Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote to his scientific rival, Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”Footnote1 Yet, ironically, Newton’s insular life led him to avoid criticism and become reticent about publishing his work—all the while uncovering some of the greatest mysteries of the natural world and establishing principles that became laws of science still studied centuries later.
While Newton and Hooke’s relationship was caustic at best, it is undeniable that it spurred both men forward. Pushing and pulling each other beyond what they may have thought possible to discover, explore, know. It truly was iron sharpening iron.
As I step into this new role as editor of American Journalism, Newton’s comments have been on my mind. I am keenly aware of the many mentors, colleagues, and friends upon whose shoulders I have stood, first hesitantly, and then more confidently as I pushed forward in my own research.
As I look over the long list of my predecessors as editors of this journal, I am in awe of these men and women who truly are giants in journalism and media history. Each one has played a vital role in fostering a place for fellow scholars—whether just starting their careers or well established—to publish and share their research. What is more, they created a space for media historians to engage in meaningful discourse. To inspire each other. To push each other forward in knowledge.
It is a task I am pleased to tackle. It is all the more fulfilling to take on this role knowing that there is a strong community of scholars united by the singular passion of sharing knowledge and encouraging the next generation of media historians forward. Because we cannot know where we are going if we do not know where we have been. Because we are only starting to understand the past. Because journalism history matters.
As I look to the next few years, I have set forth some clear goals with the new AJ editorial board—which includes Nicholas Hirshon of William Paterson University, who is the new associate editor; Matthew Pressman of Seton Hall University, the incoming book reviews editor; and Carrie Teresa of Niagara University, the new digital media reviews editor. I am excited about this team of journalism historians who have each, in their own rights, contributed to our collective knowledge on a wide swath of important and timely topics, from the history of sports rebranding to news media values and the black press, respectively.
We have two fundamental objectives.
First, we want to expand our sphere of influence as a journal. While the term “American” appears in our title and will continue to, I do not want it to be geographically limiting, and my hope is that the scholarship published in AJ will be increasingly global and transnational in scale. Because even though technology has made us think more globally—and the pandemic has certainly reinforced this interconnectivity—the reality is that media do have the ability to transcend geography, ethnicity, and race. My hope is to see more such historic scholarship in the future.
Secondly, we want to celebrate the rich history of this journal. In 2023, AJ will mark its fortieth anniversary. Among journalism and media history journals, this makes us the second-oldest publication dedicated to historic examinations of media after only Journalism History. As such, we have plans to celebrate that rich heritage of publishing journalism history scholarship with a year-long focus on where journalism history started, lessons we have learned along the way, and looking ahead to where it is going.
Much like historian John Lewis Gaddis, I believe in the idea that “even in the absence of new answers from the past, the shifting perspectives of the present can cause us to ask new questions” that have the capacity to make the horizon look different.Footnote2 It is this idea of asking new questions, in the context of our time, that will help us better understand the past and drive our scholarship forward.
I want to celebrate that past, honor those who helped document that history, and continue to create a place where future scholars can generate dialogue, share ideas, explore methodologies, and ultimately expand our collective knowledge of that endless horizon.
I am quite pleased that this first issue takes solid steps toward meeting some of these goals.
For example, Daniel M. Haygood and Glenn W. Scott’s piece, “Henry Luce’s American & Chinese Century: An Analysis of US News Magazines’ Coverage of General Chiang Kai-shek from 1936 to 1949,” is a good starting point in our effort to look at the transnational nature of media coverage. Their study of Time magazine’s coverage of China, leading up to World War II as well as after, finds Luce portraying the Chinese Nationalists, led by General Chiang, as democracy-supporting allies of the West, and in sharp contrast to the magazine’s characterization of Mao Tse-tung and his Communists as a threat to Western beliefs and values.
Similarly, Bailey Dick’s “‘We Females Have to Be Contented with the Tales of Adventures’: Trauma and Gender in Dorothy Day’s Early Reporting” is a thorough exploration of the radical Catholic activitist and newspaper maven. I believe it is also a wonderful example of how junior scholars are uncovering new avenues of research and telling important—but largely untold—stories of women who defied gender, time, and place.
Aimee Edmondson’s “‘Pure Caucasian Blood’: Libel by Racial Misidentification in American Newspapers (1900–1957)” turns to critical race theory to help readers better understand the role that the American legal system and newspapers played in efforts to maintain the racial status quo prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Edmondson’s probing questions reveal a rich, previously unexplored vein of case law spawned from newspapers erroneously identifying white people as Black that prompted a series of libel suits from 1900 to 1957 before the U.S. Supreme Court placed libel law under First Amendment protection in New York Times v. Sullivan.
And finally, Dante E. Mozie’s “‘Eyewitnesses to a Tragedy’: How the Collegian, the Student Newspaper of South Carolina State College, Covered the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre” turns to textual analysis and media framing theory to guide his examination into how one campus’s newspaper staff used their publication, the Collegian, to honor their fallen peers. Mozie’s study reveals how the campus newspaper’s coverage also communicated the anger of a community that felt betrayed by politicians and expressed frustrations over what many believed was a lack of accurate news coverage by the mainstream press.
I thank each scholar for their contributions to AJ, and hope that you enjoy this issue as much as I have in preparing it for you.
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Notes
1 Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, correspondence, 5 February 1675, box 12/11, folder 37, Simon Gratz autograph collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
2 John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 103.