Told

Government support created jobs, built trust, and invigorated American literature. We should try it again.

We tend to think of "they," "Mx.," and "hir" as recent inventions. But English speakers have been looking for better ways to talk about gender for a long time.

Hyphenation became a complex issue of identity, assimilation, and xenophobia amid anti-immigration movements at the turn of the twentieth century.

A Tulsa Tribune newspaper story of an alleged assault attempt helped instigate the Tulsa Race Massacre, leaving hundreds dead along Black Wall Street.

A behind-the-scenes look at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Cate Doty on the evolution of a society mainstay.

The official newspaper of the Nation of Islam—published from 1960-1975—combined investigative journalism and Black Nationalist views on racial uplift.

On the social and political function of political media.

Lovejoy, who ran a weekly paper called the Observer, was repeatedly targeted by mobs over his persistent writings against slavery.

That tradition of finding partners in the face of social isolation persists today.

At the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of women rethought what journalism could say, sound like, and do. Why were they forgotten?

How the radical documentarians of the Workers' Film and Photo League put their art in the service of social movements.

"Everything's sort of layered on a false understanding of history."

History must be acknowledged before justice can be done.

In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?

The manner in which the debate unfolded is a reminder of the ways slavery affected everything it touched.

What has been gained and lost from overlooking histories about the wild heterogeneity of networks that existed for well over a century?

Roger Mudd proved in 1964 that media attention can help overcome Senate obstruction.

How English and Esperanto offer competing visions of a universal language.

A serialized biography of Jane Grant (1892-1972), first woman reporter at The New York Times and co-founder of The New Yorker.

The predigital dream of the audiobook.

Before People was the juggernaut of the celebrity media, it was a magazine “about people.”

Whether you like Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Joe Rogan, or Sean Hannity, you're engaging the media world created by the late radio host.

The story of America can be told through the story of its periodicals.

Mainstream culture denied Black children their humanity—so W. E. B. Du Bois created The Brownies’ Book to assert it.

A stroll through the archives of Editor & Publisher shows an industry with moments of glory and shame — and evidence that not all of today's problems are new.

News outlets have apologized for past racism. That should only be the start.

A return to the fairness doctrine wouldn't curb the damage caused by the far-right media ecosystem fueling much of America's conspiracy-driven politics.

Then as now, not many people were willing to raise their own voices to defend the speech of a vulgarian spewing hate over a mass medium.

Absent social media, the artists of the past shaped public knowledge of historical events through illustrations.