Gerald J. Baldasty

Scripps's innovations included the creation of a telegraphic news service and an illustrated news features syndicate and the application of modern business practices to his chain of more than forty newspapers. His newspapers, aimed at working-class readers, were intended to be advocates for the common people and crusaded for lower streetcar fares, free textbooks for public school children, municipal ownership of utilities, pure food legislation, and many other causes.

E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers

Fred Fejes

James E. Grunig

Warren Kendall Agee

Clarice N. Olien

David Paul Nord

Dean W. O'Brien

Hugh M. Culbertson

Karen K. List

Keith R. Stamm

Two Studies

Communication Behaviors and Attitudes of Environmental Publics

This riveting work of social history documents the role the news media played in spurring two murders revolving around Edmund Creffield, a charismatic "Holy Roller" evangelist who arrived in Corvallis, Oregon, in 1903 and quickly enraged the citizenry by defiantly challenging the religious and sexual mores of the time. When ardent female followers began refusing to speak to their nonbelieving husbands, vigilantes tarred and feathered Creffield, eventually forcing him to flee to Seattle. Once there, Creffield was murdered by George Mitchell, the brother of one of his followers. The news media in Seattle and Oregon applauded George's defense of his sister Esther's honor, influencing the jury. Citing temporary insanity, the jury quickly acquitted George, pleasing the cheering crowds and the approving media. As George prepared to return to Oregon, however, Esther shot him point-blank at Union Station and another moralizing media frenzy broke out. Esther was sent to Western State Hospital and committed suicide after her release. Her short life was among the most poignant of the dozens wrecked by the controversy. Gerald Baldasty's examination of Seattle and Oregon media coverage shows the tenacity with which frontier media protected traditional mores, particularly the notion that men are responsible for women's purity and have the right to take action if they feel another man has besmirched a woman's honor. Expertly crafted in a brisk, accessible style, Vigilante Newspapers illustrates through the tragic tale of Edmund Creffield, George Mitchell, and Esther Mitchell how the news media defined social deviance using vague concepts such as hysteria and temporary insanity, vigorously defending the established order of religious, class, and gender norms.

Tales of sex, religion, and murder in the northwest

Vigilante Newspapers

The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century traces the major transformation of newspapers from a politically based press to a commercially based press in the nineteenth century. Gerald J. Baldasty argues that broad changes in American society, the national economy, and the newspaper industry brought about this dramatic shift. Increasingly in the nineteenth century, news became a commodity valued more for its profitablility than for its role in informing or persuading the public on political issues. Newspapers started out as highly partisan adjuncts of political parties. As advertisers replaced political parties as the chief financial support of the press, they influenced newspapers in directing their content toward consumers, especially women. The results were recipes, fiction, contests, and features on everything from sports to fashion alongside more standard news about politics. Baldasty makes use of nineteenth-century materials—newspapers from throughout the era, manuscript letters from journalists and politicians, journalism and advertising trade publications, government reports—to document the changing role of the press during the period. He identifies three important phases: the partisan newspapers of the Jacksonian era (1825-1835), the transition of the press in the middle of the century, and the influence of commercialization of the news in the last two decades of the century.

The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century

Gerald J. Baldasty

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