Elizabeth Atwood

Full-court press: How segregationist newspapers covered the championship season of an integrated Virginia high school basketball team

This qualitative study examines how two small Virginia newspapers that had opposed school integration covered an integrated high school boys basketball team that won a state championship three years after the school admitted African American students. While previous studies of sports journalism have found evidence of racial bias in the depiction of black athletes, this study finds values governing community journalism, including local boosterism, trumped racial bias.

Book Review: Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, by Harold HolzerLincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion. HolzerHarold. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. 768 pp.

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion. Harold Holzer. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. 768 pp.

37.50 hbk.

37.50 hbk.Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar and a Roger Hertog Fellow at the New-York Historical Society, offers a fascinating view into the cooperation and competition between politics and the press in mid-19th-century America. Although the book focuses on Lincoln, this work goes beyond the 16th president to look at how the leading politicians and newspapermen of the time, including Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, and Henry Raymond, vied for power and patronage.This exhaustively researched work begins with the early life of the leading figures of the book-Lincoln, Greeley, and Bennett-and situates them in the context of an America on the brink of technological and societal change. Holzer documents the countrys growing factionalism, which led newspapers to openly support Democratic and Whig politicians. Often the editors of these papers were motivated not only by ideology, but by self-interest, expecting patronage jobs once their candidates assumed office.The relationship between Lincoln and the press reflected the prevailing attitudes. Holzer traces Lincolns early fascination with the press and his growing awareness of how to use it to achieve his political ambitions. Lincoln caught the attention of a group of Whig newspapermen who plotted to send him to Washington to fill a vacant House seat.Once settled in Washington, Lincoln took up the anti-war position of the Whig Party and fought to keep the issue alive, even when hostilities ceased. As Lincoln and Senator Stephen A. Douglas lined up on different sides of the Mexican War question, and later the slavery issue, so did newspaper editors Bennett and Greeley. Greeley, the editor of the New-York Tribune who was prone to take up various utopian causes, opposed the war and slavery. Bennett, the Democratic editor of New York Herald, took the opposite stance. Although the divisive issues of slavery and secession were bad for the country, they were good for newspapers, which saw circulations soar.The mid-19th-century press not only openly lobbied for causes and candidates, the editors themselves often held elective office. Greeley won a seat to Congress as a compromise candidate for the Whigs, all the while keeping his position as editor of the Tribune. Like Greeley, Henry Raymond was not content to limit his political influence to the pages of his newspapers. He was elected to the New York General Assembly and from there planned his next newspaper venture-the New York Daily Times.Holzer deftly places the leading figures of this book within the context of changes occurring in the newspaper business. …

Reaching the Pinnacle of the “Punditocracy”: James J. Kilpatrick's Journey from Segregationist Editor to National Opinion Shaper

Historians who have attempted to account for James J. Kilpatricks rise from segregationist editor of the Richmond News Leader to nationally syndicated columnist and political pundit argue that he succeeded on the national stage because he repackaged his racism into a more palatable mainstream conservative philosophy. This article argues that any account of Kilpatricks success also requires looking at how he took advantage of changes in journalism in the second half of the twentieth century, including the rise of television news and public-affairs programming, the increased use of syndicated columnists, and the advent of pundits who entertained as well as explained.