Journalists
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Long Before Textspeak, There was Cablese
One of the things foreign correspondents juggled in the days before the internet rendered long-distance charges meaningless was the eternal trade-off between time and money in turning in a story. The mail was slow and (relatively) cheap. Cables and telephones* were fast and expensive. Reporters were torn between the desire to scoop other papers…
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The Lost Generation, the Paris Edition, and James Thurber
As I dig into the story of American journalism in Europe after the Great War,* there are several themes/topics that are unavoidable: Paris, the Lost Generation, and the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune among them.** One of the things that became clear early on is that the popular image of the Lost Generation is…
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How the Titanic Launched* One Woman’s Journalism Career
In April 1912 , a 30-year old seamstress/businesswoman from Louisiana, Missouri named May Birkhead was sailing to Europe on the Carpathia. Her holiday was postponed when the ship halted to pick up survivors from the Titanic. Birkhead put her seamstress skills to good use, creating clothing for the shipwreck victims from towels and other…
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