Journalism and the American Experience

Bruce Evensen is a journalism historian who directs DePaul University’s Graduate Program in Journalism. He spent a decade as a broadcast journalist and bureau chief in Washington D.C. and Jerusalem. His books include Truman, Palestine and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War; The Responsible Reporter; and God’s Man for the Gilded Age: D.L. Moody and the Rise of Modern Mass Evangelism.

Introduction - Journalism and the Story of American Exceptionalism

Chapter One - The Trans-Atlantic Enlightenment and Colonial America

Chapter Two - "At Every House Women Are Making Cartridges and Children Are Running Bullets and Biscuits": Revolution in America

Chapter Three - Building "an Empire of Liberty"

Chapter Four - The Penny Press and Mass Democracy

Chapter Five - "The New Birth" and the War Between the States

Chapter Six - New Journalism for a New Nation

Chapter Seven - The Progressive Period

Chapter Eight - "The Sewage of the War Spirit" and Jazz Journalism

Chapter Nine - "Misery and Human Fortitude": The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression

Chapter Ten - "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself": Franklin Roosevelt and the Radio Republic"

Chapter Eleven - A ‘Cold War’ and a ‘New Frontier’

Chapter Twelve - 'An American Nightmare’: JFK, LBJ and the War in Vietnam

Chapter Thirteen - The Struggle for Civil Rights and the Battle of Chicago

Chapter Fourteen - "What a Moment, Man on the Way to the Moon"

Chapter Fifteen - ’Our Long National Nightmare Is Over’: Watergate as Third-Rate Burglary and Cancer on the Presidency

Chapter Sixteen - Reagan’s ‘Shining City on a Hill’ and Cable’s Clinton Impeachment Scandal

Chapter Seventeen - 9/11 and Covering Wars on Terror

Chapter Eighteen - Reporting Obama and Trump in the Age of the Internet