THE HISTORY OF A SURVIVING SPECIES

Abstract

In 1925, University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park published a seminal essay on “The Natural History of the Newspaper.” That history, he wrote, “is the history of the surviving species. It is an account of the conditions under which the existing newspaper has grown up and taken form.” The reporting of foreign events in American news media has its own natural history. Commercialization and changing forms of ownership, the emergence of new media, developments in technology, evolving norms of professionalism, the shifting panorama of world affairs—these and other factors have forced continual changes in the collection and distribution of foreign news. In this essay, the authors consider these dynamic factors in identifying clearly defined periods in this evolution and demonstrating how this historical framework helps us understand the new and highly complex era of foreign newsgathering we are now in.

Keywords:

• foreign correspondence
• foreign news technology
• history of American journalism
• international reporting
• media ownership
• natural history of news

Notes

1. We have argued this point, building off the insights of sociologist Robert Park, in Cole and Hamilton (2007). For Park's essay, see Park (1960 [1925]).

2. See, for example, Hutchenson et al. (2004), Bennett (1990) and Althaus et al. (1996).

3. Examples of these longitudinal studies include: Hachten and Beil (1985), Potter (1987), Ogan et al. (1975), Emery (1989), Riffe (1994), and Riffe and Budianto (2001).

4. These factors are different from those we outlined in “A Natural History of Foreign Correspondence” (Cole and Hamilton, 2007), which were ownership, product differentiation, cost, the urgency of world events, and correspondents’ self-perceptions. There is good reason for this. That study was generally narrower than this essay. It focused on a span of 20 years in the evolution of one newspaper and asked what forces affected change during that period. This study looks at the three-century-history of American foreign newsgathering and asks what factors shaped broad changes in newsgathering within an entire press system.

5. See Clark and Wetherell (1989)—for piping foreign news, see p. 295. Also see Copeland (1997).

6. For this period, see Knudson (2006) and Stewart (1969).

7. Discussions from this point of view can be found in Leonard (1986, p. 18) and Botein (1980, p. 22). In The Good Citizen, Michael Schudson says foreign news appeared in colonial newspapers “primarily … because it afforded local readers and local authorities no grounds for grumbling” (1998, p. 36).

8. For this period, see Crouthamel (1964) and Mott (1947, pp. 216, 222). For an important discussion of the economic success of penny papers such as the New York Sun and the New York Herald, see Hamilton (2004, chap. 20).

9. Figures on the decrease of foreign news can be found in Wilke (1987, p. 1570). Other studies show a similar pattern, for instance, Shaw (1981, pp. 38–50). Donald R. Avery (1984, 1986) has noted a decline in foreign news in the years before the War of 1812.

10. See Avery (1982), who argues foreign news declined because editors and readers began to think of themselves as American and thus were more oriented toward domestic affairs.

11. The term special correspondent, as Ralph used it, applied to any reporter outside of the newspaper's hometown, be it Washington, DC, or Vienna; the foreign application became more firmly rooted in the argot of journalism.

12. Paul Scott Mowrer, “Suggestions for Reorganizing the Foreign Service,” May 6, 1920, Edward Price Bell Papers, Midwestern Manuscripts Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.

13. The term “Golden Age” is thrown around a good deal. Phillip Knightly has dated the age for war correspondence as running from 1865 to 1914 “because of the rise of the popular press, the increasing use of the telegraph, and the tardy introduction of organized censorship” (2004, p. 43). Among those who consider the interwar years the Golden Age is Morrell Heald (1988, p. xi).

14. On the proliferation of outlets for foreign news, see Desmond (1982, chaps 12, 14, 16), Goulden (1965, p. 29), Lynd and Lynd (1965, p. 386), Ryant (1971, p. 680), and Peterson (1964, pp. 57–64).

15. Interview with Marvin Kalb, who was CBS correspondent in Moscow when the Paris meeting took place, January 8, 2004. As yet another example of this attitude, a CBS executive is credited with saying, “The entertainment end of the network business did its worst so that CBS News could do its best” (Salant, 1999, p. 147).

16. Interview with Elisa Tinsley, February 2, 2005. Safety policy supplied by Elisa Tinsley (email March 27, 2005) is dated September 16, 2002.

17. This discussion is drawn from Hamilton and Jenner (2003, 2004).

18. New York Times, March 24, 2003.