Why Journalism History Matters: The Gaffe, the “Stuff,” and the Historical Imagination

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Notes

Andie Tucher is an associate professor and the director of the Communications Ph.D. program in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

James W. Carey, “The Problem of Journalism History,” Journalism History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 1–7; John Nerone, “Does Journalism History Matter?,” American Journalism 28, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 7–27, 8, 11.

Martin Conboy, “The Paradoxes of Journalism History,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 30, no. 3 (2010): 411–420, 411.

Mark Hampton and Martin Conboy, “Journalism History—A Debate,” Journalism Studies 15, no. 2 (2014): 154–171, 166.

Susan J. Douglas, “Does Textual Analysis Tell Us Anything about Past Audiences?,” and David Paul Nord, “The History of Journalism and the History of the Book,” both in Explorations in Communication and History, ed. Barbie Zelizer (London: Routledge, 2008), 66–76, 162–180. On “stuff,” see Charles H. Olin, Journalism: Explains the Workings of a Modern Newspaper Office, and Gives Full Directions for Those Who Desire to Enter the Field of Journalism (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing, 1910), 187.

Anecdotal evidence of disrespect abounds in the popular culture, but attitudes have also been measured quantitatively—for instance, in the annual Gallup survey of how people rate the honesty and ethical standards of various professionals. In the most recent survey, newspaper reporters, besides barely edging out their colleagues on television, managed to outrank only lawyers, advertising practitioners, state officeholders, car salespeople, members of Congress, and lobbyists. See “Honesty/Ethics in Professions,” Gallup, survey taken December 5–8, 2013, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1654/honesty-ethics-professions.aspx.

Examples of this argument are so prevalent that I hesitate to single out particular ones. A quick Google search brings up a long list of election-cycle articles and commentaries with titles such as “Partisan Politics? Take a Look at the 19th Century” (by a columnist who quotes a history professor); “The Dirtiest Presidential Campaign Ever? Not Even Close!” (by a political strategist and frequent talking head); “How Did Things Get This Bad? Polarization, Dysfunction, and the Collapse of Everything” (excerpt of a book by think-tank research fellow); and “The Election of 1800: The Birth of Negative Campaigning in the US” (by a professor of political science).

See, for instance, Andie Tucher, “The True, the False, and the ‘Not Exactly Lying’: Making Fakes and Telling Stories in the Age of the Real Thing,” in Literature and Journalism: Inspirations, Intersections, and Inventions from Ben Franklin to Stephen Colbert, ed. Mark Canada (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 91–118.

“Julius Chambers,” The Journalist, August 26, 1893, 3; “Large Salaries: Tempting Morsels for Able Men,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1887, 7 (reporting a salary of $10,000 at the Herald); “General Gossip of Authors and Writers,” Current Literature 4 (May 1890): 346 (reporting $12,000 at the World); Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man (New York: Harper, 1896), 198, 272. See also National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, suppl. 1, 1910, and Dictionary of American Biography, s.v., “Chambers, James Julius.”

Julius Chambers, News Hunting on Three Continents (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921; London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1922), ix–x.

Chambers, News Hunting, 2–6. Paul Lancaster, for instance, in Gentleman of the Press: The Life and Times of an Early Reporter, Julian Ralph of the “Sun” (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 42–44, cites the Deke story as an example of how young reporters in that era found their first jobs.

It is, for instance, listed in the “Reporting” section of Carl L. Cannon, Journalism: A Bibliography (New York: Public Library, 1924), 277; in the “Biography” section of Warren C. Price, The Literature of Journalism: An Annotated Bibliography (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1959), 70; and in the “Newspaper People at Work” section of Richard A. Schwarzlose, Newspapers: A Reference Guide (New York: Greenwood, 1987), 76. Dictionary of American Biography calls News Hunting “a good human-interest account of a reporter's life.”

On the druggist, Chambers, “An Ounce of Arsenic,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1894, 13, crediting the Bacheller & Johnson Syndicate, and News Hunting, 13–18; on the crossed wires, Chambers, “‘Seven, Seven, Seven—City’: A Tale of the Telephone,” London Magazine, November 1903), 403–410, and News Hunting, 368–390; on Campaneau, “Little Stories of Journalism V,” The Reader, March 1904, 351–357, and News Hunting, 141–148.

Marker in the Bellefontaine cemetery for Sarabella Chambers, June 14, 1829–April 1, 1853: “Genealogy and Local History in Logan County, Ohio: Cemeteries: Lake Township—Bellefontaine Cemetery,” accessed September 23, 2014, http://logan.ohiogenealogy.info/cem/labec.html; Julius appears as “Jas. G.” in the household of his father, Jos. Chambers, US Federal Census, 1860, Ohio, Logan County, Bellefontaine, accessed September 23, 2014, http://tiny.cc/mrb18w at the subscription database Ancestry.com; on the uncles, James and Samuel Walker: W. H. Perrin and J. H. Battle, History of Logan County and Ohio (Chicago: Baskin, 1880), 284. Some of the Cornell students assigned to “self-supporting labor” worked at the university press: The Cornell University: What It Is and What It Is Not (Ithaca: University Press, 1872), 24–26.

Uncle James Walker served as county prosecutor, as mayor of Bellefontaine, and as a government loan agent during the Civil War: Perrin, Logan County, 615; “Judge James Walker,” obituary, Clinton Public, August 7, 1885, transcribed on Rootsweb.com, accessed September 23, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/n3snm9u; Bingham Duncan, Whitelaw Reid: Journalist, Politicians, Diplomat (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), 23.

James J. Chambers and Ida B. Lane were married in 1874: “Massachusetts Marriages, 1841–1915,” FamilySearch, accessed September 23, 2014, https://familysearch.org/pal:/mm9.1.1/n44q-756. I have found no information about their divorce, but census records as well as family information posted on the Find a Grave website by a woman describing herself as Julius's great-granddaughter confirm his remarriage by 1900. See “Ida Burgess Chambers,” http://tiny.cc/06o68w, and “Julius Chambers” on findagrave.com, accessed September 23, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/jvnwce7. Ida Chambers (living with her mother and son), US Federal Census, 1900, Lowell, Mass., http://tinyurl.com/lcvu4nh; Julius and Margaret Chambers, US Federal Census, 1900, Pennsylvania, PA, http://tiny.cc/dr778w; Julius and Margaret Chambers (with one servant), US Federal Census, 1910, New York, NY, http://tinyurl.com/plzxxax; and Julius and Margaret Chambers, US Federal Census, 1920, New York, NY, http://tiny.cc/lgp68w; all on the subscription database Ancestry.com, accessed September 23, 2014. “Julius Chambers's Will,” New York Times, March 2, 1920, 8.

Chambers, “Chats on Journalism [I],” Once a Week, May 31, 1892, 7; “Chats on Journalism VII: The Special Correspondent of To-Day,” Once a Week, December 3, 1892, 6.

Herald, November 24, 1886, 6. Chambers was said to have come up with the gimmick to boost circulation, which reportedly “went up like a rocket for that day at least”: “Men One Meets,” Harrisburg (Pa.) Daily Patriot, October 3, 1889, 1.

Chambers, News Hunting, x.

Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: Ford, 1868), 83–85, tells of leaving his New England home at twenty and arriving in New York “with ten dollars in my pocket… I knew no human being within two hundred miles.” Knocking on doors was unsuccessful, and it was the intervention of kindly strangers that found him work. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography, ed. Peter Conn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 23–24, describes arriving dirty, hungry, and tired in Philadelphia, where he “knew no soul” and had just a “Dutch dollar” and some laundry in his pockets.

“Books of the Week,” Irish Times, July 14, 1922, 2; “Shorter Notices,” New Statesman, July 1, 1922, 368; “News Hunting on Three Continents,” Spectator, May 20, 1922, 628; “A Reporter's Note-Book: News Hunting on Three Continents,” Saturday Review, May 20, 1922, 526–527; Edmund Lester Pearson, “New Books and Old,” Independent and the Weekly Review, October 8, 1921, 38; [Francis Henry Gribble], “The Scarlet Journalism,” Times Literary Supplement, November 19, 1921, 745.

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Andie Tucher

Andie Tucher is an associate professor and the director of the Communications Ph.D. program in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.