Elisabeth Fondren
Dr. Elisabeth Fondren is an Associate Professor of Journalism at St. John's University (The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies) in New York. She teaches international reporting, journalism history, political communication, print/online news reporting, and feature writing at St. John’s University. Her research focuses on the history of international journalism, government propaganda, military-media relations, and freedom of speech during wartime.
She completed her Ph.D. in Media & Public Affairs with a focus in propaganda history at Louisiana State University (Manship School of Mass Communication) in 2018. Her dissertation, "Breathless Zeal and Careless Confidence: German Propaganda in World War I (1914-1918)" chronicles the evolution of ideas on German propaganda institutions during the First World War.
The American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA) selected her dissertation as an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize. Elisabeth is now working on a book manuscript.
Address: https://www.stjohns.edu/academics/faculty/elisabeth-fondren
She completed her Ph.D. in Media & Public Affairs with a focus in propaganda history at Louisiana State University (Manship School of Mass Communication) in 2018. Her dissertation, "Breathless Zeal and Careless Confidence: German Propaganda in World War I (1914-1918)" chronicles the evolution of ideas on German propaganda institutions during the First World War.
The American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA) selected her dissertation as an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize. Elisabeth is now working on a book manuscript.
Address: https://www.stjohns.edu/academics/faculty/elisabeth-fondren
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Covering the war against Japan was much different—and more difficult— than reporting the Allied invasion of Europe and Nazi Germany’s defeat. In the South Pacific, American correspondents faced constant danger not only from enemy attacks but also from hunger, heat, malaria, and other diseases, as “the cruel jungle conditions,” Casey writes, “hampered reporting from the start” (p. 86). Other obstacles included spotty communication networks, extremely strict censorship practices, and officials’ obsession to conceal or obscure the truth—especially the staggering numbers of casualties and lost battles—in order to deceive the enemy and uphold public support. On top of all that, most newspapers decided to focus primarily on the fighting in Europe, meaning that reporting from the Pacific theater rarely got the prom- inence it deserved.
are told; they also shape how stories are told, through word choice, story arrangement, selection of examples, photos, and the all-important headline; this is known as framing. Historians and biographers have written a good deal about individual editors—their publications, their editorial instincts, their altercations with powerful politicians, and their pursuit of truth, entertainment, profit, and influence. But there has been less focus on the
broader changes that have impacted the work of editors as the media ecosystem has shifted. Cultural and social changes have created new demands on editors, who have had to adjust to stay in sync with audiences’ tastes and expectations. Technological invention—and the disruption of old economic models—have forced editors to adapt to new mediums of mass communication that serve new audiences and new financial realities. In
short, broader economic, political, technological, and social changes have all influenced what type of editing has flourished and what practices drifted into the past. The Internet has posed an existential threat to editors as gatekeepers. Countless new gates that connect readers and writers have been thrown open, some with little to no editorial oversight. This is far from the first time editors have been forced to adapt to change—the history
of editing has been a story of innovation in a continuing quest to find new ways to connect readers and writers. Today, despite the decline in gatekeeping power, professional editing still has an essential role—to curate quality out of the multitude of online voices and uphold a rigor for accuracy and truthfulness that can be easily overlooked on social
media and non-professional news sites. Whether it is approving (or rejecting) a topic of investigation, copy-editing prose, fact-checking a story, arranging the home page of a website, managing a newsroom, or deciding which journalist to hire, editors play an integral role in shaping the information that is shared with audiences.
Covering the war against Japan was much different—and more difficult— than reporting the Allied invasion of Europe and Nazi Germany’s defeat. In the South Pacific, American correspondents faced constant danger not only from enemy attacks but also from hunger, heat, malaria, and other diseases, as “the cruel jungle conditions,” Casey writes, “hampered reporting from the start” (p. 86). Other obstacles included spotty communication networks, extremely strict censorship practices, and officials’ obsession to conceal or obscure the truth—especially the staggering numbers of casualties and lost battles—in order to deceive the enemy and uphold public support. On top of all that, most newspapers decided to focus primarily on the fighting in Europe, meaning that reporting from the Pacific theater rarely got the prom- inence it deserved.
are told; they also shape how stories are told, through word choice, story arrangement, selection of examples, photos, and the all-important headline; this is known as framing. Historians and biographers have written a good deal about individual editors—their publications, their editorial instincts, their altercations with powerful politicians, and their pursuit of truth, entertainment, profit, and influence. But there has been less focus on the
broader changes that have impacted the work of editors as the media ecosystem has shifted. Cultural and social changes have created new demands on editors, who have had to adjust to stay in sync with audiences’ tastes and expectations. Technological invention—and the disruption of old economic models—have forced editors to adapt to new mediums of mass communication that serve new audiences and new financial realities. In
short, broader economic, political, technological, and social changes have all influenced what type of editing has flourished and what practices drifted into the past. The Internet has posed an existential threat to editors as gatekeepers. Countless new gates that connect readers and writers have been thrown open, some with little to no editorial oversight. This is far from the first time editors have been forced to adapt to change—the history
of editing has been a story of innovation in a continuing quest to find new ways to connect readers and writers. Today, despite the decline in gatekeeping power, professional editing still has an essential role—to curate quality out of the multitude of online voices and uphold a rigor for accuracy and truthfulness that can be easily overlooked on social
media and non-professional news sites. Whether it is approving (or rejecting) a topic of investigation, copy-editing prose, fact-checking a story, arranging the home page of a website, managing a newsroom, or deciding which journalist to hire, editors play an integral role in shaping the information that is shared with audiences.
During the war, German military leaders, politicians, and diplomats had ambitions to change, reform and modernize approaches to media governance. They were losing the battle of ideas, they realized early on. And so German officials were desperate to make propaganda fit into the structure of government; they tried to use new media technologies to be more persuasive. Although there was an abundance of ideas, all of their approaches for better publicity and censorship failed. The root causes were Germany’s political structure, the lack of organization, and their messages, which were tone-deaf and not persuasive.
In their struggle to adjust their propaganda efforts, however, the Germans were slowly learning from their mistakes. By 1918, they had drawn their own conclusions of what went wrong. Germany’s propaganda experience in the First World War is exemplary of how governments learned, over time, through countless blunders, and by modeling after their enemies, the lessons of fighting a modern propaganda war.
Building on original research at political and military archives in Germany and the United States (German Federal Archives; Political Archive of the Foreign Office; Prussian Privy State Archives, Hoover Institution Library and Archives; and U.S. National Archives), the results of this study show why the ideas of German propagandists could not win the war.