The Muckrakers: Evangelical Crusaders

(Hardback)

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Description

This collection of essays provides a critical and scholarly assessment of muckraking journalists at the beginning of the twentieth century. Contributors discuss how spiritual values led journalists to seek social change, through crusades and expos^D'es, sometimes at the price of public confusion and cynicism. They explore how the richest church in America was forced to clean up its tenement houses, how a Buffalo newspaper crusaded for improvements in living conditions for immigrants, why women journalists were keys to civic improvement efforts, and how muckraking and the crusading spirit permeated the press even in small towns. The authors place these stories in the context of various facets of early 20th century American culture. These fresh perspectives on America's first investigative reporters will appeal to media scholars, historians and to professional journalists. An epilogue appeals for a return to the values and spirit of the muckrakers that might spur the public's interest and provide a moral center and ethic of caring in American journalism.

Reviews

[P]rovides a fresh look at the ideology behind America's first investigative reporters.-Staten Island Advance
[T]he essays gathered are a collective and timely call for the reinstatement of the journalist as idealist, moralist, and crusader.-Religious Studies Review
Highly recommended for all collections--US history as well as journalism.-Choice
Offers fresh insights on old-time muckraking from the perspective of a present-day investigative reporter.-Columbia Journalism Review
These carefully selected essays present a comprehensive picture of the muckraker era....Highly recommended for all collection--US history as well as journalism.-Humanities
"Provides a fresh look at the ideology behind America's first investigative reporters."-Staten Island Advance
"The essays gathered are a collective and timely call for the reinstatement of the journalist as idealist, moralist, and crusader."-Religious Studies Review
"[P]rovides a fresh look at the ideology behind America's first investigative reporters."-Staten Island Advance
"[T]he essays gathered are a collective and timely call for the reinstatement of the journalist as idealist, moralist, and crusader."-Religious Studies Review
"Highly recommended for all collections--US history as well as journalism."-Choice
"Offers fresh insights on old-time muckraking from the perspective of a present-day investigative reporter."-Columbia Journalism Review
"These carefully selected essays present a comprehensive picture of the muckraker era....Highly recommended for all collection--US history as well as journalism."-Humanities

Author Bio

ROBERT MIRALDI is Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of Muckraking and Objectivity: Journalism's Colliding Traditions (Greenwood, 1991).