Entertaining or Educating: World War I in Urban and Rural Tennessee Newspaper. Georgia Brown. History 499: Senior Seminar

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1 Entertaining or Educating: World War I in Urban and Rural Tennessee Newspaper Georgia Brown History 499: Senior Seminar April 25, 2017

2 Brown 2 The outbreak of World War I in Europe and the discrete involvement of American citizens in the war started changing the state of Tennessee. When the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, the state began to devote many of its talents and contributions to the war effort. Newspapers, one of the state s active industries, became more dynamic beginning in In the immediate prewar years, newspapers were extremely popular. i Circulation reached an all-time high in 1910, and, the majority of the American public was still receiving and reading newspapers in The print medium experienced a tremors growth during World War I since that was the primary way Americans received their news, especially in rural areas. ii Four newspapers were selected for this study: The Nashville Tennessean, The Memphis News Scimitar, the Dresden Enterprise, and The Martin Mail. The first two were regional newspapers, while the latter two were local newspapers. All four were located in West Tennessee: two in its two major cities, and the two local newspapers in a predominantly rural county, Weakley Conty. These two categories of newspapers are the broadest and encompass serious or popular, daily or weekly, urban or rural, with large as well as small circulations. The main features they have in common are: a set of news values relevant to a local readership; a typically consensual and bipartisan approach (although there are exceptions); and a dependence on support from local advertisers. iii The influence of these four newspapers changed how many Tennesseans saw World War I. Local and regional newspapers throughout the state were a pivotal part of keeping the citizens informed about the war and the global conflict. A comparison of the frequency, depth, length, and kind of war news coverage among selected Tennessee newspapers gives interesting insights about the patriotism of the readers, their level of education, their local politics, and the popularity of specific topics, as well as the newspapers reaction to and treatment of war-time propaganda and censorship, in particular when publishing war-related

3 Brown 3 cartoons. As a result, vastly different patterns appear between rural and urban newspapers, although all of them worked primarily to appeal to their customers and to increase circulation. These differences show a mutual influence between news and their readers. The object of the present study, is to show that, in addition to the newspapers shaping their readers, the readers also influenced the news and how they viewed the war. As the outbreak of the war increased the demand for international news, several American newspapers increased their prices. Many of the Scripps newspapers increased their prices from one penny to two pennies in order to hire larger news syndicates for better coverage of the war news stories. iv Regional newspapers used news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP), the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), and the United Press Associations (UP). The Tennessean used all of them, while The Memphis News Scimitar being a Scripps publication, used primarily the NEA and UP which had been created by E. W. Scripps to provide coverage for afternoon newspapers, whereas the AP had been created to cover morning newspapers. v These three news agencies, founded in 1846, 1902, and 1907 respectively, helped the newspapers obtain the content that they needed to cover international incidents. Local newspapers like the Martin Mail and the Dresden Enterprise could not afford the services of the NEA and UP which were for-profit news agencies. They did take advantage, however, of the not-for-profit AP service, vi which was especially helpful for acquiring photos and news content. The four ways that most impacted the delivery of news to the American public during the war were censorship, propaganda, cartoons, and readership education levels. All newspapers dealt with issues of government censorship during wartimes, trying to find the balance between

4 Brown 4 keeping their material relevant and keeping the soldiers safe. If too much about the whereabouts of the soldiers was revealed, then this information put them at risk of being discovered by the enemy. vii World War I was the first major international conflict in which the newspapers were fast paced and accurate enough to change the course of the war. The wars of the preceding century boosted the importance of the media during wartimes. This, combined with the level of access, fixed the war as a media communication-heavy conflict. viii To help the United States in Motivating it and orienting its energies toward a given end ix the United States and President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information. This committee censored the information that the American people were receiving to influence the opinion of the war. On the reverse side of censorship during World War I was propaganda. In order to stay on the same level as the propaganda coming out of Europe, the Committee on Public Information put relevant stories into the hands of the media people. Having this first example in American history of restriction of media, Relations between media and society have a material, a political, and a normative or social-cultural dimension. Central to the political dimension is the question of freedom and control. The main normative issue concerns how media ought to use the freedom they have. x Due to this censorship, many news stories were highly processed before reaching the American public. And, of course there were the political cartoons, which gained steam in American culture during the Gilded Age preceding World War I. The relevancy increased during the reign of cartoonist Thomas Nast, who became popular by cartooning corrupt businesses and politics like the Tammany Hall political machine. His works popularized the use of political cartoons for humor in America. For example, he was the first to depict the modern political Commented [AC1]: This is not helpful here unless you also say something about cartoons in the four newspapers under study. Earlier you had a fascinating insight about the lack of cartoons in these newspapers. Where did that content go? Democratic and Republican parties with their respective donkey and elephant mascots. His

5 Brown 5 successes directly affected the value of the political cartoon in the era following his own. During the war, the use of political cartoons became useful to governments and politicians as tools to help influence their citizens. Pamphlet became a popular means to distribute the cartoons. In order to keep the public s moral high and the country in line with that country s political agenda, the content of cartoons was often controlled by government agencies. xi Lastly, education had a major impact on newspapers at the time. The progressive agenda that swept through the nation between 1890 and 1930 had not fully extended to the South. This meant that the newspapers were written at levels for the people with the most basic of reading skills. Major and complex news were not of importance to the editors of rural and regional newspapers who gave the stories kept the same basic formatting and focused on similar themes. One theme was that the United States had helped the Allies with a military push on the frontlines. Another was that the hometown boys had done something noteworthy. Both story lines were featured on the front page for the day. A third theme was that the war induced rations for American people, so newspapers encouraged meatless and wheatless days to save on resources. The level of patriotism affords interesting comparisons among the four newspapers under study. The more patriotic of the two rural newspapers was The Dresden Enterprise. Its newspaper slogan was, The World Moves, which featured at the top of every issue. Before April 1917, in each issue, there were one or so mentions about the war. Following the United States entry into the war, every issue featured the war, the effort of the boys overseas, and the effort on the home front. The paper was historically very patriotic. In 1915, they featured a poem

6 Brown 6 about the Soldiers of 61. xii This reference to the Civil War, over fifty years after the fact, showed how passionate about their soldiers the Dresden people were. This was underscored each time the paper mentioned the Weakley County boys in their newspaper. The Dresden Enterprise also mentioned how much Weakley County Red Cross and YMCA raised almost weekly in each of its paper. It did not fail to mention that Weakley County was among the top counties in raising their quotas and in raising donations for the war effort. In one issue of the newspaper, the press encouraged rationing, making it clear that this request came from US Food Administrator Herbert Hoover and was mandatory a good way to press people into compliance. Food and fuel economy were of the utmost importance, xiii and the Dresden Enterprise took this responsibility very seriously by posting ads about it often. Regarding food rationing beyond meat and vegetables, The Dresden Enterprise wrote: The order reducing the amount of print (news) paper that may be issued by weekly newspapers by 15 per cent has been prepared by the pulp and paper section of the War Industries Board, and will be effective Sept. 15. xiv The government or the war effort rationed nearly everything toward the end of its involvement during World War I, and Weakley County did its part. The Dresden Enterprise does not seem to have been as involved in reporting war news before The second rural newspaper, The Martin Mail, was much less patriotic than its fellow Weakley County newspaper. The editors seemed unenthusiastic about the war from start to finish. Even as the United States was preparing for battles, they wanted none of the war: It was a wonderful, exhilarating sight for such Americans as might believe the war would be over before we are in it, xv was the comment describing the Western front in April An exception for the war-time press, The Martin Mail lived up to its motto: For Martin First,

7 Brown 7 Weakley County Next, the World Afterwards. This slogan eventually changed to For Weakley County, Tennessee Next, the World Afterwards. After the war s outbreak in 1914, the newspaper featured content about the war regularly, but it was not always on the front page. More often than not, it consisted of a picture on the back pages. Additionally, throughout all of 1915, no war stories were published. In 1915, the Martin Mail hardly mentioned the war at all, including the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7. A possible explanation for this lack of serious war news was that the editors knew that the Martin residents were worried that media coverage would affect social morals and lead to an increase in crime. Perhaps they thought that reading about violence in their newspaper would somehow bring the war to them. Another possibility comes from a quote in The Dresden Enterprise: Martin may not be able to unite on doctrinal, banking and political questions, but she is a solid unit on the question of patriotism to Americans in her present great struggle for the supremacy of world democracy. xvi This quote inferred that the people of Martin were not cohesive when it came to matters of government, so perhaps the newspaper editors chose to avoid unhappy customers by keeping the paper free of war news. Seemingly corroborating this interpretation, the only political cartoon featured in The Martin Mail during the entire war depicted the Anti-Saloon League disagreeing with Republicans. xvii Aside from the degree of patriotism exhibited by The Martin Mail and The Dresden Enterprise, their major difference was in their respective slogans. For Martin First, Weakley County Next, the World Afterwards, presented the newspaper as very closed off from reporting about world events such as World War I. The World Moves, indicated that The Dresden Enterprise were keen to report the news on any level. For the period, the Dresden Enterprise remained progressive in its reporting of war news.

8 Brown 8 The Nashville Tennessean and The Memphis News Scimitar were very similar in their coverage of war news. They both discussed the war almost daily before the United States entered, and after April 1917, their entire front pages were reported war news. They both featured cartoons far more often than the smaller papers such as The Martin Mail and The Dresden Enterprise. Being both located in urban, Southern cities, much of their content was the same especially pieces about the war due to the censorship and syndicated news stories. The small difference between them was one of seriousness. The Nashville Tennessean tended to feature more political cartoons. A pattern emerged: the day after a very serious event had occurred, such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, which was responsible for the outbreak of the war, a serious portrait would be on the front page. This would be followed the next day by a lighter, more cartoonish image on the front page to tease the lighter side of the issues. xviii The Memphis News Scimitar tended to be a more serious read for the people of Memphis. Both newspapers featured a section about babies who had yet to meet their fathers, since they were born after their fathers were inducted into service. Tennessee played a huge role during World War I. West Tennessee newspapers gave the war effort their support by focusing mostly on their boys overseas and the local population s contributions to the war effort. The local newspapers kept their citizens up to date on these two aspects, stressing how they helped the United States win the war. The politics of The Nashville Tennessean and The Memphis News Scimitar, included a broader, more sophisticated coverage of war news without neglecting local heroes, both on the battlefield and at home. All four newspapers through their coverage of the war showed a direct impact of the war on Tennesseans.

9 Brown 9 Bibliography Primary Sources Louis Raemaekers, Raemaekers Cartoons. BYU, The Dresden Enterprise, The Martin Mail, The Memphis News Scimitar, The Nashville Tennessean, Secondary Sources Bowles, Samuel, and Herbey Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform And The Contradictions Of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, and Melvin Lawrence DeFleur. Theories of Mass Communication. California: Longman, Halloran, Fiona Deans. Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, McQuail, Denis. Mass Communication Theory. California, (McQuails)-.pdf Mould, David H. American Newsfilm : The Underexposed War. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Seethaler, Josef, Matthias Karmasin, Gabriele Melischek, and Romy Wohlert. Selling War: The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the "War on Terror. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Sharply Drawn: The Political Cartoons of Louis Raemaekers: Stanford University, Zacher, Dale E. The Scripps Newspapers GO TO WAR: Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

10 Brown 10 i Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin Lawrence DeFleur. Theories of Mass Communication. California: Longman, ii Denis McQuail. Mass Communication Theory (California, 2010) iii Ibid. iv Dale E. Zacher. The Scripps Newspapers GO TO WAR: Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, v Ibid., 2. vi The Martin Mail, September 25, 1914 vii Zacher, 160. viii Josef Seethaler, Matthias Karmasin, Gabriele Melischek, and Romy Wohlert. Selling War: The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the "War on Terror. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ix Ibid. 41. x McQuail. xi Louis Raemakers. Clippings from American newspapers and cartoon booklets. Library of Congress. xii The Dresden Enterprise, June 04, xiii Ibid., January 25, xiv Ibid., August 23, xv The Martin Mail, April 5, xvi The Dresden Enterprise, February 15, xvii The Martin Mail, October 23, xviii The Nashville Tennessean and The Memphis News Scimitar, June 29, 1914 and June 30, 1914.