Acknowledgments

From Debra Reddin van Tuyll

No scholar is an island, not even historians, who are among the most hermit-like of the academic species. That is especially true for edited works such as this one. Consequently, we have many to whom thanks are due. First off, I would like to thank my coeditors, Mark O’Brien and Marcel Broersma.

Mark and I met, we think, at a Newspapers and Periodicals History Forum of Ireland conference in Dublin probably close to a decade ago. We started a conversation about the connections between Irish and American journalism at that conference that continued for several years. That conversation culminated in the decision to host two conferences on transnational journalism history, emphasizing the journalistic connections between Ireland and America.

As we were in the planning stages for the second conference, we came across an article by our third editor, Marcel Broersma, that actually defined transnational journalism history and laid out all its parameters and potentials. This appears to have been the first article published on the topic of transnational journalism history, so Mark invited Marcel to be the keynote speaker at the second conference. After meeting Marcel, we invited him to join us on this project. He has been a very welcome addition, and I must thank both of them for agreeing to join me on this journey.

Thanks are due to others as well, including Charles (Skip) Clark, my former dean, and Richard Kenney, my former chair, for supporting and funding the first conference on transnational journalism history, held at what was then Georgia Regents University and is now Augusta University. I should also thank Shane Stephens, the Irish consul for the southeastern United States. Shane has encouraged this project and even helped arrange for Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, Daniel Mulhall, to write the foreword to this book (more on that below). I—and we—are exceedingly grateful to Shane for his support of and interest in this project.

Thanks, too, to Deborah Manion, the acquisitions editor with whom I’ve had a most enjoyable correspondence as we’ve worked through the submission, revision, and acceptance processes for this manuscript. I suspect we will owe thanks to others at Syracuse University Press as we work through the production process, so I will thank them even though we haven’t yet met.

I would also thank my many colleagues from the ranks of American journalism historians who got behind this project, submitted papers, and attended the conferences—perhaps out of curiosity, but also out of confidence in me, that I was not steering them down a blind alley but down a fruitful new avenue of inquiry. I particularly want to thank a recent Augusta University graduate, Jordan Stenger, for jumping into this project and trusting me as her mentor.

Finally, I must thank my husband, Hubert van Tuyll. An immigrant himself, he has embraced the United States as his home. It is through his eyes that I’ve been able to get a deeper and more intimate view of what it means to leave one’s home and build a new life in America. I have watched Hubert and his parents maintain the connection to their homeland, the Netherlands, through family connections, phone calls, and letters but also through newspapers such as De Telegraaf and newsletters such as the Windmill. The internet has made this task much easier, of course, but the impetus and the media were there long before the web.

From Mark O’Brien

The history of journalism and the press—their role in forging national identity, shaping politics and culture, and educating the public—has, in recent years, become an ever more prevalent aspect of inquiry. There is a growing awareness among all historians of the importance of “the first draft of history” to every aspect of historical inquiry, with digital newspaper archives making access to this rich research resource ever easier. While national case studies remain important, transnational journalism history adds another layer of complexity and meaning to our understanding of the role and power of journalism and the press. This book grew out of many conversations on this topic with Debbie van Tuyll, and latterly, with Marcel Broersma. Thanks to both for being such amiable colleagues and hosts.

Acknowledgement is also due to Dublin City University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for funding the second transnational journalism history conference at which Marcel was the keynote speaker and to DCU’s School of Communications for funding the index. The editors thank His Excellency, Daniel Mulhall, for writing the foreword, our contributors for their endeavors, and all at Syracuse University Press for bringing this book to fruition.

From Marcel Broersma

For centuries journalism history has been mainly studied within national boundaries. This makes much sense because modern journalism developed in close relation to the rise of the nation state. More recently, however, scholars have acknowledged the intrinsically transnational nature of news and journalism. My interest in this topic was first triggered in 2005 when I organized a conference on “Form and Style in Journalism: European Newspapers and the Representation of News, 1880–2005” at the University of Groningen, and a few years later when I was invited to speak at a workshop in Potsdam, organized by the young scholars of the communication history division of the European Communication Research and Education Association. Later on, Martin Conboy and I directed a project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Dutch Research Council), on “Capturing Change in Journalism: Shifting Role Perceptions at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries,” in which we embraced a transnational approach to journalism history. Mark O’Brien was part of the second conference we organized and also contributed to the book that came out of this.

Mark and Debbie van Tuyll have been the driving forces behind a series of transnational journalism history conferences that started in 2016. They have brought together scholars from a growing group of countries and continents who have an interest in the topic. I had the great honor to be the keynote speaker at the second conference in Dublin, which offered an inspiring environment to discuss and rethink a transnational approach to journalism history. I want to thank Debbie and Mark for the fruitful discussions we have had ever since and for the opportunity to work with them on this project. I hope there will be many more transnational journalism history conferences and fascinating conversations in the future. Thanks also to the authors of the chapters in this volume and to the helpful and skillful staff at Syracuse University Press. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, and Frank Harbers, in particular, for our ongoing dialogue about journalism history and how to study this.