"What does the death of newspapers mean for historians?"

My latest blog post for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. The topic assigned me was, "What does the death of newspapers mean for historians?" though Mass Humanities gave it the online title, "The Checkered Past of Newspapers":

When people ask me what the death of the newspaper means to historians, I respond, what do you mean by death? or newspaper? I’d say, first, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated because (unlike Mark Twain) it can exist simultaneously in multiple forms and locations. The decline of the traditional newspaper is largely a phenomenon of western consumer society.

(read the rest)

An eclectic set of images--"World History of Newspapers"--can be found via the "Gallery" rubric, always on the top page of The Public Humanist. Here are a couple of examples from Massachusetts:

Appropriate for our Lincoln year and Lincoln-obsessed political climate: A classic newspaper from the era of partisanship. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator of 7 July 1865 celebrates the “Great Funeral” of “The Foul Spirit of Secession,” which died “of a severe attack of the Great Union Army, in convulsions the most violent,” on 3 April (Union troops took the Confederate capital of Richmond on that date), and offers a “Tribute to Abraham Lincoln. Extract from a Memorial Address . . . delivered at the Hall of the Mechanics' Institute of St. John, N.B., June 1, 1865, at the invitation of the Citizens, by Charles M. Ellis, Esq. of Boston."

The Northampton Free Press, of 1872. Here one could find a potpourri of local news, politics, literary poetry and prose, and a wealth of advertisements that are a treasure trove for genealogists and historians of local history and daily life. The colossal format--over two feet tall--also helps to explain the old stock images of people sheltering under a newspaper in a rainstorm or during a nap in the park. Harder and harder to do nowadays, with less durable paper and the trend toward smaller formats.

Chronicling the History of the Book as Object

From my first posting on the Public Humanist blog:

Commentators, friend and foe, have made much of Barack Obama’s calculated appropriation of the legacy of Lincoln. What most struck me, as a book historian, was his decision to take the inaugural oath on the bible that Lincoln used in 1861.

In the Senate Chamber, Jill Biden struggled with a massive family bible (in Maureen Dowd’s catty phrase, “the size of a Buick”). The small “Lincoln” Bible, by contrast, was not Lincoln’s (still in his luggage) or even American (it was published in Oxford), . .

(read the full article)

Amherst 250th: Say What You Mean

Thanks, Pb!

I'm sure that the people organizing Amherst's 250th Anniversary celebrations were just so excited to win a major gift that they forgot to proofread:

As a historian of the book--and someone who from time to time has to read linguistically and conceptually challenged student papers--I am of course fascinated by the difference between oral and written language. More attention to stylistic felicity might have avoided this embarrassment.

Anyway. . .

Please be more careful next time.

At the end of last year, Shiraz Socialist, trying to add some levity to the grim situation of the world, offered a cultural-political questionnaire. Among the highlights, one devoted to books and censorship:

It’s that time of the year when you get bumper issues of magazines, the reviews of the past twelve months and, of course, the Christmas quiz.

So here, for Christmas, is our special quiz.

ARE YOU A CLERICAL FASCIST?

Answer the following 10 questions to check your clerical fascism credentials!

1. Before being published a book should be:-
a) Vetted by a board of clerics for blasphemy
b) Vetted by academics for offensiveness
c) Eh?
. . . . .
10. The Golden Age was:-
a) 8th century, Baghdad
b) 1917 USSR – there was something to hope for
c) 10 September 2001 – though there was plenty of crap around, it wasn’t this particular kind of crap

(take the full quiz)

As 2009 begins, the questions seem bound to remain relevant for a long time.

Merry . . . Whatever . . . Again!

Although the modern reader could be forgiven for interpreting this image as some sort of cutesy multiculturalism in this age of Chrismukkah, the reality is rather different--though there is a connection.

As an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin from 2005 explained, the concept goes back over a century to a time when increasingly assimilated German Jews appropriated Christmas celebrations in their own secular manner. (The original term was Weihnukkah, of which Chrismukkah is just an anglicization.)

In recent decades, the term has become respectable--half-serious and half-humorous--and taken on a life of its own.

This image of the menorah evolving into the Christmas tree comes from a postcard sold by the Museum, and the original intent was critical rather than celebratory. The caption reads:

"Darwinian: Zionist caricature on assimilation, from the periodical, 'Schlemiel' (1904)"

That these issues still arouse strong sentiments can be seen from this rather less subtle blog entry by Jeremy Cardash and its responses at the Jerusalem Post.

In any event, greetings of the season on whichever holiday(s) you happen to be celebrating.

Mail Goggles Trump Beer Goggles

Ever written and sent off a text message you later regretted, mainly because you were too drunk or just too tired to think straight? The folks at Google have now come up with a solution, which is the equivalent of the numerical keypads on some cars: an interface that requires you to perform some simple mathematical operations before it will allow you to launch your little Gmail missive into cyberspace:

Reporting on the new service in October, software engineer Jon Perlow included among examples of "sending messages you wish you hadn't": "the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together" and "that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm."

He adds, "By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it."

Although the new system may reduce the number of embarrassing incidents, it does raise other questions:

• What implications does this have for journalists such as conservative "Vodkapundit" (aka Stephen Green), who "drunkblogged" the political debates this past season?

• And as a historian, I of course have to ask: Would the past have turned out differently, if our forebears had had this technology to force them to pause before dipping the quill in the inkwell or rushing off to the telegraph office? I tend to think first of the winestained eighteenth-century police informants' reports that Robert Darnton discovered in the Parisian archive. But what of the world-historical: Could Mail Goggles have prevented, say, the "Zimmermann Telegram"? The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in 1914?

• And most important: what can you do about people who show no good judgment, day or night, drunk or sober?

Why the world and your life stink (and part of it's your own fault)

There's a great deal of debate (much of it pointless, some of it merely pretentious) about the supposed relation between the rise of new media, electronic communication, and the decline of civility and real community. Some writers, such as Sven Birkerts, have made of this sort of jeremiad a life's passion. Others, mostly journalists, make a career out of that sort of

Occasionally, the greater insight and best antidote come from the realm of humor rather than scholarship.

From the inimitable cracked.com:

David Wong, "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable".

samples:

Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you're like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.
Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.
That's not sarcasm. Annoyance is something you build up a tolerance to, like alcohol or a bad smell. The more we're able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we're able to handle it.
The problem is we've built an awesome, sprawling web of technology meant purely to let us avoid annoying people.

#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.

#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.

#5. We don't get criticized enough.
Most of what sucks about not having close friends isn't the missed birthday parties or the sad, single-player games of ping pong with the wall. No, what sucks is the lack of real criticism. . . . I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing.

#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.
A whole lot of the people still reading this are saying, "Of course I'm depressed! People are starving! America has turned into Nazi Germany! My parents watch retarded television shows and talk about them for hours afterward! People are dying in meaningless wars all over the world!"
But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common.

(read the full article)

(Hat tip: my clever students)