Editor's Note

Most journalism historians would agree that the New York Times is the most important and influential news organization in the United States. The Times has a rich history that has made it the newspaper of record. However, the Times shares something in common with many of its press brethren: a general failure to be transparent in the way it operates. In his article, “The Accidental Press Critic: Newsroom Ethnography and Resistance to Self-Criticism and Management Change at the New York Times in 1974,” Kevin Lerner explores the study that business and organizational scholar Chris Argyris conducted of the newspaper’s leadership structure. Although the Times did not adopt Argyris’ recommendations, his book about the experience was deciphered by a journalism review and that forced the newspaper to confront its management problems. As he writes, “While Argyris may have failed as a management consultant, he inadvertently succeeded as a press critic.”

Katrina Quinn examines news coverage of the 1875 Virginia City, Nevada, fire. The sensational language used in the accounts conveyed the degree of the disaster and provided a multifaceted account of a complex event, as well as its human consequences. In his article, Jason Lee Guthrie explores how Benjamin Franklin, the author of the “Silence Dogood Letters” and “An Apology for Printers,” among other works, understood and used what we now call intellectual property. More so than most authors of his era, Franklin recognized that a writer’s need for compensation was an incentive to create material that would also benefit the public. Michael Buozis examines the way in which historians have used and contextualized the reporting of the famous Helen Jewett murder case in 1836. While journalism historians have used the accounts to understand the development of journalistic norms, he argues that critical historians can focus less on what happened and more on how sense was made of what happened.

Book reviews have always been an important part of American Journalism, as they are in any good scholarly journal. Book review editor Reed Smith has put together an especially outstanding group of reviews in this issue. Readers will find reviews of a new biography of a little-known First Amendment champion, a history of the complicated relationship between newspapers and cities at the turn of the twentieth century, and an account of the political and professional evolution of the African-American press, among others. Thanks to our reviewers in this and every issue, as well as to Reed for his tireless work as editor.