Interviewed by: Joel Moroney
Q: What got you interested in the portrayal of newsies in sheet music? It sounds like you have a personal collection of historic sheet music. Can you tell us about that?
A: When I was a reporter, my father bought and gave me a lot of newspaper-related memorabilia, including buttons, postcards, and sheet music. I framed some of the sheet music to hang in my office and at home, but it took several decades for me to delve into them as a rich and untapped source of research material. The project gave me an opportunity to explore a commercial aspect of the newspaper industry in the context of American social history and culture.
Q: Can you tell us more about the endangered nature of historic sheet music? Can you equate it to any other form of mass communication that is historically endangered?
A: Like much paper ephemera from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, sheet music was intended to be used, primarily dispersed in homes around the country, not archived in libraries and research centers. And much that has survived is in only fair to poor condition. We are fortunate that some, but not all, have been digitized. An analog might be letters home written by soldiers fighting overseas from the Civil War to World War I.
Q: You have four co-authors. Can you tell us a little about your collaborative process? Any best practices or pitfalls you can share?
A: As I developed the concept for the study, I searched for a coauthor knowledgeable about the history of American music of the period. That search led me to Dr. Joshua S. Duchan, a musicologist at Wayne State University who has extensively researched Tin Pan Alley. The other co-authors were journalism undergrad and grad research assistants at Michigan State University.
Q: Your delve into female newsies was fascinating. Like so much of the early history of the contribution of women, it appears to be a lost story (in this case, within a lost story). What other ways do you think the study of sheet music can enhance our understanding of women and the culture of the time period?
A: Our study discusses how sheet music stereotyped newsies, both girls and boys. Interestingly, while people who bought newspapers on the streets probably would not be shocked or surprised to see a newsgirl, many would consider female journalists like Nellie Bly and Ida Wells to be unseemly novelties who shouldn’t be trying to do a ‘man’s’ job. Beyond that,. I believe that sheet music portrayals of girls and women in other spheres of American life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries broadly reflected the biases, sex roles, and societal expectations of the times.
Q: What conclusions can you make about the proportion of responsibility sheet music shares in creating the cultural trope of the newsie? Why do you think the popular portrayal adopted by Walt Disney came into being or survived?
A: In an age before television, radio, “talkies,” record players and social media, sheet music was a widespread, influential component of popular American culture of the period, especially for the growing number of middle-class families who could afford pianos. At the same time, newsies were everyday fixtures on the streets of American cities, large and small, and easily visible to the lyricists and cover artists who depicted—and stereotyped—them in words and drawings. What the Disney movie and Broadway musical did was create a reverse stereotype of camaraderie, selflessness, aspiration, admirability, and shared commitment to their colleagues’ wellbeing.
Q: The parallel worlds of newsies and sheet music, between the Civil War and World War I, helped center my cultural understanding of both the time and the piece. What did you learn that surprised you about this time and place?
A: My biggest surprise was learning the extent of strikes and other collective actions by newsboys and newsgirls in a range of cities. Remember, this was a time of general hostility to unions by industries and businesses, with disruptive and sometimes violent tactics against workers by employers and their associations. The time frame of the study included the period of Red Scare accusations of “anti-American” communism, radicalism, and socialism, as well as anti-immigrant fervor. In my view, striking took great courage for those young people willing to risk their already meager incomes—after all, there were few other job opportunities available to child laborers, other than in agriculture, and even farm jobs were unavailable to urban children.
Q.: What additional avenues of potential exploration outside your look at newsies, did you discover worth exploring as it relates to the history of sheet music?
A: One area for potential research is how newspapers commissioned composers to write marches named for the newspapers, the best-known of them being John Philip Sousa’s 1889 “Washington Post March.” These were an avenue of self-promotion for the sponsoring newspapers.