Revolutions in Communication is a critically acclaimed survey of media history now available through  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from the publisher, Continuum International Press.

The cover illustration is an 1883 solar powered printing press used to promote new ideas about energy.

The book is a social and technological history that explores four major epochs of the mass media through the technologies that characterized their development —   printing, imaging,  broadcasting and digital media.

The historical narrative in Revolutions in Communication centers around technological change — a common thread that unites global media history. This approach also provides an alternative to nationalistic and professionally oriented narratives that have guided media history in the past.

The book points out that communication technologies often change because an  older media does not speak in the voice of a newer generation. Innovators and  inventors then find ways to use new technology to circumvent the old barriers. Historians call this a social construction of technology.

Threatening the media

In the long history of public relations blunders, this one seems destined to be memorable:

“We respectfully ask all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo …  We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents …  and to publish retractions. ” –  Jim Lakely, Heartland Institute, Feb. 16, 2012.  

Criminal offenses?   Although laws against criminal libel have more or less been phased out across the US, making it unlikely that this threat would ever be achieved,  there’s a larger problem here.

Experience has shown that the public relations benefit of a threat against the press is rather like mistakenly using gasoline at the scene of a brush fire:  it lights up the debate in all kinds of unexpected ways.  

Letters to the science editor, 2016

Now that the average American has taken a serious interest in science, we’re seeing a lot more of this new ersatz erudition in the public press. Here are a few letters from the 2016 election campaign:

• The so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary theory is ridiculous!  Iridium does not kill dinosaurs !! Show me just one tiny bit of evidence that a dinosaur ever keeled over after being exposed to iridium! You cant, can you? Stupid ass scientists.   –  BJR, Lubbock, Tx.
• It’s hard to believe anyone but an outright moron would accept the Kepert model as a modification of the valence shell electron pair repulsion theory. VSEPR theory is practically written in the Bible.  You will fry in hell, Kepert model fools! — TD, Richmond, Va.
• Bateman’s biological principle is clearly an abomination in the sight of God. I cant tell you how repulsive it is to have this taught to my children in school.  If people didn’t believe in Bateman’s principle, biology teachers would be cast out of their lucrative $40,000 a year with nearly full benefits except dental …  jobs.   When oh when will these lying scientists ever learn? — BZ, Bozeman, MT.
• Quantum Field Theory? Ha! Just a plot by montrachet swilling mathematicians!   — YN, Portland, ME.

(All this inspired by the appalling venom in the climate change debate in the 2012 campaign.  See Texas Climate News.)

A Fleet Street relic strikes again

Scientists worldwide were alarmed  Jan. 29 when the London Daily Mail reported — inaccurately — that British Meteorological Office had released “temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.”

The Met Office immediately issued a press release saying the article contained “numerous errors in the reporting.”

In other words, the Mail just seems to have just fabricated the data they attributed to the Met Office.  They just made it up. Invented it.  Pulled it out of the air.  Lied.  (Could it be any clearer?)

This would be outrageous for an actual NEWSpaper, but it’s standard procedure for the Daily Mail –  one of the grotesque and humble relics that once adorned Fleet Street the way gargoyles have graced Notre Dame cathedral.

Yes, Virginia, and Robin, there IS a Santa Claus

Thomas Nast 1892.

Chicago Fox news anchor Robin Robinson played the Grinch this week by advising parents to tell children the “truth” about Santa Claus.  (At about 3:30 on the video).

“Stop trying to convince your kids that Santa is Santa,” Robinson said on the air.  “That’s why they have these high expectations. They know you can’t afford it, so what do they do? Just ask some man in a red suit. There is no Santa. (Tell them) as soon as they can talk — There… Is … No … San… Ta …”

Outraged parents threatened to roast her like a chestnut if she didn’t rein it in.

In memory of Joseph Pulitzer and Charleston Bay

By Bill Kovarik

Years ago,  when I worked as a reporter at the Charleston SC News & Courier, I would often look out over the bay and think about Joseph Pulitzer.  

Out there, where the muddy Cooper River met the great blue Atlantic,  Pulitzer died 100 years ago this week ( Oct. 29,  1911).

He was hidden away on his yacht, as usual, suffering from an extreme hyper-sensitivity to sound.  According to biographers, even the sound of a person’s voice was painful, and his last words were to ask that an assistant reading to him speak more softly.

Pulitzer’s sickness is astonishing — for a journalist, at least.  Most editors and many reporters have the opposite problem. Their lack of sensitivity, in both physical and moral terms, approaches outright deafness.

Niles Register’s 200th Anniversary

Its not often that anything in our relatively young nation turns 200, especially not a newspaper of the caliber of Niles Weekly Register, the most influential publication of the early 1800s and an enduring source of documentation for modern historians.

On Sept. 7, 1811, Hezekiah  Niles published the first of a series of weekly news  summaries that would grow to 75 volumes and 30,000 pages by the publication’s end in 1849.   As a paper of record for news in the United States, it is only matched by the New York Times, founded in 1851.

Great credit goes to Bill Earle, a Maryland historian who has spent years cataloging and researching the Register.   Earle’s publication history of the Register and other online resources have proven extraordinarily useful.  

Happy Wayzgoose

August 24^th  is the traditional holiday for  printers, editors, reporters, engravers and others working at a newspaper or printing company.

The Wayzgoose printers holiday was August 24

The centuries-old holiday has largely been forgotten in the late 20^th century, but it was still very much alive a generation or two ago among printing unions in the UK.

The holiday has its origins in the feast day for St. Bartholomew, the patron saint of scribes and, later, of printers and writers.

The odd name for the holiday, Wayzgoose, refers to the centerpiece of this holiday meal: a goose that had been fattened on stubble (or wayz) from a harvested field of grain.