Overview

This book provides rare and candid insights by those who experienced the reality of meeting a deadline and the pressures of space limitations and access to information. Knudson has crafted a seamless narrative of journalism in America by tying together his own keen commentary on the evolution of news reporting with brief excerpts from those who actually did the reporting, from colonial times through the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Students will hear what the following notable journalists had to say about their craft and the coverage of contemporary events: Benjamin Franklin's ambivalence about the colonial press: extolling the 'watchdog' concept of newspapers, while abhorring the rough-and-tumble personal journalism of his day; Frederick Douglass's vivid and literary description of his 1847 interview with John Brown; Ida B. Wells' account of how her small newspaper, a beacon for many African Ameri-cans, was destroyed by an angry mob in 1892; Ida Tarbell's description of her meeting with John D. Rockefeller; Richard Harding Davis's 1911 Collier's excerpt, in which he laments the shift from the resourceful and ingenious traditional correspondent to the thundering mob of reporters who descended on any event of significance; Martha Gellhorn's experiences as a journalist who covered World War II for Collier's; Ernie Pyle's portrait of what it was like to be a correspondent slogging with the troops through the Italian campaign in World War II; David Brinkley recounting what it was like to be a veteran reporter during the JFK assassination and funeral; The Washington Post's Vice President and Executive Editor Ben Bradlee discussing the impact of Watergate on news reporting; Molly Ivins, a Texas journalist whose first collection of columns remained on The New York Times bestseller list for over 12 months, writes about media criticism The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin's examination of the O.J. Simpson trial and the phenomenon of selling 'information' to the tabloids. This book is an excellent text for courses on the history of journalism and American social and cultural history.

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Reviews

Jerry Knudson provides a lively and informative look at the history of the press from the inside out. Good for anyone interested in the professional past of the media industry.--Patricia Bradley, Ph.D.

A fresh new interpretation of the history of American journalism as viewed by the journalists themselves. An excellent supplement to standard texts as well as of vital interest to the general public. -- Bruce Underwood, University of Texas at Brownsville Jerry Knudson provides a lively and informative look at the history of the press from the inside out. Good for anyone interested in the professional past of the media industry. -- Patricia Bradley, Ph.D., Temple University [Knudson] has collected an impressive cross section of the 'literature of journalism' in one volume. The book's organization makes it a compatible and easily accessible addition to many of the standard mass media history texts used in undergraduate and graduate media history courses. American Journalism In the News is a ground-breaking work, a unique and important contribution to the history of journalism in America. Previous volumes concentrated on the documents that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on the air. This book gives us absorbing and, for that matter, entertaining writings by the many who have been journalists themselves and who have had the imagination and good sense to look at themselves, at others, and at their products. -- Calder M. Pickett, University of Kansas

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