Giving Meanings to the World The First U.S. Foreign Correspondents, 1838-1859

Subjects:

• Communications » Journalism
• Communications » Communications (General)

Reviews:

• Giving Meanings to the World is a useful introduction to the early history of foreign news reportage in U.S newspapers. Dell'Orto provides a concise framework for explaining the emergence of increased foreign news coverage in U.S newspapers in the two decades preceding the Civil War. Her inclusion of foreign correspondence by women and minority journalists makes this study all the more valuable. Her focus on the content of foreign news reportage points the way toward further scholarship.
  —American Journalism 2003

• Endorsement From Hazel Dicken-Garcia
  Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
  University of Minnesota: Focusing on images of other countries transmitted by the first formally organized American foreign correspondents (between 1838 and 1859), this important book begins to fill at least two long-standing voids in journalism history literature: First, it transcends the who-did-what-when paradigm to call attention to implications--culturally, politically, internationally--of what was reported; and it explores relationships of images to who was reporting them. Second, standing out against the very slim (emerging) literature about international communication history, the book epitomizes the importance of scholarship in this area and points up the need for continued research about international reporting across time. This gracefully written, well-researched, easy-to-read book will be valued by scholars and students in international communication history, journalism history, media studies, history and American studies programs.
• Endorsement From David B. Sachsman West Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs
  Founder and Director of the Symposium on the 19th Century, the Civil War, and Free Expression
  University of Tennessee at Chattanooga: Giovanna Dell'Orto combines traditional history, quantitative analysis, and discourse analysis to examine the role played by the foreign correspondents of the 19th century in the formation of America's 'commonsense understanding of the world.' Modern day journalists have a lot to learn from history in 'giving meanings to the world.'

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Expanding Meanings of the World
• Early American Journalism and News from Abroad
• The Shaping of Foreign News: Improving on the Single Electrician at a Seaport Town
• Images of the "World" in Mid-Nineteenth Century U.S. Culture
• Constructions of the "World" in the Mainstream Press
• Alternative Constructions of the "World"
• The Earliest American Foreign Correspondence: Giving Meanings to the "World"
• Bibliography
• Index