“Disastrous to Take a Single Note”: Memory and Materiality in a Century of U.S. Journalism Textbooks

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the highly contested professional discourse around journalistic notetaking through 125 years of U.S. reporting textbooks, exploring how professional practices have been presented, rationalized, and justified in succeeding eras of modern journalism. Analyzing through a cultural lens and material theories of “objects of journalism,” the study offers insight into developing perceptions of journalists’ ethical obligations to accuracy, presumed audience expectations for journalistic content, and the capacities of human memory. Analysis suggests that rather than resolving questions of whether and how journalists should take notes, reporting textbooks offered ambivalent, unrealistic, and contradictory advice through much of the twentieth century.