EOTO3 Reflection

During the presentation period today, I found two presentations to be super interesting and that is what this blog post will be covering today. I went into these presentations blind and I had a fun time getting to learn more about impactful journalists. I was able to give myself some new  appreciation for what broadcast journalism looked like back a mere few decades ago. 

Rolling Stone

American journalist and TV news broadcaster Walter Cronkite anchors the news desk for the 'CBS Evening News,' 1981.

Walter Cronkite

The thing that stuck with me most about Cronkite is that he just knew from a really young age. He decided he wanted to be a journalist at twelve, edited his high school paper, won a state journalism contest, and eventually dropped out of college because he was ready to just go do it. That level of certainty is kind of impressive honestly.

His career is almost hard to wrap your head around. He flew on bombing raids during World War II, covered D-Day, was at the Nuremberg trials. When he joined CBS in 1952 they literally invented the word "anchorman" for his role, which I had no idea about. He's the one who announced JFK's assassination live on air, which is one of those things that when you really think about it. 

He was consistently ranked more trustworthy than the president, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, multiple Peabodys, multiple Emmys, and Arizona State named their journalism school after him. His whole legacy is basically setting the bar for what it means to have integrity in this field.

New York Times

Howard Coswell with Muhammad Ali.

Howard Cosell

Cosell's path is a lot more unexpected. He grew up in Brooklyn, got a law degree from NYU, and was actually working as an athletic lawyer before broadcasting ever came into the picture. He got into local New York radio in 1953 and kind of built his audience from the ground up. 

He picked up the pre and post game gig for the Mets in 1962 but what really defined him was his relationship with Muhammad Ali. He was one of Ali's closest confidants and one of the very few broadcasters who publicly defended him when Ali refused military service and lost his title. That was not a safe or popular position to take, and Cosell took it anyway. 

Overall, both of them had this commitment to just saying what was true even when it wasn't the easy thing to do. Cronkite with Vietnam, Cosell with Ali and all of those things weren't safe calls. And as someone studying journalism it's kind of a good reminder that the people we actually remember in this field aren't usually the ones who played it safe

EOTO 3 Post

Link to photo

Photo of Michiko Kakutani, 29 May, 2017

 Basic Info: Well, who is she?

• Michiko Kakutani was a legendary critic who served on The New York Times for 34 years and announced her retirement almost a decade ago in 2017. This has made her one of the most significant powerful voices within women in journalism and also one of the most longest serving women in the criticism department. She won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1998.

• “Not only is she one of the longest serving book critics writing for an American newspaper – an impressive 34 years – but she is also one of the most respected, and with that, feared. For more than two decades, Kakutani’s book reviews have commanded an authoritativeness that is emblematic of the newspaper itself.” - Kill Your Darlings https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/the-subtle-resistance-of-michiko-kakutani/

Reputation: Her reputation is a vigorous, spiteful force within the world of criticism. 

• Her trademark was a cut-and-dry approach — reviews could swing from rich, laudatory praise to unapologetic, analytical takedowns. This was to the point in which she even became a verb: getting Kakutani'd. She has been referred to one of the powerful book critics of the English-speaking world and helped boost many careers of other writers and critics alike such as: George Saunders, Mary Karr, David Foster Wallace.

• Ultimately her power was unmatched. A quote from Slate stated, “It islike having the good fairy touch you on your shoulder with her wand." Slate The flip side was equally powerful: her negative reviews could overshadow even the most celebrated authors.

• “She delivered her reviews with the serene assurance of someone who was always right, seemingly able to see into writers' hearts to judge how deeply they were feeling. Slate ”

• “The legendary book critic is part of the larger vanguard of the New York Times – and indeed the New York media – interrogating the worrying new Trump era. Building on her unique position at the newspaper, Kakutani has been able to extend her book criticism beyond reviews, enacting a more political pivot in her writing to critique the current political realm through the lens of books, language and writing.”

Link to photo

Photo of Michiko and one of her famous books

Famous Feuds: Kakutaini was never afraid to be blunt and to the point which is why so many different book critics, reviewers and even writers almost despised her.

• They thought of critics to be shallow and unheard of, but that is truly what made her stand out the most was the fact that she able to get her point across with a lot of immediacy. She was successfully able to skew the literary establishment and what it all stood for. A perfect example of this was in 2006, when she called The Discomfort Zone by Johnathan Franzen’s a “odious self-portrait of an artist as a young jackass”. The author replied and called her “the stupidest person in all of NYC”
• Other criticisms have been far more high profile. In 2007, she faced significant backlash for breaking a strict media embargo of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, releasing her review on the day of the book’s release. In 2015, Kakutani once more broke a tight media embargo around Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, one of the first reviews to reveal the beloved Atticus Finch was now ‘a racist’.

• These same criticisms, though, are part of Kakutani’s appeal: her unapologetic, cut-and-dry approach to assessing a book, even ones by the likes of Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie; her playful ploys and strategies in reviews (such as imitating a fictional character) that engage or enrage readers; her indifference to media embargoes; and her antiquated vocabulary, which may frustrate readers but highlights a keen intellect: Something that stood out to me as I did research on her, was that there is so little about her readily available despite her actively speaking her truth at any opportunity she got at the end of the day.

• Lots of articles who covered this legend referred to her as “the mysterious one” or “a recluse”. Overall, not too nice words in order to successfully crack down upon her indeity and personal information.

Her reclusiveness and refusal to attend book launches or literary ceremonies ironically amplified the importance of her work, turning her reviews into something almost sacred and private. Kill Your Darlings”

After her career: Once she retired officially in 2017, that was not the end of her legendary impact.

• Even a mere year after in 2018 she published one of her most famous works that I was able to uncover which ws called: The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. I found this to be partciualry interesting due to the fact that we are in a similar state only 8 years after this book was published. In this book though, she was able to draw parrells between philosophy in a post modern world wheel also the circle of misinformation in a digital age. Despite her retirement and her work still being on archived sites she still continues to inspire young writers today by giving them a glimpse into her synthetic style of writing.
• Overall, she is a fascinating figure — someone whose opinion genuinely shaped the literary landscape for decades, which is pretty rare for a critic.

Shock and Awe Review Post

We decided to watch this film because it was a movie day in class. Overall, the film follows a small team of journalists at Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War. While nearly every major outlet which meant that news outlets like the New York Times. Certain groups kept asking why. They questioned sources, challenged assumptions even when it wasn't the story anyone wanted to run with. 

It's easy to talk about the press, but this is what it actually looks like in practice. It's unglamorous and frustrating. It's a handful of people in a bureau that have never heard of, making calls and chasing sources while the rest of the world moves in a completely different direction.

I also found myself thinking about how much courage it takes to hold a position that isn't popular, especially in a media landscape that was almost entirely unified behind a single narrative. The Knight Ridder team didn't have the platform or the prestige of the outlets around them. They just had the reporting. 

As someone who's still figuring out what kind of storyteller I want to be, that hits differently. We talk a lot about finding your voice, building your brand, knowing your audience and all of that matters. But this film reminded me that at the core of all of it, there's a simpler and harder question: are you willing to tell the truth when it costs you something? I think that's worth sitting with for more than just a minute.

EOTO 2: Reflections On Other Students Presentations

Journalism's Presentations:

One of the first presentations that I listened to that captured my attention was music journalism. I interned as a music journalist at a zine, but I was not fully aware of the history so I just found this to be super interesting! What I learned during this presentation is that music journalism was super important. It didn't just report on sound it gave this once foreign culture a voice for the voiceless. From Rolling Stone's rise to the chaotic freedom to the early innovation of blogging about the next big artist -- this field has always balanced creativity with commentary. There's something exciting about that tension between having a personal perspective and being trusted to inform.

The next part of this presentation was investigative journalism. This definitely was different and new to me because as a journalism major discovering something that was just itching to be uncovered seems super imperative and then sharing that with the world was a super fresh idea at one point. Something that I took away was that "The Muckrakers" of the early 1900s weren't just writers — they were disruptors, pulling back the curtain on systems people were told to trust. Another thing that I took note of was how central women were to shaping its methods, even when they weren't always given credit. The goal was never to push an agenda — it was to expose truth, understand different viewpoints, and push toward accountability.

Lastly, the presentation that I would want to discuss is ashion journalism. As this is my specialty within my major and I am currently minoring in Fashion Merchandising this automatically took my attention to the center stage! What I found interesting and also what the presenter dove deeper into was that fashion journalism actually started in Renaissance Europe with engravings and French newspapers. Fashion journalism was a gateway to target women as an audience when publications were almost exclusively designed for men was quietly revolutionary. As photography entered the picture in the 20th century, fashion writing stopped being just descriptive and started becoming reflective.

Overall, what I took away from this is this: that journalism, in every form, has been about giving people something they couldn't easily access on their own — whether that's truth, beauty, or a perspective they hadn't considered. 

EOTO 2: The History of Comic Strips

 

Photo Credit: Melbirnkrant.com

Picture of the character "Yellow Kid"
that was an icon within comic strip history.

The Yellow Kid was one of the first ever culturally significant comic strips that came out in 1890. The character is this comic strip is named Mickey Dugan and was created by the artist named Richard Outcault. This is only used one comic page. The Yellow Kid was significant and was born within what was referred to as a newspaper war between two forces which at this time was the New York World and the New York Journal. They were mainly fighting over viewership, readership, prices and even promotions. Eventually Hearst from New York Journal lured Richard away New York World and hired another artist to continue the strip resulting in a bunch of competing papers that were released every Sunday. This feud was not just between the companies, but you could see this take place in the comic strip itself. Both artists would actually throw questions, concerns and poked fun at one another. The comments would be about originality and ownership.

There are actually a bunch of levels to this which results in a total of three. The first one is a self reflective humorous comment on Outcualts professional move (luring them away). Then, there is commentary of a bill passed in 1896 on liquor in New York. This showcases that they were poking fun at the legal loopholes that were happening in 19th century New York City.

Yellow Kid was known for embracing the ethics and racial tensions on that era in time. The pages were extremely dialect and had a bunch of misconceptions and went against normal publicity norms much like zines do nowadays as a way to fight against mainstream media. Yellow Kid was almost the precursor to this in a way and they were also trying to represent different types of immigrant communities. This offered an interpretive openness and allowed immigrant readers to also enjoy comic strips that may not have fully grasped full English Literacy at this point in time. This reflected the middle class in New York and the certain fears that were happening in the American nation.

Outside of Yellow Kid, comics are mainly known for fantasy, fiction and have a lot of humor involved in them too. Comics recently have become a vehicle for non-fiction writing such as journalism and is now a popular genre. Comics date all the way back to the expeinrces of marginalized groups and people affected in war communities and even international audiences.

Photo: itakehistory.com

A comic strip that has an example
of how Yellow Kid was used.

Comics were there before the invention of photography and an attempt to make things easier to read visually or poke fun at something. They were originally some manifestations in the forms of prints or broadsheets that were meant to convey factual information. Illustrated media was a great way to showcase the work of print media via journalists and direct affected the infamous newspaper comic strips that we know today.Another thing to note about the history of comics within journalism is that some of them involve framing. Framing is essentially the concept of leaving certain things out in order to be able to devise to a certain group of people that you are wanting to accurately represent.

Comics have always been around as a way to document real life events that may be too complicated to explain into words and are much easily stated in a visual context. A great example of this is from the September 11th attacks. However, there is actually na argument if comic strips can be documentary at all since it is a drawing unlike a photograph. Overall, comics serve as vital pieces of information within a newspaper by being able to successfully display and address graphic narratives in a compelling sense so that the reader can fully grasp the ideologies discussed in the paper. These comics go back centuries and showcases what journalism really is about and is a gateway for visual storytelling.

Citations: 

Haas, P. (n.d.). Urban America in the newspaper comic strips of the nineteenth century: Introducing the Yellow Kid.ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. University of Florida. https://imagetextjournal.com/urban-america-in-the-newspaper-comic-strips-of-the-nineteenth-century-introducing-the-yellow-kid/

Schlichting, L., & Schmid, J. C. P. (2021). Introduction to Graphic Realities: Comics as documentary, history, and journalism. ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, 11(1). https://imagetextjournal.com/introduction-to-graphic-realities-comics-as-documentary-history-and-journalism/

Movie Post - Five Star Final

Photo: Park Circus.com

 Image of the daughter confronting the company from Five Star Final

This 1937 classic film was definitely not what I was expecting — particularly when it came to themes such as suicide being as prevalent as they were throughout the story. I understand that journalism, by its very nature, sometimes requires stepping on people's toes in order to get the information needed. However, my personal reflection is that the newspaper company in this film went far too far. They began interfering in the relationship between a young woman and her soon-to-be husband to such a degree that it started to deeply affect her mother as well — and in my opinion, the mother's drastic actions were born out of genuine desperation and pain. By the end of the film, I felt a profound sadness watching the husband witness his wife reach her breaking point, unable to bear the suffering any longer, and ultimately deciding to follow her. I simply was not expecting that.

As drastic as it may sound, I genuinely believe this kind of media overreach is even more dangerous in today's world. With the rise of misinformation and sensationalized reporting, imagine having your name amplified by a massive news outlet. Imagine them invading your privacy, asking inappropriate and intrusive questions, and actively disrupting your relationships with family and friends. For the average person, that level of exposure would be deeply traumatic and could have a severe impact on their mental health.

Five Star Final is, of course, an exaggeration. But I believe it was ahead of its time — a deliberate warning about the power of the press and the very real consequences that careless, exploitative journalism can have on real people's lives. What you say, write, and publish about someone can cause irreparable harm, and the film does not shy away from showing just how far that harm can reach.

I also want to touch on the daughter's reaction near the end of the film, when she storms into the newsroom clutching a hidden gun, frantic and desperate, demanding to know where her parents are — as though she simply cannot accept that they are gone. Of course, by that point, both of them were beyond saving. But as a viewer, and from a pure acting standpoint, that scene is extraordinary. The actress perfectly captures the raw, unraveling emotion of losing not one, but both parents in rapid succession — and how grief, betrayal, and the destructive reach of irresponsible journalism can shatter a person's entire world in a matter of seconds.

Editorial Cartoonists

 American Association of Editorial Cartoonists:

Photo: Editorial Cartoon  

Ron Hill has been providing editorial cartoons to the Chagrin Valley Times group of journalism award-winning weekly newspapers since 1999, where he currently provides 2 editorial cartoons in the form of his BB BluesBird comic strip since January of 2020.

   

History and Foundation:

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) was formed in 1957 by a small but dedicated group of newspaper cartoonists led by John Stampone of the Army Times. The organization emerged during a pivotal period when American journalists sought greater professional recognition and legitimacy within the rapidly evolving media landscape. At this time, political cartoons had become a staple feature in print newspapers across the country, depicting current events and political affairs including McCarthyism, the Cold War tensions, and various domestic political issues.

Founding Purpose and Objectives:

The AAEC was founded to address a distinct journalism profession that had been previously overlooked and undervalued in the media industry. The organization's main objectives were to promote and stimulate public interest in editorial cartoons while fostering a closer, more meaningful connection between cartoonists and their readers. These goals aimed to create a sense of community among cartoonists who often felt isolated in their work, as cartooning is primarily a solitary profession. Before the AAEC's creation, cartoonists had little opportunity to share ideas, discuss their work, or address the unique professional challenges they faced. The organization became a vital outlet for advocacy and professional support.

Annual Conventions and Networking

Photo: AAEC Logo

Logo of AAEC

The AAEC hosts an annual convention in different North American cities each year, bringing together publishers, historians, collectors, and cartoonists from across the continent. These events facilitate valuable in-person interaction, important career discussions, and meaningful idea exchange among professionals. The conventions are crucial to the association's success, offering professional development and networking opportunities for both established and emerging cartoonists entering the industry.

Advocacy for Freedom of Expression

The AAEC plays a significant role in defending freedom of expression, particularly concerning visual arts in publications. The organization has filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in cases dealing with this issue, including the landmark 1988 Supreme Court case Hustler v. Falwell. This advocacy demonstrates the AAEC's commitment to protecting cartoonists' rights to engage in political commentary, even when controversial. Importantly, the association remains politically neutral, providing a space for cartoonists across the political spectrum to share diverse perspectives while maintaining professional integrity.

Educational Initiatives

The organization promotes educational programs such as "Cartoons for the Classroom," which helps educators teach students about political cartoons, their creation, and their purpose. This initiative provides history classrooms with resources for teaching economics, social studies, and current events through visual elements and design. These programs emphasize the continued importance of editorial cartoons in publications, even as newspapers have transitioned to primarily digital formats.

Current Status and Impact

Today, the AAEC remains an active and vibrant organization with nearly 200 members actively involved in the world of political cartooning. Membership extends across the United States and into Mexico and Canada. This shows the versatility of AAEC. The association serves as a prime example of a successful organization that protects artists within publicized works such as newspapers. In a constantly changing world, the AAEC's commitment to free expression and political commentary through visual arts remains essential in 2026.

Note: Claude AI was used to summarize sources, but all writing is my own.