Course Description
In 1690, the first newspaper in America closed after one edition. But was it a flop? What happened next? This course will examine news and news gathering over two-plus centuries of American history. Find out why the 1690 paper closed, what came next, and why Virginia’s royal governor railed against free schools and printing presses. How did newspapers help colonists become Americans on the eve of the Revolution? We’ll look at how newspapers in the early republic enabled political parties and vice versa and the Industrial Revolution's influence on journalism. A look at newspapers and the Civil War will sketch in the print culture of Durham and Chapel Hill from 1861 to 1865; another class will examine the state of newspapering at the end of the “long 19th century.” Along the way, we'll identify similarities (there are more than you might think) and differences (besides the obvious, perhaps fewer) between America's earliest newspapers and those of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
In 1690, the first newspaper in America closed after one edition. But was it a flop? What happened next? This course will examine news and news gathering over two-plus centuries of American history. Find out why the 1690 paper closed, what came next, and why Virginia’s royal governor railed against free schools and printing presses. How did newspapers help colonists become Americans on the eve of the Revolution? We’ll look at how newspapers in the early republic enabled political parties and vice versa and the Industrial Revolution's influence on journalism. A look at newspapers and the Civil War will sketch in the print culture of Durham and Chapel Hill from 1861 to 1865; another class will examine the state of newspapering at the end of the “long 19th century.” Along the way, we'll identify similarities (there are more than you might think) and differences (besides the obvious, perhaps fewer) between America's earliest newspapers and those of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Bio
Frank Fee earned his Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill, MA from State University of New York at Brockport, and BS from Cornell University. He retired in June 2011 as an associate professor in School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-CH, where he taught graduate and undergraduate media history courses for many years. Prior to entering the academy full time, he was an editor and reporter in daily newspapers for nearly 35 years and taught journalism part time at the college level for more than 10 years. His research interests include journalism history, with a focus on antebellum U.S. newspapers and the journalism of Frederick Douglass; newsroom management; trends in American journalism; and news accuracy. He has presented his research on newspapers and newspaper history in peer-reviewed papers at conferences throughout the United States and in Canada, Great Britain, and Sweden. His work also has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed scholarly journals and in 2013 he was cited for the top article published during the year in the scholarly history journal American Journalism. In Duke's OLLI program, he has taught two sections of "'Titanic Sinks, 1500 Die': The Ship, the Disaster, the Culture, and Mass Media History" and one of "The Black Press and U.S. History: From the Beginning to the Civil Rights Era."
Special thanks to OLLI web mentor Alan Magid for invaluable help in setting up this site.