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Jimmy Breslin.

The Breslin Era

The end of the big-city columnist.
George Gordon Meade

After Winning the Battle of Gettysburg, George Meade Fought With—and Lost to—the Press

The Civil War general's reputation was shaped by partisan politics, editorial whims and his own personal failings.
Photo-Illustraton of Adolph Ochs.

The Invention of Objectivity

The view from nowhere came from somewhere.
Four women (L7) sit on a bench together wearing jeans and jackets.

The Women Who Built Grunge

Bands like L7 and Heavens to Betsy were instrumental to the birth of the grunge scene, but for decades were treated like novelties and sex objects.
Exhibit

Truth and Truthiness

Americans have been arguing over the role and rules of journalism since the very beginning.

John Gunther sitting in his library.

The Birth of the American Foreign Correspondent

For American journalists abroad in the interwar period, it paid to have enthusiasm, openness, and curiosity, but not necessarily a world view.
Art relating to the News Media by Beck & Stone.

News for the Elite

After abandoning its working-class roots, the news business is in a death spiral as ordinary Americans reject it in growing numbers.
Photograph of Ida B. Wells

Crusader for Justice

Ida B. Wells reported on lynching in the South, risking her own safety.
Still from a 1950s animated WHO film featuring a drawing of the globe and an hourglass pointing toward Egypt.

Of Plagues and Papers: COVID-19, the Media, and the Construction of American Disease History

The different ways news media approaches pandemic reporting.
Newspaper clipping of article titled the rise and fall of facts.

The Rise and Fall of Facts

Tracing the evolution and challenges of fact-checking in journalism.

Does Journalism Have a Future?

In an era of social media and fake news, journalists who have survived the print plunge have new foes to face.

Justice Among the Jell-O Recipes: The Feminist History of Food Journalism

The food pages of newspapers were probably some of the first feminist writing many women read.
Man reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette in a mid-twentieth century kitchen.

Why the “Golden Age” of Newspapers Was the Exception, Not the Rule

"American journalism is younger than American baseball."

A Century Ago, Progressives Were the Ones Shouting 'Fake News'

The term "fake news" dates back to the end of the 19th century.

A Homecoming for Murray Kempton

Looking at the reporter’s life through five houses in Baltimore.
The New York Times office building in New York City.
partner

The New York Times Journalist Who Secretly Led the Charge Against Liberal Media Bias

The untold story of the double agent who attacked the paper from within.
Demonstrator with sign that reads "Journalism is not a crime"
partner

When the War on the Press Turns Violent, Democracy Itself is at Risk

The bloody history of attacks on American journalists.

FDR's War Against the Press

Franklin Roosevelt had his own Breitbart, and radio was his Twitter.

Free from the Government

The origins of the more passive view of the freedom of the press can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin.

This 1874 New York Herald Feature Sent Manhattanites Running for Their Lives

James Gordon Bennett Jr.'s most eccentric public service announcement.
Walter Lippmann.

Walter Lippmann, Beyond Stereotypes

On the political theorist and the new media landscape.
A newspaper drawing of St. Louis from above.
partner

German Radicals vs. the Slave Power

In "Memoirs of a Nobody," Henry Boernstein chronicles the militant immigrant organizing that helped keep St. Louis out of the hands of the Confederacy.
Jeff Bezos against a red D.C. background with the Washington Post newspaper on the bottom half

Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post?

The Amazon founder was once the newspaper’s savior; now journalists are fleeing as the paper that brought down Nixon struggles under Trump’s second term.
Murray Kempton

The Late, Great American Newspaper Columnist

The life and career of Murray Kempton attest to the disappearing ideals of a dying industry. But his example suggests those ideals are not beyond resurrection.

How to Not Get Poisoned in America

"We should go back into history and ask: Why did we need the federal Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906?"
Lt. Selfridge and Mr. Wright stepping into the Wright aeroplane at Fort Myer, Virginia.

Uh-Oh

“When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.”
A caricature of Murray Kempton.

The Rebellions of Murray Kempton

One of his generation’s most prolific journalists, Kempton never turned a blind eye to the inequalities all around him.
Stack of Newspapers.

A Brief History of America’s Campaign Against Dissident Newsmaking

On underground presses and state violence.
Graydon Carter sitting next to stacks of ornate, empty chairs.

Vanity Fair’s Heyday

I was once paid six figures to write an article—now what?
Frank Wisner's photo covered with official seals.

The Making of a Cold War Spy

The life and work of Frank Wisner, one of the CIA’s founding officers, offers us a portrait of American intelligence’s excesses.
Oil painting of Margaret Fuller by Thomas Hicks, 1848 (National Portrait Gallery) and frontispiece from first edition of Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

The Mind and Heart of Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller was a polymathic intellect and writer, simultaneously ahead of her time and deeply enmeshed in the social and political fabric of her era.

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