The American Newsroom

A History, 1920-1960

Will Mari

Narrated by James McSorley

Available from Audible

Book published by University of Missouri Press

The story of the American newsroom is that of modern American journalism. In this holistic history, Will Mari tells that story from the 1920s through the 1960s, a time of great change and controversy in the field, one in which journalism was produced in “news factories” by news workers with dozens of different roles, and not just once a day, but hourly, using the latest technology and setting the stage for the emergence later in the century of the information economy. During this time, the newsroom was more than a physical place—it symbolically represented all that was good and bad in journalism, from the shift from blue- to white-collar work to the flexing of journalism’s power as a watchdog on government and an advocate for social reform.

Told from an empathetic, omnivorous, ground-up point of view, The American Newsroom: A History, 1920–1960 uses memoirs, trade journals, textbooks, and archival material to show how the newsroom expanded our ideas of what journalism could and should be.

REVIEWS:

“Timely and detailed .... There are no doubt other newsroom histories out there, but Mari’s skillful analysis of the American newsroom establishes a foundation that can be useful for journalism history classes.”

—Newspaper Research Journal

“Will Mari offers a fascinating reappraisal of the newsroom, that long-mythologized space where journalism is made. He shows how the newsroom, far more than merely a place for news production, is also a concept, an idea, and a set of relationships, one that helped shape American journalism in the twentieth century and will have an enduring imprint on the future of news.”

—Seth C. Lewis, University of Oregon, co-author of tNews After Trump