moines radio station, but within a few weeks she had her own show. They identify three phases in Odell's career, which align with her work in commercial, community, and public television. They also show how Odell provided an important voice to the debate over television content and women's role in it.

Nathan Godfried writes about radio news analyst William S. Gailmor, who was blacklisted in the late 1940s for embracing anti-fascism, labor rights, civil rights, and other causes. He returned to journalism in the early 1950s offering important “Popular Front” analyses of human welfare issues. In his article, Justin T. Clark examines the cultural importance of pathological lying as an explanation for the frequency of false reporting and “news fakes” during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The discovery of pointless lying showed the need for greater vigilance about the source of information and the motives of those who provided it. Jessica Ghilani explores women's magazine advertisements for the Women's Army Corps and Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War. The advertisements, designed by N. W. Ayer and Son, show how masculine and feminine military roles were rigidly drawn at the time.