Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Thursday, November 28, 2024
The Modern Style. More from the Iowa Almanac in a moment. For 30 years, Duane, Ellen, and Floppy delighted young people on TV and at the Iowa State Fair. Now relive those great times with the Duane and Floppy Collection. Our featured DVD this week at TotallyIowa.com is Volume 1, including the Duane and Floppy story, their greatest moments together, and the special Floppy's Christmas Adventure program. Get your copy of Volume 1 of the Duane and Floppy Collection today at TotallyIowa.com. Journalism has been practiced in one form or another, ever since people could tell stories, then developed a written language. But as a profession, journalism is a relatively new thing. Iowa universities have been in the forefront of journalism education over the past century. On November 28, 1913, some Iowa journalism professors defended the evolution of the craft at the second-ever National Academic Conference on the topic. A story on the front page of The Evening Times Republican in Marshalltown told about it, titled Modern Style in Journalism. Keep in mind that at that time, journalism was limited to newspapers, and its practitioners were almost exclusively male. The article quoted Iowa State College professor F.W. Beckman as saying, "The news sense, the ability to see what is new, and its new meaning to the great mass of humanity is necessary to man in every field of endeavor, but especially to men who write." He further claimed the news sense allowed a writer to see through the mass of non-essentials through dead rubbish to living facts, through husks and shells to the kernel of truth. He defended the journalistic style of reporting and writing evolving at the time as efficient, having been hammered out in the heat and stress of newspaper work to meet the demands of the millions for something to compel their attention. The Gallup Poll released in 2016 showed that trust in American media was at its lowest point since 1972, with only a third of those surveyed saying they had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. It's not much better in the latest survey. Perhaps then it's important for those who practice the craft to remember the words of Iowa State professor F.W. Beckman, who said journalists write "of the people and for them with a value that cannot be denied" when speaking at an academic conference on the topic on this date in 1913. And that's Iowa Almanac for November 28th. Follow us on Twitter @IowaAlmanac. Until tomorrow, I'm Jeff Stein.