Both authors worked for more than a decade to find more than 1,000 news stories, editorials, illustrations and other documents central to the story of journalism and the United States to create a true sense of the relationship between the nation and the press. These elements are woven together with narrative that helps readers understand the media elements in relation to the time period in which they appeared.

The News Media is published by Vision Press, which is devoted to works on media and their cultural and historical relationships with society. To learn more about the book, visit http://www.vision-press.com/The_News_Media.html.

Titled “Reading Heads to Justify Slavery: Phrenology in the Press of Antebellum America,” the research looked at the ways people who supported slavery in America used phrenology, which said that the shape, size, protrusions and depressions of the skull could be used to determine personality, intellect, temperament and character, to justify the continuance of slavery.

The paper also explored the way in which abolitionists used phrenology to portray black Americans as equal in ability to white Americans.  

The segment, which aired on March 29, traced the development of media in America. It focused, however, on how the divergent voices that we see in media today with blogging and other forms of interactive and social media are really similar to the way that the press first operated in America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For example, Publick Occurrences, the nation’s first newspaper, left its last page blank so that readers could add their own news or comments before passing the paper along to another reader.

David Copeland, A. J. Fletcher Professor in the School of
Communications, presented research at the Organization of American Historians
2008 Conference in New York City, March 28-31.

Copeland’s presentation, “Getting the Most Out of Digital
Historical Newspapers,” discussed how online digital collections are assembled and
ways they can be used by students and scholars in the classroom and for
research.

David Copeland, A.J. Fletcher Professor in the School ofCommunications, has published “A Series of Fortunate Events: Why PeopleBelieved Richard Adams Locke’s ‘Moon Hoax’” in the Fall 2007 issue of JournalismHistory. Copeland’s research usescontemporary scientific and religious thought to explain why virtually allpeople believed as fact Locke’s story in the New York Sun that claimed renowned astronomer John Herschel haddiscovered humans and other forms of life on the Moon.

To read or download the article, click on the title below:

The book, The Idea of a Free Press: The Enlightenment and Its Unruly Legacy, is published by Northwestern University Press. Daniel Schorr, senior analyst for National Public Radio and CBS correspondent for more than 20 years, wrote the book’s forword.

The series looks at the press and its coverage of American wars from the French and Indian War through the current Iraq crisis. The series contains more than 4,000 pages of analysis, images and press accounts.

In the series, Copeland wrote the volumes on the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. Brooke Barnett, associate professor in communications, wrote the volume on the Gulf War, the war on terror and the current war in Iraq.

Brooke Barnett, assistant professor in the School of Communications, wrote the volume on the Iraq wars and the war on terror. Brad Hamm, former associate dean of the School of Communications, wrote the volume on World War II, Asian theater.