Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting - Hardcover

Hamilton, John Maxwell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807134740 ISBN 13: 9780807134740

Publisher: LSU Press, 2009

Synopsis

In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted―facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs―a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security.

In Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton―a historian and former foreign correspondent―provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries.

From the colonial era―when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships―to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism’s constant―and not always successful―efforts at “dishing the foreign news,” as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of “special correspondents” and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the “golden age” of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis’ intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps.

Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to “find Livingstone”; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering.

Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism’s Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.

About this title

Book Description:

Winner of the Goldsmith Prize, the Tankard Book Award, and the American Journalism Historians Association's Book of the Year, John Maxwell Hamilton's Journalism's Roving Eye has quickly become the definitive history of American foreign reporting. This updated edition includes a new preface and updated text that reflects the most current developments in foreign reporting. Beginning with the colonial era, the book focuses on underlying factors -- such as technology and public opinion -- as well as a cavalcade of personalities who bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable resource for anyone eager to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering.

From the Back Cover:

Winner of the AEJMC Tankard Book Award and the American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award

"Journalism's Roving Eye is an alluring and enlightening piece of work. Hamilton... spurns plodding narrative in favor of an intelligent tour, full of unexpected pleasures and plums. The book, in its scope, detail, and sheer mastery, is a major achievement." -- James Boylan, Columbia Journalism Review

"Not just for journalism hounds, Journalism's Roving Eye ladles from the last two and a half centuries a detailed history of American reporting from abroad. Hamilton, a former foreign correspondent turned academic, assembles the components of the big foreign-reporting machine -- the editors, publishers, reporters, fixers, and shooters as well as technologies such as transoceanic telegraph cables, television, the geosynchronous satellite, the personal computer, and the Internet -- to produce an authoritative book. There is nothing like it in the library." -- Slate, Best Books of 2009

"Journalism's Roving Eye is a prodigious account of a specific form of newsgathering -- foreign correspondence -- that has long been buffeted by pressures to cut costs and waning public interest in what happens abroad, even before the more recent challenges posed by the Internet. Journalism has a raffish and colorful past, but the annals of foreign reporting are particularly suited to the storytelling that Hamilton provides. His book is an expansive narrative that also underscores serious questions about what is happening now." -- Foreign Affairs

John Maxwell Hamilton's Journalism's Roving Eye has quickly become the definitive history of American foreign reporting. This edition includes a new preface and updated text, reflecting current developments in foreign reporting. Beginning with the colonial era, the book focuses on underlying factors -- such as technology and public opinion -- as well as a cavalcade of personalities who bring the narrative to life in arresting detail, making this an indispensable resource for anyone eager to understand the evolution of foreign newsgathering.

John Maxwell Hamilton, the Hopkins P. Breazeale Foundation Professor of Journalism, was the founding dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University and currently is the university's executive vice chancellor and provost.

He began his journalism career at the Milwaukee Journal and reported from abroad for the Christian Science Monitor and ABC Radio. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, and many other newspapers and magazines, and he was a longtime commentator on public radio's Marketplace. Hamilton is the author or coauthor of five other books and editor of the LSU Press book series "From Our Own Correspondent."

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0807134740
• ISBN 13: 9780807134740
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 680