And what is a feuilleton? Introduction The complaint that technology and media have distorted our culture, politics, our very understanding of reality is by now well-worn. They direct us to mere appearances, satisfy (and create) near-narcotic compulsions, splinter communities into defensive cells of mutual incomprehension and disgust, and generally leave us screen-addled and manipulated. These[…]
A scheming and salacious newspaper reporter targeted Hamilton and Jefferson – and nearly ruined them. It is a common complaint that the drive for traffic at news sites in the digital age has debased our political dialogue, turning a responsible press into a media scramble for salacious sound bites. But partisanship and scandal-mongering go way[…]
The Syrian army, honing in on her satellite phone, targeted an artillery strike on the building where she was reporting from. By James Thornton HarrisIndependent Historian 2018 was an annus horribilis for freedom of the press. Reporters Without Borders announced that 63 professional journalists were killed, of whom 49 were specifically targeted for death by an army or[…]
As we commemorate Memorial Day, the drama behind the headlines announcing Germany’s surrender in World War II. There’s quite a story behind the story of the end of the fighting in World War II in Europe. As we observe another Memorial Day, it is worth remembering the events of that busy May of 1945, when[…]
From the air and on the ground: the reporters who told the HIroshima and Nagasaki stories to the American public. Seventy years ago this week, the US military revealed the greatest (and best-kept) secret of the Allied effort to win World War II. The use of the atomic bomb proved to the world that it[…]
He believed that faster news meant diminished quality. According to a recently released Pew Center survey, almost seven in ten Americans feel worn out by the amount of news that’s generated each day. Henry David Thoreau complained of much the same thing in Walden, his celebrated account of a two-year experiment in simple living that[…]
It began with an image – the first on the White House Photography Office’s 4,527th roll of film for the Ford administration. He snaps a photograph of President Gerald Ford, who leans back in a tall Cabinet Room chair, smoking a pipe and listening intently to CIA Director Colby. The image is the first on[…]