American journalists in the Great War : rewriting the rules of reporting / Chris Dubbs.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When war erupted in Europe in 1914, American journalists hurried across the Atlantic ready to cover it the same way they had covered so many other wars. However, very little about this war was like any other. Its scale, brutality, and duration forced journalists to write their own rules for reporting and keeping the American public informed.



American Journalists in the Great War tells the dramatic stories of the journalists who covered World War I for the American public. Chris Dubbs draws on personal accounts from contemporary newspaper and magazine articles and books to convey the experiences of the journalists of World War I, from the western front to the Balkans to the Paris Peace Conference. Their accounts reveal the challenges of finding the war news, transmitting a story, and getting it past the censors. Over the course of the war, reporters found that getting their scoop increasingly meant breaking the rules or redefining the very meaning of war news. Dubbs shares the courageous, harrowing, and sometimes humorous stories of the American reporters who risked their lives in war zones to record their experiences and send the news to the people back home.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Some American journalists became experienced war correspondents while covering conflicts such as the Spanish-American War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Mexican Revolution. Since the United States was neutral at the onset of World War I in 1914, journalists were free to cover all sides of the conflict. Many of these war correspondents simply had a passport, a letter from an editor, and a gift of talking their way out of jail for spying. The correspondents sought to tell the story of the massive and destructive nature of this new type of warfare, which included machine guns, trench conditions, and staggering numbers of dead soldiers. Military historian Dubbs (America's U-Boats) melds these stories into one coherent narrative. The reporters documented the entire war, alongside soldiers and generals from German, British, French, Belgian, and Russian armies. A chart allows for keeping track of the names listed. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in journalism, World War I, early 20th-century history, and nonfiction storytelling.-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.