ResearchWriting Assignment
Write a six to eight page paper describing and evaluating the way two politically or ideologically counterpoised magazines or newspapers handle a political, social, military, or economic controversy. I list below, first, a series of topics, although these are hardly exclusive. Also listed below are a series of magazines and periodicals.
Choose a pair that are appropriately different in outlook and politics. Thus if you decide to write about the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, you might select The San Francisco Chronicle (conservative, pro-business) and The Daily Worker (Communist).
Use at least four articles or essays taken from each journal and/or newspaper (a total of 8). Cite them as you would any document, with author, title or headline, date, and page number. These footnotes go at the bottom of page or end of essay, not in the text. For illustrative purposes you may want to quote a screaming headline or witty title.
Be sure to read both the news reportage and the editorials, and be aware of the general approach, politics, and audience of the magazine or newspaper.
The course texts should provide you with sufficient background material, although in some cases a very limited amount of reading in other secondary sources may be helpful.
To pinpoint dates, people, and issues, use The New York Times at JSTOR. And most bound magazines also have indexes.
Topics and Issues (or select and formulate your own)
San Francisco General Strike (July 1934)
The Bonus March (Summer 1932)
The New Deal's "hundred days" (March-June 1933)
The stock market crash (October-November 1929)
Upton Sinclair's campaign for governor of California (Fall 1934)
The General Motors Sit-Down Strike (January-February 1937)
Roosevelt seeks to "pack" Supreme Court (January-March 1937)
New Dealers loose in 1938 elections (October-November 1938)
FDR runs for a 3rd term (August-October 1940)
Charles Lindbergh, American First, and the Jews (mid-September 1941)
Germany invades Soviet Union (June 1941)
Women work in the war factories (September 1943)
Communists accused of stopping defense production in LA (May-June 1941)
Planning the 1941 March on Washington (June 1941)
Miners strike in wartime (May-June 1943)
The Detroit race riot (June-July 1943)
Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles (June 1943)
The Office of Price Administration (1944-46)
General Motors strike (November -March 1945-46)
Passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (May-June 1947)
HUAC investigates the "Hollywood Ten" (October 1947)
Jackie Robinson integrates baseball (April 1947)
Henry Wallace runs for president (December 1947 and after)
A-Bomb dropped on Japan (August 1945; watch out, this is much harder than it might seem)
Truman wins 1948 election (October-November 1948)
Robert Oppenheimer denied security clearance (December 1953)
Little Steel Strike (May-June 1937)
"Repatriation" of Mexicans from California, 1931-32
Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a Communist (August 1948)
Expulsion of Communists from the CIO (1949-1950)
UAW signs a five year contract with GM (May 1950)
U.S. explodes H-Bomb (October 1952)
Ike wins presidency (November 1952)
Joseph McCarthy investigates the U.S. Army (May-June 1954)
German Jewish Refugee Policy, 1938-40
Korean War begins (June 1950)
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed as Atomic spies (June 1953)
Newspapers and Magazines
Washington Post (liberal, indexed) on-line
Chicago Tribune (conservative, isolationist, indexed) on-line
Pittsburgh Courier (African-American weekly) microfilm E185.5.P57
Chicago Defender (African-American weekly, indexed) on-line
Los Angeles Times (conservative, indexed) on-line
The New York Times (moderately liberal daily, indexed) on-line
The Wall Street Journal (conservative business daily, indexed) on-line
The San Francisco Chronicle (conservative daily) microfilm AN5.S325
Santa Barbara News Press, The Morning Press (daily) microfilm AN5.S425
The Daily Worker (Communist daily) microfilm AP2.D26
American Mercury (conservative magazine) AP1.A55
The New International (Trotskyist monthly) HM1.N4456
The Nation (liberal/radical weekly) AP1.N3
Life (photo journalism, weekly) AP1.L54
Fortune (sophisticated business magazine) Annex H1.F67
Time (no editorials, but reportage is Republican, weekly) AP1.T5
Newsweek (more liberal than Time) Ap1.N48
The New Republic (left-liberal journal of opinion, weekly) AP1.N45
Commonweal (liberal Catholic weekly) AP1.C58
Harvard Business Review (sophisticated management journal, monthly) H1.H3
Business Week (liberal business weekly) H1.B87
Christianity and Crisis (liberal Protestant weekly post 1941) AP1.C52
The Crisis (NAACP monthly) E1.C75
Literary Digest (conservative monthly) AP1.L5744
US News and World Report (conservative newsweekly) AP1.U58
Besides the sources in bound volumes or on microfilm, please feel free to use the on-line newspaper archives available through Davidson. Three important databases are: Lexis Nexis Academic, NewsBank, and ProQuest. The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Defender are available on-line.
To find these sources go to the library homepage, click on research, then Article Indexes and Databases, scroll to the database you want (you will need to be on campus or set up with the proxy server to access these materials). You can use other newspapers as well, including your home town daily. Do not compare coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times. They are too similar.