1968: Year of Media Decision / Edition 3

by Robert Snyder

Overview

Thirty years ago American political life was all relentless, painful, and confounding: the Tet Offensive brought new intensity to the Vietnam War; President Lyndon Johnson would not seek re-election; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; student protests rocked France; a Soviet invasion ended "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia; the Mexican government massacred scores of peaceful demonstrators; and Richard M. Nixon was elected president. Any one of the events of 1968 bears claim to historical significance. Together they set off shock waves that divided Americans into new and contending categories: hawks and doves, old and young, feminists and chauvinists, straights and hippies, blacks and whites, militants and moderates. As citizens alive to their own time and as reporters responsible for making sense of it, journalists did not stand aside from the conflicts of 1968. In their lives and in their work, they grappled with momentous issues—war, politics, race, and protest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765806215
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	07/31/1999
Series:	Media Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Robert Giles is editor-in-chief of Media Studies Journal, senior vice president of the Freedom Forum, and executive director of the Media Studies Center. Formerly the editor and publisher of The Detroit News, he is the author of Newsroom Management: A Guide to Theory and Practice. Robert W. Snyder is managing editor of the Media Studies Journal, a historian, and co-author of Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York. He has taught at Princeton University and New York University.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: War

1. The Turning Point That Wasn't
Daniel Hallin
2. Justified Doubts
David Halberstam
3. Unfortunate Stupidity
Winant Sidle

Part II: Politics

4. Reassessing the Winners and Losers
Jules Witcover
5. Dumping Johnson
Curtis Gans
6. Good Copy
Dan T. Carter
7. Enemas for Elephants
Robert Shogan

Part III: Race

8. The Kerner Legacy
Pamela Newkirk
9. Goals for the Year 2000 and Beyond
Loren Ghiglione
10. Optimism, Pessimism and the Kerner Report
Randall Kennedy

Part IV: Protest

11. A Generational Divide at Columbia
Robert Friedman
12. A New Birth in France
Claude-Jean Bertrand
13. The Czech Press—Fighting for Change
Madeleine K. Albright
14. The Nightmare of Tlatelolco
Raymundo Riva Palacio

Part V: Cultures, 1968 and 1998

15. The Transformation of Time Magazine
James L. Baughman
16. The Best of Times
Richard Reeves
17. Climbing Down from Olympus
Andrew Tyndall
18. Finding Ourselves in the New Journalism
John J. Pauly
19. An Unexpected Aeratio
Todd Gitlin
20. From Underground to Alternative
Abe Peck

Part VI: 1968 in Books

21. Heresies of Liberalism
Godfrey Hodgson

For Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

Contributors discuss journalism and its meanings in 1968, and gauge the distance and direction that news reporting has travelled since then. These are contrasting essays by war correspondents and generals, accounts of Robert Kennedy's final hours, analyses of the Johnson and Wallace campaigns, a discussion of the Kerner report and its impact, and attention to the Olympics, the Columbia University strike, and other events of the day. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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