Journalism & Mass Communication Educator

Winter 2011

pp. 376-378

Books

Smith, Michael Ray (2011). Free Press in Freehand: The Spirit of American Blogging in the Handwritten Newspapers of John McLean Harrington, 1858-1869. Grand Rapids, MI: Edenridge Press, pp. 217.

“With pleasure or displeasure to friends or foes we sketch the world as it goes”—slogan of the Nation, John McLean Harrington’s handwritten newspaper published for five months in 1858.

Journalism history education is often about helping students see connections between what happened in the past and what is happening now. Free Press in Freehand shows those connections by reminding readers that every generation has writers who report the news and share it in some manner, considering their audience and perhaps their own egos, as they do.

Smith tells the story of a Civil War publisher whose handwritten newspapers compare with journalism of his time and with journalism of today. He makes the argument that in many ways, the work of Harrington may be compared to the work of today’s blogger, who “control[s] the design and content of his personal musing about public life” (p. 4).

That’s just one aspect of the book. Readers are treated to a discussion of the role about the newspaper in the South of the 1850s and 1860s, using Harrington’s work as the primer.

History textbook examinations of Civil War journalism tend to be weighted toward the stories of the Northern press, which were bigger and more successful than their Southern counterparts. But Smith looks into the very personal journalism of a small, rural community in North Carolina during this era. Through the story of Harrington and his 302 handwritten issues of various newspapers during the course of eleven years, we are treated to a glimpse of what news about the war and the community was disseminated. And just as with a content analysis of any newspaper, a look at Harrington’s papers reveals something about Harnett County’s business, culture, circumstances, and politics.

In a chapter on journalism history theory, Smith focuses on the Cultural School, which examines the social and economic conditions that influence journalism’s evolution. He suggests that Harrington’s handwritten papers reflect a society in the midst of change, yet clinging to its traditions. Smith explains that newspapers in the South during this time used the telegraph and railroads but faced high illiteracy rates and a scarcity of materials during the war, including manpower. He points out the differences between the state’s city papers, such as the Raleigh Register and the Raleigh Standard, and the rural papers such as Harrington’s. And he challenges the agree-upon definition of a newspaper, defending Harrington’s publications as newspapers despite the fact that they were not printed on a mechanical printing press. He argues that the point becomes moot when no presses were available. Whether newspapers are composed and distributed with no mechanical presses, in places such as prison and mining camps, they provide their readers with a shared culture and experience.Smith had done his research

The book is at its best when it provides readers with background. Smith had done his research. His portrait of the South during this era is a brief but appropriate overview for students, focusing on politics, economics, and slavery. And he doesn’t let Harrington off the hook. Smith uses the U.S. census to find out about the Harrington clan, including those listed as slaves and later as farm hands or domestic servants. (What a great example for students on going the extra step to find information that adds context to a portrait.)

Smith also writes about North Carolina’s uncomfortable role as a Southern press state, pointing out that its newspapers tended to borrow from Northern papers, such as the New York Tribune, that tried to be somewhat objective in covering, rather than from their Southern counterparts. Harrington’s own party affiliation reflect that conflict—he was a Democrat at the beginning of his journalistic life and later became Republican.

Because this is a biography of a Civil War journalist, Smith considers the role of an editor and of Harrington in particular. He calls Harrington a “dilettante” journalist, insinuating that Harrington’s interest in journalism was amateur and less than serious. In fact, it was a sideline to his other profession: postmaster and teacher. He was 18 when he began his journalistic enterprise, while considerably older in experience than today’s 18-year-old, still a young man. Harrington thus foreshadowed the “amateur journalism” movement of the late 1860s to 1930s, consisting primarily of teenagers printing small publications on cheap, miniature presses (see Truman J. Spencer’s literary Cyclopedia of Amateur Journalism [1891] and History of Amateur Journalism [1957], and Dane S. Claussen’s 2006 AEJMC convention paper on the subject).

Although Harrington handwrote the paper, he clearly was influenced by the mechanically produced newspapers of his time. His paper looked like theirs in terms of layout and content. Smith offers excellent photocopies and painstakingly recreated transcriptions of thirty-six pages of Harrington’s papers in the appendixes, so that readers can see what the newspapers looked like. To help readers understand the content as it related to its time and place, Smith takes two chapters to dissect two of Harrington’s newspapers. His interpretation and explanation are astute.

Which brings us back to Harrington as a blogger. Consider today’s blogger, who expects to influence readers. Consider today’s readers, who expect a “greater editorial prerogative” from bloggers than from traditional journalists (p. 36). Compare that with Harrington. He did little original reporting; he copied others and weighed in on the news (pp. 105-106). Harrington’s relationship with his readers was intimate and personal. We see that only the technology has changed.

This book would make an excellent supplemental text for a journalism history class as well as a resource for a media survey class, a it provides an introduction to many important points about journalism, the study of journalism, and journalism history. The beauty of the book on such as specific topic is that it is able to explore all aspects of the enterprise, in this case, from handwriting styles to personality in history. The book would also model scholarship for a graduate historical research class. Smith’s footnotes are often as interesting as his text, and his excellent source list encourages further study on both handwritten newspapers and newspapers of the South.

Sally Renaud

Eastern Illinois University