American Journalism

Volume 43 Number 2
Winter 2026

ARTICLES

Reckoning with Reconstruction: The Limits and Horizons of US Journalism History
Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield (FREE ACCESS ARTICLE)

This essay proposes a Reconstruction-centered approach to US journalism history that places the overthrow of Reconstruction and the rise of state-level authoritarian regimes in the US South more fully within the field’s analytical frame. We contend that journalism history has long been productively oriented toward narratives of democratic expansion, governance, and reform—an emphasis that has generated rich insights into the press’s role in public life. At the same time, this orientation has made it more difficult to see the press as an institutional actor in antidemocratic projects. Drawing on case studies of Mississippi (1875), North Carolina (1898), and Arkansas (1919), we show how white newspapers aligned with the Democratic Party participated in campaigns of racial violence, electoral subversion, and political exclusion, helping to build, consolidate, and defend authoritarian rule at the state level. By situating these cases within broader historiographical and interdisciplinary conversations, we suggest that a Reconstruction-centered press history can extend existing frameworks and deepen our understanding of the press’s role in American political development.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Journalism and the Populist Movement}
Timothy V. Klein

Populists and progressives had similar reform policies, but in the 1890s progressives sided with conservatives to defeat the populist movement. This article attempts to understand why the leader of the progressives, Theodore Roosevelt, clashed with populists in the 1890s. Roosevelt’s journalism exemplified the broader progressive impulse of pragmatic professionalism, while populist political communication was more combative and partisan. Roosevelt’s style of political rhetoric and his critique of populism evolved over time. Early in the populist movement Roosevelt focused on moderate reforms and criticized partisan slander. Then, leading up to the 1896 election, he adopted the same tactics of the partisan press that he criticized throughout his career. After the populist movement collapsed, Roosevelt accommodated populist policies and attempted to build a coalition with the same populist leaders he had previously attacked in the press.

The Awful and Impressive Example: Wife Beaters and the Whipping Post in American
Ed Morales

The study examines how white, mainstream newspapers covered the use of a whipping post to punish wife beaters in the early twentieth century. A discipline favored by President Theodore Roosevelt, the whipping post was a hot topic of discussion in the white press about ways to stem domestic violence. Employing a thematic analysis of articles from 204 newspapers in thirty-six states and the District of Columbia, this study identified four themes—gender dynamics and patriarchy, legal reform and moral justifications, punishing men and public opinion, and media influence—in newspapers during a critical time in women’s struggle for equal rights. Journalists were universal in their disgust for wife beaters, but this essay contends the media was more concerned about the sanctity of marriage than the welfare of women, who in many instances were not believed.

Decoding Media Bias in the Early Reception of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Yelena Dzhanova

It was not always the case that Kate Chopin, the author of The Awakening, was considered a foundational American voice of the 20th century. While male counterparts such as Mark Twain were celebrated for exploring themes of rebellion and autonomy, Chopin did not achieve similar recognition until after her death. Between 1899 and 1904, articles in the mainstream press widely panned her and her book. Newspapers dismissed Chopin as a writer, mocked her female protagonist, and obscured feminist themes through plot oversimplification. The portrayal suddenly changed after her death in 1904, with articles, including some in the same newspapers that initially panned her, changing their tune. This paper uses archival research and textual analysis to track that shift in reception, situating it within feminist theory and journalism history and arguing that newspapers stunted her early literary reputation through gendered depictions, functioning as cultural gatekeepers that reinforced patriarchal values.

BOOK REVIEWS

A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago
Lisa D. Lenoir (Free access review)

Great Thinkers and Doers: Networking Black Feminism in the Black Press, 1827-1927
Rachel Grant

The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain
Kevin M. Lerner

Assault on the Media: The Nixon Years, New and Expanded Edition, Updated with Analysis of 21st Century Threats to Democracy
James E. (Jim) Mueller

Pressing the Police and Policing the Press: The History and Law of the U.S. Press-Police Relationship
Quindelda McElroy

American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging
Carrie Teresa Isard

Object Lesson: Newspaper
Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen

DIGITAL MEDIA REVIEWS

The WIPR: Arts and Culture in Puerto Rico Collection, American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Lillian E. Agosto Maldonado (Free access review)

Der Spiegel Archive, Spiegel Group
Sheila B. Lalwani (Review Here)

ENDNOTES
Lori Amber Roessner