Hooray for "Hugo"

Our family saw "Hugo" this week.  It is the story of a 12-year-old orphan who lives in a Paris train station and is trying to repair an automaton, believing it has a message from his late father. He meets a toy shop owner who turns out to be forgotten and disillusioned cinema legend, Georges Melies. Hugo and Georges' goddaughter, Isabelle, reconnect him with his past and a new generation of film lovers. Anyone interested in cinema history won't want to miss this charming film. Here is an interesting story from the Los Angeles Times about how "Hugo" has revived interest in Melies.

Remembering Kennesaw Mountain

In wrapping up the manuscript for my book on Civil War journalism, I have been thinking about how I first got interested in the subject. Twenty years ago, our family was living in Marietta, Georgia, less than a mile from Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. I enjoyed hiking in the park and that's when I first started thinking about the reporters who covered the fighting that took place there in 1863. I've been writing about the subject ever since.

A Christmas Gift from the Past

My oldest daughter's favorite Christmas gift this year was a record player, yes, a record player. A college friend has one and Emily decided that she wanted one, too.  It was a lot of fun showing her how it worked--that needle can be tricky she learned--and then digging out some of our old records from the basement for her to play.

Pioneering Art Director Dies

Louis Silverstein, who became known as the “godfather” of modern newspaper design, died last week at 92.  As art director of the New York Times, Silverstein made the “Gray Lady” more visually appealing in the 1970s at a time when newspapers faced increasing competition from television. By using creative typefaces, enlarging photographs and adding graphics, he modernized a paper that had always been slow to change its look. Silverstein made his first changes to the newspaper's look in 1967 when he changed the typeface and eliminated the period that had followed the Times name since its founding. “Every time you pick up the paper, you have in your hands a reflection of Lou’s sparkling talent,” former executive editor A. M. Rosenthal once said.

Happy Birthday Jon Stewart

A belated happy birthday to Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, who turned 49 this week. I have always found it troubling that polls regularly show that a majority of young Americans get their television news from The Daily Show, but at least they are getting it from a master of social satire. Stewart once said, "I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever's going on." His show proves that time and again.

Philly papers leaving iconic home

In a move everyone saw coming, the owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News announced the two newspapers are leaving their landmark Broad Street home for a smaller space downtown.  The home of Philadelphia's two daily newspapers opened in 1925 and for decades has been one of Philadelphia's iconic buildings. The 18-story Beaux Arts skyscraper has a white facade and a distinctive clock tower. Philadelphia's two newspapers have been steadily shedding staff and currently occupy only about half the building. The Inquirer and Daily News will move into the former Strawbridge & Clothier store at Eighth and Market streets.

Pittsburgh Press reborn

The Pittsburgh Press, which disappeared from the Steel City in 1992, has been reborn as an electronic edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  The Press was the victim of a crippling strike that shut it down for a year.  At the time the Press was the largest newspaper in Pittsburgh and the closing was a shock to many.  The Press won two Pulitzer Prizes during its long history.  The electronic edition will appear in the afternoon on the Post-Gazette web site and contain 12 to 16 pages daily. Of course, this new version of the Press doesn't mean that Pittsburgh has two newspapers again, but it's good to see the ownership of the Post-Gazette giving a nod to the city's press history.

Visiting Antietam

I visited Antietam National Battlefield yesterday.  I have wanted to see the park for years and I was not disappointed. Antietam may be the most impressive Civil War site that I've visited, mainly because the battlefield still looks largely like it did 149 years ago.  You can imagine the terrible fighting that took place there because there is no commercial or residential development surrounding it as there is at far too many Civil War sites.

Of course, Antietam was one of the most significant battles of the war, but it also had an important role in media history.  Alexander Gardner made some of the best-known photographs of the war at Antietam, pictures that for the first time showed the shocking casualties from the fighting.  Although photographs such as the Confederate dead at Dunker Church or the Bloody Lane are better known, my favorite has always been the Union burial party (above). To me the single tombstone, under the large tree with the soldiers sillhouetted against a bleak sky, captures the tragedy and valor of the war.

Herblock Remembered

My colleague Russell Frank has an interesting story in the Washington Post about the newspaper's famed editorial cartoonist Herb Block, better known simply as Herblock.  Russell is coordinating the Herblock oral history project for the Library of Congress.  He has interviewed numerous colleagues of Herblock, including Bob Woodward, Gwen Ifill and Donald Graham.

Spreading the News in a Painting

An interesting story in the New York Times by Robin Pogrebin describes the restoration of the painting, "Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M From the Seat of War," which will be a permanent and prominent fixture of the New York Historical Society building. The painting by Louis Lang captured the large crowd that gathered along what is now Battery Park to welcome the soldiers returning from the battle of First Bull Run during the Civil War. The well-wishers included families of the soldiers, grieving widows, dignitaries, flower sellers and newsboys.

As the story notes, the painting comes from a time when of works were "expressive and descriptive, tools not only to evoke emotions, but also to do the very real work of simply documenting and recounting history." As such it was much like reporting. Lang painted the complex work quickly and it went on display just over a year after the regiment returned. Soon it will be back on display at the Historical Society, another reminder of a tragic and crucial era.

Kudos to Farabaugh

Congratulations to Pat Farabaugh, who earned his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Penn State in 2009, for receiving honorable mention in the American Journalism Historians Association's Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Award. Pat, who is an assistant professor at Saint Francis University, was recognized for his dissertation, “Carl McIntire and His Crusade Against the Fairness Doctrine.” I had the pleasure on serving on Pat's dissertation committee and the recognition certainly was deserved. The winner of the award was Ira Chinoy of the University of Maryland for his dissertation, “Battle of the Brains: Election Night Forecasting at the Dawn of the Computer Age.”

Internet circa 1994

Here is a video from the Today Show way back in 1994 showing hosts Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbell wrestling with this new fangled thing known as the Internet. The video, which was between show segments, never aired but shows how little journalists initially knew about a technology that would dramatically change journalism. Thanks to Chris Daly from Boston University (via my old professor, Bill McKeen) for sharing it.

Take a Break Driver 8

I was sad to hear the news this week that the members of R.E.M. are folding the band. I'll leave it to those who know far more about music to discuss their legacy. (Bill Wyman has an interesting piece on that subject in Slate.) I just know that for three decades I enjoyed their music tremendously.  I also appreciated that the guys from Athens, Ga., always did things their own way.

Ed and Anderson

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's new syndicated interview show debuted this week. "Anderson" is being compared to "Oprah" because the daytime show hopes to win the audience that Winfrey left behind when her program went off the air earlier this year.  And Cooper is going after many of the same kind of people that made "Oprah" so monumentally successful. This week's guests include Snooki and Sarah Jessica Parker.

But as an anchor who earned his credentials as a serious journalist, Cooper now has something else in common with that icon of early broadcast news, Edward R. Murrow.  Murrow, who earned his reputation reporting World War II for CBS radio and anchoring "See in Now" for CBS television, had a soft side. Starting in 1953, Murrow hosted a popular interview show, "Person to Person." In many respects, Murrow pioneered interviewing celebrities on television.

During his six years as host, Murrow interviewed such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Harry Truman, John Steinbeck and Lauren Bacall. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Murrow interviewed the guests in their home from his New York studio. The show was live and since the guests moved around their homes, they wore early wireless microphones.  Murrow's guests often used the show to plug their latest project, something celebrities on "Anderson" no doubt also will be doing.

"Portraits of Grief" Remembered

In reading and watching the stories commemorating the anniversary of 9/11, I'm reminded of all the tremendous work by the news media reporting the terrorists attacks ten years ago. Fortunately for us, the news media often does some of its best work when catastrophic events occur and that certainly was the case after the attacks. The work that has always stood out to me were the "Portraits of Grief" by the New York Times. The little sketches, published over a series of months, captured the lives of more than 2,500 victims. To read them again ten years later is to be reminded of all that was lost on that terrible day, as well as the importance of good journalism when we need it most.

Twain the Reporter

I recently finished reading The Sagebrush Bohemian by Nigey Lennon, an insightful and entertaining account of Mark Twain's formative years as a journalist and writer in the West. The young Twain, still known as Samuel Clemens at the time, moved West to make his fortune as a gold miner but soon turned to journalism to put food on the table. During his years living in Nevada and California, Twain grew from a frontier journalist to a humorist and man of letters.

He wrote initially for the Virginia City (Nevada) Territorial Enterprise, where he earned a reputation as a colorful writer, albeit one who played loose with the facts. Twain's editor soon discovered, in the words of Lennnon, that "his new recruit had a constitutional disregard for factuality. Twain seemed to think he owed to his readers to prevent mundane reality from boring them to death."  The editor put Twain to work spinning tales and he quickly gained a reputation throughout the West.

Twain was offered a position on the San Francisco Morning Call and jumped at the chance to write for a larger audience. At the Morning Call, Twain had to be a real reporter and while he complained about the job, he recognized the advantages. "No other occupation," he wrote later, "brings a man into such familiar sociable relations with all grades and classes of people . . . Why I breakfasted almost every morning with the Governor, dined with the principal clergymen, and slept in the station house."

First Tweeter?

An interesting story in the current issue of American History says that humorist Will Rogers would be at home in today's mass media tweeting. Although the folksy Rogers died more than 70 years before Twitter was invented, he did something similar with his daily telegrams that were published for years in hundreds of newspapers.

Rogers already was something of a multimedia sensation when he began writing the telegrams. He broke into show business in 1902 doing rope tricks with Wild West shows. In between his tricks, Rogers told jokes based on the news of the day. In the early 1920s he began writing a syndicated weekly newspaper column. He also appeared in movies. At the suggestion of Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, Rogers began sending telegrams about his experiences during a trip to Europe in 1926. By the end of the year, 92 other newspapers were publishing his daily observations and eventually more than 600 papers carried the popular feature.

As the article notes, "Like tweets, Rogers' telegrams were short, informal, chatty, sometimes wise, frequently trivial, occasionally foolish." Here are a few that capture the flavor of the remarkable Rogers:

LONDON, Aug. 2, 1926--A bunch of American tourists were hissed and stoned yesterday in France but not before they had finished buying.
NEW YORK, N.Y., May 22, 1927--Of all the things that Lindberg's great feat demonstrated, the greatest was to show that a person could still get the entire front page without murdering anybody.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif, Dec. 15, 1929--Passed the Potter's Field yesterday and they was burying two staunch old Republican, both of whom died of starvation, and the man in charge told me their last words were, "I still think America is fundamentally sound."

Dictionary.com

One of my favorite apps is Dictionary.com. I've learned new words like footle ("to act in foolish or silly way") and become reacquainted with old ones like aphorism ("a terse saying embodying truth or astute observation"). I also enjoy the "Question of the Day." Today I learned the difference between the meteorological terms snow flurries and snow showers. (For those who don't know, snow flurries refers to "light, intermittent snowfall without significant accumulation." Show showers refers to "a short period of light-to-moderate snowfall, also characterized by a sudden beginning and ending.") When the snow arrives here in Pennsylvania, which it always does far too early for my taste, I'll try to use the terms correctly, although I can't promise I'll do that.

Historic U.S. Newspapers

Chronicling America, the historic newspaper project by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a tremendous resource for anyone studying mass media history or anyone just interested in the past. The web site has a searchable database of hundreds of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and pages digitized. Users can not only see entire issues of valuable old newspapers but search for individual stories.