Neil Postman's Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early

577 Pages·2014·2.25 MB·English

by  Donna Lee Halper

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Open Access Dissertations
5-13-2011
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Donna Lee Halper
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Halper, Donna Lee, "Neil Postman's Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early Radio 1920-1935"
(2011). Open Access Dissertations. 368.
https://doi.org/10.7275/2175065 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/368
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NEIL POSTMAN’S MISSING CRITIQUE: A MEDIA ECOLOGY
ANALYSIS OF EARLY RADIO, 1920-1935

A Dissertation presented

by

DONNA LEE HALPER

Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 2011

Communication
© Copyright by Donna Lee Halper 2011
All Rights Reserved
NEIL POSTMAN’S MISSING CRITIQUE: A MEDIA ECOLOGY
ANALYSIS OF EARLY RADIO, 1920-1935

A Dissertation presented

by

DONNA LEE HALPER

Approved as to style and content by:

________________________________________
Jarice Hanson, Chair

________________________________________
Erica Scharrer, Member

_______________________________________
Olga Gershenson, Member

___________________________________________
Lisa Henderson, Chair
Communication
DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my late parents, Bea and Sam Halper, who taught
me to love and appreciate books; and to the late Dr. Robert DeLancey,
who believed in me at a time in my life when nobody else did.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people contributed to making this dissertation a reality. I
would like to first thank my committee, Olga Gershenson, Erica
Scharrer, and committee chair Jarice Hanson (who was always patient
and helpful, no matter how many questions I asked). I also want to
thank Michael Morgan and Briankle Chang of the Communication
Department at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, who believed in
me and admitted me to the PhD program. I am grateful to Bruce Logan,
Associate Dean at Lesley University in Cambridge, for encouraging me
during the last two years of the process. And I am forever indebted to
Bryan Benilous at Proquest Historical Databases and Brett Kolcun of
Newsbank/Readex; each provided access to numerous historical
newspapers, and made my research easier to do. I am grateful to Frank
Bequaert, whose New Hampshire bookstore was an excellent resource for
rare magazines from the 1920s and 1930s. Thanks also to Henry
Scannell and the staff of the Boston Public Library’s microfilm room, as
well as the reference librarians at the Thomas Crane Public Library in
Quincy, the Emerson College Library in Boston and the DuBois Library
at UMass/Amherst; I couldn’t have done my research without you! And
of course, I am eternally grateful to my husband Jon Jacobik, who
understood what achieving this goal meant to me, and never complained
about how long it took for me to write the dissertation.
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ABSTRACT

NEIL POSTMAN’S MISSING CRITIQUE: A MEDIA ECOLOGY

ANALYSIS OF EARLY RADIO, 1920-1935

MAY 2011

DONNA LEE HALPER, B.A. NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

M.A., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Ph. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Jarice Hanson

Radio’s first fifteen years were filled with experiment and
innovation, as well as conflicting visions of what broadcasting’s role in
society ought to be. But while there was an ongoing debate about radio’s
mission (should it be mainly educational or mainly entertaining?), radio’s
impact on daily life was undeniable. To cite a few examples, radio was
the first mass medium to provide access to current events as they were
happening. It allowed people of all races and social classes to hear great
orators, newsmakers, and entertainers. Radio not only brought hit songs
and famous singers directly into the listener’s home; it also created a
new form of intimacy based on imagination -- although the listeners
generally had never met the men and women they heard on the air, they
felt close to these people and imagined what they must really be like.
Radio was a medium that enhanced the importance of the human voice--
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politicians, preachers, and performers were now judged by their ability to
communicate with the “invisible audience.”

My dissertation employs a media ecology perspective to examine
how the arrival and growth of radio altered a media environment that,
until 1920, was dominated by the printed word. Neil Postman, a seminal
figure in Media Ecology, wrote that this field of inquiry “looks into the
matter of how media of communication affect human perception,
understanding, feeling, and value.” Radio certainly exemplified that
description: it not only affected popular culture and public opinion; it
affected the other media with which it competed. My research utilizes
one of those competing media-- print journalism. Using content and
discourse analysis of articles in thirty-three newspapers and sixteen
magazines of the 1920s and early 1930s, I examine how print and radio
interacted and affected each other. My dissertation also analyzes the
differing perceptions about radio as expressed in print by fans, reporters,
and such interest groups as clergy or educators. And finally, my
research explores some of the critiques of the programs, and compares
the reactions of the critics at the mainstream press with those who
worked for the ethnic press.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………… v

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………… vi

CHAPTER

I INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 1

II LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………… 42

III. METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………… 78

IV. EARLY RADIO AND LINGUISTIC CHANGE…………………………… 98

V. READING ABOUT RADIO …………………………………………………163

VI. ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSES IN THE POPULAR PRESS …………...245

VII. RADIO AND ITS CRITICS………………………………………………….355

VIII. CONCLUSIONS …………………………………………………………….465

APPENDIX: RADIO ARTICLES,1920-1923 ….……………………………..494

WORKS CITED …..…………..…………………………………………………..501

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

According to many of today’s media critics, radio is now obsolete,
having been replaced by iPods, the internet, and television. In fact, long
before the internet age, some scholars had already dismissed it. In 1977,
one professor wrote, “Radio... is a medium whose time in the sun of
social importance has come and gone” (James A. Anderson, qtd. in Rubin
281). These days, the common wisdom is that young people no longer
care about radio (Tucker 9), and that even among adults, radio’s
influence is minimal. But studies compiled by Arbitron, PBS, and the
Pew Research Center contradict the belief that radio is yesterday’s
technology. In fact, these studies conclude that it’s too soon to write
radio’s obituary. Radio listenership may be less than it was several
decades ago (understandable in a fragmented media landscape that
offers so many choices), but formats like news/talk, religion, and sports
continue to have millions of fans, and even some music formats are still
prospering (Perse and Butler 2005; “Public Radio Today” 2009; Janssen
2009). And as for the alleged decline in radio’s impact on public opinion,
political talk radio has repeatedly shown that it can influence voters and
arouse indignation (Hertzberg 2009; Jamieson and Cappella 2008;
Holbert 2004), while fans of one particular Christian talk show, James

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