Retelling the stories of print journalists No matter how effective your lectures might be, today's undergraduate audience demands more. Most faculty are aware that you can be as eloquent as Demosthenes himself or as convincing as a carnival barker, but today's undergraduates, inculcated from their earliest years with hours of television viewing, want more than talk, however enlightening. Journalism history offers a wide array of opportunity for the use of visuals. Printed pages from newspapers, cartoons, and photographs are available and can play a supportive role to every lecture. Surely, no instructors of undergraduate journalism fail to avail themselves of the cornucopia of photojournalism - Matthew Brady, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White - and a host of others provide a vast array of still photographs illustrating some phase of journalism history. Faculty might want to consider motion pictures as well. Motion pictures can fill a useful gap. Many undergraduates may be deficient when it comes to writing, ignorant of the classics of journalism literature, inept in verbal expression and woefully inadequate in historical perspective. Their generation was weaned on the box and more aware of events portrayed pictorially - images are something modern students can relate to comfortably. Wise faculty can use this technology to stimulate class discussion. Motion pictures that deal with journalism as a primary theme can provide a starting point for interesting discussions in a history of journalism class, with a focus on ethics, image, and cultural perceptions. Some faculty, of course, do make use of Hollywood features from time to time, aided by the opportunity offered by affordable videocassettes. But lengthy films need not consume valuable class time; time that is more usefully applied to lecture and discussion. Discussion can focus on how Hollywood has presented journalists and journalism itself; a review of the times and culture that prevailed at the time the film was made; discussion of the ideas that are promulgated; a deeper discussion into some of the people and events portrayed; and even some of the people who wrote the scripts. All of these elements provide an interesting avenue of discussion within the rubric of journalism history. All of the films cited here are available as VHS cassettes for sale or rental. Students can watch videos at home or from prints on reserve in the school library or media center. Well over a hundred motion pictures exist with a journalism theme, beginning in the 1920s. A baker's dozen of outstanding films are submitted here that faculty might wish to consider for use in conjunction with journalism classes. The selection is highly subjective; to be sure, as is any listing of the best and readers are sure to have other selections. The motion pictures here focus on print journalism - no television, no radio, and candidates aplenty exist from these categories, if journalism is defined in a broader sense. Along with a brief description of each film, the running times are included simply because it is always useful to know how much time students may be expected to watch; directors and producing studios are included for the record - faculty in the film school always want that kind of information. From the '30s Nothing Sacred (1937 United Artists, 75 min.) - directed by William Wellman and written by former Chicago newsman Ben Hecht, is a satiric and cynical look at an unscrupulous newspaper stunt to boost circulation. A supposedly dying woman (Carole Lombard) is exploited by a reporter (Fredric March) sentenced to obituaries who tries to win redemption by writing a great sob story. Truth has no role in the scam and, despite its vintage, this tale -- based on truth (Hecht said) - holds a prescient mirror to contemporary practices. Remade in 1954 as Living It Up a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicle, it lacks the hard cynicism of the original, and superior, version. …