[On June
1st, 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN) aired its first
broadcast. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied cable news and four other
significant evolutions in American mass media, leading up to this special post
on one of the best
scholarly studies of media and the Revolution!]
My original plan
for this post was to write a bit about what makes Joseph Adelman’s Revolutionary
Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789
(2019) so impressive and worth your purchase, reading, and time. But just over
a month ago, the great historian Lindsay Chervinsky (herself the author of a wonderful
new book on George Washington’s Cabinet) created History Summit 2020, an event where
the authors behind new and recent books got to share videos featuring their own
thoughts and work (as well as engage with readers on Twitter). As a result, you
don’t have to take my word for it—here’s Adelman’s History Summit
page and video on Revolutionary Networks!
All I’ll add is
this: as I hope this week’s series has illustrated, mass media has been not
just a consistent but a hugely influential presence across all of American
history. While historians and other scholars recognize that fact, I don’t know
that our broader public conversations or collective memories sufficiently do,
and the Revolution is a good example—our collective memories of the Revolutionary
era tend to focus on particular individuals (Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, the
Founding Fathers) and events (the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of
Independence, Lexington and Concord), and even many of my arguments for
expanding those memories have emphasized other individuals or communities (Elizabeth
Freeman and Quock Walker, Loyalists).
But for the vast majority of Americans in the Revolutionary era, the kinds of
news networks that Adelman analyses were far more present and influential in
their lives than any individuals or events, however prominent. Which is a good
argument for making Mass MediaStudying a more consistent part of our
AmericanStudying—starting with great scholarly works like Adelman’s book!
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other mass media moments or movements you’d highlight?
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