City Newspapers Research Articles

Participatory Civic Media and Democracy: How ‘Documenters’ Make Sense of Their Work

The Documenters Network began in 2018 as a participatory journalism project in Chicago and has since expanded to additional U.S. cities. The Network provides centralized information on local public meetings and trains and pays citizens to document public meetings. Documenters are operating in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno, Minneapolis, and Omaha, among other cities. Using an original survey and structured interviews with a sample of Cleveland Documenters, we explore how Documenters see themselves as actors in urban politics. We explore whether Documenting—for the Documenters—is about building civic engagement, holding accountable local government officials, and/or sharing public information with the community. Given the shifting local journalism scene—with declining city newspapers and the entry of major nonprofit news operations—we expect Documenters’ understandings of the role are evolving.

“Old-Time Negroes”: Nostalgic Ex-Slave Narratives in New York Newspapers of the Gilded Age

In the field of social memory of slavery, a growing body of scholarship on the Jim Crow North has complicated the notion of white supremacy as a specifically Southern ideology, locating what historians view as a “missing link” in the history of race in America. This study examines a corollary gap in American journalism history—the role that white Northern newspapers played a generation after Emancipation in softening white memory of slavery and hardening discourse toward African Americans. This article applies narrative analysis to sample five large-circulation white New York City newspapers from 1889 to 1910, along with a contemporary Black city newspaper. The study concludes that white newspapers, by perpetuating racist tropes upstreamed from literature, cultivated Jim Crow ideology beyond the former Confederacy. The findings shed light on the timeline of Black Americans’ struggle for mass media representation and demonstrate journalism’s intertextual role in shaping social memory.

Literary and Local History Themes of Resort Press of Black Sea Province

This article reconstructs the overall development of periodicals in the Black Sea Province during the period 1906-1917, taking into account political, economic, and social changes that influenced the publications' information policy. It argues that the formation of the resort press system in the Black Sea Province in the early 20th century was linked to the development of Sochi as a resort. The emergence of the resort press system is characterized by the short duration of publication activities and the lack of information about the personalities of the publishers and editors of the early Sochi newspapers — “Sochi Courier,” “Black Sea Region,” “Sochi Leaf.” The article restores a series of biobibliographic data related to figures such as P.N. Zhano and G.D. Toropov. It explores the specifics of the literary and local history content of Sochi city newspapers from 1906 to 1917. It is established that during the period under study, the uniqueness of the content of the early Sochi newspapers was dictated, on one hand, by the territorial specificity of the developing resort, and on the other hand, by the preferences of the readership consisting of local residents and vacationers. Resort themes were one of the main topics of publications, with the frequency of such materials usually increasing at the beginning of the season. The author concludes that materials with literary and local history focus were an important component of the information policy of each publication, often having an essayistic character. Special attention in such publications was paid to the history of the founding of Sochi.

Discovering the Arizona Republican Newspaper, 1890-1900: Yellow Journalism in America’s Territorial Press

Yellow journalism is widely believed to have grown out of a circulation battle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst in the 1890s. Most scholarship on its inception has been confined to newspapers in large Eastern cities. To date, little study of the period’s journalism has investigated whether, and to what degree, elements of yellow journalism were practiced by newspapers in Western US states and territories. This examination of the Arizona Republican in the 1890s shows yellow journalism was not confined to the East where it was incubated; in territorial Arizona, yellow journalism flourished. Needing to attract readers in a competitive newspaper market with a growing population, the newspaper did so with large headlines, scurrilous reporting, attention-grabbing news, and illustrations. Beyond the Eastern United States, the same force which brought on yellow journalism—publishers’ needs to attract huge readerships—fueled the practice on America’s territorial frontier in the Arizona Republican.

Adrese Pasta iela 3: Liepājas kultūridentitātes metafora (1950–1980)

The study aims to identify and evaluate the main aspects of the formation of Liepāja literary and cultural environment in the 1950s–1980s. The location of the editorial office of the city newspaper “Komunists” (“Kurzemes Vārds”) at Pasta Street 3 is of great importance to the creative cultural space of Liepāja. The Association of Young Writers was founded there in the 1950s. The editorial office becomes a gathering place for young writers, actors, musicians, and artists, a cultural space for an active, creative life. Landscape identity can be viewed as a spatially unique psycho-sociological perception of a place defined in cultural space. The theoretical and methodological basis of the article is the theoretical studies on place identity and cultural memory issues by Maria Levicka, Bas Pedroli, Jan Diek van Mansvelt, William P. Stewart, Derk Jan Stobbelaar, Astrid Erll, and others. The article concludes that many talented personalities – journalists, writers, artists, etc. – worked in the newspaper’s editorial office during the time researched. Many writers and journalists, later recognised in Liepāja, the region, and throughout Latvia, started their literary activities in the Association of Young Writers. Many of them experienced their first publications in the literary pages of the newspaper “Komunists”. Many of them were also engaged in the newspaper as journalists. A close relationship is formed between the physical environment and, under its influence, the strong attachment to the creative community. Despite the ideological direction of the political era and the limitations of the creative process, thanks to the favourable, sometimes even open-minded, supportive, and trusting atmosphere prevailing in the editorial office of the newspaper “Komunists”, the cultural and literary life of Liepāja rapidly developed and improved, and has become an important indicator of the city’s cultural identity.

Особенности употребления конституентов семантики невыразимого в федеральных, региональных и городских газетах

The study aims to compare the representation of constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible in federal, regional and city newspapers, identifying common and specific features, namely: the frequency of constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible, the reasons for their use in newspaper texts, the compatibility of constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible with lexical units, language preferences of the authors of texts (the gender aspect). The study is novel in that it is the first to identify the common and specific features of using constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible in federal, regional and city newspapers. It is the first time that the gender correlation in the use of constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible in newspaper texts has been found. As a result, the common and specific features of using constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible have been revealed. Constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible in federal, regional and city newspapers have the common features of evaluativeness and emotionality: they mark the names of emotions, feelings, sensations; they serve to attract the reader to the published information in order to influence them. The specific features include the following: in federal newspapers, constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible are more frequent than in the city press; in the texts of federal newspapers, one-word constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible predominate, while in a city newspaper, constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible are prevalent as parts of phrases. It has been found that constituents of the semantics of the inexpressible are mainly used by female authors; there are no texts in which the semantics of the inexpressible would label negative feelings and emotions in a city newspaper.

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Laughter during the Great Patriotic War in the Newspaper Magnitogorskii rabochii

The history of humor is not new to the Russian historiography. At the same time, over the last decade, the research into laughter has been in demand and relevant, especially within the study of the history of emotions. The author suggests a specific example of the study of laughter in the local context. The article examines laughter during the period of the Great Patriotic War based on the newspaper “Magnitogorskii rabochii” in two ways. The first layer is made up of “guest” humorous sketches presented by the works of “TASS Windows” and front-line newspapers. The second — feuilletons, cartoons, humoresques posted on the pages of the city newspaper. Their authors were local journalists and artists. Local authors are understood as those who resided in the city during the Great Patriotic War. The former basically broadcast images of front-line life, explained military events, consoled people demonstrating shortcomings of the enemy and the dignity of the Soviet army. The latter, during the most difficult moments on the fronts, shifted the attention of residents to pressing urban problems, largely typical of Magnitogorsk: officials, roads, baths, etc. The article pays special attention to the influence of front-line events on laughter practices, forms of humor, themes and functions performed by it. The latter underwent significant changes during the war years. If at the beginning of the war, laughter performed an explanatory and anesthetic function helping the townspeople to cope with the difficult time of incomprehension of the events, of mobilization, of the first losses, etc., then in 1942 the substitution function became key: front-line humor was replaced by local humor. The end of the war required humor to make an effort to revive positive moods in the city, to ensure a gradual return to a peaceful existence.

Первые годовщины прорыва блокады Ленинграда на страницах «Ленинградской правды» (1944–1947 гг.)

The article analyzes the reflection of the breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad in the main city newspaper. Since 1945, this event has been in the shadow of the complete liberation of the city from the blockade. While in January 1943 many Leningraders perceived this event as a milestone and key. In January 18, 1945 the anniversary of the breakthrough of the blockade was not mentioned on the pages of “Leningradskaya Pravda”. In 1946 and 1947, the third and fourth anniversaries were marked rather modestly. The main attention invariably shifted towards January 27 – the day of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the blockade. In fact, both dates – January 18 and January 27 – have gained equal importance only since the beginning of the 2000s.

Self-Promotion and Work with the Audience as the Main Links of a Marketing Strategy Small Press

The article is devoted to the analysis of the practices of regional and city newspapers of the Perm Territory and the Orenburg Region in building marketing strategies. The purpose of the study is to identify effective methods and methods of work of the editorial staff of a local publication to preserve and expand the audience and the possibility of practical use of this experience. The author, having the opportunity to monitor the activities of the monitored media for a long time, selected 10 publications for detailed consideration, each of them with 10 issues, published in October and November 2022. The empirical basis of the research consisted of 100 editions. Based on theoretical material and on the results of sociological research, personal communication with journalists and editors of territorially localized media, the author concluded that self-promotion and organizational mass work with the audience remain to be the main methods of promotion for the media of this type.

The Mechanisms of Constructing the Image of the Far Eastern Provincial City in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods

The article presents an analysis aimed at identifying an axiological strategy of forming a positive image of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in different historical periods. When creating a positive image of a provincial city, a regional identity is formed, which contributes to solving one of the most pressing problems for the Russian Far East, related to the need to preserve human resources.&#x0D; The paper examines the modern stage of forming a positive image of the city based on the example of the electronic version of the newspaper “Far East Komsomolsk-on-Amur”, since the media have different functions in the modern society, including the informative and ideological functions. The identified ways of creating a positive image include building a new model of life during the construction of the city, aimed at a bright future of the city which is full of cultural events, spreading information about happy life in the city by fixing and informing the whole country about the achievements of Komsomolsk-on-Amur residents and updating information about the heroic past of the city. So far, the methods influencing the image of Komsomolsk-on-Amur have not undergone significant changes since the Soviet times. Therefore, the analysis of the texts taken from the city's newspapers has made it possible to determine the leading dominants in the axiological strategy of creating a positive image of Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

The News in Pictures. Press Photographs and Illustrations in Twentieth-Century Neapolitan Archives

The archives discussed in this paper are private photo agencies active in Naples for the most between the 1920s and 1940s, and relatively unknown at an international level. The enormous wealth of images still preserved in some of these archives, named after their founders (Beuf, Parisio, Troncone and Carbone), is now being indexed and digitised. These agencies worked for the major city newspapers (and not only), thus producing photographs to be printed and spread on a large scale.

Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico by Vanessa Freije

Reviewed by: Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico by Vanessa Freije Stephen D. Morris Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico. By Vanessa Freije. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020, p. 286, $27.95. In Citizens of Scandal, Vanessa Freije explores how Mexico City's print media shaped the narratives and the changing political landscape during the period stretching from the 1960s through the 1980s: a turbulent and critical period in Mexico's political and democratic development. Freije accomplishes this by focusing on a series of "citizen scandals:" the mediated spectacles that through a variety of interpretations contributed to the "meaning-making practice of urban citizenship" (p. 3). The scandals examined in the book include: the embezzlement scheme in agrarian lending institutions in the early 1960s and the government censorship of Los hijos de Sánchez, the controversial book about urban poverty (chapter 1); the scandalous rumors in Nezahualcóyotl in 1974 that vaccines were sterilizing children (chapter 2); the debates surrounding the discoveries of huge oil reserves under López Portillo to the eventual denunciation (and jailing) of Pemex director Jorge Díaz Serrano (chapter 3); the Rio Tula murders and the explosive case of "El Negro" Durazo, Mexico City´s corrupt and murderous police chief during the López Portillo (federal) and Carlos Hank Gonzalez (Mexico City) administrations in 1982 (chapter 4); the 1985 earthquake, with particular attention on the collapsed sweatshops (chapter 5); the coverage and narratives surrounding electoral fraud against the PAN in the 1986 state elections in Chihuahua (Chapter 6); and briefly, the publication of the book Un asesino en la presidencia? in 1987 that accused the PRI´s presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, of involvement in the killing of a young servant as a child and its subsequent relationship to the denunciation and jailing of the leader of the oil workers union, Joaquín "La Quina" Hernández Galicia (epilogue). Throughout, Freije leverages the concept of "mediated citizenship" as the process by which urban Mexicans developed their perspectives and understandings of the political system through everyday interactions with the mass media. For students of Mexican history and Mexican journalism in particular, the account provides an in-depth look at the evolution of modern Mexican media. Discussion centers on the major institutional actors (Excelsior, Unomasuno, La Jornada and other Mexico City newspapers), particularly the rise of the news weekly Proceso in the wake of the government´s forcing out the editors of Excelsior; major personalities and opinionmakers like Manuel Buendia, Heberto Castillo, Agular Camin, Carlos Monsivais, Elena Poniatowska; and the influence of radio, television, flyers, comics and political cartoons, and urban graffiti. [End Page 234] Interwoven throughout the analysis is the dynamic and evolving relationship between the state and the media that parallels the democratic changes taking place during these years. Through various methods, the Mexican state had long controlled and censored the Mexican press. Debates and coverage during the scandals, however, effectively pushed the limits on what was permitted, ever so slightly forcing open the political system. At times, coverage simply escaped government controls. Following the 1985 earthquake, for example, media revealed deep-seated corruption and a state incapable of responding to the destruction and providing basic human services. Here, as in other examples, the government felt threatened by what it saw as uncontrolled organizations and demands from below, demands that they saw as being pursued outside the scope (and controls) of the government and the party´s (PRI) corporatist structures. Thanks largely to the narrative of Carlos Monsivais, the public came to see the experience as an illustration of the ability of civil society and the people to surpass and assume the role of the state. The mediated traumatic event proved critical to the rise of civil society organizations and gains by political opposition, putting Mexico on the road to greater political opening. Part of this dynamic involved the way the government sought to shape the narrative and counter those produced by journalists and opposition politicians. Under such circumstances, the government employed its allies within the media, offering an elite and cosmopolitan perspective, as in the reaction to the widespread rumors...

시티팝의 형성과정과 21세기 시티팝의 유행 현상에 관한 고찰

This study provides an in-depth examination of the concept of Japanese City Pop, its historical formation process, and the urban pop trend in the 21st century. Individual interviews were conducted with domestic City Pop mediators, who served as City Pop guides. Qualitative research was conducted on the contents of individual interviews, focusing on City Pop guides, papers, newspapers, magazines, record guides, and online websites. First, City Pop basically pursued Western- and American-oriented musicality, but songs focused on the relationship with the space they felt and faced through Japanese singing. Here, space is a Japanese city, and more precisely, the lifestyle of Tokyo, a city on the border between daily life and leisure, with skyscrapers and resorts, is the subject of the song. Based on the abundance and stability brought by the economic boom in the 80s, City Pop demonstrates attempts to break the boundaries between daily life and leisure by responding to consumerism. At the same time, City Pop praises the sophisticated yet snob-like lifestyle, gaining sympathy from city life and young listeners who longed for urban life at the time. Even from the current viewpoint, this characteristic can be evaluated as the direction and identity of City Pop. Next, through a review of the 21st century trend of City Pop, young listeners can guess that City Pop is matching keywords such as abundance, relaxation, romance, and sophistication enjoyed by Japan in the 1980s. The keywords of City Pop they matched are of a nature that is hard to realize with the sensitivity of the current 2020s, and the scenery of the Japanese city that City Pop evokes is also unfamiliar. Hence, in the City Pop released 30-40 years ago, they discovered the consumerist North Talge language brought by the bubble economy, and it can be interpreted as enjoying it from the current perspective. In addition, while the sophisticated melody and arrangement of AOR advocated by City Pop display similarities to Western pop songs, it is interpreted that young listeners now recognize the characteristics of Japanese singing as a cool sound that feels new rather than uncomfortable. Therefore, from the perspective of current young listeners, City Pop is given the status of an old future and a new popular music. By examining Japan’s economic and cultural background that brought the City Pop trend, this study explored the concept and historical formation process of City Pop as a type of J-Pop and the identity and image of City Pop. In addition, the review of the trend of City Pop in the 21st century revealed it seeks the possibility of a new popular music and is created from the current perspective beyond the meaning of the revival of music from the past.

The Salt Lake City Asylum and Hospital, 1870–1886: Mental Illness in Early Utah

The Salt Lake City Asylum and Hospital, 1870–1886: Mental Illness in Early Utah

Master of Her Craft: Margaret Wild

Master of Her Craft: Margaret Wild Robyn Sheahan-Bright (bio) Australian writer Margaret Wild was short-listed in the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Awards, to the delight of her compatriots. In her more than one hundred books for children and young adults, she has attracted universal acclaim for her splendid, highly layered writing, which is spare and yet suggestively complex. In books that canvas a wide range of challenging topics, her respect for young readers, and her unwillingness to shield children from uncomfortable truths, have been paramount. She is one of Australia’s most revered picturebook creators, and this acknowledgment has cemented her international reputation. Click for larger view View full resolution Background Margaret Wild became a full-time writer in 2000, after a career as a journalist, freelance writer, and publisher. Born in Eshowe, a country town in South Africa, on April 24, 1948, she moved frequently in her early life, since her father was a bank manager, but she grew up mainly in Johannesburg, where she attended local state schools. As a child, she was a voracious reader, and also loved drawing. After working as a journalist on country and city newspapers, she immigrated to Australia in 1973 and worked as a feature writer on Dolly magazine. She then completed her formal education at the Australian National University in Canberra. Returning to Sydney in 1980, she combined the rearing of two children with freelance writing for newspapers and magazines. In 1983, she began writing for children, inspired by the reactions of her son to children’s books. She combined her own writing career with managing and commissioning children’s books for sixteen years with a range of publishers, including Omnibus Books, ABC Books, Methuen, and Angus & Robertson. In 1984, she published her first book, There’s a Sea in My Bedroom, illustrated by Jane Tanner. Wild has said: “I feel very lucky to be a writer. As long as I have pen and paper, I can write anywhere, anytime—for me, it’s the best job in the world.” (“Margaret Wild”). Body of Work Wild has that rare capacity to speak to a wide range of ages in her picture-book texts, whether they be for babies or teenagers. Her rhythmical books for babies, her lyrical picturebooks for beginning readers, and her complex visual works for older readers demonstrate a virtuoso control of voice that few other writers could master. They resonate with tenderness, love, and comfort. Although Wild is best known for her picturebooks, her [End Page 38] work has also included junior novels, short stories, two groundbreaking verse novels—Jinx (2001), which has been translated into nine languages, and One Night (2003)—and one prose novel for young adults, The Vanishing Moment (2013). In these impressive long-form works, she explored teenage emotions in an empathetic and highly immediate way. This poem might be viewed as her statement of intent as a writer: Click for larger view View full resolution Jen’s Mum Will Write Jen’s mum writes advertising copy.She specializes in white goods:washing machines, dryers, fridges,freezers, dishwashers.She hates these applianceshulkingin corners,power-hungry and fractious.One day, she will have a wood stove,and she’ll write about things that mattershe will write about birth and death,about love and the absence of love,about fathers and children,about mothers and daughters,about lovers and friends.She’ll write about the whole goddamnwonderful, awful businessof loving and being loved —Margaret Wild, Jinx Click for larger view View full resolution Craftsperson Her exquisitely crafted, spare use of language is poetic: With Fox, she brings a poet’s sensibility to the writing of a mesmerising and powerful work about the elemental need for companionship in our lives. Her writing bristles with urgent action and sings with suggestive imagery; it is pared back, sometimes playful, and always emotionally resonant. In this way, it carries the very essence of what the story is about—the arcane battle between innocence and evil, kindness and cruelty, love and hate. (Sheahan-Bright) Her inventive playfulness with language in Fox (2000) was also demonstrated in the graphic dystopian thriller Woolvs in the...

Picturing the Politics of Pharmaceutics

This article historicizes the practice of separating drug dispensation from medical practice in Japan, focusing on its trajectory from the Meiji period (1868–1912) to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. I argue that the prescribing-dispensing separation debate highlighted the paradoxical modern experience of Japan, where information on the prescribing-dispensing separation became embroiled in discourses expounding on the local/Westernization (self/other) binary. The prescribing-dispensing separation dispute codifies the professional identity and the roles of the modern pharmacist—an important chapter in the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionalization in Japan. Recognizing that the modern pharmacists underwent a nonlinear professionalization as determined by interactions with other social players (i.e., politicians, physicians, journalists) in different discursive spaces (i.e., professional conferences, Imperial Diet sessions), I have turned to professional publications and newspapers in the major cities of Tokyo and Osaka, where the prescribing-dispensing separation movement was most active. By examining the material and working cultures of major participants in the medical industry (i.e., the pharmacists, physicians, medicinal traders, and the politicians), this article interrogates the production of knowledge in the transformative modernizing process of the apothecary and the pharmaceutical industry.

Female Physicians in American Literature: Abortion in 19th-Century Literature and Culture

Female Physicians in American Literature: Abortion in 19th-Century Literature and Culture

“That city, that self”: Tracing a Historical Trajectory of the City Writer

This article traces a historical trajectory of the city poet in Canada—a writer whose “street-level perspective” defines their methods and shapes their authorial personae—from the nineteenth-century through to the twenty-first. It first provides a brief exploration of some of the literature published in the Toronto Evening Telegram newspaper in the 1880s and 1890s to consider the origins of a literary tradition and an authorial persona rooted in the city. This part of the article uses the example of Robert Kirkland Kernighan to show the way early writers exploited the opportunity provided by city newspapers and the city itself to map and define themselves in artistic and professional terms. The article goes on to consider the work of contemporary city writers like Bren Simmers, who continue mapping themselves onto the street in sometimes deeply personal and increasingly unsettled ways. At base, the article argues that by extending critical discussions of urban writing back to its nineteenth-century roots, we can better understand how the city works as a unique marketplace for literature and a unique cultural economy through which literature circulates, but also as a unique context for the creation of authorial identity.