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Three Dead Americans: Life’s famous World War II photo

November 29, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Civil War, First Amendment, history, Home, photojournalism.

Americans waited nearly two years before the news media printed a combat photograph that showed a dead U.S. serviceman. The reasons for that wait were that such producing such photos are too shocking for the friends and families of the deceased and that the public’s morale and support for the war might be diminished.

The story of the Life magazine photo is an interesting one and demonstrates the controversy surrounding photographing the deceased, particularly those who have died in combat.

Below is a set of photographs of soldiers killed in battle during the Civil War.

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Texting and grammar:

November 23, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: grammar, Home, journalism, writing.

r u goin 2 c her 2-nit Strict grammarians (I don’t count myself in those ranks) believe that text messaging will kill off good grammar, spelling and punctuation. (Unless it literally kills us first, since many text messages are sent and received from behind the wheel of vehicles at 45-plus mph.) But before we don • Read More »

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JFK assassination: TV news grows up in a hurry

November 22, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, Home, journalism.

To those who lived through it (including me), nothing is comparable to those four days in 1963 beginning on Nov. 22 when we heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Televisions all over America went on and stayed on through Monday night. We had never seen anything like it — wall-to-wall coverage of a news event.

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John F. Kennedy on the importance of open government (audio)

November 13, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, Home, reporting.

In April 1961, a few months after taking office as president of the United States, John F. Kennedy spoke to the American Newspaper Publishers Association about the importance of maintaining an open government. In the speech he said, “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”

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Tennessee Journalism Series: British Media

October 30, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Home.

Drawing upon both experience and a series of recent interviews, Harmon explains the structure of the press, the place of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the minds of the British People, and the role of the Press Complaints Commission in trying to assure a fair and honest dissemination of the day’s news.

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Seeing Suffrage: The Washington Suffrage Parade of 1913, Its Pictures, and Its Effect on the American Political Landscape

June 27, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, Home.

The book chronicles the Washington suffrage parade of 1913, which took place on March 3, the day before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president of the United States. On that Monday afternoon, more than 5,000 suffragists (mostly women but also a few men) marched up Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol Building to the U.S. Treasury Building in a dazzling and colorful display of their support for a Constitutional amendment that would allow women to vote.

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Following ‘th’ iliction returns’

June 26, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, Home.

More than 100 years ago, newspaper humorist Finley Peter Dunne, speaking through his wise-beyond-years character Mr. Dooley, ended a soliloquy about the Supreme Court by saying:

“That is, no matther whether th’ constitution follows th’ flag or not, th’ supreme coort follows th’ iliction returns.”

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Andrew Greeley, author: prolific

May 31, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Home.

One word describes author Andrew Greeley, who died this week in Chicago: prolific. He wrote novels, sociological research, religious analyses and screeds (in the best sense of the word), newspaper columns, and many other forms. The sum of his writings is that he loved the human intellect and loved life itself.

Update: A New York Times editor praises the stand Greeley took against the Catholic Church hierarchy in covering up the abuse of children by priests.

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