Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Wiki Wacky
From the list of Wiki topics sent earlier, choose one name. Research who the person is and his or her relation or significance to the media. Write a 100-word biographical blurb on the person and submit it to the Comment section of this post no later than noon, Wednesday, Sept. 23. The person you choose will be the subject of your Wiki entry/project, so please choose well.
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A.J. Liebling
A.J. Liebling was born in 1904. He studied at the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City. He studied in Paris as per his father’s wishes for a year. He came back to eventually work for The New Yorker in 1935. He is known for his war correspondences in World War II and gave audiences a view from the inside. He participated in Normandy and D-day giving recounts of what life was like on the landing craft. He published a collection of his writings from The New Yorker in his The Wayward Pressman. He wrote of politics, food, sports and wrote over fifteen books during his lifetime. He is remembered as saying, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" and, “People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” Both I think suit this course.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
Hunter S. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky.Thompson is said to be the father of Gonzo journalism; a form of subjective journalism in which the writer immerses himself in the material. Gonzo journalism is also writing that has somewhat no distinction between fiction and non-fiction. The idea of Gonzo journalism was to break free of the objective style of writing at the time. Thompson’s writing was always in first person and meant to be funny or bizarre and sometimes exaggerated for entertainment. Thompson is most well known for his novels Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hells Angels; and his love of psychedelic drugs, firearms and alcohol. Thompson died at his own home on “Owl Farm” in Woody Creek, Colorado from a self inflicted gunshot to the head.
i think i'd call thompson's books "nonfiction novels" rather than plain novels. if they were novels in the old-fashioned sense, they would no longer be journalism.
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams was born in Dunkirk. New York on January 26, 1871. In 1891, he graduated from Hamilton College then from there was a journalist at the New York Sun then McClure’s Magazine. At McClure’s he made a name for himself as an intense muckraker who wrote articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. His most famous articles were called “The Great American Fraud” published in 1905 for Collier’s Weekly. The articles exposed many of the false claims about patent medicines and altered the public that many medicines were actually damaging the health of those who using them. Adams also wrote fiction articles, some of which were made into films and novels dealing with the sexual urges of teenage women. He died in Beaufort, South Carolina on November 15, 1958.
Hunter S. Thompson
Creator of Gonzo journalism and pioneer in the sense that one can blend fictional (or in his mind delusional) anecdotes in with the non-fiction elements of his articles, Thompson's view on journalism differed in a sense from all his predecessors because he never managed to distance himself from his subjects, choosing instead to immerse himself in the culture of whatever he was writing about, and consequently altering the story with his personal experiences. Famous for his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas work, Thompson was everything from a sports writer for publishers such as Sports Illustrated, to writing essays for Rolling Stone. Thompson may well be remembered for his drug-induced craziness, but he was a true genius of his time.
Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens was born in 1866. Born into a wealthy family, Steffens attended an expensive military academy where began shows signs of a rebellious nature. His first writing job was with the New York Evening Post as a police reporter. He soon became fascinated with police department and municipal government corruption. In 1903 Steffens wrote a series of articles for McClure's Magazine about corruption; the series was published in 1940 entitled, "The Shame of the Cities." By 1910, Steffens was having doubts of how effective his work actually was. When he heard about the Mexican Revolution he became interested in what he saw as two of the biggest corrupting factors, capitalism and American domination. After a trip to Soviet Russia he exclaimed, “I have seen the future, and it works." He also wrote an autobiography, aptly named The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens which was first published in 1931 which went on to become a best seller.
Shame of the Cities in 1940? I don't think so. Please double-check date.
I'm sorry that was my fault, number dyslexia. It was 1904.
Marshall McLuhan
One cannot study media or the press without stumbling across the great thoughts of Marshall McLuhan. His philosophical ideas about our modern situation of interconnectivity are studied as the guiding critique of media. He conceived the notion of the global village, which is the idea that electronic media would move the cultures of the world closer together, almost like a big tribe. In 1964 McLuhan wrote his most popular book, Understanding Media, in which he describes the best way to study media, and points out that it is not the content that affects society, but the medium. He believed that it wouldn’t matter whether you put Sesame Street on all the time, or WWE Wrestling, it would still effect the masses in the same way.
David Graham Phillips was born into a middle-class political family on October 31, 1867 in Madison, Indiana. In 1887 he graduated from the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton. Phillips started his career at the Cincinnati Times-Star, but moved to New York City three years later, working as editor for New York World. Philips used his journalistic skills to write works of fiction, while still freelancing for different magazines, journals, and newspapers. Phillips is most famous for his muckraking exposes, Treason of the Senate, which was published as a series in William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine in 1906. The expose focused on corruption of big oil and tobacco companies within the United States government. On January 23, 1911, music teacher Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, convinced that Phillip’s novel The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, a criticism of high society in Washington, was a portrayal of his sister and himself, shot Phillips multiple times outside the Princeton Club, then turned the gun on himself. Phillips died the next day.
Jospeh Pulitzer was born in Mako, Hungary on April 10, 1847. When he was seventeen years old, he tried to enlist in the Austrian Army, Napoleon's Foreign Legion for duty in Mexico, and the British Army for service in India. All three armies turned him down due to his weak eyesight and frail health. He then encountered a bounty recruiter for the U.S. Union Army. He enlisted in the Lincoln Cavalry for a year which was consisted of many German speaking men. He was first offered a job at the Westliche Post which was the leading German daily paper in the United States at the time. By the age of 25, after several shrewd business deals, he emerged as the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In his later years, Pulitzer's health prevented him from leaving his home. Regardless of this fact, Pulitzer was believed to have reshaped newspaper journalism with his New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Martha Gellhorn
Born in 1909 to working class parents in St. Louis, Missouri; Gellhorn was a well educated female for her time. However, she left college after one year to fulfill her career as a journalist. After a year of reporting, Gellhorn went to France, where she became a foreign correspondent in the 1930’s. There she worked for United Press and Vogue and wrote her first book about the pacifist movement. She went on to report in Spain on the Spanish Civil War, and Germany to write on the rise of Hitler after the out break of World War II. In between this time, Gellhorn met and married write Ernest Hemmingway, who she later divorced. During her time at the Atlantic Monthly, Gellhorn also covered the Vietnam War, the Middle East Six-Day War, and some civil wars in Central America. She thought journalist objectivity was nonsense and was a known leftist, openly criticizing fascism and racism until her death.
Don Bolles
Don Bolles was born into a family of journalists in 1928. His father was the chief of the Associated Press Bureau in New Jersey and his grandfather was a newspaper editor. He went into journalism as a sports editor but is best known for his investigative journalism with the Arizona Republic newspaper. His investigative reporting of the mafia would ultimately lead to his death. A car bomb put him in the hospital where doctors amputated both of his legs and one of his arms. He died eleven days later and the investigation into his murder was known as the Arizona Project.
H.L. Mencken
H.L. Mencken was a journalist and author born in Baltimore in 1880. He wrote for The Baltimore Sun for the majority of his career, during which time he reported on issues like the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and the New Deal. Mencken’s writing was often opinionated and humorous, and usually centered on issues of class, race and people (like William Jennings Bryan) who swindle the less-intelligent members of American society. He also co-founded The American Mercury in 1924 and edited it until 1933. There, he published work by many other famous and influential writers such as Fitzgerald, Faulker and Fante. After the magazine was banned in Boston, Mencken traveled there to personally sell a copy. Mencken was arrested but won in court, citing the freedom of the press as his defense.
Ida Wells
In her time, Ida wells had two things against her: she was an African American and a woman. Wells was born in July of 1862. Tragedy struck when Wells was 16 as both of her parents and a younger sibling died of yellow fever. To keep her family together, Ida dropped out of school and began teaching at an African American school. In 1880 Wells moved to Memphis. She taught elementary school while writing articles for a weekly newspaper under her pen name "Lola". Wells was extremely opinionated in regards to civil rights-she sued-and won-a railroad station are being forced to leave a train after being told to give her seat to a white man and was disgusted by the lynching of 3 male African American friends who were accused of raping a white woman (this event later prompted Wells to become involved in investigative journalism). Wells became co-owner and editor of the anti-segregationist newspaper Free Speech in 1889. For years Wells crusaded for both womens' and civil rights. After retiring, she began to write an autobiogrpahy-but it was left unfinished when she died in 1931 at age 68.
wow mine had ridiculous word mistakes in that long middle sentence..sorry guys
William Randolph Hearst
Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He was the only child of George Hearst, a self=made millionaire who had a career in mining. George Hearst acquired the San Francisco Examiner in gambling debt, which he turned over to William. From there, William Hearst went on to own 12 newspapers at his peak including the New York Morning Journal, Chicago Examiner and Harper’s Bazaar. Hearst was a congressman for New York in 1902. He pursued and publishing and communications and started one of the first print media companies in the 1920’s. In the ‘40s, he was an early pioneer of t.v. Hearst was highly interested in entertainment. He built Hearst Castle to celebrate the entertainment elite. The movie Citizen Kane is based off of his character. The Hearst Corporation is still in family hands today.
Ernie Pyle (August 3, 1900 - April 18, 1945)
Born in Dana, Indiana, Pyle joined the US Navy Reserve when he was 18 and served only three months during World War I before the war ended. After returning, he attended Indiana University but dropped out a semester before graduating to take a job with an Indiana newspaper. Shortly afterward he began writing for The Washington Daily News in 1921. In 1928, Pyle created the first column about aviation in the United States for The Washington Daily News. He would also become editor of the paper in 1932.
Pyle's true claim to fame, however, was as a war correspondant for the Scripps Howard chain of newspapers during World War II. He was one of the first war correspondants to write about the common soldier and this helped win him a Pulitzer Prize in 1944. One of his articles even resulted in a bill being passed (The Ernie Pyle Bill) which gave extra pay to soldiers involved in combat. Sadly, his life was ended by machine gun fire while in the Pacific covering the war with the Navy. He was killed on the island of Ie Shima, located west of Okinawa.
Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) was born on May 5, 1864, in Pennsylvania. At the age of 18 she sent the editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch an anonymous letter concerning a sexist article with the title “Women’s’ Sphere.” The writer of the article had said that women should worry about getting a husband rather than a job. Turns out the editor of newspaper was impressed with Bly’s letter and search for her through an ad in the paper and wound up giving her a job. At the time it was not ideal for a woman to write for a newspaper, therefore the editor came up with the name Nellie Bly.
Finley Peter Dunne
Born July 10, 1867 in Chicago. He came from an Irish immigrant family and died in 1936. Dunne was active 1887-1936 in the USA, North America. He was a journalist for local sports and police after high school. When he was 21 he became city editor of the Chicago Sun Times in 1888. He was known for his character “Martin Dooley”, to give voice to his commentary on current events. “Mr. Dooley”, as he became known across the nation, was a 60-something saloon-keeper with a thick Irish brogue and commented with a lot of witty common sense on current events. Dunne also created “Bridgeport”, an entire fictional, working class neighborhood on Chicago’s south side to surround and support “Mr. Dooley’s” musings.
Tom Wolfe
Born in March, 1931, Tom Wolfe was born into a wealthy family which afforded him a simple and laid back lifestyle, full of impulse decisions and more importantly time to practice his writing at a very young age. He was constantly battling against convention; conventions of culture (his undergraduate thesis on anti-intellectualism), conventions of education (his PhD thesis on how graduate education stifles creativity), and ultimately, conventions of journalism. Through his semi-literary and semi-fictional works as a freelance reporter, a new movement in journalism was created, called New Journalism. Although he would later gain critical acclaim (as well as criticism) from his later works of fiction writings and collections of other New Journalism writers, it will always be his claim to fame that he was H.S. Thompson before Thompson, the journalist who immersed himself in the culture of his subject to get his story. New Journalism has since died out somewhat, but Wolfe created a movement that truly revolutionized journalism.
Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe was born in 1931 in Richmond, Virginia. He began writing at 9 years old. Before he was a teenager he attempted to write a biography of Napoleon. He attended Washington and Lee University and majored in English. While there, he was the sports editor for the school's newspaper and helped found their literary magazine, Shenandoah. He graduated Cum Laude in 1951 and went on to play semi-professional baseball.
He abandoned baseball in 1952 and enrolled in Yale's American Studies Doctoral program. While working on his thesis he began working at the Springfield Union. In 1957 he finished his thesis and in 1959 he took a job at the Wahington Post because he had little interest in politics. He won a guild's award for his humor writing and another for foreign reporting in Cuba.
In 1962 he left for NYC. He worked at the New York Herald-Tribune as a general assignment reporter and feature writer. It was there that Wolfe would flesh out the fiction writing techniques he utilized in his feature writing and led to his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Wolfe become associated with a style of journalism called New Journalism along with Hunter Thompson, Gay Talese and others. He also began wearing his trademark white suit.
Wolfe published a number of non-fiction books throughout the 70s on various subjects such as hippie communes and the first astronauts.He also wrote social histories of modern art and architecture.
Wolfe continues to write today. He has reportedly been paid $7 million for his latest novel, Back in Blood.
Ray Stannard Baker
Baker was born in Lansing, Michigan on April 17, 1870. He attended school at Michigan Agricultural College (Now Michigan State) and took up law and literature at Michigan Law School. In 1892, Baker began working for the Chicago Record. He worked at the publication for six years as a reporter and later, an editor. There, he was exposed to seeing how poor people lived in Chicago on the streets, charity wards and soup kitchens. He later went on to work at McClure’s Magazine and his dream was to write a great American novel. He went on the be a well-known and respected muckraker and author and went on to publish Following the Color Line, as well as publishing the biography of President Woodrow Wilson. Baker died of a heart attack on July 12, 1946 in Amherst Massachusetts.
Dickey Chapelle born as Georgette Louise Meyer came to the world in the spring of 1919. She was an American Photojournalist who worked as a war correspondent from WWII through Vietnam. She began to pursue her interests in photography while attending photography school while she met her husband. She pursued her interests by working with different companies before and during war, where she was able to perfect her work. She began working as a war correspondent for the National Geographic Later and posted with the Marines during WWII. Dickey was the first female reporter to gain approval from the Pentagon to jump with American troops (paratroops) in Vietnam. Many military units began to notice her for her willingness and dedication and so many of them used her for war. Dickey was killed by a land mine in 1965 while she was on patrol.
Elijah Lovejoy ---
He was born on November 9, 1802 in Albion, Maine. He graduated from Waterville College and in 1826 moved to St. Louis to become a school teacher. In 1831 he joined the First Presbyterian Church and decided he wanted to become a minister. He joined the Princeton Theological Seminary and in 1834 became the minister of the Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. He began publishing the St. Louis Observer and supported aboltion of slavery. One edition that was published featured the lynching of a black man. After this, his printing press was destroyed and he moved to Alton, Illinois. Once he was there he began editing the Alton Observer and 3 more times his presses were destroyed. On November 7, 1837, 2 days before his 35th birthday, the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society gave him a new press. When local slave-owners heard of the new press they decided to destroy it and Lovejoy and a group of his friends decided to try to protect it. In the attack Lovejoy was shot and killed.
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