EOTO #2: Journalists Who Were Also Novelists

Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934-2021) was an American essayist, journalist, novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is noted for her unique prose on the cultural and political environment of the 1960s. 

Born December 5th, 1934 in Sacramento, California to Frank and Eudene Didion, Didion was born a writer. She didn't recall staying in school consistently until about fourth grade. Despite her education being unconventional, as her father had to consistently relocate as he was an officer in the Army Air Corps, she remembers writing for as long as she could remember. 

In a 2006 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Didion was asked about her experience as a writer, to which she stated she saw herself as a writer when she was about five, simply because she started to write things down. 

With this, she taught herself to read and write another journalist turned novelist, Ernest Hemingway. 

"I liked Hemingway," Didion began. "The thing about Hemingway's sentences is that they are really loaded. Every comma and absence of a comma makes a huge difference, and it’s really been deliberated."

After graduation, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1956. During her senior year, she won a contest sponsored by Vogue called the "Prix de Paris," an annual essay contest that was held to help sponsor job opportunities with Vogue. Didion won the contest by submitting an essay about architect William Wilson Wurster, earning herself a job as a research assistant at Vogue.

For the first year, all she did was read old issues. Alongside this, she was also writing pieces for other magazines, but the goal in mind was to write a novel. 

Using the skills she learned during her seven years at Vogue, Didion published her first novel, Run, River, telling a story of a haunting marriage that falls apart. However, her first nonfiction novel, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered Didion's best work as an example of journalism, more specifically, "New Journalism." 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of columns that she had originally posted as an assignment for the magazine The Saturday Evening Post. In these essays, Didion narrates her "internal and external worlds at a singular time in modern American history." Set in the late 1960's, these twenty essays address the political and cultural environment of California in her life. 

"New Journalism" is best defined as a technique in reporting in the 1960s and 70s that broke away from the traditional, objective style of reporting and instead relied on literary techniques and a personalized approach. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she uses her own pieces with a personal voice to explore complex, societal issues in California, moving beyond traditional journalistic objectivity and instead immersing the reader in the story's world. 

Along with Slouching Towards Bethlehem, some other novels of Didion highlight her journalistic abilities and "New Journalism" techniques, including Salvador, Miami, Political Fictions, Where I Was From, and The White Album. 

Of these books, I have only read The White Album. From a journalistic standpoint, this book was beautiful. She was involved in the political culture of California at such an interesting period, from Georgia O'Keefe to politicians in California. To me, some of these essays felt a bit redundant, as if you had to be there to understand, leaving them to feel almost irrelevant now. Nonetheless, they are still interesting reads and highlights of Didion's sharp, unique prose.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was the embodiment of art. 

Hemingway (1899-1961) was a short story writer, novelist, and journalist born in Oak Park, Illinois. Born to physician Clarence and well-known local musician Grace Hemingway, Hemingway was surrounded by intellect and art. 

His mother taught him the cello, and he credited these lessons with contributing to his writing style. His father taught him woodcraft, fishing, and hunting, contributing to his life-long passion for nature. 

In high school, he was involved in the arts (choir) and sports (boxing, football, track and field, and water polo). But the thing that people know him for is his writing, which started during his junior year of high school. 

He was an editor of the school newspaper, The Trapeze, and the school yearbook, The Tabula, jumpstarting his career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star at just eighteen years old. He started off writing obituaries, editing, and gathering crime news. 

During his journalism career, he was also a correspondent for the Toronto Star and a contributor to Esquire, Star Weekly, Look, True, and Colliers. 

T. Norman Williams, a writer who trained Hemingway at The Kansas City Star, wrote about Hemingway, stating "You see things. You know things. You read people like a book. And above all you can tell it." 

A snippet of "Kerensky, the 
Fighting Flea"

Two months after he started, he had his first feature story published. "Kerensky, the Fighting Flea" was a piece about Leo Kobreen, a successful amateur boxer, combined with Hemingway's love for boxing with humanity. 

In 1967, journalist, educator, and writer William White edited a collection of Ernest Hemingway's articles that he wrote between 1920 through 1956 entitled By Line: Ernest Hemingway.  From his eyewitness accounts of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) to his essays on hunting, this book showcases Hemingway's unique style, personality, and intelligence. 

Along with this, Hemingway went on to publish stories of his own, including In Our Time, The Sun Also Rises, and Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novel The Old Man and the Sea. Common themes within his book include the effects of war, human endurance, and nature. 

Hemingway's economic and philosophical prose was one that not only influenced countless writers (like Didion), but readers and audiences around the globe. 

Willa Cather

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a novelist and journalist best known for her depictions of immigration in America in the early 20th century and her literary criticism for various publications. 

Cather was born in Winchester, Virginia before moving to Red Cloud, Nebraska at nine years old after a tuberculosis outbreak; this is where her journalism career would take off. 

She received her early education at home before attending grammar school and Red Cloud High School, where she gave "Superstition vs Investigation." 

She enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1890. There, she wrote an essay on Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher who was a leading writer of the Victorian era. This essay was published by her professor, Ebenezer Hunt, without her knowledge to the Nebraska State Journal. 

After this publication, it was hard not to see Cather's name somewhere in the Journal. She began to publish her own pieces, including "Shakespeare and Hamlet: The Real Significance of the Play", Peter, and "Shakespeare: A Freshman Theme." She became a regular contributor to the Journal and Lincoln Courier, and she became literary editor of student newspaper The Hesperian.

Before she began her career in Pittsburgh, Cather began editing the women-owned family magazine Home Monthly. In her short time at the magazine, before it sold, she produced journalistic and literary pieces. 

But this magazine being sold couldn't keep her from Pittsburgh. 

Working on edits, plays, and book reviews, Cather accepted a job at the Pittsburgh Leader. She also contributes to the local periodical The Library with her poetry and journalistic pieces. She had pieces included in Ladies' Home Journal, Index of Pittsburgh Life, Saturday Evening Post, New England Magazine, and Cosmopolitan.  

Between 1904 and 1905, Cather taught at Allegheny High School and continued to write by freelancing. After her teaching career, she moved to New York and joined the McClure's Magazine team as managing editor. 

The New York Times Archive

In 1912, Alexander's Bridge, Cather's first novel, is publicized as a series in McClure's under Alexander's Masquerade. Some of her other famous novels include One of Ours, My Ántonia, and The Song of Lark. 

Cather's work often puts readers in the story, allowing us to get a sense of not only the landscape but the feeling. 

Eric Arthur Blair | George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1946), who used the pen name George Orwell, was a novelist, critic, journalist, and essayist best known for his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and his totalitarianism critique Animal Farm. 

His family could not afford him to go to a public school, so he was sent to a Catholic convent school. In 1911, he gained a scholarship to St. Cyprian's school in East Sussex where he remained there for five years, publishing poems in Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. Blair then won a King's Scholarship to attend Eton College where he studied under Aldous Huxley. 

While in college, Blair helped produce college magazine The Election Times, which was also joined in publication with College Days and Bubble and Squeak. 

Blair's time in college was short as the family decided that he should join the Imperial Police in Burma. 

He later recounted how the Burmese did not want to be ruled by the British, and he felt ashamed of his role as a colonial officer; he wrote about his experience in his novel Burmese Days. 

Blair in Burma

After his leave to England, he decided not to return to Burma and quickly used this experience to shape his character as a writer. He spent a period of his life in London and Paris to immerse himself in the experience  Burmese people faced, living in cheap lodging houses. With what he witnessed in Burma and what he lived in London and Paris, he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, where the experience was written as fiction. 

In 1937, Blair spent his time reporting on the Civil War in Spain with the Republican militia. After facing a life-threatening injury, Blair was forced to flee, writing of his experience in Homage to Catalonia. 

When he returned to England, he expressed his fears of fascism and abuse of power. He rejected military service during World War Two, working at the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) for three years. He headed the Indian service and focused on fighting propaganda and fascism. 

 

While at BBC, Blair introduced Voice, a literary program for his listeners in India. 

In 1941, he wrote articles for the American magazine Partisan Review. Other journalistic endeavors included contributing to The Observer, editing for the Horizon, and working as a war correspondent for The Manchester Evening News. 

In 1943, he became literary editor of the socialist magazine Tribune while his wife Eileen worked at the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information. At this point, Blair was heavily involved in journalism, writing countless newspaper articles, reviews, and criticisms. 

After resigning from BBC in 1943, he published Animal Farm a year later, a political story based on Joseph Stalin and the Russian Revolution.  This novel is regarded as one of his finest works as it tackled themes of dictatorship, equality- and lack thereof- and corruption. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is known as one of his most famous novels, warning about Big Brother, honesty in government, and totalitarianism. Many of the phrases within this book left a notably deep impression on readers, politicians, and people around the globe, coining phrases that became common phrases in political rhetoric such as "doublethink" and "newspeak." 

Other novels by Orwell include Coming Up For Air, The Road to Wigan Pier, A Clergyman's Daughter, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. 

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Each of these famous journalists turned novelists made an impact in both fields, leveraging journalistic skills like observation and storytelling while also offering the freedom to explore deeper themes and utilize unique literary tools. 

EOTO #1: Institutions & Titans Reaction Post

While watching the EOTOs, the presentations that caught my attention focused on early journalism and included fun facts, from Joseph Pulitzer and the coining of yellow journalism to the Penny Press. 

I also enjoyed learning about Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the two journalism titans who popularized the term "yellow journalism." It was fascinating to learn that this style of journalism, known for its sensationalism, actually started with a comic. From our class discussions, I also learned that comics in newspapers were originally created to help illiterate readers understand the news through visuals. 

It was also (slightly) because of these two that the Spanish War started. In January 1898, the battleship USS Maine was sent to Havana, Cuba, to watch over American interests during the Cuban uprising against Spain. An explosion on the Maine caused it to sink in the harbor. Although the exact cause of the explosion was unknown, newspapers were blaming Spain. Evidence was misreported and even fabricated.

I learned that during the Penny Press Era, news was accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. Before the Penny Press, newspapers were expensive—costing around six cents—and were primarily read by the elite. But during this era, the papers cost only one cent! 

This era also shifted the content to appeal to a broader audience. Instead of focusing solely on politics and business, which interested the wealthy, these papers included human-interest stories, crime reports, and local news. 

Though I already learned about William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass during Lee and I's presentation, I enjoyed hearing about their newspapers in more depth. 

The Liberator, founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, was such a bold and uncompromising voice against slavery. During the presentations, I learned his motto: “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice,” and it really captures the spirit of his work.

Frederick Douglass’s The North Star was equally remarkable. I loved learning about how Douglass used his newspaper not only to advocate for the abolition of slavery but also to promote equality and justice for all people, including women. His motto, “Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren,” was truly powerful to hear, especially in a time as polarized and frightening as now. 

Front Page Movie Review

Toasting to success: Hildy Johnson is celebrated by fellow 
 reporters on his way to exit the Chicago Examiner

Set in the late 1920s, The Front Page is a sharp, fast-paced comedy that delves into the world of journalism and the moral compromises made in the pursuit of more readers with sensational headlines. This film critiques the ethical gray areas of the news industry, illustrating how the pursuit of a juicy story overshadows truth. 

Directed by Billy Wilder, the film follows Chicago Examiner reporter Hildy Johnson as he follows the  "Cop Murderer Must Die" story of Earl Williams, a convicted cop murderer and alleged communist. Johnson is on the verge of retiring to settle down with his future wife Peggy, when managing editor Walter Burns pulls out all of the stops to keep him on the job. 

Johnson and Burns' relationship is the backbone of the film: it is a hilarious and somewhat contentious partnership filled with witty banter but mutual respect. Their chemistry and bickering was one of my favorite parts of the film. 

Williams was a focal point of the Chicago Tribune, with reporters scrambling to sensationalize his story. When he escapes custody during a farcical psych evaluation led by Dr. Eggelhoffer, the chaos reaches new heights. 

The scene where Dr. Eggelhoffer tumbles out of the ambulance while screaming about his fruitcake is a comedic highlight and my absolute favorite part of the film and is permanently inscribed in my brain. 

Throughout the film, especially the high points including Williams being on the run and under the desk, the reporters telephone their own versions of events, despite witnessing the same thing. This highlights the inherent bias and sensationalism in journalism, as well as the competitive nature of the news industry. Each reporter spins the story to fit their newspaper’s agenda or to make it more dramatic, prioritizing entertainment and sales over accuracy and truth. 

While the film is a product of its time, its treatment of certain characters feels dated and problematic. Mollie Malloy, a prostitute who becomes involved in the story, is reduced to a stereotype and given little agency. The journalists don't explore her perspective, illustrating how their main priority was not all perspectives but a good headline. 

As Hildy and Burns work to track down Williams, the film exposes the corruption and self-interest of local politicians. Sheriff Hartman and the Mayor are more concerned with their reelection campaigns, leaving them to manipulate the situation to their advantage. They stage events to sway public opinion and secure votes, highlighting the crooked politics of the era. The film’s critique of the intersection between media and politics feels eerily relevant today as it underscores how easily truth can be distorted for personal gain.

The Front Page is a witty, incisive exploration of journalism, politics, and human nature. While this movie was not my favorite watch, its commentary on media sensationalism and political corruption remains relevant. Plus, the way Dr. Eggelhoffer says fruitcake is so satisfying!

EOTO #1: The Life and Legacy of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was speculated to be born in February 1818 (though he believed he was born in 1817). Although his date of birth was never confirmed, he celebrated his birthday on Valentine's Day because as a child, he remembered a "sweet cake" that his mother gave him that was in the shape of a heart. 

Born into slavery in Cordova, Maryland, Bailey was taken care of by his maternal grandmother, Betsy Bailey, who was enslaved, at the Wye House Plantation. This plantation was just 12 miles away from his mother Harriet Bailey's plantation. She would visit him only a few times before her death when he was 7 years old. 

Douglass was owned by Edward Lloyd and his overseer Captain Aaron Anthony. Shortly after Anthon'y death, Douglass was sent to Sophia and Hugh Auld in Baltimore, Maryland. When he arrived, Sophia taught him the alphabet and how to read, but these lessons ended abruptly when Hugh said that this education was "unlawful" and "unsafe" to teach a slave to read, stating, "If you give a slave an inch, he will take an ell. A slave should know nothing but to obey his master-- to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best slave in the world."

Wye House Plantation

Douglass was also leased for one year to a local farmer Edward Covey, who was known as a "slave breaker," in January 1833. It had not even been a week before he began experiencing the cruel beatings at the hands of Covey for six months. In the middle of his lease, Douglass attacked Covey and was never beaten again. 

At this, Douglass stated, "This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free."

Anna Murray

In 1834, he was sent to William Freeland's farm. Although the conditions and treatment were far better than Covey's, Douglass still desired to be free. He stayed there until 1836 when he escaped Freeland's farm. He was imprisoned and sent back to Baltimore with the Auld family until 1838, where he joined a debating society and met his future wife Anna Murray.

On September 3rd, 1838, Douglass broke his chains and succeeded in reaching New York, stating that he had felt like "one who had escaped a den of hungry lions." There, he met Mr. David Ruggles who took him to his boarding house. Douglass and Murray married on September 15th, 1838, and Ruggles recommended they leave for New Bedford, Massachusetts. 

In New Bedford, Douglass and Murray had five children: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr, Charles, and Annie. 

In 1839, Douglass was exposed to William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionist leaders. He had heard Garrison speak of The Liberator and praised him for his dedication to abolition. With this inspiration, Douglass attended an Anti-Slavery Convention in 1842 and spoke about his experience as an enslaved person, to which Garrison encouraged him to continue. 

"Madam, In reply to your letter dated Newcast on Tyne 8th mo 17th 1846 I state
that I will take 150 sterling for the manumission of my slave Frederick Bailey,
alias, Douglass- I am prepared to sign such papers or deed of Manumission as will
forever exempt him from any claims by any person or persons, in other words the 
papers will render him entirely & legally free."

In 1845 he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. He spent the following years touring the globe to continue attending anti-slavery conventions and lecturing about abolition. In 1846, he became a free man. In 1847, he moved to New York and published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper that served as a platform to denounce slavery and advocate for the rights of African Americans.

Along with The North Star, Douglass merged with the Liberty Party Paper to form the Frederick Douglass Paper. Additionally, he published Douglass' Monthly and New National Era. 

In 1847, he gave a speech entitled "Country, Conscience, and the Anti-Slavery Cause" where he stated, "I have not, I cannot have, any love for this country, as such, or for its Constitution. I desire to see it overthrown as speedily as possible and its Constitution shivered in a thousand fragments, rather than that this foul curse should continue to remain as now."

Along with abolition, Douglass tried to advocate for women's rights. He attended the Women's Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls. He initially supported suffrage for all, but had changed his stance to focusing on Black male suffrage with women's suffrage following along later. 

Douglass was extremely involved with the government. With the start of the Civil War in 1861, he advocated for the inclusion of Black soldiers in the Union Army. He met with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1864, advocating for the rights and inclusion of enslaved people.  He became the first Black U.S. Marshall in 1877 and was selected as a U.S. Minister Resident to Haiti in 1889. 

On February 20th, 1895, Douglass passed away shortly after his sessions at the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C, passing away at Cedar Hill later that evening. 

Frederick Douglass was a towering figure in the right for abolition and equality. His courage, leadership, and unwavering commitment to justice transformed the course of history. Beyond his activism, he also reshaped journalism, using The North Star as a tool for social change for enslaved and free Black people. 

Mid Term Reflection

My understanding of journalism has changed since the beginning of the semester. When I signed up for this class, I had no idea it would be a journalism history course. I didn't really bother reading the description of the class, I just knew that I wanted to take a journalism class to help me decide if I wanted to minor in journalism. Now, the choice is clear. 

History is one of my favorite things to learn about, and tying it with my passion for writing and learning has made every Thursday exciting. 

We started the semester with the six freedoms of the First Amendment: freedom of and from religion,  freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of petition, and freedom of speech. Although I knew our rights encapsulated in the First Amendment, I felt like this was a foundation to establish the key role of a journalist: to act as a check on the government. 

We discussed that in order to perform this role, we need an adversarial press, or the idea that the press should never act as an arm of the government. The press has always been against the government, (until 24-hour cable news, anyway) not doing their bidding. In this recitation, Professor Dean Smith emphasized that it is not the press's job to keep the government's secrets; rather, it is vitally important that the press reveal those secrets- that is part of their adversarial role. 

Scanning through my notes, I can't help but notice the Zone of Autonomy triangle for journalists. This triangle has been one of my main takeaways from the course. As shown in the image on the left, the points of the triangle mark the clauses in the First Amendment, but it actually explains that the government can impact events outside of the triangle, but cannot mess with the inside. It's protection from the government. 

I also loved when we created a timeline tracing the colonial press era to the high modern era, charting our first paper to the rise of 24-hour cable news. Understanding the early history of journalism actually helped me understand the importance of journalism more, especially with early papers such as the Boston Newsletter and important figures like James Franklin. 

This course has not only deepened my understanding of journalism’s history but also solidified my decision to pursue a minor in journalism. The connection of history, writing, and the critical role of the press in society has made this class both enlightening and inspiring. I’m excited to see how these insights will shape my future studies and my perspective of the world.

Why Am I Here?

When I was younger, my dad never wanted me to watch the news. He would tell me horror stories of how exaggerated and overwhelming it was. He would tell me that the news was out of our hands, and because he was slightly cynical of the government, he didn't really believe in anything either.

So I didn't. I didn't really watch the news at all until COVID-19, when watching the news was imperative to keeping those around me, and myself, safe. The pandemic started when my eighth-grade year was almost over, so jumping into high school with nothing else to do but virtual classes and easy homework allowed me to watch and read the news almost daily. Even though it made me really sad, I actually started to become drawn to the idea of reporting and sharing information with others.

I registered for an introduction to journalism class my freshman year, but when we began the transition to synchronous classes during my sophomore year is when my work towards becoming a journalist began.

I started writing strictly senior features and teacher features for about a year until I started gaining an interest in arts and culture. I lived quite close to a local museum, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, where they had limited-time art exhibitions featuring art from artists around the world. There were two exhibitions that I had the privilege of writing about: "Black is Beautiful" by Kwame Brathwaite and "Declaration and Resistance" by Stephen Towns.

Black is Beautiful exhibition being 

displayed at the Reynolda House
Museum of American Art.

 "Black is Beautiful" was a movement that began in the 1960s that Brathwaite helped popularize. His photography paved the way for the "Black is Beautiful" slogan, highlighting Black art and experience. As I was writing this article, I learned so much about my history that it solidified my interest in journalism: I wanted to highlight the parts of history and culture that don't often get the recognition they deserve, whether that be through art, interviews, or news.

Kilolo Luckett, Stephen Towns, and 
Dr. Paul Baker reflecting on Flora
and Lillie. 

In writing my article, "Looking Into Declaration and Resistance," I got to write a similar piece reflecting on the importance of African Americans' resilience, dedication, and perseverance in shaping the United States through paintings and story quilts.

The thing I love most about journalism is how much you learn from learning about others. Journalism is such a unique field, and the impact that I can create is one that not many careers get the opportunity to achieve. It's nerve-wracking, but really exciting and rewarding to know that my words can help shine a light on important issues and give a voice to those who might not be heard.