Journalism 1908

Birth of a Profession

Betty Houchin Winfield, Betty Houchin Winfield

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780826266699
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The year 1908 was not remarkable by most accounts, but it was an auspicious year for journalism. As newspapers sought to recover from big-city yellow journalism and circulation wars that reached their boiling point a few years earlier during the Spanish-American War, press clubs began to champion higher education. And schools dedicated to journalism education, led by the University of Missouri, began to emerge. Now sanctioned by universities, journalism could teach acceptable behavior and establish credentials. It was nothing less than the birth of a profession.
Journalism—1908 opens a window on mass communication a century ago. It tells how the news media in the United States were fundamentally changed by the creation of academic departments and schools of journalism, by the founding of the National Press Club, and by exciting advances that included early newsreels, the introduction of halftones to print, and even changes in newspaper design.
Journalism educator Betty Houchin Winfield has gathered a team of well-known media scholars, all specialists in particular areas of journalism history, to examine the status of their profession in 1908: news organizations, business practices, media law, advertising, forms of coverage from sports to arts, and more. Various facets of journalism are explored and situated within the country's history and the movement toward reform and professionalism—not only formalized standards and ethics but also labor issues concerning pay, hours, and job differentiation that came with the emergence of new technologies.
This overview of a watershed year is national in scope, examining early journalism education programs not only at Missouri but also at such schools as Colgate, Washington and Lee, Wisconsin, and Columbia. It also reviews the status of women in the profession and looks beyond big-city papers to Progressive Era magazines, the immigrant press, and African American publications.
Journalism—1908 commemorates a century of progress in the media and, given the place of Missouri's School of Journalism in that history, is an appropriate celebration of that school's centennial. It is a lode of information about journalism education history that will surprise even many of those in the field and marks a seminal year with lasting significance for the profession.

PART I

The Scene in 1908

The year 1908 provided major newsworthy events, giving neophyte and seasoned general-assignment journalists a lot to report. The year had both presidential and congressional elections, muckraking journalism and responses to it by the courts and legislatures, and the movement in transportation from horse to car and, experimentally, to the airplane. Issues surrounding the status of women, immigrants, African Americans, and the laboring classes pushed their way into the nation's consciousness. And more leisure time for sports and the arts led to expanding coverage of these pursuits.

The year 1908 encompassed newsworthy, Industrial Age inventions. Henry Ford introduced his Model T, generally regarded as the first automobile affordable to the average American, which sold at a price of $850. General Electric patented the electric iron and toaster, the Wright brothers kept testing their new airplane, which the University Missourian kept reporting, and America gained its first skyscraper, the forty-seven-story Singer Building in New York City.¹ New York City replaced its horsecars with motorbuses.² Nobel Prizes were given for producing the first color photographic plate, for work on immunology, and for the breakdown of elements by X-ray.

The new inventions meant changes to the country's way of life, often noted in America's press. With Model T’s, roads had to be improved and more streets and highways built. With the rise of airplanes, the military immediately noted the implications for warfare, and by 1907 the U.S. Army established the Aeronautical Division of the Army Signal Corps.³

The fallout from the Spanish American War in 1898 meant that in 1908 the U.S. military still occupied Cuba. Wake Island and Hawaii had been annexed, and the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa were held by treaty. Secretary of State Elihu Root reached an agreement with the Japanese to respect each others’ Pacific possessions and uphold an Open Door policy in China.⁴

Other 1908 happenings were there for the press to notice. With public concern growing over the uses of the nation's natural resources, President Theodore Roosevelt called the First National Conservation Congress, which began an environmental resource inventory.⁵

As a continuous part of newspaper reportage, political coverage in 1908 was focused on the local, state, and national elections, and also on state and city reform legislation. The first issues of the Missourian relied on the United Press for small clips on the presidential candidates, such as “Taft will Dash South,” and on the state conventions, such as “State Conventions for New York and Conn. for Governors.”⁶ Under “Breaking News” the Missourian carried one national response to muckraking: President Roosevelt's accusations that Standard Oil “is seeking to control both political parties and shape legislation and judicial opinions.”⁷

Another noteworthy development in 1908 was journalism's growing legal issues having to do with privacy and libel. The first year's curriculum of the Missouri School of Journalism included “Newspaper Jurisprudence” as a required course. In October, a Missourian feature on John Davison Lawson, dean of the University of Missouri Law School, named him as “one of the most learned men in the world as far as technical law.” The article included a photo portrait and emphasized Lawson's popularity on campus, ending with, “Professor Lawson will deliver a course of lectures on the libel laws in the School of Journalism during the second semester.”⁸

The next two chapters, “1908: A Very Political Year for the Press,” by Betty Houchin Winfield, and “From Whiskey Ads to the Reverent Jellyfish: Media Law in 1908” by Sandy Davidson, will cover the political and legal landscape of 1908.

---

1. Laurence Urdang, ed., The Timetables of American History (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster, 1981), 278–79.

2. The New York Public Library American History Reference, 2nd ed. (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 254.

3. Ibid., 164.

4. Ibid., 89, 283.

5. Ibid, 279–80.

6. “Taft Dashes South,” University Missourian, 16 September 1908, 1; “State Conventions for NY and Conn. Governors,” University Missourian, 14 September 1908, 1.

7. “Breaking News,” University Missourian, 21 September 1908, 1.

8. “Dean of the Law Department, Author and Former Judge,” University Missourian, 15 October 1908, 2.

CHAPTER 1

1908

A Very Political Year for the Press

Betty Houchin Winfield

The watchdog role of the American press lingered from Jefferson's 1792 dictum, “No government ought to be without its censors, and where the press is free, none ever will.”¹ And, it lingered in 1908 with coverage of politics and editorial advocacy and strong connections between the press and the government. This chapter will discuss the press as a type of censor at the turn of the century, show the symbiotic relationship between the new-century journalists and politicians, and the connecting support system.

In the first issue of the University Missourian on September 14, 1908, the editors explained that the newspaper's purpose was not just to serve as a laboratory for students to cover the news field but also to give editorial interpretation and comment upon public questions. Such interpretation and comment would most often concern political and governmental news. The newspaper would provide a public service, as “a foe to wrong doing, an aid to education, a force for moral progress, and an exponent of true Americanism.”² As a “foe to wrong doing” the press would be a watchdog over government, and its “aid to education” would be to enlighten the public on the events of the day with local, regional, and national political news stories. The “force for moral progress” could include the journalistic purpose of seeking truth. The “exponent for true Americanism” would be journalism playing a powerful role in a democracy.

In fact, the Missourian’s first issue carried out several of these public service ideals. The front page highlighted a major local investigation of tainted food and substandard conditions at the Columbia city jail as well as other local stories, such as a lawsuit over the indebtedness of a local playhouse. For the public's political enlightenment, the front page included a short announcement about an alumnus's candidacy that fall for the Second Congressional District. The four-page newspaper also included national political stories, such as a United Press wire story about the response of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryant to President Theodore Roosevelt's designation of his war secretary as his rightful heir. The University Missourian would be a democratic force by serving as a public service, so said an editorial, with interpretation and comment.³

If all politics is reportedly local, then local, state, and national political news might be part of this first School of Journalism daily newspaper; with the state and national news, a local connection would be highlighted. For example, another September 14 article discussed presidential candidates and their local associations: “The good town of Columbia has a friendly personal interest in all the prominent candidates for high public office.” The paper recollected Columbia's relations to the 1908 national political figures, such as when the GOP candidate William H. Taft, a trustee for the University of Cincinnati, came to Columbia to interview biologist Dr. Howard Ayers as a possible Ohio college president and then stayed at the home of philosophy professor Dr. Frank Thilly. So, too, did the same story remind readers that Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan had previously visited the university area several times. Moreover, this issue of the Missourian and others pointed out that Columbia had connections with the candidates for governor, senator, attorney general, and lieutenant governor, either as alumni or as previous campus speakers.⁴

Similar to other newspapers of 1908, the Missourian covered local political news daily with reporter-generated stories based upon complaints of corruption, votes taken, or candidacies. National news, particularly, in the fall of 1908, of presidential campaigns, was provided through wire-service coverage, usually via the United Press or later the Associated Press; international news came from other wire-service reports about political leaders, such as when Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany changed travel plans to escape anarchists’ plots.

During that same week in September 1908 a rival newspaper, the Columbia Daily Tribune, had primarily local stories on its front page: the opening of the various schools in Columbia, as well as the organizational meetings of the Democratic clubs for presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The Tribune highlighted a “new technology”: the club played two records with “the wonderful tone and carry power of Mr. Bryan's matchless voice.” Later that week, the Tribune noted the organization of a “Negro Taft Club” with an enrollment of seventy-three.⁵

Other Tribune front-page stories that week contained a variety of political coverage, ranging from court arraignments and fines (September 14) to street speakers attacking Sunday blue laws (September 16), from county commissioners’ decisions over road construction (September 15) to a city council meeting taking up sewer requests and street and sidewalk improvements (September 16). The paper announced the upcoming speech by Virginia Senator John W. Daniels to the county Democrats. Daniels “is of a type of statesman that is fast passing away…his personality is most striking and his oratory is brilliant and convincing.”⁶

These small-town front-page articles indicate the type of political coverage found then in both large and small dailies. The Columbia papers reported on local and state governmental actions, candidacies, and elections, and did investigations urging reform. The connections between the institutions of journalism and government were mighty strong, indeed, and the partisan press of the early nineteenth century lingered with interpretations. The community newspapers at the turn of the century usually had local newspaper competitors and thus remained largely partisan; they vied for local printing patronage given by the party in power. The financial support from the political party kept the newspaper alive. Too, trends and issues affected the news, regardless of party.

In addition, the century's first decade was the height of the reform era in American politics, including political reform. These new-century years were a time of many political and legislative progressive actions. The American temperament included an idealistic, “can do” spirit, a willingness to dismiss the old and try the new, wrote Mark Sullivan.⁷ Such optimism became part of Progressive Era legislation. For example, the Direct Election Primary of 1900 gave people more control of the selection of their officials and greatly reduced the power of the party machines to choose candidates. Other government actions were the enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; an establishment of a permanent Census Bureau; the adoption of land conservation with the Reclamation Act, which reversed the previous policy of transferring public lands into private ownership; regulation of child labor; the Pure Food and Drug and the Meat Inspection Acts; a federal railroad rates law; and protective import tariffs. States had begun regulating the life insurance business and limiting women's working hours. Slowly, too, the states also began approving a constitutional amendment to grant Congress the power to levy and collect an income tax to pay for the progressive enforcement and changes.

There were other political events and issues that warranted news coverage. Within twelve years of the new century, settlement in the Western territories increased populati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Emerging Professionalism and Modernity
• Part I. The Scene in 1908
• Part II. Modernization: Journalism Comes of Age
• Part III. Institutional Rumblings and Change
• Part IV. Journalism's Extended Family
• Part V. General Assignment Plus
• Part VI. Journalism's Concurrent Voices
• Conclusion. 1908: The Aftermath
• About the Contributors
• Index