Most baseball fans—certainly those who appreciate its history—know the memorable poem “Casey at the Bat,” written in 1888 by Earnest Thayer. But how many know that the speechwriter for New York Mayor John Lindsay rewrote the poem as an ode to the New York Mets, and that candidate Lindsay read it to the team before they departed for the 1969 World Series. That was just one of numerous ways that Lindsay sought to associate with the “Miracle Mets” in an effort to win over wary voters during his underdog reelection campaign. As Nicholas Hirshon writes in his article, “One More Miracle: The Groundbreaking Media Campaign of John ‘Mets’ Lindsay,” the Lindsay campaign effectively aligned itself with a historic sports team and managed to pull off a major political upset. Lindsay's innovative media campaign, in Hirshon's words, “fostered a legacy that strengthened the connection between politics and baseball.” Although the mighty Casey may have struck out, the savvy Lindsay certainly did not.
Melita M. Garza examines the Great Depression editorials published in San Antonio, Texas, newspapers about the role of Mexicans and immigrants. The newspapers portrayed immigrants as everything from alien “riff-raff” to “indispensable” worker hero—in so doing, shaping the mythology surrounding America's newcomers. In his article, Matthew Cecil writes about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's 1958 book, Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. The book became a bestseller, thanks to an aggressive promotional campaign that revealed how Hoover managed to create relationships with Americans who identified with him and who shared his views about Communism. Cayce Myers explores the representation of publicists in early public relations history. Publicists played an important role in developing modern public relations practices, using press relationships, research, and reputation management to foster change in public opinion.
In “Professional Notes,” Debra Reddin van Tuyll argues for more scholarly research on transnational journalism history. The transnational perspective recognizes that information flow is not, and never has been, constricted by national borders. There are numerous examples of the perspective in media history worthy of study, and she discusses one: the case of Irish and American journalist John Mitchel. Writing for newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-1800s, the radical and controversial Mitchel viewed virtually every subject, including the treatment of American slaves, through the lens of Irish independence. He constantly probed the definition of freedom, a global question in the mid-nineteenth century.