Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing

Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing PDF Author: Samuel V. Kennedy III
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815627999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Samuel V. Kennedy offers the first definitive work on the magazine muckraker who became a biographer, novelist, historian, and master storyteller—Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958). An upstate New Yorker who graduated from Hamilton College, Adams began his writing career at the legendary New York Sun. He then moved to magazines where he was a medical writer. As a muckraker, he exposed the inefficacy of patent medicines for which Americans spent tens of millions of dollars seeking remedies for everything from the common cold to cancer. His muckraking and personal lobbying helped gain passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which earned him honorary membership in the American Medical Association. His success led him to an independent life as a writer for the next half-century. The book traces the prolific and eclectic writing career of Adams who wrote more than fifty books and wrote the scripts for the films, It Happened One Night (1934) and the 1920's sensation, Flaming Youth. Kennedy offers insight into Adams's relationships with fellow writers, agents, magazine editors, book publishers, and reviewers, which he maintained throughout an illustrious career. Noted for his upstate New York novels and stories, Adams's ability to adapt to changing times while continuing to attack sham and hypocrisy mark his successful career.

Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing

Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing PDF Author: Samuel V. Kennedy III
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815627999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Get Book

Book Description
Samuel V. Kennedy offers the first definitive work on the magazine muckraker who became a biographer, novelist, historian, and master storyteller—Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958). An upstate New Yorker who graduated from Hamilton College, Adams began his writing career at the legendary New York Sun. He then moved to magazines where he was a medical writer. As a muckraker, he exposed the inefficacy of patent medicines for which Americans spent tens of millions of dollars seeking remedies for everything from the common cold to cancer. His muckraking and personal lobbying helped gain passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which earned him honorary membership in the American Medical Association. His success led him to an independent life as a writer for the next half-century. The book traces the prolific and eclectic writing career of Adams who wrote more than fifty books and wrote the scripts for the films, It Happened One Night (1934) and the 1920's sensation, Flaming Youth. Kennedy offers insight into Adams's relationships with fellow writers, agents, magazine editors, book publishers, and reviewers, which he maintained throughout an illustrious career. Noted for his upstate New York novels and stories, Adams's ability to adapt to changing times while continuing to attack sham and hypocrisy mark his successful career.

Common Cause

Common Cause PDF Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640122192
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A lost literary relic of the First World War, Common Cause tells the story of Jeremy Robson, a crusading newspaper editor in the fictional midwestern town of Fenchester. The Guardian’s muckraking has led special interests to withhold advertising in order to drive Robson out of business. But he and local plutocrats put their differences aside when war is declared in 1917 in order to attack the German-American community for its supposed fealty to their Fatherland. Common Cause provides a vivid picture of the America-first fear and hate that gripped the midwestern United States during the Great War.

Muckrakers

Muckrakers PDF Author: Edd Applegate
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810861084
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
During the 1800s, the United States progressed at a remarkable rate. Commerce gave rise to regional specialization and contributed to the growth of cities. By 1860 the nation had prospered to the extent that it no longer depended on Europe to purchase its goods. Innovations in technology helped increase production, especially in textiles, and transportation projects helped reduce costs of certain products. As the country progressed, so did its citizenry and their attention to certain interests: movements on issues like women's rights, capital punishment, workers' rights, education, and mental health swept across the country. As these groups advanced their causes, a kind of journalism began to capture readers' attention: the exposZ. Although examples similar to it had appeared occasionally in various publications years before, it became more prevalent at the turn of the century. In the spring of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he compared certain crusading journalists to a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: 'There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muckrake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed.' In Muckrakers: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors, Professor Edd Applegate profiles the men and women who either wrote muckraking journalism or edited publications that featured muckraking articles. Some of the most important figures of journalism are here, including Nellie Bly, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, George Kennan, Jack London, Frank Norris, Rachel Carson, George Seldes, and I.F. Stone. The book contains more than fifty entries, each discussing the subject's professional career and major works. In some cases, comments about the subject's work by others have been included, as well as suggestions for further reading. As a resource guide, Muckrakers will be of interest to professors, scholars, and students interested in learning more about the individuals who played such significant roles in muckraking journalism.

Manipulating the Masses

Manipulating the Masses PDF Author: John Maxwell Hamilton
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807174173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize by the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy Manipulating the Masses tells the story of the enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917. Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI reached every crevice of the nation, every day, and extended widely abroad. It established the first national newspaper, made prepackaged news a quotidian aspect of governing, and pioneered the concept of public diplomacy. It spread the Wilson administration’s messages through articles, cartoons, books, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; through feature films and volunteer Four Minute Men who spoke during intermission; through posters plastered on buildings and along highways; and through pamphlets distributed by the millions. It enlisted the nation’s leading progressive journalists, advertising executives, and artists. It harnessed American universities and their professors to create propaganda and add legitimacy to its mission. Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration’s trampling of civil liberties. Until now, the full story of the CPI has never been told. John Maxwell Hamilton consulted over 150 archival collections in the United States and Europe to write this revealing history, which shows the shortcuts to open, honest debate that even well-meaning propagandists take to bend others to their views. Every element of contemporary government propaganda has antecedents in the CPI. It is the ideal vehicle for understanding the rise of propaganda, its methods of operation, and the threat it poses to democracy.

Encyclopedia of American Journalism

Encyclopedia of American Journalism PDF Author: Stephen L. Vaughn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135880204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The Encyclopedia of American Journalism explores the distinctions found in print media, radio, television, and the internet. This work seeks to document the role of these different forms of journalism in the formation of America's understanding and reaction to political campaigns, war, peace, protest, slavery, consumer rights, civil rights, immigration, unionism, feminism, environmentalism, globalization, and more. This work also explores the intersections between journalism and other phenomena in American Society, such as law, crime, business, and consumption. The evolution of journalism's ethical standards is discussed, as well as the important libel and defamation trials that have influenced journalistic practice, its legal protection, and legal responsibilities. Topics covered include: Associations and Organizations; Historical Overview and Practice; Individuals; Journalism in American History; Laws, Acts, and Legislation; Print, Broadcast, Newsgroups, and Corporations; Technologies.

Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America

Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America PDF Author: Bill Kauffman
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1625648421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Bill Kauffman has carved out an idiosyncratic identity quite unlike any other American writer. Praised by the likes of Gore Vidal, Benjamin Schwarz, and George McGovern, he has, with a distinctive and slashingly witty, learnedly allusive style, illumed forgotten corners of American history, articulated a defiant and passionate localism, and written with love and dark humor of his repatriation. Poetry Night at the Ballpark gathers the best of Bill Kauffman's essays and journalism in defense and explication of his alternative America--or Americas. Its discrete pieces are bound by a thematic unity and propulsive energy and are full of unexpected (yet startlingly apposite) connections and revelatory linkages. Whether he's writing about conservative Beats, backyard astronomers, pacifist West Pointers, or Middle America in the movies, Bill Kauffman will challenge, maybe even change, the way you look at American politics and the American provinces.

The Attention Merchants

The Attention Merchants PDF Author: Tim Wu
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804170045
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term "net neutrality”—a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. "Dazzling." —Financial Times Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu’s narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Since then, every new medium—from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook—has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of “attention merchants” has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous reality we can no longer afford to accept at face value.

From Whispers to Shouts

From Whispers to Shouts PDF Author: Elaine Schattner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549741
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
It’s hard today to remember how recently cancer was a silent killer, a dreaded disease about which people rarely spoke in public. In hospitals and doctors’ offices, conversations about malignancy were hushed and hope was limited. In this deeply researched book, Elaine Schattner reveals a sea change—from before 1900 to the present day—in how ordinary people talk about cancer. From Whispers to Shouts examines public perception of cancer through stories in newspapers and magazines, social media, and popular culture. It probes the evolving relationship between journalists and medical specialists and illuminates the role of women and charities that distributed medical information. Schattner traces the origins of patient advocacy and activism from the 1920s onward, highlighting how, while doctors have lost control of messages about cancer, survivors have gained visibility and voice. The book’s final section lays out provocative questions facing the cancer community today—including distrust of oncologists, concerns over financial burdens, and disparities in cancer treatments and care. Schattner considers how patients and their loved ones struggle to make decisions amid conflicting information and opinions. She explores the ramifications of so much openness, good and bad, and asks: Has awareness backfired? Instead, Schattner contends, we need greater understanding of cancer’s treatability.

Journalism Standards of Work Today

Journalism Standards of Work Today PDF Author: Stephen A. Banning
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527559025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This research examines journalism ethics to answer the questions of whether we still need journalism ethics in the twenty-first century, if it is possible to exercise journalistic standards of work and, if so, on what values should these ethics be based in a world much different from that which existed when the first journalism codes of ethics were formulated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To distil the motivations and essence of the early journalistic standards of work, the book discusses the function of media in a democracy and the formation of mass media during the first industrial revolution, as well as its consequential change in journalists’ locus of control and how journalists self-identified. The sudden creation of mass media pushed some journalists to create ethical principles which would guide the newly empowered press, an effort which culminated in the creation of the first national code of journalistic ethics in 1923. The book closely examines the elements of the 1923 “Canons of Journalism”, finding them to contain timeless values, despite their original application to now dated technology. It highlights the basic elements and applies them to media today, in a way that interfaces with new technology without abandoning the essential components of equipping citizens for representative governance.

Early Detection

Early Detection PDF Author: Kirsten E. Gardner
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807877123
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Dispelling the common notion that American women became activists in the fight against female cancer only after the 1970s, Kirsten E. Gardner traces women's cancer education campaigns back to the early twentieth century. Focusing on breast cancer, but using research on cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers as well, Gardner's examination of films, publications, health fairs, and archival materials shows that women have promoted early cancer detection since the inception of the American Society for the Control of Cancer in 1913. While informing female audiences about cancer risks, these early activists also laid the groundwork for the political advocacy and patient empowerment movements of recent decades. By the 1930s there were 300,000 members of the Women's Field Army working together with women's clubs. They held explicit discussions about the risks, detection, and incidence of cancer and, by mid-century, were offering advice about routine breast self-exams and annual Pap smears. The feminist health movement of the 1970s, Gardner explains, heralded a departure for female involvement in women's health activism. As before, women encouraged early detection, but they simultaneously demanded increased attention to gender and medical research, patient experiences, and causal factors. Our understanding of today's vibrant feminist health movement is enriched by Gardner's work recognizing women's roles in grassroots educational programs throughout the twentieth century and their creation of supportive networks that endure today.