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O rder N um ber 9208822

The history o f th e journalism program at M ichigan S tate
U niversity
Morton, Jerry Lee, Ph.D.
Michigan State University, 1991

UMI

300 N. Zeeb Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48106

THE HISTORY OF THE JOURNALISM PROGRAM
AT MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
By
Jerry Lee Morton

A

DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
iii

pamoi lumiiiueni vi mo ici|uucinema

for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Educational Administration
1991

ABSTRACT

THE HISTORY OF THE JOURNALISM PROGRAM
AT MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
By
Jerry Lee Morton

The study explores the history of the Michigan State University journalism
program from the offering of the first journalism course in 1910 to the
establishment of the College of Communication Arts in 1955. The work is
based on interviews with journalism educators and former students and
documentation found largely in the Michigan State University archives and the
State Library of Michigan, including the letters and memoranda of University
officials and a variety of University and general periodicals. The narrative
describes the two major traditions in the development of journalism education in
the United States and the place of Michigan State’s program within those
traditions. The study discovered that there were two currents in the history of
journalism education in America. The first, based on the Joseph Pulitzer model,
stressed ihe iraditionai roie of the press as a sociai and political force and
viewed the institution as reporter, interpreter and societal critic. The second, the
one that influenced Michigan State, was the philosophy of the agricultural
colleges, that held that journalism education should teach students to apply
their skills to assist farmers. Over time, the study found, the Michigan State
program shifted its focus from the farmer to the rural and small town population
more generally, by adopting an emphasis on rural journalism, the journalism of
the small town. Following World War II, Michigan State again changed its
program to align it more closely with schools offering a metropolitan approach

to journalism education. This change in emphasis resulted in the University’s
making journalism a part of a new College of Communication Arts, reflecting
University administrators’ interest in mass communication theory.

FOR TOM AND TAFFY COFFEY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1 BEGINNINGS

1

CHAPTER

2 A DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM

46
4

CHAPTER

3 APPLEGATE AT MSC

83

CHAPTER

4 A COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION ARTS

135

ENDNOTES

195

BIBLIOGRAPHY

223

iii

BEGINNINGS

There were two major currents in the early history of journalism
education. The first viewed the press as primarily a social and political force.
According to that approach, the purpose of journalism education was to teach
future practitioners how best to understand those forces and, by applying their
skills, to describe, interpret or influence the events that those forces shaped.
That theme may be traced from the founding of a certificate program at Cornell
University through the establishment of courses at the University of
Pennsylvania and several Midwestern schools to the opening of the Pulitzer
School of Journalism at Columbia, the school which epitomized that approach.
The second, the one that shaped MAC, was the philosophy of the agricultural
colleges. Underlying that current was the idea that journalism education
could teach students to apply their skills in a more narrowly-defined way -toward the understanding of agriculture -- and, in so doing, aid the schools in
their major mission of assisting farmers.

1

When the Michigan Agricultural College offered its first class in journalism
in April 1910, the question of whether such a course belonged in a university
had already been answered. By then, the issue had been debated for more
than 40 years and, by one account, instruction in journalism was being offered
in 18 other colleges and universities when MAC established its first course.1
Most of those programs and classes, however, had developed with very
different purposes from the course at the Michigan Agricultural College.
Indeed, they had flowed from a traditional understanding of the role of the
American press and, therefore, of the approach best suited to educating its
future practitioners.
The issue of whether journalism should be taught in college had been
debated among the leading professors and practitioners of the day. Journalism
was a trade, one argument went, and, as such, it should be taught where it had
always been taught: on the job. Among the advocates on the other side were
Harvard University President Charles Eliot and New York World publisher
Joseph Pulitzer, who “realized that journalism had become a major social
force”2 and, in embracing the idea of college training for journalists, sought to
determine how colleges and universities might best prepare future journalists
to enter an occupation “recognized in every quarter as of the highest
importance in the political, social, and material progress of the country.’0 The
fact that this view of the press was held by leading college presidents and
publishers, who represented well-established schools and metropolitan
newspapers, has greatly influenced the writing of journalism history. The
names of Eliot and Pulitzer, for example, are prominent in any comprehensive
story of journalism education and, in fact, their contributions cannot be ignored.

3
At the same time, the new course at the Michigan Agricultural College, as

at a few similar schools before then, had been created not because the press
was viewed as a national social force but because there was a need for
providing information about MAC’S reason for being -- agriculture -- to the
people the school was trying to reach -- the farmers. Under that interpretation,
and consistent with the mission of the college, students who learned to gather
and report information could one day prepare reports for the College’s
agricultural experiment station, edit a farm magazine or publish a weekly
newspaper in a rural community, each reflective of the school’s land-grant
philosophy of turning out “educated farmers, educated gardeners, and
educated mechanics, and to create and disseminate a taste for improved
agriculture”4and the precept that "knowledge itself was regarded as having
little value unless applied to the immediate concerns and problems of the
workaday world.”5 Like Pulitzer and Eliot, professors at the agricultural
schools were aware that journalism had the capacity to perform a social good - to help farmers, for example. At the same time, the definition of journalism at
MAC lacked a significant element implicit to the understanding of journalism as
defined by Pulitzer and Eliot -- that the role of the newspaper was not merely to
provide information but to serve as a social critic, to recognize and take a
critical stance against societal wrongdoing.
Younger than the earliest schools offering journalism education, holding a
narrowly-defined purpose and removed, geographically, from the metropolitan
editors who might take up their cause, the agricultural colleges remained
outside the national debate on the value of classroom training for journalists.
While the early courses at Cornell and Pennsylvania, for example, showed
that journalism classes belonged in a university, the programs at Iowa State

4
and the Michigan Agricultural College proved that the subject could be

redefined to meet a somewhat different purpose. To understand the history of
the journalism program at Michigan State University, then, is to understand
both the events leading to the establishment of journalism courses in
American higher education and, from there, the special currents that led to the
first class in journalism instruction at MAC.
Traditionally, the history of journalism education in the United States
begins with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s creation of fifty journalism and printing
scholarships at Washington College in 1869.6 The course itself was meager.
Its purpose was to train youth in helping rebuild the post-Civil War South.7 Its
significance to journalism education is largely in its being the first, a way of
marking the beginnings of both an educational approach and the debates that
would follow. General Lee, the college president, had asked the board of
trustees that 50 scholarships be established “for young men intending to make
printing or journalism their profession." Although the board approved the
request and notices of instruction in journalism appeared in the Washington
College catalog until 1878, there is no evidence that any of the scholarships
were ever awarded.8Because no courses were ever taught, and because the
project was geared to fit only a specific time and place, the Lee proposal
should be remembered as merely having posed the idea of college training for
journalists, rather than establishing a model for others to follow.
The debate that followed in the 1870s, however, is worth noting, both in
content and because those entering the debate represented editors of major
newspapers of general circulation who viewed their papers, above all, as the
"major social force” described by Pulitzer. The most telling insights into the
views of those editors were gathered in the book Views and Interviews on

5
Journalism bv Charles F. Wingate, a New York newspaperman, published in

1875. In it, he interviewed 27 writers and editors on the subject of the work of
news reporters and editors and the matter of collegiate journalism training.
The responses give insight into the thinking of the day.
For example, when asked his opinion on the best method of newspaper
training, Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal replied:
“There is but one school of journalism and that is a well-educated newspaper
office. To be sure, this may be preceded by a certain special course of study in
political economy and belles-lettres. But versatility of talent and
accomplishment -- which, as a rule, is a drawback -- is in journalism a prime
necessity, and this cannot be acquired within the narrow compass of an
editorial college. I don’t believe a journalist can be made to order. I have tried
it under favorable conditions and failed; whilst, on the other hand, I have seen
some most unpromising beginners come out amazingly.*
Wingate asked Horace White, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune, what
he considered the proper training for a journalist. His answer: "I think that
journalists must train themselves by practice in the several departments of the
profession. It is the province of the superintending editor mainly to point out the
errors of his subordinates. This is all the necessary or useful training which a
young journalist can secure from his superior. The rest must be acquired
through his own observation and experience. A superintending editor will, of
course, give general, but seldom detailed or minute, instructions to his
subordinates. The chief editors would come up through the forecastle. It is not
impossible that a successful chief editor should take his place from another
walk of life, without previous training in subordinate places, but I should always
think that his usefulness and success would have been much greater for such

6
training." As to whether a school of journalism was possible, White said: “I do

not think that there is room for a distinctive school of journalism, though such a
school is possible, just as a swimming school is possible. The ordinary
curriculum of colleges might be better adapted to the requirement of journalism
by adding to it the study of commerce and international law and, enlarging the
course of political economy.”’0
Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, was one of the few
metropolitan editors who favored professional education for journalists. The
education level of journalists entering the New York field, he said, had
improved during the 1870s over the previous decade. “I know the Tribune.
about which there has been a popular idea, once falsely attributed to its editor,
that ‘of all horned cattle he least like to see a college graduate in his office,’
there is scarcely a writer who is not a college graduate,” he said, “while,
indeed, two-thirds or more of its reporters are, to use the vague phrase, men of
liberal education.” Newspapers, he said, gave young reporters good
journalistic training, “but we shall see the time when the strictly professional
education of journalists will be far better than it is now.”11
More important than an editorial endorsement, the support of journalism
education by Cornell University President Andrew Dickson White gave the
movement credibility at a time when it needed the backing of a national figure.
White said that his own “natural inclination should have been toward
journalism” but that, at that time, “men did not prepare for it; they drifted into it.”12
Instead of merely advocating courses, he oversaw creation of a two-year
“certificate in journalism," the nation’s first.13Although records show that only
one such certificate was granted (in 1876), the idea created “a minor
phenomenon,”14somewhat as Lee’s had, among practitioners and professors.

7
Because the program produced a graduate, and because its content

reflected the prevalent attitude of the day -- journalism as a social and political
force whose study should require an understanding of those forces -- the
Cornell program marked the beginning of journalism education in the United
States. The Cornell certificate program, while offering no “special course” in
journalism, required students to learn “the art of printing” under “the Director of
the University Press to such an extent that they will be able to take charge of an
office and do book and job work by themselves.”15The program, however
small, was a building block in the history of journalism education.
As other journalism courses began to take shape, in a variety of
universities and within a variety of departments, they shared the Cornell idea.
That is, journalism, while taught as a “practical” subject, belonged in an
academic setting among courses that would help future journalists understand
newspapers, society and the relationship between the two. Further, former
newspaper reporters and editors developed those courses, often preceded by
the public support of a college or university president.
David Russell McAnally, for example, an English professor who had written
for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. taught a History of Journalism course at the
University of Missouri, the first attempt at “a systematic presentation of the
growth and development in that field."16
The first journalism course at the University of Michigan, though taught by
a rhetorician, had the support of a former newspaper editor, President James B.
Angell. “If I have had any success in life,” Angell said, “it is due to my
experiences while editing, for several years, a daily newspaper. It makes a
man a hard worker. It makes a man a minute man -- always ready. It teaches
him simplicity, directness and compactness, all very very useful in his after

8

life.”17
Fred Newton Scott, a former reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tauaht
Rapid Writing in the Department of Rhetoric in 1890, a course “open only to
such as receive special permission.”18 By 1910, the university offered
“general” and “special” courses in newspaper training and, using terminology
similar to that of Cornell, awarded “a special certificate” to any student who,
while meeting the requirements for the bachelor’s degree, completed one of
those courses.19
The first curriculum in journalism, at the University of Pennsylvania in
1893, was created through the efforts of two newspaper editors, Eugene Camp
and Joseph French Johnson. Camp, a member of the editorial staff of the
Philadelphia Times, inspired the series of courses through an address,
“Journalists, Born or Made?” delivered to the Alumni Association of
Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance . In it, Camp outlined attempts to
give instruction in journalism in the colleges and questioned whether such
efforts could be beneficial, asking: “Granting ability and aptitude, can oral and
written instruction accomplish as much for the future journalist, as for the future
lawyer, doctor or divine? If the learner knows ideas when he sees them, can
he as well be taught the selection of those that will combine in the making of a
good newspaper or magazine, as those that will argue well to a jury, act well on
the sick, or preach well to a congregation?"20
Camp’s presentation, and his request that such a program be adopted at
the Wharton School of Finance, led to the establishment of the curriculum and
to the “convincing evidence of the value of the undertaking.”21To implement the
plan, the university hired Joseph French Johnson, an editor with the Chicago
Tribune. Camp’s approach was not one of training students fully for newspaper

9
work but to give training that would be useful in newspaper offices. He

preferred to call his program “courses for journalism,” saying that, although he
favored the idea, neither the University of Pennsylvania nor the press was
ready for a “school” of journalism.22
The placement of journalism within a business school was due to Camp’s
call for “the professionalization of journalism.” Wharton was a professional
school. Further, the university authorities “had very little in the form of concrete
curricula in journalism” to determine where several journalism courses might
best be placed.23 Though part of a business program, the curriculum followed
the traditional theme of newspapers as a social and political force. That is,
Camp chose a former editor of a major newspaper, rather than a publisher or
business manager, to conduct the program. Furthermore, the University of
Pennsylvania, through its "practice” course, was the first school to utilize a city,
Philadelphia, as a news laboratory in which students handled assignments
regarding university functions and city politics.24
During that same period, the 1890s, the movement for journalism
education gained momentum elsewhere as the universities of Iowa, Indiana
and Nebraska offered news writing through their English Departments.25 Like
most previous courses at other schools, the new ones were single offerings
lodged within established departments.
As yet, there had been no serious talk of a journalism "school.” That
changed in 1903, however, when Joseph Pulitzer not only talked about a
school of journalism but announced his plans to contribute two million dollars
to establish one at Columbia University.28
Specific plans for a new school aside, the names “Pulitzer" and
“Columbia” symbolized a combination of power and prestige in the newspaper

10
and academic worlds of the early 1900s. At a time when newspapers were,

indeed, among the strongest social and political forces of the era -- as
reporters, interpreters and critics -- Pulitzer had learned to read and direct
those forces in building his publishing empire. And at a time when study in a
diverse and respected university curriculum, in concert with newly-created
journalism courses, had emerged as the way for future journalists to better
comprehend those forces, Columbia, an Ivy League school located in
America’s largest city, was an ideal setting to do just that.
Pulitzer, in fact, made that point in announcing that the school would
provide new courses in journalism techniques in addition to classes already
being offered by the university.
“If the undergraduate and graduate courses in literature, in history, in
political and economic science, and in other subjects which are of especial
importance to journalists, shall be coordinated and developed with the special
purpose of training men for journalism,” he said, “and if these courses shall be
supplemented, as is proposed, by such technical instruction in purely
professional matters as may wisely be undertaken by the University, there is no
reason to doubt that the new school will amply justify itself."27
His concern about the proper academic direction of the school became
immediately apparent with the naming of an advisory board. Those appointed
to that eight-member board included Harvard University President Charles W.
Eliot and former Cornell University President Andrew Dickson White who had
overseen creation of journalism’s first “certificate” program nearly three
decades before.28
Eliot had long advocated college training for those in the “intellectual
professions.” In his view, most people “engaged in the intellectual professions

11
-- law, medicine, journalism, science, public service, industrial leadership --

were not liberally educated.”29 Part of the reason, he believed, was “the
antiquated state” of the school and college curricula. “When institutions of
learning cut themselves off from the sympathy and support of large numbers of
men whose lives are intellectual," he said, “but refusing to recognize as liberal
arts and disciplinary studies languages, literatures, and sciences which seem
to these men as important as any which the institutions cultivate, they inflict a
gratuitous injury both on themselves and on the country which they should
serve.”30
Despite Eliot’s interest in journalism education, no journalism curriculum
emerged at Harvard. After studying the Pulitzer plan for training newspaper
workers, just prior to the establishment of the school at Columbia, Eliot
informed a Pulitzer associate that Harvard would make "profitable use" of any
endowment offered for the creation of a journalism program. “If the sum would
be used here at Harvard University,” he said, “the project would have the
advantage of numerous courses appropriate for young men who mean to be
journalists which are already given at the University every year -- such for
instance, as courses on recent history, on the history of English, on
government, jurisprudence, diplomacy, sociology, finance, statistics,
economics, ethics, psychology, the history of art, and the principles of design."
When the Pulitzer gift was announced four months later, Eliot said that it
seemed to him that “Mr. Pulitzer came to the right conclusion, under the
circumstances, when he decided to give his great endowment to Columbia
University.'01
The journalism courses listed for the Pulitzer School included Newspaper
Administration, Newspaper Manufacture, The Law of Journalism, Ethics of

12
Journalism, History of Journalism and The Literary Form of Newspapers.

Significant, too, were the courses Pulitzer chose not to include in the proposed
curriculum. Missing were classes in advertising, business management or
circulation. One of the leading newspaper financiers of the day, Pulitzer
nevertheless believed that a journalism school was a place for idealism and,
as such, should be restricted to the theory and practice of the newsroom.32
Pulitzer’s idea that journalism education should include study of the press
and society, rather than merely offering technical training, received both high
praise and criticism from the nation’s editors. An editorial in the Outlook a
week after Pulitzer’s announcement called the proposed undertaking “one of
the most interesting educational experiments of our time.” Further, the
magazine stated, “that the Columbia School of Journalism will in time have a
perceptible influence on the press of the country as regards dignity, breadth of
view, and thoroughness of method can hardly be doubted.’03
Some critics used the announcement to refuel long-held beliefs against
journalism education of any kind. Others who had generally opposed such
education, however, endorsed the move, largely out of respect for the man and
the university.
In the North American Review for March 1904 Horace White, editor of the
Chicago Tribune, said: “In reply to questions addressed to me by the editors of
the World some months ago, I said that I could see no need of a School of
Journalism. I am, nevertheless, glad that Columbia University has been
supplied with the means to establish one.” 34
Pulitzer responded to his critics in the article “The College of Journalism”
which was published in the North American Review in May 1904. The teaching
of journalism, he said, was not merely a matter of teaching methods but of how

13
those methods could be best applied. Here, again, Pulitzer spoke of the

newsroom as a place for idealism. “Not to teach typesetting, not to explain the
methods of business management, not to reproduce with trivial variations the
course of a commercial college,” he said. “This is not university work. It needs
no endowment. It is the idea of and for the community, not commerce, not for
one’s self, but primarily for the public, that needs to be taught. The School of
Journalism is to be, in my conception, not only not commercial, but anti­
commercial. It is to exalt principle, knowledge, culture, at the expense of
business if need be. It is to set up ideals, to keep the counting-room in its
proper place, and to make the soul of the editor the soul of the paper.105
Although the School of Journalism did not open until the fall of 1912, a
year after Pulitzer’s death, the Pulitzer plan’s ambition and attempt to prove
the value of journalism education to editors and educators - provided impetus
for journalism programs elsewhere. Between 1903 and 1912, in fact, 19
schools initiated journalism instruction, compared with nine in the previous 34
years since General Lee had proposed the printing scholarships at
Washington College.36
Among them were several in the Middle West that taught journalistic skills
while requiring students to acquire a broad background through coursework in
many departments.
That principle was evident in the nation’s first four-year journalism
curriculum, offered in 1904 under the direction of Frank W. Scott, a former
newspaper editor, at the University of Illinois. In setting up the course of study,
Scott organized the offerings of his department and “correlated them
effectively with the educational opportunities afforded by the entire university.’07
A year later, journalism was introduced at the University of Wisconsin

14
where “the ideas outlined by Pulitzer in 1903 had steadily influenced

developments.” The plan, established by Willard G. Bleyer, of the English
Department, went beyond the Pulitzer plan in the commitment to university
courses outside journalism. That is, Bleyer saw journalism education “not
merely in terms of the techniques of writing -- though at first this was quite
naturally the main approach -- but increasingly in terms of historical, social, and
economic forces affecting the newspaper and magazine world.”38 For that
reason, the curriculum stressed the basic social sciences as well as
psychology, languages and literature.
The course at Missouri, which opened the nation’s first journalism school
in 1909, bore similarities to the programs at Illinois and Wisconsin. Though far
removed from Joseph Pulitzer and the metropolitan setting of which the New
York World and Columbia University were a part, the school established by
Dean Walter Williams, a former newspaper editor, shared with Pulitzer the idea
that a good journalist must understand not only the craft of journalism but the
society in which it is to be applied. The distinctive feature of the school was its
use of the laboratory method, an approach that attempted to simulate the
newsroom in the classroom while offering courses in news reporting and news
editing.”39
At the University of Michigan, meanwhile, students and alumni, aware of
the Pulitzer plan and the school at Missouri, called for an expansion of the
journalism program which, over the years, had consisted of a single course
supplemented by credit received for work on the student newspaper. The
Michigan Alumnus, in supporting a program, said that “there is no doubt but
that the whole field of journalism can be improved and the best way, of course,
is to give the man, entering upon this career, better training, a broader

15
education and higher ideals -- the legitimate function of the University."

The Michigan Board of Regents approved a “special course designed to fit
students for work in journalism” with the understanding that the move would not
cause additional expense. Instead of creating a school or journalism
department, the Board had allowed for a "co-ordination of courses” within the
Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts that would include eight hours
of “practical newspaper work” within curricula already being offered by the
Department.40 It answered critics who said the University had done nothing
new: [ the University of Michigan News-Letter 1 “A chance is afforded to pursue
those university courses which will give the prospective newspaper man some
idea of the perplexing questions of the time, and their foundation in history if
they happen to be questions of long standing.”41
By the time journalism education had arrived at the Michigan Agricultural
College, then, many other programs had already been attempted or
established. They ranged from the short-lived certificate program at Cornell
University to journalism schools at Missouri and Columbia. They included
Illinois and Wisconsin, which sought to integrate journalism courses with other
offerings while creating journalism departments, and the University of
Michigan which acknowledged the need for some journalism training while
believing that such a “special course” should remain within the Department of
Literature, Science, and the Arts.
What these programs shared was the belief that journalism skills -reporting, writing, editing - could be taught in the classroom as well as in the
newsroom, a topic of nationwide debate a few decades earlier. The schools
differed on how best to teach those skills - from eight hours of "practical
newspaper work” at Michigan to the introduction of a “laboratory” approach at

16
Missouri. At the same time, almost all programs established by 1910 shared

the view that those skills would one day be used to describe, interpret and
influence events to provide critical analysis for readers living in a complex
society and that, to be prepared, the future journalist would benefit most from
courses that would examine, as the Michigan News-Letter had said, “the
perplexing questions of the time.”
Against that background, it is not surprising that journalism historians have
emphasized the roles of Pulitzer and Pennsylvania and Missouri in journalism
education while overlooking the contributions of the agricultural colleges - and
not merely because Pulitzer, Pennsylvania and Missouri accounted for “firsts.”
That is, in contrast to Columbia and Pennsylvania, MAC, a small school
established outside the "frontier village”42 of Lansing and remote from
metropolitan newspapers, had no benefactors of nationwide reputation to
build, develop and publicize a program as Pulitzer had done in New York or
Camp had done in Philadelphia. More significant, to many, agricultural
journalism was merely a specialty outside the “major social force” of
metropolitan journalism whose practitioners focused upon a small slice of
society and whose work appeared on farm pages hidden inside a newspaper
or in magazines of interest to a relatively small number of readers.
To take that view, however, is to overlook another journalistic “social force”
of the nineteenth century -- the agricultural press -- and how its presence,
intertwined with the growth of the agricultural colleges, encouraged the birth
of several journalism programs which, in the twentieth century, would become
among the nation’s largest.
To begin, agricultural newspapers and magazines were more much than
specialty publications to the people of Michigan in the mid-nineteen century.

17
Community newspapers were devoted largely to political opinion and news

about internal improvements, such as new roads and post offices. “And then
the readers usually looked for a story each week, a poem, and a column on
agriculture."43
In 1840, Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, had a population of only 9,102.44
The vast majority of the state’s 212,267 residents lived in rural areas with 86.6
percent of those employed working in agriculture.45 For that reason, a single
column on agriculture, or even several columns, in a community newspaper
was hardly enough for Michigan farm families. So they turned to the
newspapers and magazines of the agricultural press.
An early textbook on agricultural journalism stated that agriculture is
comprised not merely of “the application of scientific practices to the tillage of
the soil and to the raising of livestock" but to economic matters and the social
and ethical problems of establishing a sound rural community and to the
adjustment of agriculture and related activities to modern civilization. “To
present all these things to all interested persons through newspapers and
periodicals constitutes the field of agricultural journalism."46
The birthdate of that field is usually given as April 2,1819, when John S.
Skinner established the American Farmer in Baltimore.47 By the middle of the
century, farm journals had begun to flourish. In 1850, more than thirty farm
periodicals were being published, having about 100,000 readers. Ten years
later, the publications had grown to between fifty and sixty, the circulation more
than a quarter of a million.48 The papers and magazines had succeeded
because they offered information and advice that farmers could not obtain
elsewhere. On a deeper level, they represented a specialty journalism,
speaking, as they did, to and for a rural population distant from the people and

18
papers of the city. In describing the special quality of the farm newspaper, a

Massachusetts agriculture official said: ‘There is in its pages a common ground
where all conflict ends; a platform upon which all can stand; a creed which all
can believe. And who does not know the inward peace and satisfaction with
which the unhappy voyager across the stormy surface of a partisan press finds
repose in these columns, which remind him of the calm and steady and
luxuriant promises of nature, of growing crops and of animals devoted to the
‘service of man?’ And more: Who does not know that whatever progress has
been made in agriculture has received its stimulus and direction from these
same columns?”49
The Michigan Farmer, established at Jackson in 1843, was typical of the
early farm journals. In it, the editor vowed to “traverse the State, and find out
what sort of farmers we have got here in Michigan” and "how they are getting
along under the difficulties and hardships and privations of a new country.’60
In addition to presenting the news, the magazine supported farm interests
through its editorials. Among the first was an editorial advocating, by “hook or
crook,” the establishment of an agricultural warehouse and seed store at
Detroit to accommodate farmers throughout the state.51
By 1850, the significance of the Michigan Farmer could be judged through
its number of readers. With a circulation of 4,000, the magazine enjoyed a
readership greater than the Detroit Tribune and the Detroit Free Press, the
state’s only daily newspapers, combined.52
The mix of farm news and editorials might be considered merely as good
journalism, a way of writing for an audience not adequately served by
newspapers of general circulation. At the same time, the agricultural press,
given the era and its audience, was something more than a sound journalistic

19
enterprise. For underlying the philosophy of the farm periodicals was a

commitment to scientific agriculture, to the “book farming” that farmers had so
often scorned.
The publications, significantly, invited reader participation that went far
beyond the traditional “Letters to the Editor” columns in metropolitan
newspapers and, in so doing, fulfilled an educational and social purpose
unique to the agricultural press.
The easiest way for farmers to obtain, and relay, information about
agricultural practices was by talking with neighbors, a method that often helped
perpetuate long-held superstitions. The columns of the farm press, meanwhile,
served as a much larger neighborhood. For there, readers were invited,
through their letters, to tell a larger audience about techniques that had best
served them on the farm. The approach led to a variety of opinions which, in
turn, led to lively debates. Those debates, combined with staff-written articles
on pertinent topics, introduced farmers to new ideas, made them aware of
new developments in agriculture and helped break down old superstitions.53
One of the most prevalent superstitions addressed in farm journals was the
wide-spread belief in the influence of the moon upon agriculture. The moon,
many farmers believed, had to be “right" to carry out successful activities from
the planting and harvesting of crops to the weaning of children. “Times without
number, farmers prepared the soil with utmost care, then ignored a favorable
season for planting, because it was 'not the right time of the moon.’" Debates
between moon-believers and nonbelievers were carried on in the press with
several writers citing extensive experiments to refute the old belief. Such
superstitions did not die easily, but when they did, the case for scientific
agriculture, and the credibility of the agricultural press, had taken a step

20

forward.54
Before agricultural schools were established, then, reading the farm
newspapers, and considering what they had to say, was, in itself, a form of
schooling. Before the farm press, "old farmers would not be convinced that
there was any value in book or newspaper farming. They believed in the old
dung-hill; they were ignorant of the compost heap.”55
Farm journalists stressed the importance of agricultural education. They
supported agricultural instruction in secondary schools and the creation of a
national school of agriculture. When the latter failed, the journals revived their
campaign for individual agricultural colleges in each state, of which the
Michigan Agricultural College, in 1855, was the first to be established.56
The term “scientific agriculture,” as presented in farm journals and by
others advocating schooling for farmers, was rather precisely defined.
Agriculture was to be based on science, and science was identified as
“knowledge duly classified and arranged” or as “systematized knowledge,
systematized truth.” Scientific farming, then, was “the science of understanding
nature in her varied forms” and the application of that knowledge to
agriculture.57
The agricultural press had supported that approach by urging farmers to
accept the principles advocated by agricultural leaders and by publicizing
individual experiments. In the early 1850s, the journals were joined in that
support by state agricultural societies, organized by state legislatures “for the
purpose of promoting the improvement of agriculture and its kindred arts.”58
Resistance to scientific agriculture was based on the belief that farming
could best be taught as it always had been, by practical farmers who had,
themselves, been successful on the land. The old saying that, ‘Books and

21
learning never made farmers,’ was often voiced by agriculturists who sneered

at the idea of regarding agriculture as a science.59 “He who undertakes to
teach it,” it was said, “ought to have acquired his qualifications by absolute
practice.” Those who favored schooling considered farming a profession like
medicine or law, though one “far more difficult to master, without a special
training for that work.”60
The idea of schooling for farmers, even after MAC was established in 1855,
was slow to gain acceptance -- by both the public at large and by the farmers
themselves -- because of the nature and the newness of the land-grant
philosophy and the way it differed from previous ideas of what a college
education should accomplish.
“The land-grant institutions originated out of the conviction that the lot of
the common people could be improved by seeking and applying knowledge to
the immediate and essential aspects of living. The classics and religion that
had previously dominated in the founding of colleges in the United States
offered little of relevance or of immediate benefit to this group."
“The clientele that was to be served by the new institutions did not demand
colleges dedicated to their needs; many resisted the idea that the efforts of an
educational institution could be beneficial to farmers and the rural population.
In fact, the land-grant college experiment stations and extension activities
could immediately benefit only those who accepted and used them. And that
group was but a fraction of the total. Not infrequently, however, the changes
made by the progressive farmer were later adopted by others. Successful
examples of new practices attract attention and emulation.”61
Although a course in the subject was not part of the curriculum, the
significance of journalism in the college’s early years should not be

22

overlooked. Indeed, MAC officials understood the social and political roles of
the press at least as well as the presidents and professors of the more wellestablished colleges who, in debating the merits of journalism education,
would often describe those roles in idealized terms. More than that, MAC
presidents knew the value of having the press as an ally and, while they
seldom spoke of journalistic principles and aims, they clearly understood, in
practical ways, how to direct the influence of newspapers and magazines to
support the aims of their college.
An understanding of the agricultural press - which supported education
for farmers and was read by the people the college was trying to reach - was,
in fact, vital to the early presidents of MAC. That the school’s first president,
Joseph Williams, possessed that understanding, and an appreciation for
journalism, is evident from his background. Earlier in his career, Williams had
founded and edited the Toledo Blade and, in 1853, in a letter reflecting upon
his years with the newspaper, he had looked to the future, saying: “I think
editorialism will become a profession.”62
Williams, knowing the importance of editorial support for what would lead
to the Morrill Act of 1862, and the granting of land to agricultural colleges,
“composed a circular, hundreds of which were addressed and mailed by
students, asking editors to support the Morrill bill and pointing to the success of
agricultural colleges in Europe, in Michigan, and to the plans in eight other
states. Many responded with editorials and lengthy extracts. When Justin S.
Morrill delivered his one address in support of the bill, he reminded his
colleagues of what they perhaps knew as well as he: “that there was an
agricultural college in ‘Michigan, liberally supported by the State, in the full
tide of successful experiment.”63

23
Since no journalism courses were being offered in any college or

university in the early 1880s, there were no models to suggest what a college
journalism program might or should be. That the Michigan Agricultural College
chose the direction it did was not due to the events at other schools, or within
MAC itself, but to the passage of state and federal laws.
The first, passed by the Michigan Legislature in May 1885, required MAC
professors to share results of their experiments with farmers of the state and, in
so doing, helped encourage the cause of journalism at the College. The law
authorized the State Board of Agriculture, the governing body of the Michigan
Agricultural College, "to provide from time to time in bulletin form, for
dissemination among the people of this State, and through the medium of the
public press the results of experiments made in any of the different
departments of the agricultural college, and such other information that they
may deem of sufficient importance to require it to come to the immediate
knowledge of the farmers and horticulturists of the State."64
The first publication issued under that act, written by R.E. Kedzie of the
Chemical Department, told of the planting of early amber sorghum in plots
throughout the state “to test the sugar producing and forage properties."65
Earlier experiments at MAC had sought a sugar or sweetening crop that could
be grown in Michigan, in response to a state sugar shortage during the Civil
War.
In a sense, those bulletins were an extension of the articles the farmers
had written years before for the agricultural press, articles that had provided
forums on the best methods for planting crops or raising livestock. This time,
however, instead of offering sometimes conflicting anecdotal evidence as the
farmers had done, the articles were based upon scientific experiments, and as

24
their results assisted the citizens of Michigan, they assisted, too, the reputation

of the College that produced them. In requiring the College to report through
the “public press," the law, as well, forged an official link between MAC and the
newspapers of the state. Although the law did not lead directly to classroom
journalism, it made College officials aware of the practical value of journalists
who might prepare those bulletins for distribution and, at the other end, who
might place and interpret them in newspapers to the best advantage of the
College.
The process was accelerated at MAC, and at other agricultural schools, two
years later with the passage of The Hatch Act, a federal law that granted funds
to establish agricultural experiment stations in each state and required “that
bulletins or reports of progress shall be published at said stations at least once
in three months, one copy of which shall be sent to each newspaper in the
States or Territories in which they are respectively located.’66 The infusion
of additional money into the MAC budget meant the expansion of experimental
programs that had been carried out for twenty years and the publishing of
increasing numbers of bulletins. By 1889, College station bulletins had a
circuiation of 4,500 copies. Further, the scnoors annuai report to the State
Board of Agriculture stated, “some of the leading newspapers of Michigan and
other states reprint the most important parts of our bulletins, and so give them a
very wide circulation.”67
The mere printing of bulletins, however, was not sufficient if MAC hoped to
reach out to Michigan farmers. For rural American life in the late 1800s was a
difficult life with problems often described in dramatic or graphic terms.
Some commentators pointed to the “scores of abandoned farms” and
“hundreds of dilapidated houses” while others complained that farmhouses

25
had become “too often nurseries of morbid thoughts and brooding,

monotonous sentiment that distort and often madden the mind."68
“Indeed, the high incidence of dissatisfaction, even insanity, among farm
families; the abundance of abandoned farms; the difficulty in keeping children
from going to the city; and the lack of esteem accorded tillers of the soil, as well
as the inability of many farmers to earn an adequate income, were each offered
frequently as testimony to the distressing state of America’s yeomen."69
Field work was difficult, the methods primitive. Into the 1880s the “greater
part of the grain raised in Michigan” was “harvested with a cradle, and grass
was cut largely with the scythe.”70
For a college trying to educate farmers throughout Michigan, the
challenge was to relay the information that would help ease the “distressing
state" which those farmers faced in their daily lives. To do so, MAC had to first
pierce the isolation that set rural communities apart from the cities, from each
other and, most significantly, from the school that was attempting to help. That
the Michigan Agricultural College was aware of the challenge was evident in
the words of President Theophilus Abbot.
“Farmers are isolated,” he said. “There is noi that sharp action of mind
upon mind which disciplines to quick perception and logical thought the
artisans of a major city. Information, improvements, reach them more slowly
than other industrial classes."71
That isolation could be measured, in part, in the number, and nature, of
Michigan’s roads. During the 1880s, the “usual means of locomotion besides
the rail” was the horse team and wagon. “Ox teams were still common on
farms and highways” and, in general, travel was “confined to a limited area.”72
As late as 1905, in fact, while the state had approximately 68,000 miles of

26
public wagon roads -- simply dirt roads -- only 245 miles were listed as

macadam roads, the most advanced surfaced road of the day. And despite the
diligence of local officials, “the roads throughout the state generally became
impassable during the rainy and wet periods in the fall and the spring.”73
Communication was slowed, too, by limited postal service. Before rural
free delivery, for example, the farmer received mail only by calling at the closest
post office, often several miles distant. When rural free delivery was started in
Michigan in 1896, the village of Climax in Kalamazoo County was the
departure point for the two carriers, one with horse and buggy, the other a
bicycle.74 Even then, it took the farmers a while to use the service. Some
mornings either carrier could “stuff all the mail for his route in his coat pocket.”
“Sometimes there were less than a dozen letters. Hardly a farmer took a daily
paper.”75
In the late nineteenth century, then, it had become clear that MAC needed
to develop new approaches if it was to become a major force in agricultural
change and improvement. “Classroom instruction offered to the relatively few
farm boys who came to the campuses would not by itself give the [agricultural]
colleges ihe role ihai ihey wanted. The schools needed to establish a close,
functional relationship with adult farmers.”78
The farmers’ institute provided a means of doing so. MAC was, in fact, the
first land-grant school to develop a system of institutes in essentially the form
that would continue into the twentieth century. The institutes brought together
farmers and faculty in Michigan communities for speeches, discussions and
exhibits aimed at furthering the cause of agriculture.
During the first institute week, held in six communities in January, 1876,
Allegan farmers were invited to travel to town with fruit and grain to exhibit and

27
were promised “gratuitous accommodations for as many as possible in private

homes, and reduced rates at the hotels for the overflow.” Events included a
talk about “swamp muck" and speeches entitled “Shall Farmers Keep Bees?"
and “Long-wooled Sheep.”77
Significantly, the sessions featured, too, a talk by Dr. Frank Kedzie on
lightning rods, a topic that illustrated how isolation and a lack of information
had made the farmers vulnerable to “ humbuggery.” For “the greatest of all
forms of humbuggery that the rural dwellers ever experienced...was that
connected with the lightning rod.”70 Lightning frightened farmers since they did
not understand it, and losses to property and life had been numerous and
heavy. If the door-to-door peddler were allowed to tell his story “he would
surely convince most farmers that they lived in imminent danger, and even
though the buildings had safely stood for years without the lightning rods, that
fact in itself would make the whole area a harvest field for the rodders.” Once
they persuaded the farmers to have them installed, their next move was to sell
an expensive kind, usually selected from a display featuring several types of
highly ornamented forms “with fancy points, glass insulators, and rods that
were square, twisted or triangular in shape.”"
Dr. Kedzie, in his address at the institute, exhibited a collection of such
rods, saying that “a blacksmith could make a rod that would be more effective
and much less expensive than the patent ones which confidence men foisted
upon unsuspecting farmers.”80 An editor called Kedzie’s presentation “a
sprightly talk on his crooked subject."81
Through the years, the institute became an increasingly important way for
MAC to establish and maintain close contact with farmers. Although faculty
members were essentially providing information, much as they did through the

28
experiment station bulletins, they approached the task with a missionary zeal,

as reflected in a report on the 1896 institutes.
That year, as in others, institutes were held in January during MAC’S threemonth winter break. As the students took their vacations, which for most meant
doing farm work or teaching in rural schools, the College faculty traveled to
institutes throughout Michigan, “like a well-trained army at the signal for battle,
without a balk and without a murmur” ready to meet 'the duties of the hour with
readiness, tact, and effect.”
“The college walks are deserted and the halls are silent.” The MAC Record
said, “but all over this broad state our men are at work and the cause of
agricultural education is advancing with great strides. It is a great Agricultural
College extension movement -- this institute work -- and as such our hearts are
in it.”82
Overall, however, the MAC information effort was not geared to the farmers
alone. Although the results of faculty experiments, as reported in bulletins,
helped the Michigan Agricultural College strengthen its ties with the press,
school officials were concerned that editors in the state’s largest cities still did
not understand the purpose and value of the College. And a better
understanding, it was believed, would lead to more stories about MAC and
more favorable editorials in the state’s largest, most influential newspapers.
Further, that understanding was becoming increasingly important to a college
that had begun offering a non-agricultural major - mechanics - in a state that
was becoming increasingly urban. By 1890, for example, Detroit’s population
had risen to 205,876, more than 20 times what it had been a half century
earlier. The need to build better relations with newspapers in Michigan was, in
fact, reflected in the recommendations of a faculty committee established in

29
1895 “to carefully inquire into the causes which have contributed to the

seeming lack of popularity of our College, with the class of people in whose
special interest it was organized by the State."63
While the MAC enrollment had more than doubled in the decade since
1885, from 173 to 398, the committee pointed out that most of that increase was
due to the newly-created mechanics course while the numbers of students in
the agriculture course had remained about the same.
One of several reasons given by the committee for the failure of that course
to grow was "antagonism of the press,” particularly by "some of the influential
papers of the State.”84 The committee blamed the matter on “ignorance of what
the College is and what it is doing,” saying “the cases where an editor has
visited the College and become acquainted with the spirit here, and afterwards
attacked the institution are rare indeed.”85 As a remedy, members suggested
that the College advertise extensively as part of its effort to “carry the school to
the people, tell them where we are, what our equipment is, and what we can do
for the farmer and mechanic.”86
The committee submitted its report to the State Board of Agriculture in
September 1895 at the beginning of the presidency of Jonathan L. Snyder.
Because it occurred when MAC officials, through the success of station
bulletins and the perceived harm of “antagonistic” stories, had become more
fully aware of the power of the press, and because it led to the recruitment of
Thomas C. Blaisdell, who taught the first journalism course, the hiring of
Snyder marked the beginning of journalism education at the Michigan
Agricultural College.
Although his previous teaching and administrative experience had been
limited to grade schools and high schools, Snyder took quickly to his role of

30
promoting the College. Snyder realized that the explanation of College

programs and purposes could not be entrusted merely to MAC presidents who
might not know the most effective way to present information to the press. Nor
could MAC officials assume that, given the uniqueness and growing diversity of
the school, journalists on Michigan community newspapers would necessarily
understand the nature of the College or the substance of the disciplines -- in
particular, agriculture -- it was attempting to teach. Instead, he sought to put
together several initiatives into a program that helped promote the College
over a period of several administrations. It was an effort that included creation
of a promotional newspaper, attempts to build strong and lasting relationships
with the Michigan press -- both the agricultural and the community publications
-- and, finally, establishment of the school’s first journalism course.
A biweekly newspaper, the MAC Record, which began publication in
1896, reported on the activities of MAC students, faculty and alumni. More
important, the paper published stories and editorials that spoke of the
advantages of attending the school. It thus served as a way to recruit future
students from Michigan farms. One such article, for example, stated that the
agricultural course, “while giving a splendid knowledge of scientific and
practical agriculture, at the same time gives a broad, general training.”87 An
1898 article, “What Have the Agricultural Colleges Done for the Farmers?”
mentioned journalism when it told of MAC men who had “greatly improved the
quality of agricultural journals by acting as editors, contributors or making
bulletins for the papers to use.”88 At times, special issues, highlighting each
department, were printed and sent to as many as “5,000 young people
throughout the state, many of whom are high school seniors.”89 Another
successful promotional item was the annual MAC calendar, giving “views of

31
buildings, landscapes, laboratories, interior views of laboratories, etc.” which

was distributed “to all the high schools of the State, alumni, newspapers, State
officers, country ministers, and the leading agriculturists of the State.” The
results from that “source of advertising” were “very satisfactory.’80
During the Snyder administration MAC grew. When journalism was offered
for the first time, the College had evolved into four divisions: agriculture,
engineering, home economics and science and letters. The home economics
division had emerged from the women’s course, created in 1896. That course,
in fact, included the first graphic arts class at MAC, an offering in “reproductive
processes in the arts” which featured instruction in “all kinds of process
engraving such as half-tone, zinc etching, photogravure, chalk engraving (for
rapid newspaper work.)”91
At the same time, student enrollment continued to grow, in 1904 passing
1,000 and by 1910 numbering 1.497.92
Though still an agricultural college in name, MAC, by the end of the
century, widened its appeal beyond the sons of farmers. The creation of the
women’s course, President Snyder said, was "but another step in the
recognition of the truth that henceforward the Michigan Agricultural College
must stand for the education of the whole mass of people.” A decrease in the
rural population in many areas of Michigan and an increasing population in the
cities showed MAC administrators that “there is a growing industrial or
mechanical class, while the class upon which the College had heretofore
placed its entire dependence for moral support is actually decreasing in
numbers.”93
Recruitment relied on a more general approach, one that was reflected in
Snyder’s article in an 1896 issue of the MAC Record. “The education which

32
perhaps served your fathers and mothers to good purpose will fall far short in

meeting your needs,” he told prospective students. “You are living under
different conditions and in a different age. You can readily see that the time is
fast approaching in this country when the person who can simply work with his
hands will have a very poor show, but for the educated farmer and the
educated mechanic there never were such bright prospects as there are at
present.”94
The college, with the addition of new courses, had not changed the plan
“mapped out at its foundation, viz., the fostering of industrial education."95 Such
education, though, was considered to cover a variety of occupations, as
evidenced through the creation of the engineering and home economics
programs.
The topic of journalism, too, appeared with greater frequency in College
publications as the years progressed. The MAC Record, for example, noted
campus visits of journalists as when “the class in stock breeding listened to
two very interesting talks by Mr. H.H. Mack, market reporter for the Detroit Free
Press and the Michigan Farmer."96 College administrators also appreciated,
and acknowledged, favorable publicity by the Michigan Farmer. On one
occasion, following the publication of several articles about the school, The
MAC Record noted: “Since June 12, the Michigan Farmer has devoted
considerable of its valuable space to the friendly discussion of topics
connected with the agricultural college and to the presentation of articles by
professors and graduates of the college. This friendly relationship between the
farmer and the college should be fostered. Both are working for the
advancement of the same class of people and they should work together in
harmony.’87

33
The enduring relationship between the College and the agricultural press,

and the school’s continuing commitment to “the farmer,” was a strong signal
that a college journalism course, when offered, would focus upon farm
journalism. Still, of growing concern to a school seeking to widen its scope,
and increase its enrollment, was its relationship with “the city press," a term the
MAC Record employed when referring to newspapers in large towns, like
Lansing or Detroit. A series on the College by the State Republican, of
Lansing, for example, drew special praise. “We note with pleasure a plan of
the State Republican to make the people of our home city better acquainted
with the College and its departments,” the article stated. Pointing out that
relations between the school and the newspaper had improved, it continued:
“We heartily welcome any effort to draw the College and city into closer
sympathy, truer appreciation the one of the other, and we know of no influence
more potent and more direct to such an end than that of the city press. It is an
influence equally powerful both to attract and to repel; and the College
community, in the days that are happily past, has keenly felt an antagonism and
readiness to criticise harshly sometimes apparent in our home papers -- all the
more keenly, indeed, because they were our home papers. More recently we
have had to thank our city press for many courtesies and for practical
evidences of kindly consideration.”88
Universities like Pennsylvania, Columbia or Michigan did not need to court
the “city press.” They were located in or near metropolitan areas where the
schools were well-known. Jonathan Snyder, though, promoted MAC to
newspaper editors by inviting them to campus to, in the words of the faculty
committee, remove their “ignorance of the college and what it is doing.”
Significantly, he reached many editors, particularly those in smaller

34
communities, where the farmers lived, through the Michigan Press

Association, an organization that represented primarily the state’s weekly
newspapers.
Although MAC officials acknowledged occasional problems with the city
press, and recognized that the school also served an urban constituency, a
strong tie to the rural press was of greater importance to the College.
President Snyder, in fact, viewed the weekly papers as an extension of
the agricultural press, representing, as they did, the communities the College
was attempting to reach through its experiment station bulletins and where it
was likely to recruit students for its courses. A prominent industrial journalist,
too, had called the weekly newspaper “a co-ordinate educational force to the
agricultural school,” adding: ‘The newspaper goes to the homes, speaks its
lesson to every member of the families on the farm, every day or every week. It
is a friendly home visitor, bearing messages of all means of improvement, as
well as of the doings and attainments of friends and neighbors, and deals with
all the daily affairs of life. If it be a worthy newspaper, its mission and ever
present and accomplished service is to inform, instruct, please, encourage and
inspire. In brief, its mission is to give the news.”89
The most important campus visit by editors during the Snyder years, then,
was a March 1901 tour by members of the MPA, one that had not been on the
agenda of the editors’ annual convention.
Formed at Adrian in 1869, the Association had become the largest
organization of newspaper editors and publishers in the state. Although there
are no records to indicate that the Association promoted the idea of a college
course in journalism, one of its goals was to work to upgrade the profession.
As its statement of purpose said, “from this Association may and should result

35
that esprit de corps which will make us a brotherhood in fact, purge the “Fourth

Estate” -- so-called -- its somewhat Bohemian reputation, raise it to the full rank
of an honorable and honored profession, and make it in very deed a social, as
it is now a political, power in the State.”1” While news accounts of the MAC
visit do not indicate that journalism education was discussed, it may well have
been. For Association members were familiar with the teaching of journalism
in college, specifically, the course offered at the University of Michigan. The
Association meeting in Ann Arbor in 1891, in fact, included presentation of a
paper entitled “The printer-editor or collegiate-editor - which is the most
successful as a country publisher, and why?"101
In setting up the tour of MAC, Snyder, according to a story in the State
Republican, visited the state Supreme Court, where the Association was
conducting a session, and invited members to visit the College. “It was agreed
to adjourn at 3:30, and the president left to arrange for an extra [street] car to
carry the cargo of wit and wisdom to his institution,” the article said. The next
day, under the headline “State Press at MAC,” the paper reported: “The
Michigan Press Association and the MAC came together yesterday afternoon,
and the sound of the collision will reverberate for days throughout the
newspapers of Michigan."102
Editor J.E. Beal, of the Ann Arbor Courier, one of thirty-nine editors who took
the MAC tour, “spoke of the surprise and profit that had come to him and to
others as they began to realize the magnitude of the College and the work it is
doing for the state.”103 The MAC Record, which devoted three of its columns to
the event, quoted from a letter signed by Association officers which said, in
part: “All could not but be impressed with the magnitude of the institution, the
thoroughness of the various courses of instruction, and its great value to the

36
agricultural and educational interests of the state; and we urge upon the

farmers of Michigan the importance of giving this admirable institution their
hearty support and co-operation.”104
Ties between press associations and colleges, especially those seeking to
build journalism programs, were not unusual. “A close working-relationship
between newspaper organizations and schools of journalism” was frequent in
the early history of journalism instruction, “and a feeling of mutual responsibility
strengthened as the work became firmly established."105
As journalism education developed at other colleges over the next decade,
the discussion focused upon the Pulitzer program and upon similar efforts at
Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. Although Jonathan Snyder, a college
president, was probably aware of such developments, newspaper articles
make clear that journalism education at the Michigan Agricultural College was
headed another way -- in the direction the Michigan Press Association had
indirectly endorsed by stressing the connection between the school and “the
farmers of Michigan.”
As the decade continued, the MAC Record published other articles on
journalism, and on MAC graduates who had become journalists,

The MSC

Alumni Catalogue (1857-1930) and the MAC Record (1896-1915), in fact,
point out that most MAC graduates who worked in journalism were fulfilling the
roles of agricultural journalists, as opposed to “city press” journalists, even
before the first course was taught. Those records show that of 77 graduates
listed as holding journalism positions through the class of 1909, 46 had at one
time been employed by farm journals or Michigan weekly newspapers.
Nineteen others served as reporters or editors on daily newspapers, including
those in Chicago, Detroit and Boston, six worked for weeklies outside

37
Michigan and six for non-agricultural trade publications.

Regarding references to the type of journalism the school would eventually
offer, a Record storv on an address to the Farmers’ Club by Professor Thomas
Shaw in 1906 on “Agricultural Journalism" was most notable. More than giving
a speech stressing the importance of farm papers, Shaw also noted their
weaknesses, placing “the lack of men of practical experience as heads of the
departments, first; then their power to select strong assistants, second; and
third that the paper be well written.” He also spoke “strongly against the fact
that nearly all of the papers always lack space, and so good, but lengthy
articles are sadly mangled in an attempt to make them meaty.”106
But other agricultural colleges had already taken the lead. Iowa State
College, in 1905, was the first school to offer a course in agricultural journalism
after it had received a one thousand dollar grant from Chicago livestock
commissioner John Clay for “a course in the teaching of writing for the
agricultural press.”107 The University of Wisconsin, in 1909, divided its College
of Agriculture into eight departments, including a Department of Agricultural
Journalism.108 A year later, the Kansas Agricultural College initiated a
curriculum in agricultural journalism with courses in Gathering the News,
Journalism Practice, Copy Reading and Writing for Farm and City Papers.109
Just as the beginnings of journalism education had drawn support from
editors and publishers of metropolitan newspapers, a proposal for agricultural
journalism at the Michigan Agricultural College had its editorial supporters, too.
At MAC, the support came from editors of the agricultural press, mostly notably
those with the Orange Judd Farmer and the American Agriculturist. As to
purpose, the publication did not speak of journalism in abstract or idealized
terms but of a need for “practical" courses that would provide students with

38

“actual experience.”
In April 1909, the MAC Record acknowledged the trend toward courses in
agricultural journalism by reprinting an editorial that had appeared in the
Orange Judd Farmer, of which a 1903 MAC graduate was associate editor.
“The rapid development of the Agricultural press is giving rise to an increased
demand for men trained along journalistic lines, and at the same time with a
practical and theoretic knowledge of agriculture,” it said. “Now there are more
than 400 recognized agricultural papers, with a combined circulation of several
million. To furnish material for these journals requires a large quota of trained
writers and thinkers which the agricultural colleges should aim to supply.”
While pointing out that "so far MAC has made no special effort at teaching
journalism,” the article said that “many of its graduates are making good on the
editorial staffs of several of the leading agricultural papers" and “have done
much to raise the standard of agricultural journalism in this country.”’10
In its editorial stating that “Orange Judd Farmer would like to see the
(agricultural) college take up this work with vigor and give it a thorough tryout
the coming fall and winter,” the farm journal addressed many of the arguments
that the editors of metropolitan papers had met three decades earlier.
Specifically, the editorial said: “Another drawback has been the feeling of
many publishers that agricultural journalism cannot be taught in college, that
the office is the only place where an agricultural editor can be made. While this
is partly true, the colleges need not be discouraged. Engineers, lawyers,
preachers, doctors, are not made in college. They are simply given a start,
merely taught the general principles of their professions. Proficiency comes
only with experience.”
“Let the colleges put a competent man in charge of the course, let them

39
invite a few experienced newspaper men to lecture to the students. Give them

actual assignments, take them into a newspaper office and give them some
actual experience in the mechanical department. Agricultural journalism can
be taught in college. Oranae Judd Farmer believes this."
M.G. Kains, an 1895 MAC graduate and editor of the American
Agriculturist, also supported the teaching of agricultural journalism, saying
in a letter to the MAC Record: “My chief regrets in connection with my college
work, both at MAC and at Cornell University, are that I had no training in
journalism of any kind. What I learned was by tedious experience and a dreary
series of blunders. Doubtless had a course in journalism been given at the
college I might have taken it, because I had my nose pointed toward
experiment station and college work.”111
Kains said “a good course in agricultural journalism” was a “long step”
toward a job with a farm newspaper or magazine. “Doubtless the course in
journalism at MAC will furnish at least some of these opportunities, and
whether the student actually follows journalism as a profession or not, the
experience he should gain should be of considerable service to him, and a
thing much appreciated by any editor to whom he may send articles.”
The call for “practical" training was not unique to agricultural journalism.
Indeed, from Robert E. Lee to Joseph Pulitzer, the supporters of journalism
education called for the teaching of skills that would be useful to the
practitioners, whether in the print shop or the editorial room. The Pulitzer idea,
though, had struck a balance between two conflicting philosophies: “one which
called for a very ‘practical’ type, of training, and another which emphasized the
need for broad cultural programs including a minimum of technical subjects.”112
The MAC approach, while calling for practical subjects, combined journalistic

40
skills with the “knowledge of agriculture” mentioned in the Oranae Judd Farmer

article.
That approach was stressed in a January 13,1910, editorial in the
Holcad. the student newspaper. The editorial, which encompassed
engineering as well, may have prompted the establishment of the College’s
first course in agricultural journalism. Like the MAC administrators, the student
journalists viewed journalism as a practical way of helping farmers, rather
than, using the Pulitzer approach, as a social force to be harnessed and
understood.
“Agricultural and engineering journals have become a necessary part of
our education,” it said. “This is more true after our graduation than now. Then,
the technical journals will be our only means of keeping in touch with the
advancements in science. And then, we will be in touch with these periodicals
from another standpoint. We will be called upon to contribute to their columns.”
“How many of us will be in position to write clearly and interestingly about
some phase of our work? Will we feel the need of training along these lines?
A prominent man of our faculty who is an authority in this line declared that it
takes him five times as long to write an article for a magazine as it ought. He
also said that the hardest part of writing a scientific bulletin was to secure men
who could write well. Is there not room in our curriculum for a course in
technical journalism?”113
When “English 2k -- Agricultural Journalism” was offered in April, it met
standards that the Oranae Judd Farmer had set for such a course. That is, the
class included a lecture by an experienced editor and provided students with
“actual assignments.”
The course was described in the College catalog as: “Daily theme work

41
for a limited number of selected men especially interested in learning to

express in simple, effective English their idea concerning technical subjects.
Elective only after consultation with head of English department, juniors and
seniors, Agricultural course, two hours per week, spring term.”114
The instructor, Thomas C. Blaisdell, 42, chairman of the Department of
English and Modern Languages, had come to the Michigan Agricultural
College in 1906 from the Pittsburgh Normal School where he had taught
English. His friendship with President Snyder, whom he had met while he
taught high school and Snyder was an elementary school principal in
Allegheny, Pa.,115 had prompted an 1896 visit to the MAC campus during which
he gave a poetry reading.116
Blaisdell earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse
University and, in 1904, received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
Prior to coming to the Michigan Agricultural College, Blaisdell taught nine
years at the Pittsburgh Normal School. By 1910, he had authored five books
on English Composition.117
According to press and College reports, Blaisdell, in setting up the
journalism course, “outlined a plan of action” that offered “great practical
experience in all phases of the work."118 The experience included production
of “a type-written agricultural paper” -- called the Michigan Agriculturist - by the
class each week. Later in the term, the class had “the opportunity of editing the
department of horticulture for one of the issues of the American Cultivator
which is one of the leading agricultural journals in the country.”119The course
also included a study of farm journals and a lecture by I.R. Waterbury, editor of
the Michigan Farmer. The Waterbury talk focused upon “some of the
fundamental principles that govern writing for agricultural papers."120

42
In announcing the introduction of the course, the Holcad called the move

“another indication that MAC keeps up with the times,” adding: “It must be
realized that editors or writers cannot be made in a classroom, but the principle
which governs this line of work can be learned. One can learn how to write
correctly and entertainingly. That there is a demand for this kind of training was
manifested in the large number of applicants for this course. We are to be
congratulated upon the fact that our college is among the first to realize the
need of such training.”121
The MAC Record predicted that the class would “become in another year
or two one of the most practical courses in the college.”122
The 1909-10 report of the English Department, written by Blaisdell and
filed as part of the College’s annual report to the State Board of Agriculture,
was more limited in its praise, saying: “A course in agricultural journalism was
presented during the spring term. This is the first time that such a course has
been given in this institution. While the results obtained are far less satisfactory
than they will be another year, every member of the class felt that he had
received from the 2 hours per week given to the work as great a return as for
any other 2 hour course taken.”'23
Blaisdell taught agricultural journalism for two more years. In 1912, the
English Department purchased two typewriters for the journalism students, and
Blaisdell called the course “the most successful” course in agricultural
journalism “the department has yet presented.” Practical experience continued
to be stressed, and “almost every student in the class” sold “at good prices to
agricultural papers some of the work prepared for the class room."124
Later that same year, the Holcad printed an “Announcement," written by a
journalism student: ‘This issue has been edited by Dr. Blaisdell’s class in

43
agricultural journalism. The primary object has been to obtain practical

experience in the compiling of copy, and herewith we submit the results of our
first trial. The substance of this paper dwells mainly on agriculture, as our daily
experience is along that line, but we have tried to use all available news
representing the entire student body. The experience in editing this number
has been valuable. We hope that other classes will take advantage of the
same opportunity and try their luck in editing our student paper.”125
In addition to teaching the course each year, Blaisdell helped promote
journalism in another way by establishing the Penman Club, a student
organization “which rapidly sprang into prominence and which has a bright
future before it from the standpoint of obtaining brilliant speakers to come to the
college at frequent intervals, and of accomplishing great good for MAC through
its policies of boosting rather than knocking."126 In arranging for leading editors
and public officials to speak at MAC, those activities, far from attracting only
journalism students, often became campus-wide events.
In one instance, Governor Chase Osborn, who, as publisher of the Sault
Ste. Marie Times had visited the campus with the Michigan Press Association
in 1901, was a guest of the club in what was described as “the greatest Mass
Meeting ever in the history of the institution.”127 During a reception at the
Blaisdell residence after the speech, Osborn told the members that “no field
offers greater returns, both as to satisfaction of work accomplished and in a
financial way, than does the newspaper.” “The man who enters the field,
however,” he said, “must be a fighter, a teacher, a moralist, a leader, in order to
succeed.”128
Another time, the Penman invited Detroit News editor James
Schermerhorn, who addressed students in a "well filled” assembly room of the

44

agricultural building.120
While the purpose of other journalism programs was to help students
understand the social and political forces in society and, when appropriate,
report critically upon that society, a goal of agricultural journalism courses at
MAC was best expressed in an article on the Penman in the student yearbook
that said: “One policy laid down by the Penmen [sic] is to take advantage of
every opportunity to boost the oldest agricultural college in America ~ and the
best -- and, when absolutely necessary to print disparaging news, to write
stories in such a manner as to reflect minimum discredit upon the college.”130
By the time the Pulitzer School at Columbia University opened in 1912,
then, the Michigan Agricultural College had already joined a few dozen other
colleges and universities, large and small, in establishing a course in
journalism.
For the most part, the work of Pulitzer, Andrew Dickson White at Cornell
and Eugene Camp at Pennsylvania, among that of others, must be credited
with taking journalism education from the realm of debate in the mid-1870s to
the reality of the classroom four decades later. Using well-established
programs of liberal arts and social sciences as a base, the schools had found
ways to add courses teaching newspaper skills so that the future practitioners
would understand the complex institution - the press - and the society in
which those skills were to be applied.
Journalism at Iowa State, Kansas State and Michigan State did not spring
from the same roots as that at Cornell, Pennsylvania and Columbia.

MAC and

the other agricultural schools found in journalism another way to serve the
needs of the farmers -- by training writers well-versed in agriculture -- and, in so
doing, in carrying out the colleges’ land-grant missions. Journalism had

45
appeared at the agricultural schools after the debate on the value of

agricultural education, and the need for such colleges, had been resolved.
“Concession to the validity of agricultural education,” then, “was eventually
extended to the mechanic arts, to home and family living, and to other aspects
of human activity”131-- including the teaching of journalism.
One philosophy took a broad view of journalism, the other a specialized
approach. One was primarily the journalism of the city, the other of the small
town. Despite those differences, though, by 1912 each shared a commitment
to one of the nation’s newest academic fields. If the movement toward
classroom journalism had taken decades to reach that point, it would take
many more years to determine something more: whether the Columbias and
the MACs -- as their colleges and commitments might change -- would travel
paths that would bring them closer together or draw them even further apart.

A DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM

Between 1910 and 1935 the journalism program grew from a single
course to a Department of Journalism and Publications. The program
continued to serve the citizens of rural Michigan even while it redefined its role.
The first course, a class in agricultural journalism, was intended to educate
agricultural students who would, in turn, educate the farmer. From there,
journalism education at MAC evolved from being merely journalism for the
farmer to journalism for the small town. Most significant in that development
was the building of formal ties with the rural weekly press. A convention of
rural editors called on MAC to open a department of rural journalism (in 1918).
The establishment of an on-campus office in 1931 for the Michigan Press
Association, the representative of rural newspapers, made the commitment
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the arrangement as part of their effort to gather support in rural Michigan
through newspaper publicity for MAC’S expanding programs and mission.
Faced with the need to hire a new department chairman when department
chairman Albert H. Nelson died in 1935, the college confirmed Michigan
State’s rural journalism emphasis and promised its continuation by selecting
Albert A. Applegate from South Dakota State College, where the bulk of his
experience had been as a teacher of journalism, publicist for the school and
adviser to small-town editors in South Dakota.
46

47

During the four years following the departure of Thomas Blaisdell to Alma
College in 1912, the course he had taught -- agricultural journalism -remained the only journalism class at the Michigan Agricultural College. That
MAC continued to offer farm journalism, even as the Pulitzer School at
Columbia became a model for programs elsewhere, was due to its continuing,
primary role as an agricultural school.
It was a role reflected not only in the curriculum but in campus life as well.
For the 1,371 students enrolled in the fall of 1912, “recreational activities were
generally confined to lectures given by local ministers or faculty members and
to weekly debates.” “These were augmented at times by a musical recital or a
literary reading. Students were invited occasionally to the homes of faculty
members. Picnics, husking bees, and the like were other forms of planned
recreation. The rural influence was evide nt.^
The following spring, 83 of the school’s 165 graduates earned degrees
from the College’s agricultural division, as opposed to 51 from the engineering
division.133 In 1914, President Jonathan Snyder stressed that “in this institution
the agricultural students very much outnumber the engineering students,"
adding that “the opposite is true in the land-grant colleges in our neighboring
states -- Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana."134
The 1914 entering class of 605 students included 233 (38.5 percent) who
listed their father’s occupation as “farmer” with “merchant" second at 69. Three

48
students listed “editor” and three others “printer.”135

As journalism education entered the agricultural colleges, the demand for
additional courses in agricultural journalism soon followed. By 1914, the
curriculum at Iowa State College, the birthplace of agricultural journalism,
listed courses in agricultural advertising, newspaper management, home
economics journalism, journalism practice and engineering journalism
practice.136 It is not surprising, then, that editorials in the MAC student
newspaper called for more courses even as the first journalism class ever
offered at the school was still being taught. In an editorial in the spring of 1910,
the editors of the Holcad. while praising the new course in agricultural
journalism, called for a writing class where “all technical subjects are taught,”
with emphasis on engineering. “Engineering journalism,” the editorial said,
“while not of such a broad and popular scope is nevertheless as important as
agricultural journalism. The graduates of the engineering course will be called
upon to express opinions in writing as often as will the graduates of the
agricultural courses.”137
That fall, an editorial in the Holcad offered a “personal query” as to whether
it might be “both expedient and beneficial to establish a course in printing at
MAC." The editorial pointed out that “each year thousands of bulletins are
issued by the College, two papers are issued weekly and hundreds of dollars’
worth of other printing has to be sent outside.” Such a course, it said, would fill
a paramount need.138There is no evidence to suggest how, or whether, College
officials responded to The Holcad call for an expanded journalism program.
Through its one course, the MAC program was following the strategy set by
other agricultural colleges. That is, the class in agricultural journalism was
attempting to demonstrate that it added "to the effectiveness of training in

49
English” in the agricultural schools, as similar courses at Iowa State College

had done, while proving that “writing for the press” may be taught in a
classroom.”139
MAC’S lone journalism course grew in popularity. An article in the MAC
Record in the spring of 1915, stated that the course, offered annually to a
maximum of ten students, would, beginning the next autumn, be taught each
term. The same article mentioned that “the best farm papers in the U.S.” were
accepting stories produced in the class “with seeming delight” and that
students who have taken the course think that it is one of the best minor
courses offered in the junior and senior years.”140 By then, the course
description had been broadened slightly. Mention of writing on technical
subjects was gone, replaced by objectives that suggested the course was
moving toward general newswriting: “To inspire a keen interest in clean and
attractive journalism, to develop the faculties of observation and discrimination
in journalistic value and to afford by extensive practice a rather wide field for
practical writing according to the special tastes and qualifications of each
student.”141
A report by the Department of English and Modern Languages, meanwhile,
said the department was making “no attempt to make the course a broad
training" in the various phases of agricultural journalism but a class limited “to
the preparation of special articles for the agricultural press." That is, the
department was prepared to continue doing what it did best -- to teach writing -but was not yet prepared to offer, either in a course or a curriculum, topics like
publicity or newspaper management that were being taught at Iowa State. The
MAC course was intended to lead students “to better thinking, to better writing
and to a sane and wholesome attitude toward the English language and the

50
principles of composition as the tools of expression.” While noting that the time

allotted to the class, even if taught three times a year, was still "much below that
given to similar work in several other agricultural colleges,” the department
looked to a time when it might “employ an instructor whose training and
experience have given him very exceptional qualifications for the teaching of
agricultural journalism.”142
Those statements point out that the course -- in leading to “better thinking,
better writing” -- had met standards applied to all English courses. Though
part of a new academic field, the offering in agricultural journalism, the report
assured college administrators, required students to respect “the English
language and the principles of composition" as other department courses were
required to do. That the department looked ahead to a time when it might hire
a person of “very exceptional qualifications” to teach the course is evidence
that it considered agricultural journalism a part of its standard offerings. The
department’s cautious approach to finding a proper instructor for agricultural
journalism merely reflected its practice in hiring any instructor for the
department. “As it is necessary that nearly all teachers of English be drawn
from institutions whose ideals are much different from those of a land-grant
college,” a Department report said, “changes in the staff of the English
Department are of serious consequence. When new teachers are employed,
they must be assimilated to the purpose, the method and the ideals of the
institution.”143 In the same way, the department would be best served by hiring a
journalism instructor who was aware of the differences between a program in
agricultural journalism, with its primary purpose of serving the farmer, and the
programs at Columbia, Michigan and other schools that took the broader, more
general view of newspapers and magazines as critics and shapers of social

51

and political forces.
Such a person would one day help MAC emulate the expanded offerings of
“several other agricultural colleges,” a reference to schools such as the Iowa
State College, which had created a Department of Agricultural Journalism in
1906144 or the University of Wisconsin which established a similar department
in 1909.145
Although journalism at MAC was about to change, the approach was not
dictated by suggestions for new courses from the Holcad editorial writers nor
even through the initiative of the Department of English and Modern
Languages. Rather, change came with the hiring of the school’s first publicity
officer in 1917.
The importance of supplying information to the people of rural Michigan on
a regular basis through their community newspapers was hardly a new idea.
Indeed, President Snyder showed he knew the potential value of the rural
press to MAC when he invited members of the Michigan Press Association to
tour the campus in 1901.
The hiring of Earl R. Trangmar, a 1917 MAC graduate, as publicity officer,
though, created the first formal link between the College and the small town
press, a link forged for a single agricultural purpose related to World War I:
“The need of publicity in the crop production and food conservation campaign
in Michigan and the great service which the MAC is capable of rendering.” At
the same time, the MAC Record reported, it was "believed that after the present
campaign has been completed, the publicity work” would become “a definite
part of the College’s extension program.’’146 Using the suggestion of the United
States Food Administration, the college instructed Michigan families in “the
saving of wheat, meat, fats, and sugar, and the preservation of perishable

52
foods.” “We have presented the work,” a college report stated, “from three

viewpoints -- causes of the present food situation, and the responsibility of the
household regarding it; the necessity of the housewife’s having a sound
knowledge of food principles; and practical methods of canning and drying and
of the cooking of the substitute foods to which the average housewife was little
accustomed.”147 To help provide that knowledge, Trangmar produced thirteen
bulletins and “mimeographed literature” on subjects that included canning and
drying, thrift, meat substitutes and war breads.148
Within two years after the College publicity bureau began operating, it
“supplied five distinct news services to the newspapers and periodicals of
Michigan.” Those services included daily and weekly newsletters to daily
newspapers, a news syndicate for rural and weekly publications, an
agricultural news service for all publications and the providing of special
articles, upon request, to newspapers and farm journals. To make certain the
service would reflect the work of the entire college, the office encouraged all
faculty members to contribute information, with the result that “the departments
of the college making use of the publicity service reported an increase in their
correspondence on every occasion that copy was sent out."149
Trangmar’s most significant achievement, however, was his bringing
about, in August 1918, the first conference of rural editors and publishers of
Michigan, a gathering “which he conceived, planned, carried out."150 A letter to
those journalists promised that the meeting would be “both educational and
inspirational in its aims -- will furnish you with a broad-gauge vision of what it is
possible for the country press of the state to do for itself and for rural
Michigan.”151 More than that, the conference was intended to “effect an
organization among editors themselves” and to “get them in line with the

53
college and the work the college is accomplishing.”152The three-day

conference drew "140 men representing 90 of Michigan’s best country
publishers” to hear journalists, government officials and representatives of
other agricultural colleges speak of the continuing importance of the rural
press. “There need never be any fear that the country press will be driven out
of existence," H.J. Waters, managing editor of the Kansas Citv Star and former
president of the Kansas Agricultural College, told the conference. “It fills a
place the urban newspaper can never fill, and I believe I speak the truth when I
say that it wields collectively a greater influence than the city press. This is so
because the country paper reaches into the homes and hearts of the reader. It
is, we might say, a member of the family."153
In a sense, Waters’ remarks were aimed simply toward providing the
“inspirational” note that Trangmar had promised in his invitation to the
journalists. For that reason alone the comments are worth noting, presenting,
as they do, a highly-idealized view of the small-town newspaper - “a member
of the family” - by a speaker who was both an editor and the former president
of an agricultural college. Such remarks, in fact, were typical of rhetoric often
used by practitioners and advocates -- and at least one chairman of the
Michigan State journalism program -- to describe the rural press. William
Allen White, the nation’s best-known small-town editor, said that “if you could
take the clay from your eyes and read the paper as it is written, you would find
all of God’s beautiful, sorrowing, struggling, aspiring world in it, and what you
saw would make you touch the little paper with reverent hands.”154
Such rhetoric, even if understood as just that, provided some sense of
mission for journalism instructors at the agricultural colleges just as the
comments of Pulitzer, and others, offered a rallying cry for teachers in larger,

54

more diversified journalism programs.
The comments of Waters and other boosters of small town papers
symbolized the fears of a rural society that, more than at any time before, felt
threatened by forces it could neither dominate nor fully comprehend. The
census of 1920 would show, for the first time, that over half of the population
lived in cities and towns. “Between 1915 and 1920 the old rural majority living
on the producing land, or close to it in small towns and villages, had become a
minority."155 As a result, “the older America of the Protestant, old-stock culture
felt deeply threatened by the values of the burgeoning city...” The census
figures, perhaps confirming what rural Americans thought they already knew,
proved a “frightening statistic for those on the farms and in small towns whose
way of life had prevailed for three centuries.” “They attributed to the metropolis
all that was perverse in American society: the revolution in morals, the corner
saloon, the control of municipal government by urban immigrants, and the
modernist skepticism of the literal interpretation of the Bible.”156 Proponents of
the small-town paper, then, using words like “homes” and “hearts,”
championed the values of the small town itself, an institution that fought the
perceived evil of the cities by affirming the perceived virtue of rural life.
The presidential election of 1920, in fact, “gave confidence to those who
feared that political as well as cultural dominance in the United States was
slipping away from the Protestant middle class."157 The winner of that election,
Warren Harding, was a newspaper publisher in Marion, Ohio, whose own view
of the small-town newspaper reflected rural American values.
During the presidential campaign, one of the editors of his newspaper,
The Star, compressed unspoken and informal office rules into a code “which,
for campaign purposes, was given out as having been formally written out and

55
signed by Harding and as having hung on the office wall." Although

exaggerated, the code was “harmless and did not violate essential truth.”
Further, it was printed and talked about all over the country and, as late as
1934, was quoted in a discussion of newspaper ethics: “If it can be avoided,
never bring ignominy on an innocent man or child, in telling of the misdeeds or
misfortunes of a relative. Don’t wait to be asked, but do it without the
asking...Never needlessly hurt the feelings of anybody. Be decent; be fair; be
generous. I want this paper to be so conducted that it can go into any home
without destroying the innocence of any child.”158
The conference of editors at MAC in 1918 - a celebration of rural life as
well as a planning session ~ was called “one of the biggest things that has
been undertaken by the college staff insofar as expected results are concerned
and one which will have most far-reaching effect.” In the view of the MAC
Record, it had “been apparent for some time that the college was not in as
close touch with Michigan farmers and rural communities as they should be
and that its influence was not exerted thoroughly or as strongly as that of like
institutions in neighboring states.” An analysis, it said, “has indicated that what
we seem to lack more than anything else is a means of reaching farmers and
rural communities with a news service of some sort, one which would keep
farmers in constant touch with the activities of the college and help in
organizing agricultural interests.159
To bring the College and rural journalists closer together, participants
created the Michigan Rural Publishers Association and passed a resolution
calling for an annual conference at the college, since they were “convinced that
a closer co-operation between MAC and the rural press is desirable.”160 Of
potentially greater significance to the course of journalism education, though,

56
was the passage of a separate resolution which received secondary mention in

articles on the conference appearing in the Record and the Lansing State
Journal, a resolution endorsing “establishment at MAC of a department of rural
journalism.”161 Further, the MAC Record stated, the rural editors “have already
taken steps to accomplish this by legislative means.”182 In commenting upon
the idea of a department of rural journalism, the Record added: “The linking up
of the rural press to the support of the college is a big step in the right direction.
It will bring a closer connection between the college and its community. We
sincerely hope that their proposal of the establishment of a department of rural
journalism is put through here.”163 The Journal story said the editors “went on
record as in favor of rural journalism at MAC to meet country newspaper
needs.”164
Despite the reference to “legislative means," no bill relating to the creation
of a department of rural journalism was introduced in the 1917 or 1919
sessions of the Michigan Legislature, according to House and Senate journals.
Nor was such a department mentioned in the College’s annual reports to the
Board of Agriculture, future issues of the MAC Record
or the correspondence of President Frank S. Kedzie.
Although a department was not established, journalism at the Michigan
Agricultural College would never be the same. For the conference, in serving
as a rallying cry for rural journalism, had symbolized a change in direction that
had been slowly occurring both in the journalism course and in the college
itself. No longer could it be said that journalism at MAC was strictly agricultural
journalism. In 1917, the agricultural journalism course was renamed "Writing
for the Press,”165 denoting a shift from writing for agricultural newspapers and
magazines to writing for publications of general circulation. Nor could it be said

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that the Michigan Agricultural College was strictly an agricultural school. Over

a period of thirteen years -- between the presidencies of Jonathan Snyder who
resigned in 1915 and Robert Sidey Shaw who took over in 1928 -- the school
“created new divisions of applied science and liberal arts, revived graduate
study, founded a music school, developed curricula in medical biology,
physical education, business administration and hotel management.”166Against
that background, the Michigan Agricultural College, in 1925, became Michigan
State College.
Although the journalism program no longer emphasized agriculture, it had
not abandoned the farmer. Rather, journalism at MAC, as reflected in the
conference of 1918, had evolved from “agricultural journalism" to “rural
journalism,” including both farm fields and Main Street. As such, students were
no longer concerned with the interests of the farmer alone but with all the
people and institutions of the small town - and, as the gathering had shown,
with the editor and the weekly newspaper most of all.
That the small town had replaced the farm as the focus of MAC journalism
was apparent in the program’s relationship with the Michigan Agriculturist, the
student agricultural magazine. Founded in 1922, and published until 1934, the
publication was “devoted entirely to the advancement of our [agricultural]
department” and served as “a journalistic workshop for those who are not too
timid to enter.”167 At many agricultural colleges, such magazines, as
laboratories for student journalists, were published in close cooperation with
journalism departments. At Iowa State University, for example, the Iowa
Agriculturist, founded in 1902, continues to publish with the help of student
staff members and faculty advisers.168At MAC, however, no such cooperation
ever existed. Writing or editing for the Agriculturist. Gottfried Graff, a 1934

58
graduate and associate editor of the magazine during its final year of

publication, said, was similar to working for any student newspaper. “None of
us had a writing background, except possibly from high school," he said, in a
1991 interview. “The purpose was to get as many people involved as possible,
people who liked agriculture and who had a desire to write." Few, if any, staff
members during Graff’s years at MSC took courses in the Department of
Journalism and Publications. “We were agricultural students,” he said, “with no
connection with the people who taught journalism. We were like any journalists
in the sense that we wanted to write, thought it was important to write about
what we liked -- agriculture -- and felt that we would benefit from our
experience later on.’” 69
As the Michigan Agricultural College moved from agricultural journalism
and service to the farmer to the broader perspective of rural journalism and
service to the small town, it continued to stand apart from journalism programs
that viewed the newspaper as a societal critic and analyst. In addition, it began
to stand apart from several of those programs in another way. For, just as MAC
sought to serve weekly newspapers in small communities, Northwestern
University, in 1921, established a program with an opposite purpose -- to sen/e
large newspapers in large cities -- and called its Medill School of Journalism
“the only metropolitan newspaper training institution west of the Alleghenies."170
In one sense, MAC differed from Medill in the way it had always differed
from schools who viewed newspapers as a social force. In announcing plans
for Medill, Northwestern President Walter Dill Scott set forth the aim of the
school by saying “the profession of journalism" was “of vital importance in its
influences upon public opinion and upon the minds and character of mankind.”
To that end, the goal of the school would be to “make better journalists” who

59
would, in turn, “produce better newspapers and periodicals."171

The belief that the newspaper was primarily a social and political force -and, as such, a potential social critic -- was offered, as well, by several
speakers at the Medill dedication ceremony. The remarks, presented by
editors of Chicago newspapers, differed from those that would have been
presented at a gathering of rural journalists, like the one at MAC in 1918. To
the metropolitan editors, the newspaper was not a family member, but, in the
view of Joseph Medill Patterson, a voice that, at any time, might be called upon
to report, explain, interpret or criticize.
“The newspaper is to the nation what the voice is to the individual,” he
said. ‘The individual without a voice is nothing, and the nation without a voice
is a chaotic mix, at the mercy of any conspiracy, of any cleverness, of any
cunning. The newspaper is the public square. The news is simply the voice of
the nation, and the newspaper men are the syllables or sounds.”172
Other remarks by Patterson, however, showed that the Michigan
Agricultural College journalism course differed from the program at
Northwestern in another way. For Patterson, co-editor of the Chicago Tribune.
which funded Medill, drew a distinction in journalism education that had
seldom been made before. To him, programs differed not merely by what was
taught but by the very location of the colleges. And to Patterson, those
differences were best drawn between the rural and the urban schools.
“The advantages of a school in a great newspaper city like Chicago are
obvious,” he said, “because the student instead of studying the theory is
studying the practice of the newspaper game. He will make a close study of
what is being done today in the newspaper offices and from these studies he
will draw his conclusions as to what he ought to do. In schools situated in small

60
towns it is necessary to use the deductive method of instruction. In other

words, a student is given his premises as to the best newspaper practices and
from these premises by a system of reasoning he draws his own conclusions.
The Joseph Medill School intends to avail itself continuously of the offers to
generously made by the newspapers of Chicago to give students of the school
access to their plants.” The nearness of the school to a big city, he said, would
be useful to the students and to the newspapers because much newspaper
training in Chicago was spent “in rubbing off the rough edges of a boy who has
perhaps come from a country paper or in waiting for a young man to learn his
city.”173
In the years following World War I, then, journalism at the Michigan
Agricultural College was essentially rural journalism. In that regard, the
newspaper was still viewed not as a potential critic but as a way of providing
information about the College and its mission and as an important institution in
the community the school was trying to reach -- the small town.
For that reason, the role of the MAC publicity agent, created with the hiring of
Earl Trangmar in 1917, became increasingly important. For such a person,
especially one who understood the rural press and rural communities, could
promote the College in several small-town newspapers through the creation of
a single, well-crafted news release. Following the resignation of Trangmar in
1919, James B. Hassleman accepted that role and, under him, the publicity
office became known as the Office of Publications. Because there was no
other "information man” on campus, Hassleman said, the Office was “expected
to carry out whatever service could be furnished in connection with athletics,
student recruiting, general college activities, and any other ‘public relations’
activities which seemed in order.” As Hassleman put it: “Thus the original news

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service was established and its success made it feasible to continue various

but consistently scheduled news services.”174
A graduate of Wesleyan College in Connecticut, and with newspaper
experience in Indianapolis, Hasselman came to MAC in 1915 as an English
instructor. In 1917, the agricultural journalism course, which he taught, was
renamed “Writing for the Press.” During that year, Hasselman also worked out
a “cooperative agreement" with the editor of the MAC Record “in which Record
news assignments will be turned over to different members of the class to cover
in news style.” In addition, the course showed MAC journalism students
another phase of journalism. That is, students were to take their stories “to the
printers to help in the 'make up’ of the type matter” where they would learn
“something of the printing and mechanical side of journalism.”175 The
emphasis on news style and the introduction to the mechanical side -- both
important to the small-town editor -- were other indications that the course at
MAC had become journalism for the small town.
Although appointed director of publications in the spring of 1919,
Hasselman retained his connection with the English Department so that he
could continue to teach the newswriting course. Later that year, due to “the
growing responsibilities and duties of his new position,”176he relinquished
those ties.
His successor in teaching Writing for the Press was Albert H. Nelson, an
assistant professor in the English Department who joined the MAC faculty in
1919, and taught a growing number of journalism courses in the next decade.
Born in Wolcott, Indiana, Nelson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at
Wabash College and taught English at Oklahoma A and M before serving with
the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I.177

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Under his guidance, the department, in 1920, while offering the standard

Writing for the Press, added a section for seniors “majoring in food or textiles"
which was “adapted to the aims and interests of students specializing in home
economics.”178That section was an option in a newly-organized technical home
economics course. While the general home economics course was intended
to train students primarily as home economics teachers, social service workers
or home makers, the technical course offered its students a larger number of
possibilities: “for the professions of teaching, dietitian, institutional manager,
cafeteria director, visiting housekeeper, director of nutrition clinics, hospital
dietitian, demonstrator for commercial firms, expert buyer for merchants, expert
in commercial laboratories, special editorial work on women’s magazines and
publications.”179 Students in the technical course were required to take more
courses in science, English and public speaking than those in the general
curriculum which, for example, did “not require chemistry beyond organic."180
Although the journalism program and the Office of Publications did not
merge for several years, the influence of an expanded publicity program -- and
of Hasselman -- was evident in the creation of journalism courses in the 1920s.
A course in Agricultural Publicity, for example, was added to the English
Department in 1924-25 for prospective agricultural teachers, county agents
and extension workers.181The course included a study of the farm page and of
farm columns in the newspaper and afforded "practice in conducting such
means of farm publicity.”182
The addition of Agricultural Advertising to the curriculum that year also
showed Hasselman’s and Nelson’s interest in the expanding field of
advertising. Nelson, in an article for the Michigan Agriculturist, wrote that “for
years manufacturers and business men have known that ‘it pays to advertise’,

63
but the farm has only recently realized that the old saying applies to agricultural

products as well."183 Hasselman helped organize the MAC Advertising Club In
1920.184 Following a club proposal, the Record
said it believed “that there is a distinct need for a course in advertising at
MAC.”105
Other new courses followed. Writing for Farm Journals and Writing and
Editing Farm Bulletins were added in 1924-25.186 The following year, Reporting
and Correspondence, Editing, Editorial Writing and Critical Writing entered the
curriculum.187
The expanding Michigan State College journalism curriculum in the 1920s
continued to address the interests of the small town. Courses in agricultural
publicity and advertising -- as opposed to those focusing only upon the writing
of technical bulletins -- recognized the farmer not merely as a field worker but
as a small-town business person who must learn to market products to nearby
communities and beyond.
The addition of journalism courses, in fact, paralleled the growth of what
had become Michigan State College. From 1920 to 1928, enrollment rose
from 1,411 to 2,813. An expanding College created a need for expanding
publicity, and to meet that need W.W. Johnston’s English Department made a
cooperative arrangement with Hasselman’s publicity bureau. Through that
agreement, student journalists could earn practical experience while working
for the bureau under Hasselman’s guidance.
One of the first students to work for Hasselman was Merideth Clark, a
resident of Vicksburg, Mich., south of Kalamazoo, who entered MSC in the fall
of 1925. As a high school student, Clark had learned the printing trade at the
Vicksburg Commercial, a semi-weekly newspaper. At MSC, Clark majored in

64
English, took journalism courses and said he learned the most by working for

Hasselman and as a reporter and printer for the State News.188
“Jimmy (Hasselman) and I became great friends," Clark said. “He gave me
a job in the publicity department at 45 cents an hour. It involved writing news
releases for the newspapers, sometimes helping in production -- maybe even
running the presses -- or just anything that needed to be done.”
The journalism courses, he said, gave him little insight into the practical
side of publishing. “All the professor (Nelson) was interested in was English,
naturally,” he said. “He had no idea what made a newspaper operate.”189
Writing a press release under Hasselman, whether about the research of
an agriculture professor or the activities of a student, Clark said, helped him
sharpen the skills he had acquired while working at the Vicksburg Commercial.
“Like all those old editors,” he said, “Hasselman had his notions about what it
took to write a good story. An ideal sentence was twelve words, an ideal
paragraph forty."
That journalism at Michigan State College, whatever the orientation,
acquired its own department was logical, given the trends in courses and the
College. By 1929, MSC offered twelve course in journalism, as opposed to
one a decade earlier. Also, during the presidency of Robert S. Shaw, from
1928 to 1941,15 new departments were created, usually to give autonomy to a
subordinate area. On July 1, 1929, the State Board of Agriculture established
the Department of Journalism and Publications so that "related activities in the
fields of publications, journalism and public information might be
coordinated.”190
The new department was responsible for: (1) Instruction in all courses in
journalism. (2) Editing, publishing and distributing bulletins for the Agricultural

65
Experiment Station. (3) The news service for the Extension Division. (4) The

news service for the College, including athletics. (5) The publication of
pamphlets and booklets relating to the academic work of the College and the
supervision of all College printing. (6) Photo services for College departments.
(7) Supervision of programs for College radio station WKAR. (8) The
mimeograph and multigraph service for all College departments. (9) The
compiling, editing and printing of all official College reports. (10) The general
supervision of students publications: State News. Wolverine. Michigan
Agriculturist. 191
When the change was announced, Hasselman said the department had
been formed “to act as the foundation of a stronger and more complete
curriculum in this subject when the demand justifies it."192 A State News
editorial called the move “an important step for the future of journalism" at
Michigan State College. “Little will be done for a time as far as expansion in
this field in concerned,” it said, “but a foundation can be built for a greater
journalism department than would be possible under present conditions.”
Equating the growth of the journalism program with the growth of the State
News, it said that “a greater journalism department, from the standpoint of
enrollment and courses, will be necessary before this campus can manage a
daily newspaper,” a possibility considered to be “rather far in the future, of
course.”193
Under the new arrangement, Hasselman was named chairman and
extension editor in the new department which included Nelson and assistant
extension editor A.J. Patch, radio program director Keith Himebaugh and
photographer James H. Pratt.194
The naming of Hasselman as chairman and the establishment of a

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Department of Journalism and Publications - rather than separate

departments of journalism and publications -- further demonstrated MSC’s
commitment to rural journalism. While Albert Nelson had taught three or four
journalism courses per semester in the 1920s, James Hasselman had directed
the college’s publicity program. As such, Hasselman was well-acquainted with
the newspaper editors of Michigan, particularly those in rural areas, and with
the types of stories that would most likely appear on their pages. So,
compared with Nelson, Hasselman had the greater influence outside the
classroom, the place where journalism was of immediate use to the College.
Furthermore, the creation of the department showed that journalism at MSC
was still considered a means of providing information favorable to the school
and its aims that was, at the same time, consistent with the ideals of the small
town. The new department, then, supplied such information to rural
communities while training the journalists who would one day control the
newspapers in those communities. Indeed, when it came to journalism and
publicity, as the department name suggested, College administrators did not
distinguish between the two.
During its first year, the new department offered ten classes including
Business Writing, a course transferred from the English Department which
eventually became the most popular offered by the Journalism Department.
The 1929-30 catalog described Business Writing as being “a course in the
general principles of business correspondence with training in the composition
of effective business letters." Courses in Writing for Farm Journals and
Agricultural Publicity were not listed, but agricultural writing was mentioned in
course descriptions for Technical Writing and Special Feature Articles.
Under its new department status, journalism was part of the Division of

67
Liberal Arts. To earn a journalism degree, students must have completed nine

credits of English composition, nine credits of laboratory science and two years
of a foreign language.186
In addition to their classroom and publication duties, the staff, the first
annual department report stated, conducted “a number of one-day 'news
schools’ planned primarily for co-operative workers in the extension field...at
various points in the state.” It also stressed the department’s publication efforts
which included the news service "centered mainly around the agricultural and
home economics information material furnished regularly to Michigan’s 365
weekly and 70 daily papers."
Then, the following year, through the guidance of Hasselman, the
department made an arrangement with the Michigan Press Association that
further strengthened college ties with the state’s small-town newspapers.
Since the conference of rural editors and publishers in 1918, college
administrators had sought ways to expand publicity efforts to reach readers in
Michigan’s farm communities. Earl Trangmar, in fact, had suggested that the
college hire “three young men with newspaper experience" to act under him as
reporters to tell the press of Michigan of the work of the college.196 That idea
later evolved with the hiring of students, like Merideth Clark, who worked under
Hasselman’s close supervision. Under the 1931 arrangement with the press
association, the college took a further step by providing an on-campus office for
the association’s executive officer (the secretary) and employed him on a halftime basis, at an annual salary of $400, as extension specialist for the rural
press. The first Michigan Press Association officer to hold the job was James
Haskins, the publisher of the Howard Citv Record.197 With Haskins in his oncampus office, the links between Michigan State College and the rural

68
journalists of Michigan -- and between the MSC journalism program and the

concept of rural journalism -- were complete.
“The press association had been virtually inactive for some years,”
Hasselman said, “and Jim Haskins’ job was really two-fold: to help build up
active participation by rural papers in the Association, and to find out the kind of
news service they could use -- both state-wide from the College and locally
from the county agricultural agents.”1"
The 1931-32 annual report, meanwhile, stated that 323 students had been
enrolled in the 15 courses, or sections of courses, offered that year. Of those,
263 were listed as students in News Writing or Business Writing.199
The following year’s annual report stated that on Dec. 1,1932, Hasselman
severed connections with the college. Albert H. Nelson was appointed acting
head.200 Those statements provided only a brief description of College events
leading to the forced resignation of Hasselman, historian and former President
Frank S. Kedzie and Joseph F. Cox, dean of the school’s agricultural division.
The process had begun in August 1932, when five citizens of Ingham
County asked that “a grand jury scrutinize alleged financial irregularities in the
College.” Among charges were ones that salaries were paid as deposits in the
local bank in which College men were officers; that the Secretary had
attempted to sell a horse to the College, which would have been an illegal act,
that a faculty group had offered a farm to the College at an excessive price; that
campus planning was performed at a high fee by a Detroit landscape architect
rather than by the College department; and that the Michigan State Institute of
Music and Allied Arts used campus buildings, received fees from the College
for student lessons and profited in other ways from its connection with the
music department. Investigations by a one-man grand jury, Circuit Judge

69
Leland W. Carr, and by the state’s assistant attorney general, Joseph Baldwin,

failed to discover any misconduct.201 Carr, in fact, indicated that the charges
had not arisen out of misconduct but in “critical remarks, magnified and
distorted by repetition."202 Acting upon that implication, the Board forced the
resignations of Hasselman, Cox and Kedzie who were viewed as leaders in
compiling evidence against their colleagues.
Newspaper reports indicate that the Board had acted to “quiet politics” on
the campus.203 In brief, “the charge was that Kedzie, Cox and Hasselman had
criticized the administration of President Robert S. Shaw and Secretary
Herman H. Halladay.’®04 George Alderton, a former Lansing State Journal
sports editor, who free-lanced as sports publicist for the College beginning in
1923, agrees with that assessment. “Jimmy Hasselman was a very affable guy,
a kind of one-man band who did a little of everything and seemed to know
everything,” he said. Regarding the events leading to his dismissal, Alderton
said Hasselman was simply a member of a group that tried to topple the MSC
administration -- and lost. “President Shaw was simply a crafty old boy who
beat ’em all to the punch.”205
President Shaw’s papers show, in fact, that college officials had been
gathering evidence against Hasselman, Kedzie and Cox for several months.
Unsigned comments among those papers include one stating: “several weeks
ago Hasselman told Mr. Weddell, Secretary in the President’s office, that he
was sorry that he had not written the controversy [that is, his view of the alleged
irregularities] up and called the boys all in. By the boys, he meant prominent
members of the Weekly Press Association.” Further, “so far as it can be
determined through inquiry for quite a long period, it is evident that Mr.
Hasselman spends three hours or less on the average in his office daily. He is

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absent from town a great deal unbeknown to the administrative officers of the

institution.”206
The Michigan Press Association, housed in its campus office for two years
when the story broke, appeared to balance its position, backing Hasselman
while promoting the “good of the college." A confidential MPA memo sent to
weekly newspaper editors during the investigation pointed out that “so far the
only comment in the weekly papers has been of a friendly sort of non-committal
attitude,” a position the Association directors favored. “For the good of the
college and everyone involved,” the memo continued, “we are merely
suggesting that it might be advisable to await the various reports before
printing anything, one way or the other. The MPA has had too long and too
friendly an association with the college to do what might be an unintended
injury. This suggestion is passed along simply as an idea for your
consideration.”
In addition, nine “individual representatives of numerous rural newspaper
of Michigan" wrote Shaw and the State Board of Agriculture to demand that
“before any dismissals of any person, or group of persons, are made, that full
open public hearings be accorded to all persons interested.”207 Although no
open meetings were held, “a committee of weekly newspaper publishers" was
allowed to be present when Hasselman appeared before the Board of
Agriculture during its inquiry of the matter.*08 While discussions during that
appearance were not made public, President Shaw’s papers contain two
pages listing several questions that may have been asked of Hasselman.
Although the answers to the questions are not known -- or whether, in fact, the
questions were even asked -- they give insight into Shaw’s concern regarding
Hasselman’s conduct of the publications office. Those questions included the

71

following:
Did you suggest to students working in your department that
they turn in more hours than they actually worked or did you
increase the number of hours turned in so that students might thus
receive a higher rate of pay than the college allowed?
Did you do everything you could to prevent the Detroit
Times attack on the college administration?
Did you see any of the articles before they were printed
and announce in the publications office in the presence of
students what they were going to be and joke about how they
would make some people squirm?
What Hasselman hoped to gain is not known. If nothing else, his role as
publicity director at the College may have conflicted with his instincts as a
journalism instructor and former newspaper man. The simple explanation is
that, privy to information about a matter involving several MSC officials, he felt
strongly enough to support the anti-administration side of the argument -- a
position also taken by Frank S. Kedzie, who had spent fifty-two years at the
school and appointed him publicity director in 1919 -- and lost.
From MSG, Hasselman went to Washington as an editor for cooperative
extension programs in the Department of Agriculture where, the Michigan
Press Association bulletin editorialized, he was “beyond the reach of greedy,
grasping self-promoters and where trickery and deceit have nothing to do with
one’s work.”209 By itself, such a comment is hardly worth noting. Indeed,
Hasselman was as likely to find “trickery and deceit” in Washington as in rural
Michigan. The remark does, however, indicate that, after 18 years with the
college, Hasselman had gathered strong support from within the ranks of
Michigan small-town newspaper editors. Significant, too, is the fact that the

72
Michigan Press Association was able to publicly avoid taking sides in the

dispute. Both the memo suggesting the newspapers avoid “unintended injury”
to the college and the one mentioning Hasselman’s new job were released
only to the small-town editors.

Amid the investigations and resignations, with

their potential for negative publicity, the ties between Michigan State College
and the Press Association had remained strong .
The departure of Hasselman, in fact, had little immediate impact upon the
journalism program. Albert Nelson, who was named permanent chairman the
following year, continued teaching all the journalism courses, as he had in
previous years. Patch and Himebaugh continued in their assignments, and
three other staff members, including a photographer, were added to the
growing publications office. In a joint venture with the office, Nelson organized
the Press Club to reach the high school papers of Michigan with stories of the
college and its students. Classes in journalism were given “definite
assignments in sending stories about student activities to many of the
weeklies” and received “actual practice in newspaper correspondence.”210
Thus, under Albert Nelson, the journalism classroom became an adjunct to the
publications program as the department served the interests of rural Michigan
by sending stories to weekly newspapers.
Nelson was remembered by students as being “alert, efficient, factual.” “Yet
despite his businesslike manner, Nelson was human. His journalism students,
who invariably thought him austere at the beginning, always discovered that
before they finished his courses.”211
Although he studied journalism during the summer of 1921 at the
University of Wisconsin, Nelson’s only newspaper experience had come five
summers later as a copy editor and rewrite man for the Worcester

73
(Massachusetts) Telegram, an experience he sometimes drew upon in class.

Gregg Smith, who entered Michigan State College in 1932, remembered
that “there was something of the stoic about Albert" but that his “reserve would
completely vanish if a neophyte writer or editor displayed a flash of ingenuity, a
clever lead, an eye-catching headline." Nelson, he said, helped students “fit
beautifully into the requirements of the newspapers at that time.” “He would
simply say: ‘Here are the facts. See what you can do.’ Any extra adjective
would be washed out.”212
“One day,” Smith said, “he brought a news story about a squabble
between some deep sea divers who were racing to recover treasure from a
shipwreck off the Carolinas. Everyone was ordered to the blackboards to write
an appropriate headline for the story. Most of the headlines were informative
and in good taste. Then he came to mine, which by a stroke of luck, was right
on for that day. It read: CAPTAINS FIGHT FOR GOLD AND JEWELS;
TREASURE HUNTERS RESORT TO ARMS. By the time he was finished
extolling the merits of that headline, I was blushed with pride. But probably the
most important result was that from then on, Albert Nelson began to express
more interest in my writing activities and the courses I was taking. The
stoicism, the cold exterior impression, the aloof attitude melted away once a
student displayed the interest and energy to apply themselves.”
Nelson, in personality and manner, was the opposite of James Hasselman,
usually referred to in news articles as “Jimmy.”
“Slender, ramrod back, blonde, cold, blue eyes, thin lipped,” Smith said.
“That was Albert Nelson, a rather awesome character to us freshmen just out of
the cornfields. In retrospect, I think that was good. We knew that he meant
business when he strode into the classroom, right to the minute. A gray-three-

74
piecer was his standard uniform. The gold watch he flicked from a vest pocket

and laid on the desk told you that the class period was underway and would be
concluded in exactly 50 minutes.”
If the class was newswriting, he came well-prepared. He’d open a file
folder with comparative samples of leads and sequence structures of how the
Detroit Free Press, the Times or the News had handled the same story, the
previous day. If the class was editing, he had headline samples from any one
of a dozen state dailies. He was strictly newspaper. You never heard mention
of radio.”
“He seldom cited any of his personal experiences in the news world
beyond telling the class he had been in rewrite and editing on the Worcester
paper. A few of the more irreverent class members would gear up their
sarcasm with pithy references: ‘Better do it like they did on the Worcester
Telegram.’ I did my share of that, too."2'3
After a long bout with cancer, Nelson, 43, died on October 18,1935. By
then, journalism enrollment -- with a total of 338 students for all courses -- had
more than doubled in the previous ten years. At the same time, annual reports
stated that the department’s publicity production was increasing, too. One such
report, for example, said that weekly papers had devoted “16,470 more column
inches of space” to college news than in any previous year. In that same
report, in fact, Nelson had said that “it is my hope that two phases of publicity general college and sports -- may be greatly strengthened."214
In the search for a new chairman for the Department of Journalism and
Publications, it was natural for the College to seek a man with “very
exceptional qualifications” in rural journalism, as the Department of English
had sought two decades before. It was unlikely, for example, that the school

75
would seek a director through journalism programs at Columbia or Michigan,

unless, of course, that person had been willing to adapt to the philosophy of
the program at Michigan State, the philosophy of rural journalism and its
service to the small town.

Guided by that philosophy, the new director would

prepare MSC journalists to staff the rural papers that chronicled life in small
towns and the expanding work of Michigan State College which sought to
recruit students from those communities. Further, that person would be
required to retain, and strengthen, ties with the Michigan Press Association -- a
strong link to rural Michigan -- and direct a publicity bureau that would, almost
by definition, grow along with the College.
Within a month, the school discovered, and hired, Albert A. Applegate, who
took over on Jan. 1,1936. Although details of Applegate’s hiring are
unavailable, he was the ideal candidate for the job. That is, he had been
chairman of the Department of Printing and Rural Journalism at South Dakota
State College, in Brookings, where his duties were similar to those he was
expected to perform at MSC. Applegate’s decision to leave South Dakota was
due, in part, to the continuing depression in the state which had caused the
faculty to take 20 percent pay cuts earlier in the year. “The state educational
institutions are being drained of their best men because the salary scale is so
low," a newspaper editorial said. “Professor Applegate joins a long list of
recent losses, and goes principally because his new offer gives him a much
better scale.”215
A graduate of the University of Illinois, he earned an M.A. in journalism
from the University of Montana in 1923, while an instructor in that university’s
school of journalism. Applegate had also worked as a reporter and editor for
several newspapers including the Butte (Montana) Anaconda and the Boise

76

(Idaho) Statesman.
At South Dakota State he had been extension editor, experiment station
editor, public relations director and sports information director. In addition, he
strengthened relations with the state's newspaper editors, much as Michigan
State was attempting to do. “When he arrived in Brookings,” his daughter,
Roberta, said, “the university (Vermillion) had the journalism reputation.” I
recall that he said some of the newspaper editors began to ‘complain’ about
the news releases -- ‘we used to be able to throw them away. Now they are so
newsworthy and well-written we have to print them.’ He traveled the state -north, south, east and west -- making it a point to become personally
acquainted with each editor and publisher. Often he served as an unpaid
consultant - not just promoting SDSC but helping these editors and publishers
upgrade their papers, solve problems.”218
Applegate’s stated goal as chairman of the department at South Dakota
State was the aim of all agricultural schools of the day: to provide “adequate
training in the rural newspaper field, training which will not just make good
printers or good news writers or good advertising men, but will make them allaround newspaper men, filling a place in the lives of the people of South
Dakota or of other states where they may go.”217
George Phillips, a 1929 South Dakota State College graduate, who worked
as a publicity assistant under Applegate and later served as department
chairman, said Applegate took a “practical" approach to journalism, whether
building ties with the state’s editors or teaching students the skills they would
need later on.
One such approach, he said, was Applegate’s role in helping establish the
South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame, housed in the journalism department.

77
“The object was to honor newspaper people who had contributed to the

profession and the state,” Phillips said, “and, in that way, the school was
keeping good ties with the editors and publishers, too. It was indicative of his
relationship with the press. He not only wanted to help out.

He wanted to give

editors a place to be remembered, to build them up.”
One of the specialized aspects of the South Dakota State program was its
printing curriculum. As chairman, Applegate oversaw those courses and, as
such, he knew printers and the sometimes highly-technical field of printing
literally inside and out. One instructor, for example, would not lecture unless he
had a slug casting machine, with spare parts, before the class at all times. Yet,
Applegate, Phillips remembered, was apparently more dedicated to the subject
of writing.
“His philosophy of journalism, his creed,” Phillips said, “was that the most
important thing was the writing of proper English.” “Reporting and investigative
ability were important, but if you couldn't write in an interesting way, you
weren’t destined to be a top-notch journalist.”218
When Applegate left South Dakota, newspapers throughout the state
printed editorials praising his work. He was viewed as “a live wire” who had
“put the Department of Journalism on the map” and had “endeared himself to
every publisher in the state.”219 In addition, he had “not only conducted an
efficient department dedicated to the job of training printers and journalists, but
kept South Dakota accurately informed on all agricultural problems affecting its
welfare through press releases furnished weekly and daily publications
throughout the state.”220
When Albert Applegate was appointed chairman at MSC, the college was
one of 532 U.S. institutions listing at least one course in journalism.221 In 1911,

78
a year after the Michigan Agricultural College had offered its first class, 33

schools were teaching the subject, though “there were only five schools with a
series of professional courses reasonably well developed.”222
By the mid-1930s, however, journalism programs could still be divided into
two general categories, much as they had been two decades before.
If the view of Pulitzer -- that journalism education stress the newspaper’s
roles both as reporter, interpreter and critic -- typified the traditional approach
in 1910, Eric W. Allen, journalism dean at the University of Oregon, among
others, represented that outlook years later.
“The competent journalist,” he said, “must understand the scientific basis of
current life, the complex of established principles that underlies any modern,
objective civilized discussion of politics, government, economics, psychology -in general, the art of living.” In his view, schools of journalism would “utterly fail
of their deeper purpose if they do not attempt and succeed in producing as
graduate who is thoroughly grounded not only in the separate social sciences,
but also in the habit of keeping up with the authentic progress of the best
current thought and actually applying the most enlightening conception of
social science to his work as a reporter and as an editor.n223
Willard Bleyer, who had integrated journalism into a social science
curriculum at the University of Wisconsin earlier in the century, continued to
believe that courses in writing and editing were a way to help a student “think
logically” and “to apply intelligently what he has learned” in other courses to
future work as a reporter or editor. “Therefore, it seems to me,” he said, “that
the function of most of the courses in journalism is to teach students how to
think straight about what is going on in the world at large and how to apply
what they have learned to understanding and interpreting the day’s news."224

79
At Michigan State, and at other agricultural colleges, meanwhile, the

approach remained much as it had in 1910, though the agricultural mission
had been expanded to include other departments -- home economics, for
example -- and agricultural journalism had long been redefined as rural
journalism, the journalism of the small town. While the goal of the MSC
Department of Journalism and Publications, then, seemed less lofty than the
words of Allen and Bleyer, that mission was no less important to the students
in the classroom or the residents of the state.
The purpose of journalism education at MSC, according to the
department, was to combine “instruction in theory with actual practice" and to
provide “the student with an opportunity to observe the functioning of the
principles taught in the classroom."22® The course names, in fact, reflect
editorial practice: Business Writing, Bulletin Writing, Advertising Copy. As yet,
Michigan State College, given its purpose, had no room for courses in
journalism history or ethics of the press that were present at Oregon, Wisconsin
and similar schools.
Journalism at Michigan State, and at other agricultural colleges, had
grown greatly in 25 years, from a single course to a single department. It must
be noted, though, that other journalism schools were growing, too, and in
directions that most agricultural colleges had yet to take.
For even as schools were developing four-year programs, the movement
toward graduate work and research in journalism had already begun. As early
as 1925, The American Society of Newspaper Editors, in a resolution on
journalism education, stated th a t, in its view, the ultimate goal of schools of
journalism should be “their development into graduate schools to the end that
their educational standards shall be on a par with those maintained at the best

80
schools of law or medicine."228 In 1935, the School of Journalism, Columbia

University, became exclusively a graduate school with entrance restricted to
students holding bachelor’s degrees. The plan confined work in journalism to
a single graduate year with all classes grouped under three heads: Reporting
and copy reading: editorial writing, policies and research; and research in
publishing policies.227 By then, other schools, including the Universities of
Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Stanford and Emory, had made provisions for a year
of graduate work beyond their requirements for the bachelor’s degree.
Journalism research topics, as reflected in graduate theses, meanwhile,
covered a wide range. At Wisconsin, in 1935, topics of doctoral dissertations
combining journalism and social science included “The Attitude of Some
Newspapers on Law Breaking and Enforcement” and “American Public
Opinion and European Armaments, 1912-1914.” M.A. topics in journalism
concerned “Ethiopian and Italian Propaganda in American Newspapers” and
“History and Development of News Pictures, With Special Regard to
Propaganda Uses.”228
The titles of those theses -- indeed, the existence of graduate programs indicate how much journalism education at the University of Wisconsin, typical
of the large universities, differed from that of Michigan State, typical of the
agricultural colleges. Consideration of international journalism or research into
social problems such as crime, for example, were not mentioned in available
records of the first 25 years of MSC journalism. In fact, through 1935, the only
research listed by a Michigan State College professor in The Journalism
Quarterly was “Fifty Years of a Rural County Newspaper" by sociologist Ernest
M. Banzet.229
A requirement that faculty members produce research, to any degree,

81
then, might be another way of separating the journalism program at Michigan

State College, as a land-grant school, from the programs at other schools.
Albert Applegate, for example, was not hired to produce articles for the
Journalism Quarterly, journalism education’s leading research publication, or
to judge the quality of a graduate thesis. Indeed, his hiring says as much about
the mission of the land-grant school in the 1930s as the statements of Allen
and Bleyer reveal about the large state universities.
“The early success of the public service mission - embracing both
extension and problem-oriented research - of the land-grant college and the
clientele to which that mission was directed made the land-grant college a
distinctive institution. Its effectiveness was not to be measured by the scholarly
characteristics of its faculty or by their research and writing. More important
was the impact of its programs developed to meet specific needs of its
designated clientele. These needs underwent continued change in a rapidly
expanding nation. In addition, the land-grant college continually expanded its
clientele as its early public service ventures confirmed that national well-being
and development depended ultimately and directly on individuals and their
collective actions and values in a democratic society.1430
In Albert Applegate, Michigan State College had found a journalism
instructor who had proven, at another land-grant school, that he could meet the
need of the “designated clientele” -- students, farmers and small-town
newspaper editors in his role as teacher and director of publications.
More than that, the mission of the land-grant college “initially required
involvement in the same activities as those to whom its services were directed."
If the college was to assist the farm family to increase production, for example,
the faculty “must not only be able to offer realistic advice but also demonstrate

82
that the advice was based upon experience and validated by it. Faculty

members had to model in college facilities and on college grounds what they
undertook to demonstrate to others."231
As a former newspaper reporter and editor, Applegate might be able to offer
such “realistic advice” to the editors of Michigan’s small-town papers and, in so
doing, serve those communities as well. Further, the journalism program, by
offering courses of special value to small-town editors, might become a
campus “model" of what those newspapers, both in form and in content, could
best become, the rural equivalent of what the Chicago Tribune had tried to
establish for metropolitan journalism at Northwestern.
Moreover, performing the service mission required a faculty member with
special qualities. “Pragmatism, practicality, and technological competency
were at least as important as scholarship.
Albert Applegate, then, after demonstrating those qualities in South
Dakota, came to the Michigan State College well-acquainted with what his
mission for the journalism program might be. Future years would best
determine how the man would match the mission and, in a department that
would see its third chairman in five years, for how long.

APPLEGATE AT MSC

The journalism program at Michigan State College from 1936 to 1949 was
marked by the leadership of Albert A. Applegate. Under his guidance, that
program, which became the Department of Journalism in 1943, expanded in
students, faculty and courses. As it grew, the department continued to promote
the interests of rural journalism, a commitment which began at MAC in 1918
and which Applegate had previously followed at South Dakota State College.
Evidence of that direction was the department’s strengthening ties with the
Michigan Press Association, the representative of the state’s small-town
newspapers. The orientation toward the small town remained strong
throughout the mid-1940s. As the college enrollment nearly doubled following
World War II and as the journalism curriculum evolved in size and diversity,
however, that direction began to change. In 1949, the department, with a
faculty that had increased during the Applegate years from three to 18, was
accredited by the American Council on Education for Journalism for its newseditorial sequence. As the 1940s ended, questions arose as to whether, and
how, the program’s role in serving the state and serving the college would
change even further in the upcoming decade
When Albert Angelo Applegate arrived at Michigan State College in
January 1936 to head the journalism department, he seemed just the man to

83

APPLEGATE AT MSC

The journalism program at Michigan State College from 1936 to 1949 was
marked by the leadership of Albert A. Applegate. Under his guidance, that
program, which became the Department of Journalism in 1943, expanded in
students, faculty and courses. As it grew, the department continued to promote
the interests of rural journalism, a commitment which began at MAC in 1918
and which Applegate had previously followed at South Dakota State College.
Evidence of that direction was the department’s strengthening ties with the
Michigan Press Association, the representative of the state’s small-town
newspapers. The orientation toward the small town remained strong
throughout the mid-1940s. As the college enrollment nearly doubled following
World War II and as the journalism curriculum evolved in size and diversity,
however, that direction began to change. In 1949, the department, with a
faculty that had increased during the Applegate years from three to 18, was
accredited by the American Council on Education for Journalism for its newseditorial sequence. As the 1940s ended, questions arose as to whether, and
how, the program’s role in serving the state and serving the college would
change even further in the upcoming decade
When Albert Angelo Applegate arrived at Michigan State College in
January 1936 to head the journalism department, he seemed just the man to

83

84
how, the program’s role in serving the state and serving the college would

change even further in the upcoming decade.
When Albert Angelo Applegate arrived at Michigan State College in
January 1936 to head the journalism department, he seemed just the man to
keep the program on a course that had been evolving for nearly a decade.
Through the creation of the Department of Journalism and Publications in
1929, the College had built a program which, in its dual role, trained future
reporters and editors while providing the publicity to promote the school in
newspapers throughout the state, particularly in small towns. The instructional
role, begun by Thomas Blaisdell in 1910, had been carried on by James
Hasselman and Albert Nelson. The promotional aspect, long advocated by
President Snyder, had been directed primarily by Earl Trangmar and
Hasselman. If the 1929 move had solidified the two roles, the hiring of
Applegate -- a journalist, teacher and publications director -- had placed them
under the direction of a man who, more than either of his predecessors, was
qualified to perform them both. While both Trangmar and Hasselman had
eeeumeH their rintiee at MRP. ehnrtlv after nrerfuetinn frnm m lle e e

Annlenato

came to Michigan State at 36 with 15 years of journalism and teaching
experience behind him.
Further, Applegate, given his work in South Dakota, was especially suited
to strengthen College ties with the Michigan Press Association, a
representative of the state’s rural newspapers. And that connection, more than
any other single factor, symbolized the department’s ongoing commitment to
the journalism of the small town.
Applegate’s inclination toward those papers, in fact, was reflected in a

85
speech delivered before the South Dakota Press Association four months after

his arrival at Michigan State College. In it he pointed out that, despite the
influence of the large daily papers, the weekly press of the nation
predominated “numerically, in circulation, and in individual attention getting."
"Despite the dominance of the large cities in commerce and finance," he
said, “the metropolitan newspapers do not maintain the highest ideals and
traditions of American life." “They do not mirror the life of the cities in which they
are published, where people are really common, ordinary, friendly, simple. It is
left to the papers in the small cities, the towns and rural areas to carry those
standards of American tradition."
The editorials of small newspapers, Applegate said, have a high
percentage of readers “and therefore a greater influence, than the editorials of
the combined efforts of writers on metropolitan papers." “Indeed," he said, “it is
no secret that one Chicago daily elects the men it attacks, and that a seeker of
a presidential nomination is hampered by the support of a chain of
newspapers." “But the home editor is one of the folks; he talks in his column as
he does on the street corner. He is taken for what he is. It is to the credit of the
weekly press that the editorial judgment is unusually sound."
Applegate said he did not think it was possible for small-town publishers to
“neglect our job printing." “But we can be newspapermen first and job printers
afterward, instead of having the newspaper tag along after the job department.
It is as newspaper men we shall be judged."233

86
More than an endorsement of small-town papers, Applegate’s comments were

an endorsement of small-town life. In content and in spirit, the remarks were
similar to the speech H.J. Waters had delivered to the rural journalists at MAC
in 1918. To Waters, the goal of the country paper was to be “a member of the
family." To Applegate, its purpose was to “carry those standards of American
tradition" -- of common, ordinary, friendly, simple people -- that the metropolitan
newspapers had overlooked. Further, it was the purpose Applegate had
followed at South Dakota State and was committed to follow, through the
classroom and through Michigan’s rural editors, as he began his career at
Michigan State.
Speeches praising small-town journalism and small-town life were
incomplete, in fact, without an attack on their urban counterparts which did not
“maintain the highest ideals and traditions of American life."
Against that background, it is possible to understand how the emotional
attachments to either small-town or city life helped account for differences in
journalism schools which, like the editors and reporters themselves, sided with
either the “rural" or the “metropolitan" press. In a broader sense, though, any
“country-city” division within journalism education merely pointed out the
divisions within the nation at large.
Those divisions were clarified in 1928 when the Democrats "decided to
ride with the forces of urbanism” by nominating Alfred E. Smith, the governor of
New York and a Roman Catholic, for president. Bigots said the election of
Smith would be “a religious affront to rural Protestants." More than antiCatholicism, objection to Smith was based on “a pervasive anti-urbanism that
embraced antagonism to his religion, his views on liquor, his tie to Tammany
Hall, his identification with the new immigrants, and his association with the city

87

itself."234
The campaign rhetoric of Herbert Hoover, who grew up in Iowa, on the
other hand, might have been crafted by the editor of a small-town newspaper:
“He wrote of boyhood memories of gathering walnuts in the fall, carrying grain
to the mill, fishing for catfish and sunnies, and finding 'gems of agate and fossil
coral on the Burlington track. His family, he recalled, had woven its own
carpets, made its own soap, preserved 'meat and fruit and vegetables, got its
sweetness from sorghum and honey.*35
Hoover, and his “image of a pristine America,” won decisively, and the
words of a Minnesota newspaper following the election might have been used
to describe the attitude of many small-town editors both then and for years to
come. “America is not yet dominated by the great cities," it said. "Main Street is
still the principal thoroughfare of the nation.”236Significantly, the term "Main
Street," as the symbol of small-town supremacy in American life, remained
popular in rural newspapers for decades beyond 1920, the year the census
showed, for the first time, that more Americans lived in urban areas than in the
country.
At Michigan State College in September of 1936, meanwhile, Applegate
began his first fall term as chairman with a curriculum that included
Advertising Copy, News Writing, Editorial Writing, Business Writing, Feature
Writing, Editing, Special Feature Articles and Bulletin Writing.237 At the same
time, while the journalism program, with its eight offerings, possessed course
quantity and variety, other schools had established curricula that were much
broader. A 1936-1937 survey of 32 journalism programs showed that 93
percent of the schools listed courses in the History of Journalism, 87 percent in
Journalism Law and 81 percent in Typography. Further, 16 schools offered

88
classes in current events or contemporary affairs, 14 in public opinion and ten

in interpretation of foreign news, foreign news sources or international
journalism.238
In time, the MSC program would provide similar courses. Even as that
program expanded, though, to Applegate, as professor and publicist, fostering
ties with the small-town papers and their communities remained a major
mission during his 19 years at the College.
“What Applegate did that was terribly important to MSU,” said Elmer White, a
1940 MSC journalism graduate and director of the Michigan Press Association
from 1953 to 1976, “is that he visited every publication in the state.” “He wanted
every student to have a newspaper internship during college. After a while,
every editor and publisher who needed a reporter would give a call. If
Applegate knew him and could help, he would."239
Although Albert Nelson had been “well known among the Michigan
(newspaper) fraternity by his cooperative activity with the Michigan Press
Association through the College publicity department,”240Applegate took that
activity further. During his first year at MSC he organized what was to become
an annual statewide contest for Michigan weekly newspapers with winners
announced at the MPA meeting in January.241 “The contest won immediate
favor with the newspapers," Applegate reported, “and will be continued.”242
“The Michigan Press Association was already on campus," White pointed
out, “but Applegate embraced the relationship and developed it.” “The MPA
annual meeting was attended by outstate publishers. It was more of a factor in
Michigan journalism than it is now.

MSU became known as a place to send

kids, many of them publishers’ kids, to learn the business."
In a 1980 memoir on his years at Michigan State University, former

89
President John Hannah mentioned the significance of having the MPA at the

College. “This was a great asset in our dealings with rural communities,” he
said, “and as rapport improved between the weekly press and the Michigan
dailies, the association became a much more comprehensive organization."
“Their annual week-long meetings were held at Michigan State, and over the
years a friendly and cooperative relationship developed between the
association and the university. In the early days, the Michigan State
Journalism Department was oriented toward training people for weekly papers
and small dailies."243
Such an orientation was as important to the life of the small town as the
orientation of the larger, more broadly-based journalism school was to the life
of the city. That is, despite the statements about small-town papers that often
reflected myth more than reality, those papers did play a significant role in the
life of the small town -- a role, Hannah and Applegate believed, the MSC
journalism program would help future editors and reporters to understand.
A study by Michigan State College sociologist Ernest M. Banzet pointed
out that that the metropolitan paper is confined to a place “where life is less
intimate and more impersonal than in the small towns." Further, the paper must
attempt “to serve a clientele which is often characterized by vast differences in
wealth and income and in political, religious, intellectual and artistic interests
and ideals.” Because it serves a large number of people, “it cannot hope to
include much detail about the incidents, the interests, and the lives of its
constituents."244
In contrast, the rural weekly is “essentially the paper of the small
community," a community in which the residents are in “close proximity" and of
“essential homogeneity." Those conditions enable them “in the process of

90
carrying on a common life to meet frequently in face to face relations which,

when recorded in the columns of the rural weekly, makes possible an intimacy
that is, as a rule, conspicuously lacking among those who peruse the more
pretentious paper.”
To be successful in a small community, then, an editor must be aware of that
closeness and intimacy. The editor should know that “he cannot hide behind
the anonymity which is often prevalent in the news and editorials” of the large
city daily. For that reason, the small-town editor is required To guard the
accuracy of his statements more carefully than the city editor.’*45
While the Banzet study defined the role of the small-town paper, a Special
Bulletin issued by Michigan State College showed that its significance had not
been diminished by either the Depression of the 1930s or the continuing
population shift from country to city.
That bulletin disputed a view by “some persons” that the weekly newspaper
“was becoming increasingly unimportant as a disseminator of news.” “The
disappearance of the weekly newspaper in certain communities too small in
population to support a paper independently, as well as the increase in
circulation of daily papers,” the bulletin said, "have contributed to this view.” In
fact, it said, Michigan weekly newspapers numbered 335 in 1936, just as in
1933. “In view of the financial depression since 1930 the continuance of 335
papers would seem to indicate that they were an essential service agency in
the community and might be expected to continue.”248
The Banzet study and the Special Bulletin, then, demonstrated the
importance of the newspaper as a small-town institution and assured that the
institution was being continued. With that in mind, a college serving rural
Michigan was correct in believing that the newspaper was a primary way to

91
reach the residents of the small town. And a close relationship between the

journalism program, with its publicity bureau, and the representatives of the
rural press was a way to assure that messages from college to potential
student or college to farmer were being properly sent and received.
The orientation toward rural newspapers was demonstrated, in part, in
Newspaper Management, one of three new courses offered in the fall of 1937.
Taught by MPA Field Secretary Gene Alleman247the class was similar in
content to “the old type of community weekly course” that, at many other
schools, had been taken over by business management courses.248 The
course was described as covering “the principles of newspaper management
for news, retail advertising, general advertising, classified advertising,
circulation, business administration and cost accounting. It is supplemented
with field trips to weekly and daily newspaper plants and with lectures by
newspaper publishers.” The other additions were courses in Radio Writing and
Present Day Practices in Advertising.249
By the late 1930s, courses in newspaper management were taught in most
journalism programs. By 1937, 80 percent of journalism schools offered at
least one course in business management, 66 percent a course in community
newspaper and 31 percent a course in circulation and promotion.250
In general, the nature of such courses tended to reflect the orientation and
diversity of the journalism programs. While MSC offered a course in
newspaper management taught by the secretary of the Michigan Press
Association, for example, Northwestern University’s Medill School of
Journalism conducted a course in Metropolitan Newspaper Practice under the
supervision of the night editor of the Chicago Daily Times.251 A course in
Newspaper Management, offered in Chicago, featured “training of news

92
executives with particular reference to circulation, advertising and promotion

problems of papers."5®2
The difference between the management courses at Michigan State and
those at Northwestern was not to be found in courses descriptions. Indeed,
each school stressed the teaching of newspaper management, advertising and
circulation skills. Rather, the difference was a matter of location, a prime
example of the difference between “rural” and “urban" journalism programs.
While the Michigan State courses were taught by a representative of the rural
press, the Northwestern classes were offered by an editor of a Chicago
newspaper. While students at MSC might visit a newspaper employing a few
people and with a circulation in the hundreds, students at Northwestern would
routinely study newspapers that employed hundreds of people and with
circulations in the hundreds of thousands.
“Applegate was a pragmatist,” Elmer White said of the management and
advertising courses. “He knew the degree meant more if you had business
along the way.” “In the old days, you had to know something about advertising,
circulation and typography. When you went to work at Bad Axe or Colon, that
was important."283
MPA publications, in fact, often helped introduce editors and publishers to
college journalists. The Association’s “confidential bulletin,” for example,
printed the following ad and others like it: “Professor Albert A. Applegate, head
of the MSC Journalism and Publications Department, recommends a young
man, age 23, who is looking for editorial or advertising work on a Michigan
newspaper. If you have such an opportunity for a beginner, notify Mr.
Applegate in East Lansing.”2"
The expansion of the journalism program, though, was not due to the

93
influence of the Michigan Press Association alone. Rather, the change can be

attributed to at least two other factors. One was the growth of a College that by
1940 had an enrollment of 7,052 . Another was Applegate’s ability to take
programs that had worked at South Dakota State and transplant them to
Michigan State. And in making them work, he helped tighten the bond
between college and community.
In 1938 and 1939, for example, he took steps to forge a link between the
Department of Journalism and Publications and Michigan high schools, much
as he had done in South Dakota. There, Applegate initiated high school
workshop programs and worked closely with the high school journalism
teachers and newspaper and yearbook advisers. “At that time -- far more than
today -- they too often had no journalism training, had been drafted for the jobs.
As a former high school teacher, he had an understanding of their problems
and their needs."2”
Norman Rumple, a South Dakota State College journalism graduate who
later became editor of the Midland Daily News, was an assistant in Applegate’s
“High School All-State Staff" program in South Dakota. “It was a typical
Applegate approach to things,” he said. “He was teaching journalism while
trying to get people to come to his school. And it worked." That approach, he
said, meant selecting high school journalism students from throughout the state
to produce an edition of the Huron (South Dakota) Daily Plainsman under the
direction of Applegate and his students. “Being a journalist," he said,
“Applegate made sure we knew what we were doing.” “The point was to help
the students produce a decent newspaper. From the public relations viewpoint,
his orders to us were to get to know every kid by name, plus the name of the
parents, hometown paper and the publisher. After that, you could follow up

94
with press releases on what a good job each high school journalist had

done."25*
At MSC, Applegate established a course in Supervising High School
Publications which entered the curriculum in 1938.257 The course, available to
juniors, seniors and high school teachers, was required for "students who plan
to teach with a major or minor in journalism.” Not listed by the college’s
Department of Education, the course was likely initiated by Applegate because
of his own background as a high school teacher early in his career and by the
success of his high school journalism programs in South Dakota.
By the time Applegate established that course, high school journalism in
Michigan was rather well-established. In 1921, for example, schools in
metropolitan Detroit had announced formation of an organization for Michigan
high school and junior high school publications, The Michigan Interscholastic
Press Association. About 100 student journalists, members of the new
organization, met for a three-day “high school editors' conference” the
following year at the University of Michigan and, in 1927, the U of M’s
Department of Journalism assumed sponsorship of the Association.258The
Association was still under the supervision of the University of Michigan during
Applegate’s time at MSC. (It did not move to Michigan State University until
1982.)
The MSC plan to attract high school journalists and their advisers included
creation, in 1938, of High School Journalism Day, an event which drew about
900 participants its first year and attracted nearly 2,000 students from 750
schools ten years later.258 As part of that day, the MSC staff evaluated, judged
and offered suggestions on high school publications.260 In addition, the
department, in its role as publicist, issued a booklet on the college that was

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sent to Michigan high schools as part of a “campaign of information" earned on

under the direction of Secretary John A. Hannah.261 Attracting 900 high school
journalists -- a number greater than 10 percent of the college’s enrollment -- to
MSC for a single day was a notable achievement. In fact, there is no evidence
that an attempt to assist, and recruit, high school reporters and editors in such
numbers had previously been made at Michigan State. Efforts to attract
students through campus visits were not new. In the late 1890s, President
Jonathan Snyder, in addition to his mail and advertising campaigns, organized
excursion trips by train that brought “literally thousands of people to the
campus,” including “3,000 during one day in 1899 and 8,000 during an
excursion week each August” at a time when the enrollment was less than
700.262
Despite his success, Applegate understood the limitations of recruiting high
school journalists for Michigan State College. “Although the number... coming
into the field is increasing slowly,” he said, “somebody -- a lot of somebodies -will have to do a job of selling while students are still in high school. Special
days on journalism at Michigan State, the University of Michigan, and Wayne
help, but encouragement by men they know at home will have greater
influence than that by any body else. Once we get them, we think we do a
pretty good job of persuasion and training. But you can’t train 'em unless you
see 'em.”263
Besides the course in Supervising High School Publications, the fall, 1938,
catalog showed new offerings in Farm and Home Writing -- “designed to aid
the prospective teacher or extension worker in planning and writing newspaper
articles concerning his vocation and community activities” -- and in Advanced
Reporting.264 As courses were added, the department hired a second full-time

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journalism instructor, Ralph Norman, and appointed MPA Secretary Gene

Alleman as a part-time instructor. By the 1938-1939 school year, the number of
students enrolled in all journalism courses had risen to 1,015, causing the
department “to limit enrollment in several courses, because of a limited
personnel and thus deny training to many who desired it."265 At the start of the
1939 school year, in fact, 69 students were listed as journalism majors at
Michigan State College. That same fall, eleven schools reported enrollments
of at least 100 including New York University (410), Missouri (384), Iowa (180),
Illinois (149) and Wisconsin (141).288
The role of the Department’s news service, an aid to recruiting students,
received prominent mention in Applegate’s annual reports to the president.
Those reports revealed the chairman’s approach in promoting the program
and the college. "During the year the head of the department addressed 32
Rotary club, four Kiwanis clubs, and several meetings of Parent-Teacher
associations," he wrote. “On each occasion he visited publishers along the
way, and made an attempt to make stronger their friendship to the college and
to the department. The popularity of the college is seen in the fact that
practically all the journalism graduates were placed soon after their graduation.
The work of creating goodwill needs to be continued, but cannot be hurried. It
is individual, and often is based on personal friendship, and on service."287 The
references to “goodwill” and “service” were further confirmations that the
direction of the Michigan State program in the late 1930s was the same as it
had been in 1910. That is, the newspaper was viewed not primarily a social
force or potential critic but as a way of providing information and, as such, as
serving the farmer, the citizens and the institutions of the small town.
As the numbers of journalism students increased at MSC and elsewhere,

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the debate over journalism education continued. Such education ranged from

a single course at one school to a journalism graduate program at another. By
1938, in fact, the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, had
announced creation of a five-year program leading to a master of science in
journalism degree. Medill Dean Kenneth Olson believed such an approach
brought journalism education "close to that ideal of a graduate professional
school on the same level as schools of law and medicine.”268“I am not sure but
that in some respects we are as far along toward the final answer as are the
schools of law and medicine,” he said, “for we have to the best of our ability
been insisting upon a cultural and social ingredient in our education and have
devoted ourselves largely to the application of social sciences to the field of
public affairs.” “At Northwestern our school is organized on the same basis as
the law school, we require three years of college work for admission. Just as
do law students, our students carry a joint-degree program with the college of
liberal arts and receive their first degree from this college. Just as does the law
school, we grant only the professional degree on the completion of a
professional program superimposed on a liberal education. We differ from the
law school in that our program is not so professionally narrow but provides
opportunity for advanced work in social sciences.”268
Despite that approach, journalism educators continued to categorize most
programs much as they had years before.
“There is still no unanimity,” Arthur T. Robb, editor of Editor and Publisher
magazine said in a 1940 speech, “on the question of whether a school should
attempt to give its students a solid academic and cultural background, or
concentrate on the technical areas.”270 The former, he said, were attempting to
leave students with “fundamental ideas which will bud and flower as the years

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bring them into contact with changes in political thought, with new discoveries

in the scientific laboratories, with changing concepts of industrial and social
relationships, with the currents of racial conflicts in the old and new worlds.”
Regarding the teaching of journalistic skills, he said, “these educators take it as
a matter of routine that their graduates will understand the mechanics of
writing, the editing of copy, the generality of headline style, the fundamentals of
a good editorial, the ethics and history of their chosen profession."221
The opposing view was held by many small-city publishers who believed
that their newspapers did not need, nor could afford to pay, men and women
with broad qualifications that might include advanced degrees. “They want
bright young men and women who can take news stories over the telephone,
get names, addresses and ages straight, report a meeting of a lodge or a
women’s club without getting the paper messed up in personal quarrels, write
a headline if necessary, ride the copy desk on relief, solicit and write an ad for
the butcher, the baker or the plumber, and know what to do with a subscription
if it is handed to them.”
Wesley Mauer, a member of the University of Michigan journalism faculty for
42 years and department chairman from 1948 to 1966, while agreeing that
most schools would tend to fit either of Robb’s definitions, said he thinks all
programs, in the late 1930s, faced a common challenge that had lingered from
journalism education’s earliest days.
“Applegate and I were attempting to prove that journalism belonged in the
classroom,” he said. “Journalism wasn't accepted in many schools and
universities at that time. In many, it’s still not accepted. If you taught even a few
courses in journalistic skills, you were said to be running a trade school.

By

the time we arrived, both of our universities had accepted the subject, but we

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had to keep making our point, both inside and outside the campus. The

question of how it should be taught, too, became an issue.”272
The Michigan program stressed what Robb had called a “solid academic
and cultural background” for journalists. “We taught that journalism grew from,
and drew upon, a shared culture in general," Maurer said. “I believed that all
academic connections important to journalists were more closely associated
with the subject matter of other departments, rather than simply technique. At
Michigan State, the program had emerged from agriculture, from extension
work. The orientation, from the beginning, was occupational, so it was logical
that journalism would stress technical skills.”
Another way of defining the programs, then, is that Michigan followed the
urban model for journalism education, Michigan State the rural. At the same
time, the journalism program at MSC was not so simple to define. The product
of an agricultural curriculum, journalism at MSC had strayed from that base, at
least when judged against programs at other agricultural colleges. Iowa State
College, the first school to offer a course in farm journalism in 1905, for
example, listed a four-year curriculum in agricultural journalism in 1920, two
years after such a curriculum was advocated by a conference of rural editors,
but never acted upon, at the Michigan Agricultural College. Then, in 1927,
when the MAC program was still under the English Department, Iowa State
expanded its offerings to include a major in journalism for home economists.
Since “the Iowa State Journalism Department concentrated on teaching writing
allied with various scientific fields,” in fact, the department, in 1927, changed its
name to “The Department of Technical Journalism.*73
When the Department of Journalism and Publications was established at
Michigan State College in 1929, degree requirements reflected the fact that the

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journalism program had previously been part of the English Department.

Those requirements included completion of 24 credits in composition in
addition to the three-term freshman course. Required within those 24 credits
were two terms of expository writing or two quarters of news writing. Beyond
that, journalism students were to complete 25 credits in literature including
three terms of Survey of English Literature, a course in Greek Literature in
Translation or Greek Myths and The English Old Testament as Literature or Old
Testament Stories.274 Even when “composition” was dropped from the
journalism degree in 1939, requirements regarding composition and literature
remained the same.275
Required journalism courses in 1938-1939 included three terms of
Newspaper Management and a new course in Reporting of Public Affairs, a
course dealing “with reporting of federal, state, and municipal government
activities.”276
A journalism student entering Michigan State College in the fall of 1938
was enrolled in the Division of Liberal Arts. As such, he or she was required to
complete 200 credits to earn a degree. The information in the 1938 College
catalog indicates that a typical four-year program for a student wishing to
pursue newspaper work might have looked like this:

Fall Term Freshman Year
Composition (2 credits)
Elementary French (5 credits)
Algebra (3 credits)
General Botany (3 credits)
Elements of Geography (3 credits)
Military Science -- Freshman Training (1.5 credits)

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Winter Term Freshman Year
Composition (2 credits)
French (5 credits)
General Botany (3 credits)
The Geography of Europe (3 credits)
Military Science -- Freshman Training (1.5 credits)
Physical Education -- Swimming (1 credit)
Total Credits: 15.5
Spring Term Freshman Year
Composition (2 credits)
General Chemistry (3 credits)
Greek Myths (3 credits)
Introduction to Rural Sociology (3 credits)
U S o + S N rw

A r+ / O

i nviwijr v i n u yv

Military Science - Freshman Training (1.5 credits)
Physical Education -- Calisthenics, Apparatus and Games (1 credit)
Total Credits: 16.5
Fall Term Sophomore Year
Survey of English Literature (3 credits)
General Chemistry (3 credits)
American History from 1763 to the Jacksonian Era, 1829 (3 credits)
Expository Writing (2 credits)
Introduction to Philosophy (3 credits)

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Military Science - Sophomore Training (1.5 credits)
Physical Education -- Handball (1 credit)
Total Credits: 16.5
Winter Term Sophomore Year
Survey of English Literature (3 credits)
News Writing (2 credits)
American History from 1829 through the Civil War (3 credits)
Principles of Economics (4 credits)
History of Philosophy (3 credits)
Military Science -- Sophomore Training (1.5 credits)
Total Credits: 16.5
Spring Term Sophomore Year
Survey of English Literature (3 credits)
Principles of Economics (4 credits)
American History Since the Civil War (3 credits)
English Old Testament as Literature (3 credits)
Military Science —Sophomore Training (i.o creoiis^
Total credits: 14.5

Fall Term Junior Year
National Government (4 credits)
Shakespeare (3 credits)
News Writing (2 credits)
Survey of American Literature (3 credits)
Principles of Advertising (2 credits)
General Psychology (4 credits)

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Total Credits: 18
Winter Term Junior Year
State Government (3 credits)
Shakespeare (3 credits)
News Writing (2 credits)
Advertising Copy (2 credits)
Political Parties (3 credits)
Urban Sociology (3 credits)
Total Credits: 16
Spring Term Junior Year
Municipal Government (3 credits)
Milton (3 credits)
Editing (2 credits)
Business Writing (3 credits)
History of Agriculture (3 credits)
Total Credits: 14
Slim m er Term
Newspaper Field Training (6 credits)
“The student shall work at least six weeks during the summer
between his junior and senior years on a newspaper approved
by the department.”
Fall Term Senior Year
Newspaper Management (2 credits)
Radio Writing (2 credits)
History of Foreign Relations of the United States (3 credits)

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History of Art (3 credits)
Ethics (3 credits)
General Psychology (4 credits)
Total Credits: 17
Winter Term Senior Year
Newspaper Management (2 credits)
Editorial Writing (2 credits)
Special Feature Articles (2 credits)
Industrial Psychology (3 credits)
History of American Art (3 credits)
History of the American Frontier (3 credits)
Concepts of Sociology (3 credits)
Total Credits: 18
Spring Term Senior Year
Newspaper Management (2 credits)
Reporting of Public Affairs (3 credits)
Special Feature Articles (2 credits)
History of the American Frontier (3 credits)
Banking and Monetary Policies (4 credits)
Total Credits for Term: 14
Total Credits for Four Years: 200

In contrast, that same year, journalism students in the general curriculum
at the University of Michigan were required to take only about one-third the
English and literature credits required at MSC, 18, but were to complete 60

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credits, or a third of the degree requirements, in economics, history, sociology
and political science. Michigan State students were required to complete a
minimum of only 15 credits in social science. In addition, the University of
Michigan offered three special curricula for journalism majors. Under those
arrangements, journalism students could specialize in an area with additional
courses in Government and Politics, Economics and Sociology or Reviewing
and Dramatic Criticism.277
Significantly, it was possible, in 1938, to major in journalism at Michigan
State College without taking a course in agricultural journalism. For then, the
continuing commitment of the Department of Journalism and Publications -- as
symbolized by the commitment of Albert Applegate -- was not merely to the
farmer but the small town. As such, despite its inclusion within the Division of
Liberal Arts, the program was still more closely aligned with the former
agricultural colleges than with those with the broader orientation of
Northwestern or Michigan. That is, while Kenneth Olson was building a fiveyear program leading to a master's degree at Northwestern, Albert Applegate
was traveling the Michigan roads to meet the editors of small-town papers, as if
creating his own “fifth-year” program - a job for each student following four
years at MSC. And while the rhetoric of Wesley Mauer stressed the cultural
roots of the Michigan program, the rhetoric of Albert Applegate was more
attuned to the ideals of the small town, as reflected in his speech to the South
Dakota editors in 1936.
Journalism textbooks of the late 1930s and 1940s were varied, often
focusing upon a specialty such as editing, editorial writing or feature writing.
An example of a more general text in wide use was Technical Journalism by
F.W. Beckman, Harry R. O’Brien and Blair Converse, who, at one time, had

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taught at Iowa State College. Although it is not known if the book was used at
Michigan State College, Technical Journalism gives insights into how
classroom instructors may have approached the teaching of journalism,
particularly at the land-grant schools.
To the authors, journalists were regarded as "interpreters” who could put into
words, clearly and effectively, “the day by day story" of accomplishments or
problems within an occupation, such as agriculture, or a community.
“Fundamentally, the press, whether it be agricultural, newspaper, trade or
magazine," they said, "has its economic and social excuse as an element, and
a most important one, in the educative process. The press is because it serves.
And it serves primarily in two ways: first, in the conveying to the rank and file of
an industry, a class or a profession, the ideas, the discoveries, the advances of
the leaders in industry, class or profession; second, in providing a mechanism
by which the isolation of individual industries, classes or professions can be
broken down and ideas of common interest exchanged."278
Consistent with the philosophy of the agricultural schools, that view
described the press more as an educator than a social critic. As interpreters,
journalists were responsible for conveying any ideas that might be exchanged
beyond boundaries of profession or class.
In examining the textbook Interpretative Reporting by Northwestern
Professor Curtis D. MacDougall, published in 1938, one finds a different view
of journalism and the meaning of interpretation. A look at the MacDougall text,
complete with its own brand of idealism, gives further insight into how the
orientation of small-town journalism, and the schools which sought to serve it,
differed from those which saw the press as interpreter and critic, as well as
reporter of events, and were committed to a metropolitan approach.

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In discussing the future of journalism, MacDougall said that "the

improvement in the quality of the personnel engaged in journalism will
continue to be both a business necessity and an essential to the future
existence of democratic society.” “Only a competent and responsible
journalism,” he said, "can provide the knowledge and understanding the
masses of mankind need in order to maintain government of the people, by the
people and for the people."279
To properly interpret events, MacDougall said, a journalist should
appreciate both the psychoanalyst and the philosopher.
“The interpretative reporter of the future should be as shock-proof as a
psychoanalyst and a practical philosopher in his general outlook on life,” he
said. “He cannot succeed if he is hampered by prejudices and stereotyped
attitudes which would bias his perception of human affairs. Hence, the
newsgatherer should have a firm understanding how men think and why, both
to avoid pitfalls in his own search for so-called truth and to understand the
behavior of those whose actions it is his responsibility to report."280
In statements that reflected an understanding of the press as social and
political force, and the need for journalism students to understand those forces,
he asked: “What is this thing called public opinion which the newspaperman
may think he is influencing? How explain a new political movement in terms of
economic tendencies which give rise to such symptoms? What about the
power which the demagogue of the moment seems to be able to exert? The
interpreter of the news must see reasons where ordinary individuals observe
overt happenings. And he must study them as the scientist scrutinizes the
specimen in his microscope, scientifically.’581
Technical Journalism, meanwhile, devoted about half of its 339 pages to

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journalistic techniques within chapters entitled The News Gatherer and His

Methods, News Story Structure, The News Story Lead, The Body of the News
Story, Writing the News Story and Meeting and Interview Stories. Chapters
emphasizing the writing of feature stories included Writing the Feature Story,
Feature Article Beginnings and Titles and Feature Story Style. One chapter
was devoted to Publicity and Publicity Relationships, another to Ethical and
Legal Aspects of Technical Writing. Examples of what the authors considered
to be well-written stories were included in a section on Illustrative Stories.
“A news story consists roughly of a lead, or opening section," a chapter on
techniques in the news story lead pointed out, “and of a development or body
(the headline is not part of the news story as written by the reporter). News
story leads are of two general sorts, one used normally on what we call straight
news, and the other, borrowed and adapted from fictional forms, used normally
upon feature material. The first is called the summary news lead and the
second the suspended interest lead."282 A chapter, typically, ended with a list of
“assignments” to challenge the student’s understanding of the material and his
or her ability to master a technique. Following the discussion of leads, students
were asked to “clip 10 summary news leads from papers or magazines.
Analyze the completeness with which they answer the questions who, what,
where, why, when and how. Discuss briefly the feature of the story and
whether or not you think the writer chose his feature rightly.’*83 Another
assignment called for students to “write a news story beginning with a summary
lead.” “Be able to explain why you chose the feature as you did."284
A journalism course at Michigan State College during the Applegate years
included similar assignments and an emphasis on the importance of gathering
news quickly and accurately.

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“The focus back then was on news reporting and writing with not quite so

much emphasis on craftsmanship," Geraldine King, a former journalism
instructor at Wayne State University and 1949 journalism graduate of Michigan
State College, said. “One has to remember that, to most people teaching in the
1940s, 'news’ meant the news appearing in newspapers. At that time, Detroit
had three newspapers, Grand Rapids, and many other towns, two. Papers
seemed almost unchallenged as the primary source of news, but they did
compete fiercely among themselves."285
The significance of providing information quickly and accurately to
newspaper readers i;n the pre-television news days, King recalled, was
pointed out in the final exam in a news writing course she took at MSC. “The
instructor set up a story involving a plane crash in San Francisco," she said,
“and gave us additional, sometimes conflicting, information every few minutes.
We were supposed to be working for a paper in Chicago, so we had to know
time zones. You have to keep in mind that newspapers had several editions in
those days. That meant being very quick, being correct and adjusting copy to
appear in those editions. To succeed, a student had to understand time
element and tenses. In other words, there was a lot happening at once. I can’t
say the standards were any more or less exacting than they are today. There
was just a different emphasis. One assumed that newspapers were the first
place people would get their news. Alternate lead styles weren’t stressed until
television entered the scene. Then writers and editors had to find new ways to
get their stories read.”
In addition to textbooks, King said, the newspapers themselves served as
course material. “Many courses - news writing, reporting, feature writing -were taught on the basis of articles that appeared in the paper," she said. “A

110
teacher would take facts in the newspaper stories and read them to the class.

Your job, as a student, was to spiel it back - organized and in an interesting
manner.’*86
Dorothy Anderson, who graduated in 1938, said an Applegate course
sometimes taught students the importance of observation and recall in stressful
situations.
“We did more than learn just by the book,” she said. “One day a student
stood up, then 'dropped dead’ in front of the class -- just like Applegate had told
him to do. Everyone was a bit startled. A couple of people went to get help.
What Applegate really wanted us to do was to take notes and write a good
story. The class wound up writing several different versions of what had
happened.”287
Earl Brigham, a 1942 graduate of Michigan State College who later taught
at MSC under Applegate, said Applegate struck a balance between course
substance and techniques.
“When it came to writing,” he said, “Applegate stressed the Associated
Press, or summary, lead: who, what, where, when, why, how. Pretty
straightforward. Nothing fancy. That was a good news lead for its day. Even
now. Mostly, he thought journalists should be well-rounded in many other
subjects so they could display depth in their writing. I remember him advising
students to get as much background as they could -- in literature, history,
political science, just about anything. Spelling and grammar were vital, of
course, but you were expected to know that when you came to class."288
An Applegate course, Brigham said, was also likely to include a discussion
on ethics. “He emphasized integrity and responsibility,” he said. “Case
histories were part of his approach. The question was: ‘What would you do if—

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?’ The case might involve whether to use of names in certain stories or might
consider the issue of invasion of privacy. He would give us something worth
thinking about, something that would come in handy out there on the job.”288
In the late 1940s, Brigham joined the MSC faculty part-time to teach
Business Writing. The class had first been taught by Albert Nelson in 1929, but
Applegate expanded the course and, as he did so, stressed the importance of
writing both to students and to other departments within the college. Applegate
felt that the course “helped build the department more than any other one
course, by showing students what they could do with writing skills.”290The
demand for the course among business students led to the employment of an
additional journalism instructor, Dean W. Kuykendall, who taught four sections
during the spring of 1940. That same term, the Division of Engineering
requested that a section be reserved for engineering students the following
year.281 By 1950, the course, renamed Business Letter Writing and required of
students majoring in general business, was offered in 54 sections, with 25 to
30 students per section, over the four academic quarters .28ZBusiness Letter
Writing was endorsed by the chairman of the Business Administration
Department, F.K. Hardy, who said a 1947 survey of business alumni had shown
“the value of knowing how to write and speak was indicated by a vote of 168 to
one in favor of courses in business writing and speech."283
The three-hour course was described as presenting “the general principles
of business writing, with practice in writing various types of letters, among them,
the letter of application, the sales letter, the credit and collection letter, the
adjustment letter, inquiry and order letters, and business reports.’*84
Business Letter Writing, Brigham said, met twice a week, once in lecture and
once in a writing laboratory. “I used basic journalistic principles in teaching the

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course," he said. “The idea was to be practical, to show students how to make

a business letter right. I’d emphasize sentence construction and taught by
rules that would apply to any other journalistic writing: gather your facts,
present them in an organized way, stress your central point. When it came to
editing, I’d go through and chew up the letters terribly. But, in the end, the
student knew how to create something worthwhile, like a job application letter
or a resume.”205
The expansion of the Business Letter Writing course had been due, in part,
to events that had occurred at Michigan State College during World War II, a
period of generally declining enrollment within the Department of Journalism.
In his 1944-1945 departmental report, in fact, Applegate said that “during the
year just ended, the Department of Journalism" had perhaps "reached its
lowest ebb, but it has again begun to make progress."296There were 30 junior
and senior journalism majors in the fall of 1944,297 and the following year there
were eight graduates, all women. The senior class for 1946, Applegate
reported, numbered 21,298
Low enrollments had been of concern to educators since the beginning of
the war. A committee on journalism education and the war, comprised of
college journalism educators, had stated that schools and departments of
journalism had “an obligation to keep their programs going throughout the war
if for no other reason than the opportunity to be of service to the press.”299
Another committee of journalism instructors considered how the “standard
journalism curriculum" at their colleges would help fulfill "important
requirements for training for the services.” Those requirements, the committee
concluded, included “discipline, which is acquired by the necessity of meeting
deadlines, taking definite assignments, covering regular beats, and skills in

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interviewing and the concise writing of reports, which are of inestimable value

in the work of the various intelligence units (and in the FBI)."300
A survey conducted by Charles E. Rogers, journalism professor at Iowa
State College, pointed out that several programs -- Michigan State College not
listed among them -- offered “new war courses" or modified “existing courses,
to give emphasis to new problems, opportunities or needs of the press
occasioned by the war.” The University of Wisconsin, for example, established
a course in Army Public Relations, Marquette offerings in Radio in the War
Effort and History of the Press in Wartime and Pennsylvania State College a
course in War News, Advertising and Publicity in Their Application to the War.30'
The curriculum at MSC, however, showed no war induced changes. The
changes that did occur during the war years were brought about by college
decisions that created a Department of Journalism and gave it a new academic
home. The first action, taken at a Board of Trustees meeting on Dec. 17,1942,
established the departments of journalism and publications as two separate
units with the Publications Department responsible for “agricultural news
releases, editing of the college publications and the institution’s press
relations."302The Publications Department was headed by Lloyd H. Geil, who
had come to Michigan State College in 1935 from an Aurora, Illinois, high
school where he was a journalism instructor and who had taught the
Supervising High School Publications and advertising courses under
Applegate.303
The second, in 1944, was the result of a "general reorganization” of an
MSC “administrative structure which had grown by accretion as much as by
design.”304As part of that reorganization, college divisions were renamed
schools “because they were in fact constituent parts of a university" and would

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appear to be “more professional in character” to students entering their

programs after the freshman or sophomore year. Under the new arrangement,
the Department of Journalism joined “a number of vocational curricula" to form
the School of Business and Public Service which also included the
departments of Business Administration; Physical Education, Health and
Education for Men; Physical Education, Health and Education for Women;
Police Administration; Hotel Administration, Public Administration; and Social
Work. Colonel Dorsey Reed Rodney, a former commandant of the college
R.O.T.C. program, was appointed dean to “organize and head" the new
school.305“With the return of the veterans after the war,” Rodney said, “many
young men felt the need for selecting areas of specialization which would
prepare them for work in the contact fields of business and public service. The
grouping of certain departments under one administrative head was felt to be
desirable.”306
Meanwhile, as the new School of Business and Public Service was
being created, members of all college departments prepared for what was
expected to be a dramatic increase in student enrollment following World War
II.
“Michigan State College is using the best brains at its disposal to think
through and try to analyze what the problems are going to be when this war is
over in order that it may be in position to meet them most effectively,” President
John A. Hannah told the Michigan Press Association during its convention in
1944. “”We know that we are going to be called upon to handle more students
than ever before in the history of the institution.”307
The increase, Hannah said, would be due, to some degree, to a trend in
Michigan high schools. “A larger percentage of our young men and young

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women finishing the high schools each year go on to college," he said, “and a

larger percentage of that number are attending o u r.. .state-supported colleges
and universities." Of greater significance, however, was a federal government
plan for “a program that will send a million or more of the members of the
armed services to our colleges to pick up and complete their interrupted
educations on the campuses of the nation." To Michigan State College, he
said, that would mean having “5,000 of these men at one time join each of the
second and the third years after the war comes to an end -- imposed on top of
the largest civilian student body in the history of the institution."
To assist journalism departments in planning for the post-war years,
Frederic E. Merwin, president of the American Association of Teachers of
Journalism, created nine committees to deal with “Journalism Teaching in the
postwar Period" and named Albert Applegate general chairman and
coordinator of all committees. The committees were expected “to collect and
analyze data pertinent to college instruction in journalism in light of changes
which are likely to be of decisive importance once peace returns."308
In a letter to the members of the committees, Merwin urged consideration of
the questions: “What will be the role of formal education for journalism in terms
of the evolving newspaper, pictorial journalism, the new administrative law,
advanced production technologies and radio news? What must we teach men
and women who will deal as journalists with the vast educational program
which seems so necessary for an alert citizenry in the world of tomorrow?
What past practices must we retain or discard and what procedures and
disciplines must be introduce?”309
The announcement of Applegate’s appointment appeared in the April 1944
issue of the Journalism Quarterly, the same month Applegate offered, in an

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article for the Michigan Publisher, the magazine of the Michigan Press

Association, his own appraisal of post-war journalism education at MSC. In
that article, Applegate outlined a modified approach to allow for the changing
nature of students and of technology.
“Journalism courses at Michigan State College heretofore have been held
to a minimum," he said, “and in those courses offered, we have emphasized
practical values. We have placed special attention on general cultural
background, in an attempt to graduate young men and women educated for
newspaper work rather than trained technically for one particular job. We
believe we can best serve news and advertising and students, too, by
providing our graduates with a general education and the immediate tools with
which to work; sending them out prepared to complete their training in the
field.”310
With the ending of the war, he said, would come a change in that
philosophy. "Following the declaration of peace or perhaps even before then,
when soldiers will be returned to us on medical discharge, we shall be forced
to a slight modification in aim, because of the demands of students,” he said.
“These returned soldiers, as I found at the close of the last war, will be impatient
with backgrounds, and will be demanding courses that are more technical.
They will have their eyes upon an immediate job and courses leading to such
jobs.”
To meet those expectations, Applegate anticipated a change in classroom
approach. "We shall, however, continue our selection to provide a continuation
of general cultural background studies, but we shall place somewhat greater
emphasis upon practical training. As an illustration: in news writing and
reporting, we shall probably break our classes up into small laboratory groups,

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each student working under the direct supervision of a man whom we shall call

the city editor. In copy reading, too, students will be in small laboratory groups
working under normal newspaper conditions, working against a deadline. We
shall, of course, continue to require one summer of practical experience,
preferably between the junior and senior year. “
"We shall introduce a course in elementary typography, not so much to
make typographers of students as to teach them the possibilities and limitations
of type. A course in photography is also on the schedule."
At the same time, Applegate acknowledged a need for additional
instruction in radio.
“With the close of the war,” he said, “frequency modulation in radio is
expected to be more common. To the newspaper it carries possibilities of great
harm or great good. I shall not be surprised if fifty Michigan daily newspapers
will have their own FM radio. Radio writing, therefore, will receive added
impetus. Writing news for use on the radio is an art in itself, and so we
probably shall break down our radio writing into three courses, placing greatest
emphasis upon writing news for broadcasting, but also stressing writing of
advertisements and continuity."
Courses in public affairs reporting, newspaper management and
advertising were to be reorganized, too.
“One of the courses we have always offered at the end of the journalism
sequence is Reporting of Public Affairs," he said. “We expect to continue this
practice. We shall, however, include field work in that course so that every
student, under the direction of a capable instructor, will have an opportunity to
visit offices of state, county, and city and become acquainted with general
governmental and court practice and terminology. We are ideally located to

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teach such a course."
“Gene Alleman’s course in newspaper management, we expect to break
up into three courses. They will be devoted to editorial and promotion
management, advertising management, and circulation management. We
expect to enlarge our courses in advertising slightly, placing more emphasis
upon retail advertising copy.1011
With the war’s end in 1945, the changes anticipated by Hannah,
Applegate and others began to occur. In the winter of 1946 “the College
enrolled over two thousand and in the spring nearly four thousand men and
women who had served in the armed forces."312 The total fall term enrollment
rose to 15,000 in 1947 and to 16,000 in 1949. Michigan State, which before
the war had been twenty-second among the nation’s schools in the number of
full-time students, was ninth in 1949.313
For the journalism program, those years brought corresponding increases in
courses, students and faculty. In the fall of 1945, a Survey of Journalism
course, “designed to give students a background of journalistic reading," was
added to the curriculum along with offerings in Advertising Copy and Research,
Newspaper Advertising Management and Radio Continuity Writing. An
increasing number of business students called for more sections in Business
Writing, and, as a service to another department within the School of Business
and Public Service, journalism offered a class in Sports News Writing. “This
course is for Physical Education Majors only," the course description said, “to
give them training in writing general and specific news about sports and
physical education programs. So far as possible the special interests of each
student are considered in making assignments.314 Journalism majors
numbered 171 in the fall of 1947 and 295 in the fall of 1948.315 Nationally,

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enrollment of journalism students in 73 schools and departments of journalism

for the fall term 1949-1950 declined slightly more than eleven percent from
1948 to a total of 10,367 students. At the same time, MSC majors increased to
312, placing the Department fifth in size behind Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota
and Northwestern.3’6
The growth in student numbers had been accompanied by an increase in
courses. The 1947 College catalog listed 24 journalism courses, and 34 were
listed the following year. New courses included Newspaper Circulation
Management, House Organ Editing, Newspaper Promotion Management,
Typography, Radio Advertising, Fine Arts Writing, Radio Continuity Writing,
Editorial Writing, Direct Mail Advertising, Retail Advertising and Advertising
Campaigns.
The additional advertising courses had, in fact, led the College, in 1948, to
add a full sequence in advertising to the journalism curriculum. Under that
plan, students could earn a maximum of 27 credits in advertising. In so doing,
they were required to take 24 credits in economics instead of a language, a
requirement for editorial majors. The economics requirement was “based upon
the advice of practicing advertising men in Michigan."317
To teach the expanded curriculum, the Department of Journalism
expanded its faculty. During the war, courses were taught by a faculty of three:
Professor Applegate, Assistant Professor Dean Kuykendall and the MPA’s
Gene Alleman, a lecturer. In the fall of 1945, the college added a fourth
member. He was Assistant Professor Alan Scott who had earned bachelor’s
and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri and had worked on
newspapers in Missouri and had taught one year at the University of
California.318

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The following January three more former newspapermen joined the
teaching staff.
Assistant Professor Joseph A. Del Porto was a 1935 graduate of the
University of Pennsylvania and received his master’s degree from the
University of Chicago in 1936. He had worked on the staff of the New York
American, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the City News
Bureau of Chicago and the Erie (Pennsylvania) Dispatch-Herald-Sun.
Instructor Don J. Gemmel, a 1935 graduate of the University of Iowa,
joined the faculty from a public relations job with World Airways. Previously, he
had worked with the Tri-Citv Star of Davenport, Iowa, and the Moline (Illinois)
Daily Dispatch.
Instructor Vernon B. Bowen, a graduate of Evansville College in 1939, had
done graduate work at the London School of Economics and Political Science
and the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He had worked for the
Evansville (Indiana) Courier and The Stars and Stripes.319
That fall, reflecting the need for instructors in the department’s new
advertising sequence, five more teachers were added to the faculty.
Assistant Professor Edward Buttgen, who held a master’s degree from the
University of Illinois, had spent six years in advertising with the St. Louis
Packing Company. Fred Maguire, appointed as assistant professor, was a
Dartmouth graduate and former newspaperman who had studied at Harvard as
a Nieman Fellow and was the winner of the Sigma Delta Chi award for
courage in journalism in 1943. Assistant Professor Richard Spong was a
Dartmouth graduate with a master’s degree from the Pulitzer School of
Journalism and six years of newspaper and public relations work.
Instructor Charles Blagdon, a Kalamazoo College graduate, had 14 years

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in industrial advertising and selling. Instructor Paul Sutton, a University of

Wisconsin graduate, had done 13 years of newspaper, advertising and radio
work.380
In January 1948, three more instructors were hired.
Melvin Lostutter, appointed an assistant professor, was a graduate of the
University of New Mexico and had done graduate work at Indiana University.
He was for 16 years editor of the Columbus (Indiana) Evening Republican and
had worked for other newspapers in Indiana and Kentucky. Lostutter had
published several short stories and a novel, High Fever.
Instructor Edwin Wintermute was a magna cum laude graduate of Brown
University and had done graduate work at Teachers College, Columbia
University, and in the Yale School of Fine Arts. He had taught a year at Brown
and three years in the School of Journalism at the University of Washington.
Prior to coming to MSC, Wintermute had served on the copy desk of the
Providence Journal.
Earl McIntyre, appointed an instructor, was graduated in advertising from
the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and had worked as editor
of the Shadwick (Illinois) Review and city editor and associate editor of the
Harvard (Illinois) Herald.321
The fall of 1948 saw the hiring of Instructor Elwin McCray to teach
typography. A graduate of Muskingum College, McCray had been on the staff
of the Fort Wavne (Indiana) News Sentinel and later was the owner and
publisher of his own weekly newspaper.322
Four additional teachers were added to the faculty in the fall of 1949,
including the first MSC journalism instructor to hold a doctorate.
Professor Harold R. Jolliffe came to the College from Ohio State University

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where he held the rank of associate professor. The holder of a Ph.D. in

classical languages from the University of Chicago, Jolliffe spent many years in
newspaper work and had, for five years, worked on the copy desk of the Detroit
Free Press.
William Cumming, Kenneth Johnson and James Murphy came to MSC on
their first teaching assignments as instructors, Cumming and Johnson in the
editorial sequence and Murphy in advertising.
Cumming was a graduate of the University of Maryland with a master’s
degree from the Medill School of Journalism. Murphy, a graduate of the
University of Missouri, also had a master’s from Medill. Johnson held
bachelor’s and master’s degree in journalism from the University of
Wisconsin.323
As the fall quarter of 1949 began, then, the Department of Journalism
faculty, following earlier resignations of Kuykendall and Sutton, numbered 18
members including one with a Ph.D. and seven with master’s degrees. As
significant, the development of the program had, that summer, earned the
department accreditation by the American Council on Education for
Journalism.324
Discussion of setting standards for schools and departments of journalism
began decades earlier with the founding of the earliest programs. By 1924,
more than 200 schools were advertising courses in journalism, a matter which
concerned the editors of the Journalism Bulletin. “If more than half of these
develop professional courses,” an editorial stated, “there will be a period of
oversupply and low standards in the profession of journalism.” Such a
situation, the editorial continued, need not occur. “This experience can be
avoided," the editors believed, “in the case of institutions which are interested

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in teaching journalism if they will adopt one of two courses: prepare to accept
the standards of the first class school of journalism, or prepare to offer a limited
amount of work of Class A standard. Just as there are Class A schools of
medicine which offer only the first two years of medical work, so there can be
Class A schools of journalism which offer only a part of the full professional
course. If schools of limited resources and limited size will concentrate on a
limited amount of work of high standard that will prepare the students to take
the last years of their courses at institutions with full Class A rating, the
character of the journalism graduates will be improved and both the schools
and profession will have raised their standing.”325
Although that plan was never carried out, the term “Class A rating"
appeared over the next 25 years in the literature of journalism education. That
classification, in effect, became synonymous with membership in the American
Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism and, hence, with
accreditation.
The AASDJ was formed in 1916 through a proposal by Dean Walter
Williams of the University of Missouri. In 1912 Williams had completed a
survey of journalism offerings in colleges and universities and had appended
his own evaluation of a small group of what he deemed “reasonably effective
schools and departments." Those leading schools, he proposed, should form
the new association.326
The first organization of college journalism instructors, the American
Association of Journalism Teachers, had taken root in 1912 at the University of
Wisconsin with the gathering of 24 teachers from 17 institutions. Since many of
the early journalism units were on agricultural campuses, an early discussion
session focused on agricultural journalism. The Michigan Agricultural College

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was not represented at that meeting.927

All journalism instructors were eligible to join the American Association of
Journalism Teachers. At the same time, only certain schools could gain
membership in the Association of American Schools and Departments of
Journalism. An early reference to the accreditation of programs appeared in
the November 1926 issue of the Journalism Bulletin in which it was reported
that “the 18 schools reporting membership in the Association of American
Schools and Departments of Journalism may be regarded as the nearest
approach to Class A schools of any grouping made at the present time."328
The article said, though, that “schools which are not members of the
association should not be considered inferior because of their failure to seek
election." “There is no generally accepted basis for making distinctions among
them,” it said. “Some of them are better than others and not all of them should
be listed as being in a class below that of the members of the association. In
general they should be regarded as institutions of high character offering
acceptable professional instruction in journalism. Whether or not they may be
acceptable as members of the association has been left for the Council on
Education for Journalism to determine."329
In reality, some of the standards of the Council, established jointly by the
two associations to draft standards and classify schools and chosen from
among the memberships, often became “bones of contention” when the
AASDJ refused entry to some schools.330 The “Principles and Standards of
Education for Journalism” prepared by the Council in 1924 was to serve as the
standards for membership and classification for the next 17 years.
The General Principles outlined by the Council stated that “adequate
preparation is as necessary for all persons who desire to engage in journalism

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as it is for those who intend to practice law or medicine.” The document also
addressed the nature of that preparation. “Adequate preparation for
journalism, therefore, must be sufficiently broad in scope to familiarize the
future journalist with the important fields of knowledge, and sufficiently practical
to show the application of the knowledge to the practice of journalism.” This
could best be achieved, the Council believed, through “a four-year course of
study in a college or university, including such subjects as history, economics,
government and politics, sociology, literature, natural science, and psychology
or philosophy." “Not merely acquisition of knowledge," it said, “but
encouragement to independent thinking and fearless search for truth should be
the purpose of all courses in preparation for the professional of journalism."331
There is no evidence that Michigan State College applied for membership in
the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism. A 1945
survey of journalism schools and departments lists MSC as a Class B program.
The College was said to be among 71 such schools "offering substantial
programs of journalism leading to degrees or majors.” A few of those schools,
it was said, “are offering sound programs that could meet -- at least in some
respects -- the requirements set up for schools holding membership in the
AASDJ.”332
Until 1948, classification as an A,B,C or D program was based upon the
Standards of Education for Journalism established by the Council on
Education for Journalism in 1924 as revised in 1941. Judging the MSC
program against a few standards for a Class A ranking, one can understand
why the Department did not hold that ranking and how it compared with those
schools which had been accepted for AASDJ membership.
Among the requirements “considered essential” for membership, for

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example, was one stating “that instruction in preparation for journalism shall be

organized as a separate academic unit - department, course, or school of
journalism - with a dean, director, or professor at its head.1033The Michigan
State College program did not achieve department status until 1929 and then
as part of a Department of Journalism and Publications.
The requirements also said that “the form of the bachelor’s degree granted
shall indicate that the student upon whom it is conferred has successfully
completed the requirements for a degree in journalism: bachelor of arts in
journalism, bachelor of science, course in journalism, bachelor of journalism.”
The MSC program offered an English degree until 1929 and, until 1938,
awarded a degree in English Composition and Journalism.
Standards also dictated “that the courses offered in journalism shall afford
instruction and practice in reporting, copy editing, editorial writing, and the
writing of special articles; and instruction in the history of journalism, and the
principles, or ethics, of journalism (with particular reference to the duties and
responsibilities of the journalist to society), and the law of the press." The first
general reporting course, Writing for the Press, had been offered at the
Michigan Agricultural College in 1917, editing and special articles courses in
1925 and editorial writing in 1938. History and Ethics of Journalism, however,
was not taught until 1944, and the first Law of the Press course did not appear
until 1948.
Regarding the faculty, the “number of instructors in journalism” was to be
“sufficient to insure careful attention to the individual needs of the students in
the instructors’ courses” and “the amount of class and laboratory work required
of each instructor” was not to exceed that of instructors in similar departments,
such as that of English composition. Although the number of instructors

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considered "sufficient" might vary with the size of each journalism program, it is

clear that Michigan State College, although one of the nation's larger
programs in terms of students, through the end of World War II, had a smaller
staff than schools holding membership in the American Association of Schools
and Departments of Journalism. In 1939-1940, for example, MSC employed
three journalism teachers, one of whom shared teaching duties with his work
as secretary of the Michigan Press Association. In contrast, that year only one
of 32 Group A schools had as few as three staff members. The average
number was eight.334
In 1941, the AASDJ revised its standards for membership, tightening
several former requirements and adding five others. Under the new standards,
each academic unit in journalism was to have a minimum faculty of three full­
time teachers of professional rank -- defined as “the ranks of assistant
professor, associate professor, and professor.*035 In addition, “sufficient
laboratory equipment" must have been available "in the school or department
to train students in the production methods of various forms of journalism under
study." Libraries, too, were to be “comparable with those available in other
professional disciplines” for the use of students. “These facilities shall include
adequate contemporary and historical files of newspapers and periodicals,
documentary materials, and a wide range of books and treatises in the various
fields of journalism."
The change in the accreditation of journalism programs, however, came
about not through revised standards but through the adoption of a new
accrediting policy.
“The present system of accrediting schools and departments of journalism
has, in my opinion, several inherent defects," Fred S. Siebert, University of

128
Illinois professor, AASDJ president and a future chairman of the MSU School

of Journalism, told the Association’s convention in 1945. “Briefly these are:
The present system does not provide for any periodic evaluation of the
educational programs of member institutions. No machinery is provided for
withdrawing the name of an institution from the accredited list. The schools
and departments accredit each other without outside guidance or
assistance."336
The impetus for a re-evaluation of the accrediting system and standards,
Siebert said, had come from professional organizations of newspaper editors
and publishers. “These organizations have indicated an interest in our
problems and have offered help,” he said. “The American Newspaper
Publishers Association, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the
Southern Newspaper Publishers Association have expressed a desire to assist
the schools and departments of journalism in solving their accrediting
problems.”
Professor Kenneth E. Olson, of Northwestern, said the newspaper
associations were “concerned in eventually obtaining a professional status for
newspaper editorial employees." “They feel that, by developing a sound
accrediting system which will gain our schools recognition as professional
schools,” he said, “a great step forward will have been taken in bringing about
a closer collaboration between the press and the schools."337
The AASDJ, at that convention, adopted a resolution favoring “the
appointment of a committee on accreditation of schools and departments of
journalism.” A formal Statement of Policy was adopted by that committee in
December 1947. In that statement, the purposes of the American Council
Education for Journalism in accrediting schools and departments of

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journalism were as follows:
* To describe the characteristics of schools or departments of
journalism worthy of public recognition as professional schools.
* To guide prospective students in journalism and allied fields in
choosing a school or department of journalism that adequately will
meet their educational needs.
* To serve as a guide to newspapermen, magazine editors and
publishers, radio station executives, advertising agency officials,
and other interested employers in the mass communication field as
to which schools and departments of journalism are recognized as
presenting professional programs worthy of approval.
* To assist secondary school guidance personnel and college
and university administrators, especially in the field of guidance, in
advising prospective journalism students as to the schools or
departments which best meet their potential needs.
* To stimulate the constant improvement of education for
journalism through continuing application of the principles of
accreditation.
* To provide accredited schools and departments with detailed
information as to the success of their graduates in the various
fields in which they serve.338
Unlike the AASDJ standards which applied equally to all schools, the new
basis of accreditation took institutional goals into account. “A school or
department will be judged for accreditation on the basis of the objective of the
institution of which it is a part," the statement said. “Wide variations will appear
in programs and in objectives. The objective of a school or department in a
small traditional arts college may be far removed from that of one in a large
state university or a well-endowed private institution.”
“The primary objective of a school or department is to train candidates for
the practice of journalism, but it is recognized that some schools and
departments may elect to confine that training to one field or area of journalism

130
while others may offer training in several fields such as news and editorial,

business management, advertising, radio, magazine production, community
journalism, or news photography."
The school or department was to be judged “on factual data which in the
opinion of the Accrediting Committee of the American Council on Education for
Journalism reflects the resources available for journalism education." “These
items," the statement said, "include the readily measurable aspects of faculty,
library, curricula, laboratory facilities, number of students, financial support, and
employers’ appraisals of graduates.” The data would be complemented by a
“system of visitation whereby members of the committee and regional
representatives chosen by them will visit each school or department applying
for accreditation and evaluate such intangibles as student morale, teaching
effectiveness, school prestige, regional validity, student-faculty relations,
personality and achievement of faculty, effectiveness of administrative set-up
and other items of a qualitative nature.”339
The accrediting was to be done by a seven-member committee with four
selected by the American Association of Schools and Departments of
Journalism and three chosen from among five newspaper organizations:
American Newspaper Publishers Association, American Society of Newspaper
Editors, Inland Daily Press Association, National Editorial Association and
Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.340
The first list of ACEJ accredited schools, announced in June 1948,
contained the names of 35 schools and departments of journalism. To be
accredited, a school need be approved for one or more sequences, defined by
the Accrediting Committee as “a group of related courses intended to prepare a
student for specialization in a particular area.”34’ Thirty-one schools received

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approval in the news-editorial sequence, thirteen in radio journalism, twelve in

advertising, eight in community journalism, seven in advertising-management,
six in agricultural journalism, five in magazine journalism, four in newspaper
management, two in pictorial journalism and one in each of the specialized
areas of science journalism, communications and public opinion and
informative writing.342
Michigan State College was among seven schools applying for membership
for the 1949-1950 academic year.343 Following an April visit by a five-member
committee, headed by Missouri Professor Earl English, the school was
accredited in the news-editorial sequence. In endorsing the MSC program, the
committee rated the Department in 21 categories, giving a “high" and "medium
high” rating in 14, “medium” in three, “medium low” in three, and “low” in one.344
Further information on the accreditation of the MSC program in 1949,
according to a spokesperson for the Accrediting Council, located at the
University of Kansas, is not available.
With the endorsement of the committee, the Michigan State College
program was among 38 to have been approved during the ACEJ’s first two
years of accrediting. More than providing a list of schools that met committee
standards, accreditation had taught journalism educators something more.
“These are some of the things we have learned from the program so far,”
Ohio State Professor Norval Neil Luxon said. "First, that having to gather and
record reliable data about their schools has helped the school administrators;
second, that in 11 schools only one sequence was strong enough to be
accredited; third, that there is no standardization of courses in accredited
schools; fourth, that there is no ‘perfect’ school of journalism; fifth, that there is
no absolute ‘right’ way to teach journalism; sixth, that the report of the visitation

132
committee has proved to be very important because it weighs intangibles
which recorded data cannot show and because the qualitative aspects of
school’s work are important. Nearly a hundred news, advertising, and radio
executives have helped with the visitations, and the experience has given them
a better understanding of the problems of the schools."34*
At the same time, Luxon mentioned situations that needed correcting: “ (1)
Some schools let students elect too high a percentage of journalism courses.
(2) No really good aptitude tests in the field have been devised. (3) Some
schools afford too little opportunity for student-faculty contacts outside of class.
(4) Too many school directors do not keep their administrative superiors fully
informed about the objectives and progress of the schools. (5) Too many
schools keep poor records of alumni and of job placements.348
The classification of journalism programs, then, had evolved from a list of
one hundred schools categorized as State Universities, State Colleges and
Schools, and Endowed Colleges and Universities by James Mervin Lee in a
Department of Interior Bulletin in 1918 to a list of 38 programs who met the
standards of a committee of professors and professional journalists 30 years
later. To Norval Neil Luxon, in fact, “announcement of the accredited list in
June 1948 marked the most significant event in journalism education since the
University of Missouri set up its school of journalism in 1908."347
To Michigan State College, accreditation had brought national recognition
to a program that, under Applegate, had focused largely upon training
journalists for Michigan newspapers. Significantly, accreditation had been
awarded neither for agricultural journalism nor community journalism -- a term
synonymous with rural journalism -- but for the news-editorial sequence, a
course of study common to, though not limited to, programs of urban

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journalism.
By the late 1940s, in fact, the journalism program was no longer oriented
toward the small town. The accreditation of the general news-editorial
sequence was an indication of that change. The instructors hired following
World War II were another. Most had come to Michigan State following
journalism careers in large cities, not small towns. Their varied academic
backgrounds included degrees from Northwestern, Columbia, Brown,
Dartmouth and the University of Chicago, rather than the former agricultural
schools like Iowa State or South Dakota State. Further, Applegate broadened
the direction of courses in public affairs to place added emphasis on the
coverage of state and city government. In the classroom, an MSC journalism
instructor was as likely to stress the deadline considerations of a metropolitan
newspaper as of a small-town weekly.
As the 1950s approached, then, the journalism program, like the College
itself, faced the question of how best to capitalize on its new-found national
recognition and “wealth” of faculty and students.
Just as the Department of Journalism and Publications had divided into
separate units in 1943, expanded offerings in advertising and radio, not to
mention the coming of television, might dictate the further division of those
specialties into their own departments.
Further, as MSC continued to expand in size and in scope, it remained to
be seen whether Albert Applegate’s vision of journalism education - one of
service and of the small town -- was large enough to match the widening vision
of the College. That is, in the quest for prominence, the question might arise
as to whether the approval of newspaper editors would mean as much to
MSC as the approval of the presidents and scholars of other universities

134
whose judgments were based largely on the quality of research and graduate

programs.
In short, a growing field, and a growing department, would at least require a
re-evaluation of what journalism should mean in a classroom of the 1950s in a
College that was about to become a University.

A COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION ARTS

The year 1955 saw creation of the College of Communication Arts and
the upgrading of the Department of Journalism to a School of Journalism within
the College. Establishment of the College was due, in part, to the influence of
the Michigan Press Association which called for a building to house the
growing journalism program. A second influence was the introduction of the
concept of “communication” and academicians’ search to define the term, a
quest that was altering journalism education at other universities. During the
early 1950s, then, the journalism faculty, other faculty members and College
administrators re-evaluated the Department at MSC, partly to determine the
role journalism and communication might play in a larger, integrated program.
The re-evaluation, too, weighed the value of a Department still tied largely to
serving the newspapers of pjra! Michigan against the possible benefits of a

broader program that would strive for national prominence in communications
research. The most significant re-evaluation occurred when President John
Hannah took the future of the communications program out of the hands of the
faculty and placed it with a five-member committee of senior MSC
administrators. In writing a grant application to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation,
the committee outlined plans for a communications college and a building to
house it. Although denied, the proposal gave impetus to establishment of the

135

136
College of Communication Arts and, despite continued misgivings by the

journalism faculty toward communication theorists and their potential role in the
future of the proghram, led to the placing of journalism within that College. In
the spring of 1955, Albert Applegate retired from the Department of Journalism
after 19 years as chairman. He was replaced by Gordon Sabine who assumed
the roles of chairman of the School of Journalism and dean of the College July
1 upon the creation of both.

Despite years of expansion in students, faculty and courses, the Michigan
State College Journalism Department, by the early 1950s, had not found a
permanent home. The Department had been housed in five locations since the
early days of World War II -- from the Student Union, to post-war quonset huts
to the Union Lit Club building, which would later become the site of the College
library.
The lack of a building, or at least several classrooms devoted to the
teaching of journalism, was not critical in the first 40 years of journalism
instruction. Early courses in writing and editing could be offered within
ordinary classrooms. During that time, there was little need for the additional
space required to equip and instruct courses in typography, photography, copy
editing and layout.
More students and more courses had created a need for more space, a
situation that was typical in journalism schools following World War II. The lack
of adequate facilities for journalism programs had been of concern to members

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of accrediting committees that had evaluated 46 college and university

programs in 1948 and 1949. Journalism instruction did not “fare well in the
general character and suitability of the building or space occupied” by the
programs, Earl English, executive secretary of the Accrediting Committee,
said. “Too often, the instruction is centered, it seems, in a temporary structure
or in the oldest and most beaten-up building on the campus.”348
“Leaders in mass communications have not progressed to the point where
they take pride in substantial physical facilities for professional training in their
fields. This is not easy to understand in view of the important help the
newspapers, particularly, have given in working for adequate educational
housing for law, medicine, agriculture, and education in general." The problem
for the “poor showing,” English said, was centered “chiefly on our reticence to
work for our own interests. Certainly any school which hopes to retain the
accredited status of its journalism program should have plans for adequate
housing in the future building program of its institution." News organizations,
not entirely sold on the importance of journalism classroom training, were slow
to support building programs. As graduates grew in numbers and quality, and
as editors, participants in the accreditation process, learned the significance of
strong classroom programs to their own organizations, news people and
academicians worked together to improve the quarters in which college
journalism programs were housed.
In reaction to those statements, and facing a growing need for space,
several journalism programs, in the early 1950s, moved into new or remodeled
facilities. In 1951 alone, according to reports in the Journalism Quarterly, the
University of Iowa began construction of a $525,000 Communications Center
to house all teaching, research and publications efforts; South Dakota State

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dedicated a $250,000 journalism building; the University of Wisconsin
journalism building underwent a $50,000 remodeling program to
accommodate radio and television studios and a new typography laboratory;
and the University of Kansas expanded the William Allen White Journalism
Building to include the university press and the student newspaper, the Daily
Kansan.
When Albert Applegate needed help in acquiring a journalism building at
MSC, it was logical that he turned to the small- town newspaper editors of
Michigan, through the monthly publication of the Michigan Press Association.
By then, the formal relationship between the College and the MPA was nearly
30 years old, and Applegate, since his arrival at MSC, had worked to
strengthen those bonds, most recently by proposing a Michigan Journalism
Hall of Fame to honor men and women who had “rendered conspicuous
newspaper service.”349Applegate was following the path pioneered by other
disciplines. Just prior to World War II, the Michigan Hotel Association had
asked MSC to “erect an inn which would serve as a hotel management
laboratory and would accommodate campus visitors.” With the aid of a
$100,000 grant from the association - and a $1.4 million gift from the Kellogg
Foundation years later - Kellogg Center opened in 1951.350
Further, despite a continuing decline in rural population and the
continuing encroachment of big-city papers, radio and television, weekly
newspaper editors continued to see their publications as a way of selling
small-town pride and values -- and thereby selling their newspapers -- as they
had decades before.
“The voice of the country editor is one of the most powerful voices in
America today,” an editorial in the American Press, a national publication for

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weekly editors, said. “Upon his shoulders, to a great extent, rests the future of

our country. Admitting their own uncertainty over the desires of the people, and
over finding the right answers to the complicated problems of the present day,
the leaders of our national government often turn to the unimpassioned,
simply-worded ‘horse sense’ in weekly newspaper editorials to find the
answers to their questions."351
In 1951, the Michigan Press Association listed a membership of 312
weekly and 54 daily newspapers, up from 247 weeklies during Albert
Applegate’s first years at Michigan State College.352
Applegate approached the editors of those newspapers through a
February 1951 article in the Michigan Publisher in which he pointed out the
need for a journalism building. In stressing that need, Applegate cited a
student survey of department equipment. “When students in the journalism
department of Michigan State College returned to school last fall they decided
they could be of greatest service to the college and their department by starting
a campaign for a new journalism building," he said.353“They made their
decision on the grounds that their department ranks second only to the
University of Missouri in enrollment of undergraduates, and on the belief that
the department housing and physical facilities were inadequate.” The
department, Applegate said, was “staffed with men well experienced in
newspaper and advertising work --104 cumulative years of successful
experience.” Office space for faculty and classrooms for news reporting and
news writing courses were adequate.
At the same time, Applegate said, students found that space for copy
editing, typography and photography was inadequate. The copy editing
laboratory had only a horse-shoe table and 18 chairs. “It should be equipped

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with teletype and means of projecting heads and make-up for study and
demonstration.” Photography was being taught in the physics building, a half
mile across the campus, in a laboratory on loan from the Physics Department.
Classes were held in buildings throughout the campus, making it difficult for
instructors to make use of department projection and recording equipment.
“The greatest handicap, the students believe, and they are backed in that
opinion by the department staff and the administration of the college, is the lack
of campus facilities for printing the college daily, the State
News, which has a circulation of 13,500 copies,” he said. “Above all, the
students see a great advantage in having a unified center for the various
activities of the department.”
In bringing the problem to the attention of the editors, Applegate said he
would “not for an instant give the impression the college is unsympathetic to
the students or the department.” The drawback, he said, was that the college
had grown “so rapidly the administration has had to put its attention first on
basic housing and other physical needs.” Stopping short of asking MPA
newspapers to contribute to the construction of a new building, or to lobby the
College administration to provide one, Applegate ended by asking: “Does
anybody have an answer?”354
The short answer was that the Michigan Press Association did, in fact,
solve an immediate problem facing the journalism program at Michigan State
College. That is, nine months after Applegate’s article was published,
representatives of the MPA appeared before the State Board of Agriculture to
propose that a “journalism-publications building” be constructed on the
campus. The following summer the Journalism Department was granted its
own building, the remodeled Botany Building which had been built in 1892.

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The call for a journalism building at MSC was put forth by a committee

established by the MPA to study the “state’s journalism schools in an attempt to
improve them."355 The committee, consisting of five newspaper editors and
publishers, was set up in September 1951 to “define, extend and strengthen
the courses and weed out incompetent students." There is no evidence that,
despite the close ties between MSC and the MPA, the committee was
concerned only with the program at Michigan State College. The Michigan
Press Association did, in fact, develop a printing program at Ferris Institute in
Big Rapids. Further, MPA publications frequently included news items on the
departments at the University of Michigan and Wayne University in Detroit.
The Association’s recommendation appears to have been one step in a
longer process to influence the nature of journalism education in Michigan and,
most important to preserve the dominant role of newspaper journalism in a
curriculum it had come to share with public relations, radio and the growling
medium of television.
The committee had been formed at the suggestion of Association Vicepresident Meredith Clark, publisher of the Vicksburg Commercial, a weekly in a
town of 2,000 south of Kalamazoo. In a June 1990 interview, Clark said that he
had been concerned with the quality of students graduating from the journalism
programs in Michigan universities. As a 1929 MSC graduate, who had worked
in the College publicity department under James Hasselman, he said he was
especially aware of the problems facing Albert Applegate, particularly the
need to find a home for the Journalism Department.356
The MPA promotion of a “journalism-publications building” influenced the
course of journalism education at Michigan State far beyond the call for a
single building. Clark said that he had asked for more than that in a

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conversation with John Hannah months before the MPA committee met with the
Board of Agriculture. “ Louis Berman, the publisher at Whitehall and I, went to
President John Hannah of MSC and suggested the college form a school of
communication, a college of communication arts, ” he said. ‘This suggested
the college bring journalism, advertising, radio and the budding television
training into one school with one head. President Hannah liked the idea
immediately and scheduled us to present the plan to the college board of
directors.”357
In an MPA confidential memo to editors shortly after the College of
Communication Arts was established in 1955, the Association took credit for
offering the idea for such a college. Although the MPA gave early public
support to centralizing journalism efforts at MSC, and eventually supported the
the communications college, the Association was not alone in suggesting that
journalism might be divided into several departments under a single director.
President Hannah, for example, established a “Communications Committee” in
1953 to determine how best to organize the instruction and production -- the
College radio and television stations and the student newspaper -- of
journalism at MSC. Further, the term “communication arts" had been
employed by Denver University in creating a “school of communication arts” to
house print, radio and television journalism and a theatre program in 1953.358
A year earlier the University of Detroit had become the first Michigan school
to offer a communication arts degree, embracing “journalism, radio, tv, speech
and theater”.359
Although journalism would comprise only one unit in a communications
school, it is not surprising that the press association favored such a plan.

With

the Journalism Department defined, in effect, as print journalism, and set apart

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from radio and television departments, the MPA might more easily influence

the direction of journalism Instruction at MSC -- that is, toward the weeklies
and small dailies. In addition, press association members, Clark said in the
1990 interview, were aware that the next director of the journalism program
might not be as receptive to the concerns of small newspapers as Applegate
had been. By 1953, four members of the MSC journalism faculty had Ph.Ds,
and the Michigan Press Association correctly read that figure as part of a trend.
In the post-war years, “a policy of appointing persons who were at least well
along toward the doctorate...became institution-wide.”360 In a statement that
could have referred to journalism, it was said that “even in departments where
a man with a Ph.D had been considered somewhat eccentric, it was
discovered that several such men could be a source of strength rather than of
weakness.”361 Against that background, when the time came, Clark said, the
MPA might be able to influence the selection of a person with a strong
newspaper background, minus a Ph.D, to head the Journalism Department
while conceding the dean’s position in the new school to a person with a
doctorate. "We didn’t mind having the whole operation headed by someone
who didn’t know how to put a paper out,” Clark said, “as long as that person
had the management ability to run it -- and was sympathetic to what the
newspaper journalists were trying to accomplish.”362
From the perspective of 40 years, the statements of Meredith Clark
regarding a communications school, and the conclusions to be drawn from
those statements, present a plausible explanation of events surrounding the
MSC Journalism Department in the early 1950s. At the same time, materials
revealing the nature of the MPA committee presentation to the Board of
Agriculture on Nov. 29,1951, suggest that the editors focused their remarks

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upon a general criticism of journalism graduates, a reaffirmation of the

importance of community journalism and the specific need for a journalism
building. Exactly what transpired between the MPA committee and the Board
of Agriculture -- that is, any significant exchanges among members on those, or
other, topics -- cannot be known. During that time, meetings of the MSC board
were closed to the public.
Minutes of the Aug. 9,1951, meeting of the Board of Agriculture stated that
“Meredith G. Clark of Vicksburg, as chairman of a committee of the Michigan
Press Association, would like an opportunity to visit with the board to discuss
the long-term requirements of the publishing industry for cooperation from
Michigan State College. The other members of the committee are Louis
Berman, of Whitehall, Frank Worthington of Wyandotte, Carl Saunders of
Jackson, H.F. Bailey of Adrian, and Jack Bedient of Albion, President of the
Michigan Press Association."3” The minutes of Nov. 29,1951, said that “the
Educational Committee of the Michigan Press Association ... met with the
Board and presented a series of suggestions for improvements of the facilities
and program of the Department of Journalism and other areas in the field of
communications.”364 Whether “other areas in the field of communications"
included the concept of a college of communication is not clear.
The MPA committee presentation was based upon a statement prepared
by The Committee on Journalism Schools, released to Association members
and quoted directly in a story in the Michigan Publisher about the meeting.
“We are worried about the young people you are sending into our
profession,” the statement said. 'Thirty years ago, some of us remember, we
considered it good judgment, in applying for a news job, to forget to mention
that we were from schools of journalism. Gradually, that attitude has changed

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until now the majority of all our employees in editorial rooms are from schools

of journalism, and the trend is growing to place journalism graduates in our
business departments as well.”385 The schools, the committee said, served the
MPA by providing students with “rudimentary training which saves us months of
in-service training” and by attempting to “weed out many people outfit for
newspapering.” The committee directed its criticism at the students’ lack of
understanding of government, business and economics. “We meet journalism
graduates ignorant of practical business economics or the place of
management and capital and labor in an industrial scheme of things, unable to
tell the difference between a stock and a bond or to read and interpret a
financial statement.”
Recognizing that “new forms of communication and transmission are
forcing fundamental changes,” the statement said that “many of us wonder, for
instance, if one of the changes may be newspaper emphasis from ‘what’ is
happening to ‘why’ it’s happening.” For journalism schools, the changes would
mean “intense experimentation and change” with the “most modern facilities as
an aid because they and their graduates must play a vital role in world thinking
and communication."3'* In this regard, the editors were following the
philosophy of Joseph Pulitzer, that journalism students must understand the
power of the press and, when the time came, how to harness and direct that
power.
Because the world was changing so fast, the editors believed, small- town
journalism was as “vital” as it had ever been. “This country field is so vital that
many of us believe that more direct attention should be given by the schools of
journalism,” they said. “These little papers have tremendous political influence
because they live in such intimate contact with their readers. The country field

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needs the very best editors we can give it, the finest young people from the

best schools we can evolve. To provide editorial thinking that will be a bulwark
for American ideals and American education and that will help keep aloft the
torch of individual freedom."
Regarding the need for a journalism building, the committee pointed out
that classes were being held in 10 buildings and that, because of a lack of
space, "some of the most modern equipment is standing idle.”367 Further, the
building housing the faculty offices and several of the classrooms -- the Union
Lit Building -- was to be razed to build the College library.
The solution, the committee said, was to construct a building that would
serve several purposes.
First, that building should be “suitable to house a printing plant and entire
Department of Journalism and pay for it out of profits." (Although details of that
proposal were not offered in the Committee report, the Michigan Publisher
reported that the building would be “financed by revenues from a college
printing department. Revenue bonds to finance the combination classroom
and printing plant building would be paid from earnings of the campus daily
newspaper and a printing plant housed in the basement of the structure." The
University of Michigan, the article said “will move into a $4,785,000 addition to
Angell Hall while the MSC Journalism Building is scheduled to be razed for the
library." College printing, it pointed out, was being handled by six private
plants.368)
In addition, the building would "provide printing and typography work for
students in journalism, valuable for the weekly field” and a “working laboratory
to teach the business economics of papers.” Finally, the building would "place
the (College) paper under the Department of Journalism" so that students

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could “test first-hand advertising and circulation and editorial ideas."

The statement finished with a pledge of support for the Journalism
Department and a reminder of the direction, in the committee’s view, the
Department must take.
"We want to help you in any way we can," it said. “We believe that if you
really want to make an outstanding school of journalism, you will have to house
its offices, classrooms, labs and printing in a single building where there can
be complete intercommunication and coordination among everyone connected
with the department."
“It’s not enough that we get out of journalism schools young people with
pat formulas to news writing. We need young people with the Albert Applegate
training that will enable them to be leaders in the tough weekly field, as well as
the city field; young people aflame with ideals of independence, of justice,
conscious of the need to preach constantly the meaning of true democracy.’0611
In its statement, the Committee on Journalism Schools showed that it was
not merely concerned with the future of the Michigan State College journalism
program but with the MPA’s future influence upon that program. The criticism of
recent journalism graduates was an example of that concern. When calling for
added study in government and economics, the MPA representatives had
sided with the view of Arthur T. Robb who, a decade before, had written that
“outstanding successes in the small city fields” had been achieved "by
newspapers which understand the life of their communities and their
relationship with the rest of the world," not those that had concerned
themselves "principally with backshop problems.”370
Emphasizing the “why” of events, as the committee had put it, was vital to
newspapers if they were to compete with radio and television, media which

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could provide the “what" of those events instantaneously. Although courses in
television news writing were not part of the journalism program, members of
the Michigan Press Association had reason to believe they one day would be.
In 1952, the Council on Radio-Television Journalism had concluded that
“schools of journalism with sound radio news departments should give serious
consideration to offering basic training in television news.” “Fundamental
education in news gathering, writing, editing, and administration lies at the
base of such training," the Council said.371While no courses in television were
being taught at MSC, an administrative Committee on Television had
concluded that “the development of television as a medium of mass
communication confronts Michigan State College with the obligation to train
students for employment in the field, and with interesting opportunities to
improve its educational services to students and to the people of Michigan as
well."372 That the Michigan Press Association felt threatened by the challenge
of electronic journalism had been apparent to President John Hannah. “I
found in frequent meetings with the officials of the Michigan Press Association
that they were much concerned with radio as potential competition for the
press," he wrote. “The appearance of television intensified their concern.
Some editors and publishers believed TV news bulletins, for example, might
make newspapers unnecessary. Of course, nothing of this sort happened.1073
The MPA reference to the “tremendous political influence" of “these little
papers" reminded the College board members that the newspapers had an
influence in community affairs, particularly in towns without radio or television
stations, though “tremendous” is probably too strong a word too describe that
influence.
The idea of placing print instruction and a printing plant under one roof,

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put forth by Albert Applegate in the Michigan Publisher, may have been

borrowed from his former school, South Dakota State College, which was
carrying out such a program in its Department of Printing and Rural
Journalism.374
In mentioning “Albert Applegate training," the committee was urging
continuation of the approach that had provided “rudimentary training” for
journalism students under a man who understood the needs of rural editors.
Carl Saunders, a member of the MPA committee, helped define that term a few
years later when he said that the success of Michigan State journalism
graduates was “to be expected, because Bert Applegate himself is a practical,
sound newspaper man.” “He has been able to instill into his students not only a
knowledge of journalism, but something of the spark which when fanned into
flame produces good reporters and editors.”375
The reference, too, was probably MPA’s first show of concern about what
might happen to the MSC Journalism Department upon the eventual retirement
of Applegate, then 63. As Meredith Clark said, the Association was concerned
that his replacement be “sympathetic to what the newspaper journalists were
trying to accomplishment.”
The committee’s recommendation, while not resulting in a new building,
encouraged the relocation of the journalism program in the fall of 1952.
Regarding construction of a journalism-publication building, a Department
report said “careful analysis indicated that worthy as the project was, the cost of
building has increased so much that the project should be postponed. The
modernized Botany Building is the present answer. However, there is still
strong demand for an addition to this building to house a printing plant for the
State News and other college printing which would serve as a laboratory for

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journalism students."37*
Following announcement of the move, the Journalism Department called
upon the Michigan Press Association for further assistance. “When the
Michigan State College Department of Journalism moves this summer to a
larger, more centrally located building on the campus,” Professor E.E. McCray
wrote, “an opportunity will be afforded Michigan publishers to cooperate in a
practical way.” The cooperation, he said, “would take the form of donations to
the typography laboratory of usable equipment no longer needed in the
publishers’ plants." A willingness to make such contributions, he added, “was
expressed recently by some publishers attending a meeting of the Michigan
Press Association at East Lansing.”377The article included a "complete list of
items” including “cut-storage cabinet with 20 or 25 drawers, preferably steel,
makeup table with steel surface and overhead lead and slug rack and steel
type cabinets with California job cases and working tops.”
The arrangement pleased the Michigan Press Association which, in an
article on the Botany building, said “the journalism boys and girls have quarters
fitting the importance of their training.”378 As McCray had urged, the editors
had helped equip the facility and, according to the article, were impressed that
the building would encourage a “practical” approach to journalism. “Special
desks, or tables, with adjustable tops gives students practical equipment
similar to that which they will use if they decide to follow this phase of the work
(advertising) after graduation," it said. “Equipment in the editorial room is not
complete but in a few weeks will take on the look and atmosphere of a typical
daily newspaper city room."378
The transfer of the journalism program to the Botany building, whose
remodeling was funded through a Legislature appropriation, showed that the

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Michigan Press Association retained a measure of influence with the College

board. Further, the donation of equipment pointed out the continuing
cooperation between the Journalism Department and the MPA. At the same
time, the article describing and praising the new set-up also signaled
Association challenges that would reach beyond the building itself. In it,
Professor Earl A. McIntyre said that, while 60 percent of freshmen entering
journalism classes indicated a preference for newspaper work, “when they
become seniors, two-thirds of them have changed their minds and plan to enter
related or allied careers such as public relations work, advertising specialties
with agencies, or any one of the many fields offered by industry or other types
of publications." One reason for the change, he said, was “that these
youngsters have become thoroughly imbued with something that has been
veiy much emphasized in the past 20 years, namely ‘SECURITY.’ They are
attracted by the liberal pay offered by industry and other types of publications.
They are fascinated by the more glamorous products of advertising where color
and liberal illustrations are used.” More than that, public relations work was
regarded by the students as “more attractive than the everyday grind of
newspaper work."300
The story also pointed out that the College “has operated radio station
WKAR” and “sometime in the near future will operate a television station and
install a complementary course of study." Despite the remodeling of the Botany
building, it added, “the plans for the future might conceivably result in the
establishment of a School of Communications which would, in one center and
under one general supervision, embrace the newspaper plant, the radio and
the television stations, with the complementary training courses." “Admitting
that this last falls somewhat into the field of conjecture, don’t write it off

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completely. Any Michigan citizen who has followed the aggressively forward-

looking policies of President John Hannah must recognize that he has been
found in very few ruts, and, if in one, he has not stayed there very long.”3®'
The story marked the first public reference to a “School of Communication”
at Michigan State and, while it went beyond the MPA’s statement to the Board,
it supported the view Meredith Clark had offered President Hannah, that such a
school should include radio and television, as well as print journalism.
It is not surprising that Hannah’s vision for communications at MSC
encompassed more than a single element. “In fact, the concern that brought
about the School of Communication Arts was directly related to John Hannah’s
long-time intent to interrelate and thereby reinforce the obligations of the
college to provide educational services to the state not only through the
existing extension program but through a much broadened program using the
full resources of the institution. His vision included such a school and
placement in it of the various publication and communication facilities of the
institution. He emphasized the advantages of involving both faculty and
students in the operation of educational services, research, and instruction.
These views had been formed over his many years of association with
Michigan State."382
Journalism’s role in helping “ provide educational services to the state”
could be traced to the school’s early days when farm bulletins, often produced
by MAC graduates, reported on the work of the College’s experiment station.
By the mid-1950s, the College could send its messages by both radio and
television as well as the printed page and, through an expanding list of courses
that included advertising and public relations, was capable of teaching
students how any message might be presented.

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By then, too, the College catalogue was offering a broad definition of

journalism as if the subject was already part of a "communications" program.
“The Journalism curriculum," it said, “is designed for those students who intend
to enter the communications field.” “It seeks to provide them with a cultural
background and an understanding of the social and economic significance of
communications. In addition, it affords training and practice in communications
operations. ”383
Journalism students entering MSC in 1952 were required to complete one
year of American history; 12 credits in literature, including Old Testament
Literature; and two courses in political science and to obtain “one summer’s
experience in their selected field before entering their final year of college."384
In addition, they were to take 34 credits in journalism with requirements
determined by their choice of concentration in a specific sequence: Newspaper
Editorial Practice, Advertising, Agricultural Journalism, Teaching or Industrial
Journalism.
The sequence in agricultural journalism was “set up in response to an
ever-increasing demand for personnel from agricultural publications,
advertising agencies, agricultural colleges, newspapers and radio stations."
The program allowed students to take courses in agriculture and journalism
with a major and minor in the subject of their choice. Educators, it was said,
had been “gravely concerned over the shortage of personnel in this important
field, and placement officials report that they can fill only a fraction of the
available positions."385
Although the Michigan Press Association might have been concerned with
Earl McIntyre’s report that many students were leaving the newspaper field for
opportunities with other publications, it might have noted that the Newspaper

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Editorial Practice sequence was committed to a series of “practical" courses

still geared to the needs of MPA editors. Courses in news writing, reporting,
advanced reporting, public affairs reporting and copy editing were required as
well as newspaper management, a class first taught by Gene Alleman nearly
two decades before and geared to the operation of small- town newspapers. In
addition, the Department of Journalism and the Association continued to
promote projects of interest to the editors and their readers. An Editors’
Country Life Conference, held in 1952 and jointly sponsored by the
Department and the MPA, was “devoted exclusively to problems of Michigan
rural residents as related to Michigan daily and weekly newspapers.”386
Ironically, too, the Journalism Department, during a time of media advances
and new courses, had established a sequence in agricultural journalism, 34
years after a gathering of Michigan editors had called for creation of a
Department of Rural Journalism.
The most telling view of the MSC Journalism program in the mid-1950s,
however, was from the inside, as revealed through a statement “Journalism at
Michigan State College" submitted to Herman J. Wyngarden, dean of the
Department of Business and Public Service, in December 1953. Although its
purpose was not revealed in the document, the statement was likely written to
provide Wyngarden with information to prepare him for his role as a member of
a five-man Communications Committee established by President Hannah to
study the future of communications at Michigan State College. The 11-page
statement was written by Journalism Professor Harold Jolliffe who accurately
represented the balance between academic and professional interests in the
Department. With a doctorate in classical languages from the University of
Chicago, Jolliffe spoke with authority about the journalism student’s need for a

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strong “cultural background," as outlined in the course catalogue. At the same
time, as a former reporter who spent his summers as a copy editor for the
Detroit Free Press, he also knew the importance of the “training and practice" a
journalism program might offer its students. Though his reporting experience
had come on large newspapers, including the Toronto Star. Jolliffe was aware,
too, of the concerns of the Michigan Press Association, whom he had served as
a panelist at the MPA's annual convention.
In defining the “Job of Journalism,” Jolliffe described journalism as
important because “we need to know in what kind of world we are living.” “And
that need spells out the job for mass communications, or 'journalism.'”387
Journalism, he said, may be divided into two arts: the art of presentation and
the art of inquiry. “Both arts require a broad, general foundation quite outside
the specific skills and arts of journalism itself.”
The job of journalism education, then, was to guide students “into those
studies which will lay the best foundation for their future (and not in any too
narrow 'vocational' sense).” “Teach them the history, responsibilities, functions,
media and arts of journalism. Inspire the kind of hard thinking, ethics, and
courage that mark the great as opposed to petty journalism. Be practical and
'vocational' without sacrificing these higher duties. (Colleges have fallen heir
to the apprenticeship function. We have the job not merely of inspiring
greatness but also of training ‘the hewers of wood and the drawers of water.’)”
The “professional field of journalism” should be served “in the measure
and manner to be expected of a university.” That meant the Department
should: “Maintain active contact (and not through the department head alone)
with the working field. Supply it with trained and suitable workers. Be sensitive
to its demands. Be helpful with its problems. Be kindly critical of its

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shortcomings. Join it in common efforts for improvement. Maintain an active

center of research. Amend this list, if it is faulty, but at least have some sound
framework of action."
The journalism staff at Michigan State College, he said, “is just about as
able as the present market affords." Against that background, the dean was
urged to “have some confidence in that staff, give it free access to facts and
consult it on problems, encourage it to mingle freely with the practitioners and
critics of journalism, let it meet often, heed its collective advice, relieve it of

-

some of the constricting load of paper work -- do these things and the results
will quickly soar from mediocre or average to one of the best programs in the
country.”
Regarding “New Fields," Jolliffe pointed out that “there is a trend toward
renaming or expanding journalism schools into schools of mass
communications." “This has much to commend it. But such a structure should
not be put in the hands of an opportunist or a visionary theorist.”
“Radio and television,” he said, “are partly entertainment media and partly
parallel outlets to newspapers and magazines in the dissemination of news.
But they are not to any great degree news-gathering media. For example:
Michigan newspaper, radio, and TV members of the Associated Press are
pledged to supply AP with any significant news they gather. Many of the
broadcasting stations never contribute anything. The most aggressive ones
supply only a trivial fraction. The fact is that news gathering, except for pictorial
news, is fundamentally the same thing, regardless of outlet. An actor who tells
the news over the air is not to be confused with the man who gathers or writes
it.”
“This is not meant to exclude the new media from journalism. But we must

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avoid the example of those schools which oversold [broadcast] journalism (a

glamorous attraction to kids) and then found themselves unable to market most
of their graduates." (A hand-written note beside the latter statement said:
“Above was written in fear that department would be put under a TV man.")
Jolliffe suggested that the advertising courses “should probably stay with
journalism" and said that “business writing is probably attached as happily to
journalism as it could be to any department.” “Its personnel might be better
integrated with journalism if it were allowed to develop a course in direct-mail
advertising. Its inclusion in a school of communications would be logical."
In the matter of the student newspaper, The State News, the statement said
“it is questionable whether the conflicting elements of press freedom,
aggressive reporting, administrative caution, and youthful irresponsibility can
ever be completely integrated. A faculty member who teaches aggressive
reporting and enforces censorship is bound to appear hypocritical to his
students.” There were alternatives to the long-time arrangement that had put
the student paper under the direction of a faculty adviser - “one being a
complete separation" of the newspaper and the Journalism Department.
“It need hardly be added that the impact of the College on the people is to
a great extent through the press,” the document concluded. "Newsmen may
judge the College somewhat by its product in their own field. It can do the
College no harm if a fair share of its graduates achieve high positions in the
fields of mass communication. Much can be achieved, and much depends on
the kind of man chosen to head the new venture.”388
The statement, both in content and in the fact it had been written, was
another indication of change within both the Journalism Department and the
College communications programs. Another reference to a “school of

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communications" and mention of a “new man" helped illustrated that point. If
the document itself was a signal that change might occur, its message favored
the status quo. Although the statement warned against an approach to
journalism education that might be too “narrow” or “vocational," it clearly
supported a “practical” program, a view which the Michigan Press
Association would agree. A goal, for example, was to supply the professional
field with “trained and suitable" workers. That these workers would be oriented
to print, rather than electronic, journalism is evident in the statement’s criticism
of the “new media” of radio and television, categorized as being more
concerned with entertainment than news. That statement, while recognizing
the need for the Department to teach a variety of courses, still favored what the
MPA committee had called the “Albert Applegate” type of training, a position
that is hardly surprising since Applegate still headed the Department, Jolliffe
was a former newspaper reporter and the MPA had recently assisted the
program in acquiring and equipping a new building. Regarding the student
newspaper, it would appear that the Department was attempting to drop its role
as official adviser to the State News, a responsibility it had held since the
Department of Journalism and Publications had been established in 1929.
That role, as Jolliffe implied, had sometimes put student editors at odds with
Department faculty members and, by implication, had placed the journalism
program in the middle of disputes between the students and the College
administration. Such a position would seem politically unsound, particularly as
the Department sought to make its way in a new communications program and
attempted to sell students on careers in newspaper journalism.
In the statement, Jolliffe made “mass communications” synonymous with
"journalism,” a definition with which growing numbers of journalism educators

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had begun to disagree, indeed, on one measure, at least, the Michigan State

College program was behind other schools in an evolutionary cycle.
“The first period in the evolution of the schools," Ralph D. Casey, director of
the University of Minnesota School of Journalism had written in 1945, “was one
of groping and trial and error, but the pioneer teachers established a solid core
of largely technical courses for the training of collegians eager to embark on
journalistic careers.”389The second stage, Casey said, was one of "growth and
development," marked by “accent courses in the history of journalism and the
institutional nature of the newspaper." While Casey’s term "accent courses” is
a bit puzzling, he is probably referring to those courses other than writing and
editing -- journalism history, law of the press, journalism ethics, newspaper
management. Finally, in the third period of their life cycle, the schools
recognized that “today’s journalism is no longer the journalism of the press
alone.” "The forward-looking teachers acknowledge that today’s school of
journalism is properly a school of communications; indeed, if 'communications’
meant alone the conveyance of information and ideas, and did not also
connote the movement of human beings and things, universities could
recognize this in the designation of departments where symbol practitioners
are trained.”390In an era when newspapers competed with radio, and would
soon compete with television, the statement that “today’s journalism is no
longer the journalism of the press alone” could hardly be debated. Casey’s
comment that “today’s school of journalism is properly a school of
communications” was a bit ahead of its time. When Casey published his
article, creation of the MSU School of Communication Arts and Sciences, the
nation’s first, was still 10 years away. Regarding his definition of
communications and his talk of "symbol practitioners,” Casey was using a

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jargon foreign to journalism instructors of the 1940s, but common to

communications professors who joined journalism faculties a decade later. To
Casey, the term “communications" referred to a discipline that had become
fashionable following World War II and had its base in the social sciences.
Harold D. Lasswell, one of the leaders in the field, for example, had published
one of the earliest communications studies in political science. In the future,
Casey said, “content, not course labels, will be important in viewing the
program of a school of journalism.” Regarding community journalism, Casey
said that “the student who specializes in the rural newspaper must have
support work in rural sociology, rural institutions and, above all else, in
agricultural economics. Weekly newspaper courses often suffer from a sterility
which is due in part to the failure to relate the weekly newspaper to its own
peculiar environment."381
Years later, Casey wrote that “journalism teachers need to hold their own
with the brilliant group of social scientists who have moved, and will continue to
advance, into an area in which media, symbols, audiences and effects are
commingled; and who appreciate the increasing social importance of
communication.”392More than that, “journalism instruction can no longer
depend alone on the intuitive guesses of former journalism craftsmen, who
upon entering teaching ranks rely too heavily on past personal experience in
the use of technical tools and skills. It is good sense to recognize that the
instructor has an obligation to plow back into his teaching some synthesis of
the important findings developed in the past decade from systematic and
disciplined communications investigations.”
Those investigations, Casey said, had drawn “heavily on the work of other
disciplines. Psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, area study specialists in

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economics, foreign affairs and government, and their Kinsmen have given us a

wealth of insights into the problems that face the communicator and his
audience, and the effects of the communicated symbols on attitude and
behavior. It is fair to emphasize that the best work of trained journalism school
investigators will now stand comparison with the output in communications
research of those specializing in the behavioral sciences.”3”
Comparing the position paper of the Journalism Department with the
statements of Casey, one would judge that the MSC program, in 1953, was in
only the second stage of development. That is, the Department continued to be
print-oriented, stressing “accent courses” in journalism history and newspaper
management while barely acknowledging the existence of, much less the
importance of, other media. As significant, perhaps, the Department simply
defined “communications” as the means used -- words on a printed page, for
example - to convey information. To Jolliffe, a school of communications would
literally mean putting those means -- newspaper, radio and television with
their accompanying staff and equipment -- under a bigger roof, much as the
MPA had proposed for newspaper education in its plan for placing journalism
classrooms and a printing plant in one building.
Others, like Casey, meanwhile, were grappling with the definition of
communication itself, one that would go beyond any single medium.
Ironically, differing viewpoints on what “communication" meant helped signal
the end of one era in journalism at Michigan State and the beginning of
another. A Department that urged it be allowed “to mingle freely with the
practitioners and critics of journalism" would be different from one that might
request time to evaluate "systematic and disciplined communications
investigations.” The orientation of a professor who saw words at the top of a

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story as a “headline” -- and pondered a better one - would differ from that of a

colleague who saw those same words as “communicated symbols” and
pondered their effect on “attitude and behavior.”
Most significant, perhaps, a primary objective of the MSC approach
had been to “serve the professional field of journalism in the measure and
manner to be expected of a university." A key element in that approach was the
Department’s long-standing relationship with the Michigan Press Association,
an arrangement in which each group often advised, and sought the approval
of, the other. Future journalism educators, Casey suggested, would not be so
concerned with the standards set by editors but would, instead, “need to hold
their own with the brilliant group of social scientists” who appreciated “the
increasing social importance of communications." Journalism school
instructors would not be judged on whether their writings were accepted by
news professionals but whether they would “stand comparison with the output
in communications research of those specializing in the behavioral sciences."
This shift in focus would become institution-wide as MSC, like the
communications programs, expanded. In the early land-grant college, Paul A.
Dressel said in College To University: The Hannah Years At Michigan State.
the loyalties of the administrators and faculty were “to the people of the state,
and they viewed the institution as existing to serve the people’s needs."
"Departments were small. Interactions, and even interchange, among
departments and disciplines by individuals were commonplace. The prevailing
concern was with identification and solution of problems and with the
education of the people involved. Activities were diverse, but there was a unity
in them which gradually faded as strong degree programs were developed in
the arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.”394

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Vocational programs -- journalism, social work, nursing, hotel

administration - also took on a national orientation. “As faculty members
entered these vocational areas,” Dressel said, “they continued to view the
university as an agency to serve society, but many also gradually came to
regard it as an organization to promote career, departmental, and ultimately
professorial reputations." “The shift in emphasis from practical problem solving
to organized knowledge and theory became even more evident. The faculty
now viewed itself as part of a worldwide learning community -- a collection of
scholars -- rather than as a group of people devoted to helping others."395
Meanwhile, the matter of how, or whether, to accommodate all
communications programs within one department was working its way toward
a solution.
“In the process of reviewing all our programs at Michigan State,” President
John Hannah said, “we took a long hard look not only at the Department of
Journalism but at the entire field of mass communication." “Instead of
establishing a program in radio or television, competitive with journalism, we
decided to organize a college of communications, or communication arts, to
include journalism, television, radio, public speaking, dramatics, and allied
subjects. This seemed a radical idea to many of the academics in the field
around the country.1096
The future of communications programs at Michigan State College was
determined, in part, through the creation of a Communications Committee by
President Hannah in 1953.
Members of the committee were Milton Muelder, director of research
development and former dean of arts and sciences; James Denison,
administrative assistant to President Hannah in charge of public relations;

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Herman J. Wyngarden, dean of the School of Business and Public service;

Floyd W. Reeves, who had developed MSC’s Basic College which integrated
liberal arts and technical courses for all freshmen and sophomores; and
Thomas Cowden, dean of the School of Agriculture.387 It is significant that this
was a committee of administrators, not faculty.
The committee’s work was reflected in a 31-page “Proposal For
Communication Arts," completed in 1954, which served as both a blueprint for
communications at MSC and as a request for funding from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation.398That the foundation was asked to provide $6 million for
construction of a communications building and $25,000 per year for five years
“in order to staff properly as well as to develop, the program of research which
is needed to give guidance and assistance to this total enterprise" was not
surprising. “We had an understanding with (foundation president) Dr. Morris
and the Kellogg Foundation that whenever the University had a good project
that we had reviewed thoroughly," President Hannah said, “the foundation
would examine it carefully, which meant that in most instances they would
finance it.”399
The evidence suggests that John Hannah’s optimism over potential
Kellogg Foundation funding gave far more impetus to the establishment of a
school of communication than the prodding of any individual department or
organization, like the Department of Journalism or the Michigan Press
Association. More than that, one member of the Communication Committee
said that the College of Communication Arts would not have been founded
when it was, or perhaps as it was, had it not been for the strong possibility of
foundation assistance.
Milton Muelder, in a 1991 interview, said the concept of “communication,"

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as outlined in the proposal, was “a level higher" than what journalism

educators, or others concerned with largely vocational interests, had in mind.
Of the Kellogg proposal itself, Muelder said that the reasons for seeking a
grant ranged from the “almost Biblical” to the “crass and mundane."4”
“The idea to approach the Kellogg Foundation came from Floyd Reeves,
an adviser to President Hannah," Muelder said. “Reeves told Hannah: 'I have a
good friend at the Kellogg Foundation (Morris Seay), an education man. I
know that W.K. is ripe for a big grant, and I know my friend can help us.’ With
the greatest confidence, Reeves said we could land $4 million to $5 million. All
we needed was the right kind of proposal. And, of course, we had a man
inside the foundation who would be an advocate for it. Imagine what beautiful
music that was to our ears."
In outlining a proposal for a communications college, Muelder said, the
committee brought together the best elements of what he called “major buzz
words" of the late 1940s and early 1950s: “Control” and “communication."
“The word 'control’ was popular throughout the military," he said, “and
much of its popularity was transferred to college administration following the
war. Not ‘control’ in the sense of stifling, but in the sense of bringing about the
most effective coordination of execution and policy. The communications
college -- with its several operations and purposes -- would provide a perfect
example of congruence of policy and execution.”
To members of the Communications Committee meeting in 1953 and 1954,
he said, the term “communication” went “far beyond the media aspect." “The
belief was that communication is a two-way street,” he said. “You could send a
message, and that required clear articulation. Communication, however,
required a response, an echo of understanding. There must be a desire to

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understand. I could be accurate, lucid and still not have communicated.

Communication wasn’t something stale or frozen. That understanding, that
way of using the concept as it had not been used before, took on an excitement
and potential in the total university that had meaning.”
In calling for a communications college that would lead to a better
understanding among faculty and students throughout the university, he said,
the proposal spelled out a quest that was idealistic, "almost Biblical" in nature.
At the same time, the proposal, in calling for a building, had a practical side as
well.
“In addition to our intellectual language about communication and
learning,” he said, “we were striving to fill a need that was crass and mundane.
The most pressing problem at Michigan State in the early 1950s was a lack of
space. The school was growing beyond its breeches. The fight for space was
severe. To illustrate, when I was dean of science and arts, it was imperative
that I get research started, but there was simply no space for research. Finally, I
took a classroom and divided it in half, an action that wasn’t popular with many
of my colleagues. In part, the proposal for a communications building
documents the drive for space, any space."401
To write the first section of the proposal, the committee called upon Russel
Nye, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer who had served as director of the
division of language and literature while Muelder was dean of the school of
science and arts. “We needed an intellectual statement that expressed
eloquently the thinking of the committee," he said. "Nye was a superb
candidate to take our ideas and give them intellectual substance and
meaning.”
The Statement of Needs and Purposes read, in part, as follows:

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Our democratic system is predicated on the principle that its
citizens must constantly choose among values and alternatives in
social, political, economic, and moral relationships in every area of
daily life. American democracy is in essence the wise exercise of
free choice, based on full objective information. The problem of
communicating that information - all of it - to a growing and widely
dispersed people is therefore one of prime importance. Unless our
citizens possess a thorough grasp of both the information and
processes by which decisions are reached, our democratic system,
as well as the intellectual and spiritual forces which sustain it, is
severely prejudiced

Our institutions of higher education have assumed both informative
and research functions, charged by our society with a responsibility
for discovering, refining, and transmitting knowledge to the people.
Our universities have fulfilled their obligations reasonably well. In
earlier periods of our national development, it was sufficient that their
graduates carried the influence of the educational institutions with them
to their own localities, there to communicate directly with the people
through press, pulpit, public office, and other positions of responsibility.
Nye offered an idealized view of what Michigan State had been and what it
might become. To him, communication, originally, had merely meant providing
information to people who would apply it to better their lives, much as the
Michigan Agricultural College had done through its experiment station reports
to the farmers and in its training of agricultural and small-town journalists. At
the same time, Nye, taking note of rapid changes in technology, spoke of a
world in which communication process was as important as technique and, as
others had said, a world in which communication needed to be redefined.
Continuing, he wrote:
In the twentieth century, however, the technological revolution in
the field of mass communication has radically altered this situation.
It is now possible to communicate simultaneously with millions of
citizens who, by reason of the increasing demands of mass media
for their attention, find it more and more difficult to sort, sift, assimilate,
and evaluate the information transmitted to them from a multitude of
sources.

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Contemporary America faces a double problem; First, to acquire
knowledge and information about ourselves and the world around
us, and second, to distribute that knowledge and information quickly,
effectively, and widely within our society, so that its citizens may have
available to them in times of decision both the means and the ability
to act wisely.
Some institutions of higher learning in the United States have long
been aware of the educational implications of these recent
developments in mass communication media. They have recognized
that through them the educational process may be hastened,
strengthened, and extended far beyond the campus.
They know that proper use of these media offers an unequaled
opportunity for the educational institution to communicate, far more
swiftly and authoritatively than before, with all segments of society.
Radio, television, cinema, new audio-visual techniques, and an
expanded and more effective press are all instruments by which
universities may better realize their purposes. Because these
media have intimate relevance to education, the task of measuring,
studying, and utilizing their effects now belongs peculiarly to
educational institutions.
In speaking of measuring, studying and utilizing the effects of the media,
Nye acknowledged the role of communications research and its place within
the university. Regarding the role of Michigan State, he said:
It is particularly appropriate that MSG, first of the land-grant
colleges, should be deeply concerned with this problem. For
nearly 100 years MSC has devoted itself to the task of discovering
and refining knowledge, of communicating it to citizens young and
old, and of teaching them how to employ it in their lives and their
communities. As society has become increasingly complex, so too
has education widened its objectives and accelerated its processes.
Yet a century of progress must not obscure the fact that, in the light
of an even swifter expansion in the means of communication,
education is finding it difficult to maintain its position of leadership
in certain areas of knowledge and endeavor where public opinion
is formed. If institutions of higher education are to retain their
initiative, if they are to continue to honor their traditional
obligations to society, they must use fully -- and not be used by these great new instruments for the transmission of knowledge.
There is critical need for a unified attack on the problem of

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communication, concentrating on it the total skills and resources
of the educational institutions.
This proposal calls for the creation of a center designed to deal
with the practice of teaching of modern media of mass
communication, and to assist and encourage useful study of that
field.continued and developed.402
While the language of the committee, as Muelder said and as Nye
illustrated, went “a level higher” than the spelling out of mere vocational
needs, the document addressed the practical needs of the Department of
Journalism, as expressed by the Michigan Press Association in its meeting with
the College board. For example, journalism classrooms, along with faculty
offices, would be housed in the new communications building. The
“Department of Journalism, except for Business Letter Writing," the proposal
said, was to be transferred from the “School of Business and Public Service to
the School of Communication Arts.” The building would also house “printing
facilities" for the student newspaper, which was to be under the direction of the
Department of Journalism, and the College press. Pointing out that “the
College has long enjoyed a cordial relationship with the press of Michigan,” the
committee recommended that the building also accommodate the offices of the
Michigan Press Association.403
The building would, in fact, contain both instructional and service facilities
for several departments. In addition to journalism, the new Communication
Arts School would include the Department of Speech and new departments of
Audio-Visual Communication and Public Relations. The latter department was
to "provide courses in Public Relations" and "assist in the development of
curricula in Public Relations with both major and minor sequences." The
communications building, in addition to housing printing facilities, would be

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home to the College Information Services program, the College radio and
television stations. Besides the MPA, the building would include offices for the
National Project on Agricultural Communications and the Michigan Association
of Broadcasters.
The proposal for a School of Communication Arts, then, both as an
academic concept and as a center of activities, was consistent with the MPA
editors who had said they believed that “if you really want to make an
outstanding school of journalism, you will have to house its offices, classroom,
laboratories and printing in a single building where there can be complete
intercommunication and coordination among everyone connected with the
department.”404
At the same time, as the Nye statement had shown, the members of the
Communications Committee had viewed the role of communications at MSC in
a much broader sense than had the print journalists or representatives of any
other single unit. “The whole structure of the building” was to be designed not
merely to house departments but “to stimulate and encourage a unified
approach to communication art." To that end, the structure was “not to be
considered as a classroom building.” In fact, only 15,000 square feet in the
324,000-square-foot building had been allotted for classrooms. Simply, the
“operations to be housed” in the building would be “of such a nature that they
require much space." “Television rooms, practice rooms, rehearsal stages,
printing facilities and storage space are some of the necessities. The proposed
structure would have two auditoriums and also two television rooms with seats
for spectators. It would contain about ten offices where research teams from
other departments could be housed while working on research projects in
communications."

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While the need for research, and the space needed to perform it, was

important to all members of the Communications Committee, the issue
probably had most significance to Muelder who, as director of research
development in 1951, had conducted a survey on the state of research at
Michigan State College.
“The first step toward building a research program,” he said, "was to flush
out all the talent locally. The idea was to develop the most sophisticated
research staff possible by building upon the talent that was already there.”
To do that, Muelder surveyed all faculty members at MSC, asking them to
define their research interests and reveal information on foundation,
government or other sources of funding.
“Other than just a handful of responses,” Muelder said. "The survey
resulted in nothing. It was devastating that the College was so naked in its
research efforts.”*05
That research was to play a role in a new communications program was
was evidenced by a statement that such research was to be administered by
the “Head of the [University] Office of Research and Development.” “The
purview of research problems in the Communication Arts,” the proposal stated,
“extends over the wide vista of extension programs as well as over most of the
academic disciplines, and impinges directly on many phases of the operation
and production of the media employed in communications. Studies in
technological processes, sociological processes, psychological factors,
historical and cultural factors, semantics, interpersonal relations, and many
human behavior phenomena as they relate to communications are suggestive
of the spectrum of research required in a Communication Arts research
program."

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The Research Development Office was to be “relatively small” and “should

give both encouragement and assistance to communication research
throughout the entire institution." “The holding and organization of many types
of institutes and seminars in the Communication Arts on a local, regional,
national and international basis; the development of diversified research
projects in communication which may be submitted for private and public
grants; the development of an information center and a continuing up-to-date
bibliography on communication; and the transmittal to appropriate departments
of important findings in communications research and studies are important
aspects of the functions of this office. Under the general supervision of this
office would be at least one large demonstration conference room and about
ten smaller rooms which could be used by interested departments for
conferences, seminars, special research projects, and demonstration
purposes."
Under a section entitled “The Instructional Program," the proposal stated
that “the curricula in Communication Arts are based on two concepts: (a) that
both content communicated and the communication process are important, and
(b) that the expenditure of time and energy necessary to acquire important
ideas and knowledge or skills in artistic rendition is greater than that necessary
to acquire skill in the use of mass communication or ability to determine which
medium or media to employ to accomplish particular purposes most effectively.
Based upon these concepts, these curricula place greater stress upon content
than upon communication skills. All draw much of their content from the
humanities, the fine arts, the sciences or the social sciences. All are designed
to provide a broad, liberal education. In most of them particular attention is
given to the social sciences. In all of them, subject-matter content is

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supplemented by training in communication skills.”
To carry out those concepts, the Communications Committee mapped out
an undergraduate program that would include “a general introductory course
or sequence of two or three courses in the communication arts" that would be
“developed and offered each term as optional for all students.” “This course or
course sequence will cover all media of communication arts, supplanting the
present survey courses in journalism, radio and television. It will be offered by
the new Department of Public Relations which is to be established."
In addition, “one or more optional curricula will be established in each of
several schools, including Agriculture, Business and Public Service,
Education, Home Economics, and Science and Arts. Such curricula will be
administered jointly by the respective School and the School of
Communication Arts.” That approach was similar to ongoing Journalism
Department programs in agricultural journalism and journalism education that
allowed students to specialize in subjects outside their own department.
Each curriculum would also include: “A major concentration in one or more
of the regular subject-matter departments, with a cognate consisting of one or
more courses in one or more of the departments of the School of
Communication Arts, or A major concentration in one or more of the
departments of the School of Communication Arts, with a cognate consisting of
one or more courses in one or more of other schools,

ql

A double major in the

School of Communication Arts and one or more of the departments in other
schools."
“The curricula provided,” the proposal said, “will be designed to prepare the
student to communicate effectively in his primary field of specialization and to
enable him to acquire a deeper understanding of the communication process

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in society."
The proposal also called for a graduate program that would be "extremely
flexible to meet the needs of students of diverse professional interests and
backgrounds.” The “general curricula for a graduate program leading to the
Master’s or Doctor’s degree, with a major or minor sequence in
Communication Arts” would be “developed for the general guidance of
students and advisors” with content dependent “upon the needs and
professional objectives of the individual students.”
The document was significant in that it gave clear insight into how MSC
administrators -- advisers to President Hannah among them -- viewed the
future of communication education at MSC. As important as requesting a
building, the committee had spelled out a possible orientation for
communication courses at Michigan State -- “place greater stress upon
content than upon communication skills" -- and that tendency would resurface
in plans for research, curricula and graduate programs throughout the
proposal.
In the communications program, too, Muelder said, the Committee saw the
potential for improving all parts of MSC.
“The thought was that if we approached communications right,” he said,
“we could become the best teaching institution in the country. The quality of
teaching throughout the College would improve, and we would accelerate the
whole educational process.”406
Although “subject-matter content" would be supplemented by “training in
communication skills,” the attention to skills -- reporting, editing, writing -- was
secondary, the emphasis on “practical journalism" far less than Harold Jolliffe
had advocated in his statement on the future of the Department of Journalism.

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Since the beginning of journalism education, teachers and administrators had
stressed a need for students to take courses from throughout the college or
university- The argument had focused on the nature and number of those
courses with all sides agreeing that offerings in liberal arts or specialty areas
would assist the journalist in applying skills by providing
a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. To the Communication
Committee, “content" meant not merely the substance of other courses, but the
content of messages. Further, future students within the communication
college should not assume that their particular interests -- newspapers,
television, magazines -- were necessarily the best way to convey certain
messages but should, in part, consider research that could reveal “the best
mode or combination of modes as related to content and as related to the
particular audience for which information is intended."
If articles in scholarly journals, by writers like Ralph Casey, had indicated a
shift in direction of journalism education, the proposal by the Communications
Committee was a call for that new approach at Michigan State College. With
its broad definition of communication education, its plans to revise curricula
and its quest for a Research Development Office, the committee proposal
seemed almost written in another language when compared with the statement
put forth by the Department of Journalism. Indeed, as MSC set forth to create
another “school" -- on the eve of becoming a university - the development of
research and graduate programs seemed logical steps in that process.
Against that background, a Department of Journalism that prided itself on
its annual participation in a conference for small- town newspaper editors
would find itself out of step in a school of communication whose administrators
sought to bring together researchers who could discuss and develop

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"diversified research projects in communication" and might transmit “important
findings in communications research" to "appropriate departments."
Research, at least in the scholarly context defined by the committee
proposal, had not played a significant role in the journalism program of Albert
Applegate as the results of Milton Muelder’s research survey in 1951 had
shown. The word “research" had not, in fact, appeared in the statement by
Harold Jolliffe. Rather than citing the publication of articles in academic
journals, the statement described faculty members through professional
accomplishments, as “men who have written novels and short stories,
produced TV programs, prepared news broadcasts, owned and operated
country weeklies, managed small dailies, managed news bureaus, or written
and edited for large metropolitan dailies.” Indeed, the first article written by an
MSC journalism faculty member for the Journalism Quarterly, the scholarly
journal of journalism education, did not appear until 1953. At that, it was an
article stressing “practical” journalism: “Typography in the Curriculum: How
Many Graduates Use It?”407
Regarding graduate programs, the Department of Journalism response to
such a possibility was only lukewarm. “The journalism profession itself largely
considers a Ph.D degree in ‘journalism’ as ridiculous," it had said, “although
one or two schools offer it. As one works toward the research fringe of
journalism, he is inevitably in some other discipline -- political science,
economics, sociology, or linguistics." While Jolliffe acknowledged that a
master’s degree in journalism may have some value, he said “a more
constructive program might be one, something like the Nieman Fellowships, in
which outstanding newspapermen could return for a year to pursue those
studies in any field for which they had developed a need.” The department’s

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conclusion about graduate work in journalism was that “the whole question

deserves a thorough review from all angles.”
The MSC Department of Journalism statement had ended by saying:
“Much can be achieved, and much depends on the kind of man chosen to head
the new venture.” Although Applegate’s intentions were probably known when
the document was written late in 1953, the fact that a change was near became
official the following spring with the announcement that the long-time chairman
would retire, effective June 30,1954. (Following a round of farewell tributes,
Applegate announced on July 1,1954, that he would stay on, at the request of
the Board of Agriculture, until a suitable replacement could be found “perhaps until July 1 ,1956.’’408)
At a testimonial dinner sponsored by the State News, attended by more
than 300 present and former students and representatives of the Michigan
press, Applegate’s accomplishments were enumerated as including creation of
“the annual high school journalism day, annual photographic conferences,
daily operation of the State News, annual classified advertising conference,
two student chapters of national journalism honoraries.”408
At the gathering, Applegate said he had come to Michigan State with “the
vision of making the MSC Journalism Department the best in the country." “It is
your job to make what was my vision -- and now is my dream -- come true," he
said.410
In its willingness to wait as long as two years for a successor to Albert
Applegate, the Board of Agriculture was awaiting the outcome of planning for
the school of communications - and the probable granting of Kellogg
Foundation money - whose direction might influence the selection of the new
director of journalism.

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Regarding the selection of Applegate’s replacement, there is little evidence

to suggest how many candidates were considered before the choice was
made. The only name listed in University or Michigan Press Association
archives, other than that of the man chosen, was Charles L. Allen who was
mentioned in an MPA memo in April, 1954. Noting that Applegate had been
asked to stay on at MSC, the memo said that Allen, “associate dean of the
Medill School of Journalism has expressed interest in the position." “Dean
Herman Wyngarden informed me," the memo from the MPA secretary said,
“that Allen be invited to East Lansing for an interview. He said President John
Hannah was personally interested in getting a good man for the MSC post. It
goes without saying that the association is not sponsoring any candidate,
though individual members are free to express opinions."411 Although Allen’s
name did not appear again, his academic background, which included a
doctorate, might have made him an acceptable candidate to the College board.
At the same time, his background as associate dean at Northwestern’s Medill
School of Journalism - a school with a strong newspaper orientation -- should
have been acceptable, perhaps ideal, to members of the MPA. More than that,
Allen had addressed the 1942 Michigan Press Association convention where
he had spoken on “Newspaper Trends and War Problems” in his role as chief
of rural press section of the Office of War Information.412
Applegate's announcement had come as the Communication Committee
continued to draft, and redraft, its proposal. “Morris Seay came to campus for
a hearing on our proposal, to see how things were working out,” Muelder said.
“All of us had our speeches ready. We thought we had a strong proposal.
We’d pulled all the resources of the media together, had an overriding
philosophy to guide us and had begun to identify people we’d hire to

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implement the new operation."
A few months later, Muelder said, the committee was informed of a
possible setback in its planning for a College of Communication Arts. “The
Kellogg Foundation wondered how it could give money to something that did
not exist,” he said. “That is, there was a proposal to fund a building for a
College of Communication Arts, but, at the time, there was no such college."
To meet that obstacle, Muelder said, President Hannah received "informal
assurance” from the MSC Board that it would establish the College of
Communications Arts, a message passed on to the Kellogg Foundation.
Then, on March 25,1955, Kellogg Foundation President Morris Emory
informed Hannah that the request for funding had been denied.
“It is apparent that your people have done a great deal of good thinking
relative to this proposal,” he wrote. “They have done a good job, especially on
changing the administrative organization. However, I am still concerned about
the tremendous reliance apparently put on a building. The building is a routine
thing in my thinking. We in the Foundation are interested in financing the
things that will touch a program with fire, the extra push that will get a snowball
started down hill. I do not think the creation of a tremendous building will do
this.”413
The decision, Muelder said, left members of the Communications
Committee “aghast." “We were so certain that the program would be funded,”
he said, “that we barely considered what would happen if it were not. Although
there had been no public word, people in the College assumed that a new
communications school would be put in place soon. At that point, backing out
entirely would have been very difficult."
At a Communications Committee meeting of April 19,1955, “the members

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of the committee who were present felt" that it should “continue to develop a

program of communications." “This perhaps should be a reduced program," a
committee report said. “We should take some steps in this direction by July
1.1,414

Then, on May 12, the Communications Committee recommended, in a letter
to President Hannah, “That we set up a school or college (depending on the
nomenclature adopted by the rest of the institution) with a dean responsible
directly to the President. For the time being this new dean should also serve as
Acting Head of the Journalism Department." In reality, there had been no hiring
process for the post of dean. Rather, as the letter further indicated, “candidates
for this position were approached in light of becoming Head of the Journalism
Department."416
The man interviewed as a replacement for Albert Applegate, and who, in
the process, would become dean of the new college, was Gordon Sabine, 38,
dean of the journalism program at the University of Oregon. In Sabine,
Michigan State would hire a former journalist who was well-versed, as well, in
the field of mass communication. A reporter for several newspapers, Sabine
earned journalism degrees from the University of Wisconsin. After that, he
studied under Ralph Casey at the University of Minnesota where he received
his Ph.D in 1949. “Under his leadership at the University of Oregon, a new
building, Eric W. Allen Hall, was built to house the School of Journalism and
related courses.”416
Sabine’s theory of journalism education, as expressed in a 1991 letter,
followed the Pulitzer approach, rather than the model for agricultural or rural
journalism that had guided the program throughout most of its history.
“There are, it always has seemed to me," he said, 'two kinds of journalism

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education: Education IN journalism, which consists of the technique courses

we teach -- newswriting, reporting, copyediting and the like. And education
FOR journalism, in which we have the knowledge about which journalists must
gather and report -- the history, political silence, economics, literature, science,
the rest of the world geographically and intellectually. If we have only the
education IN, we have little to write about. If we have excellent education FOR,
we are able to investigate and report the news at the depth the serious reader
deserves. It was strengthening the education FOR that I sought to accomplish
at Michigan State."417
The same week the Communications Committee recommendation had been
presented to Hannah, members of the Michigan Press Association requested a
meeting the president in which they sought reassurance about the future of
newspaper education in the new school and about the man who would lead
the program. The representatives had sought the meeting after learning “the
many-yeared leadership of Albert A. Applegate would be replaced by someone
new, someone perhaps not interested in MPA and its problems.” “In this
environment,” a membership bulletin reported, “the journalism course would be
subverted into a fingerling of a 'communications school’ dominated by TV and
radio. Early in May, President John Hannah of MSU evinced an interest in
hearing MPA size-up the problem and on Tuesday, May 10, a delegation of the
Association directors and officers, led by president Granger Weil, met with
Hannah and his board."
“Since Sabine is a journalism professor with undergraduate and graduate
work at recognized schools of journalism, holds a Ph.D, and has been dean of
journalism at Oregon, our committee believes that any attempts to submerge
our particular interests to TV and radio will be vigorously rebuffed," a Special

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Member Service Bulletin of the MPA said.41*

A week following the Communications Committee recommendation, the
Board of Trustees approved a School of Communication Arts. “After a study
continuing over several years,” the Board minutes said, “ the whole field of
mass communications including journalism, radio skills, television skills, audio­
visual aids, etc., it is recommended that effective July 1,1955, there be created
a School of Communication Arts. The Department of Journalism now in the
School of Business and Public Service and the Department of Speech now in
the School of Science and Arts are transferred to this school. It is
contemplated that continuing study will result in eventually transferring certain
other activities related to communication arts to this school.”419
With the the upgrading of Michigan State "College” to Michigan State
University that same summer, the School of Communication Arts became a
college, the Department of Journalism the “School” of Journalism. The
“scaled-down” version of the College of Communication Arts did not include
several items that had been envisioned by the Communications Committee - a
department of public relations, for example. Most important, perhaps, the new
College still lacked a building, a centralized location, a need which had
spurred communications school idea, via the Michigan Press Association, in
1951. Indeed, the several departments that would eventually make up the
College of Communication Arts would remain scattered throughout the campus
until the opening of the Communication Arts and Sciences Building in the fall of
1981, 26 years after the creation of the College.
Although the School of Journalism had become part of a new College,
with a concept of communication that differed from that of Albert Applegate and
those he had hired, the journalism program, in its first years as a “school,”

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maintained a degree of independence. While the College was more than two

decades away from acquiring a building, for example, the journalism program
had, at least, obtained the Botany Building where it could conduct all
classroom and laboratory courses and house offices for faculty and staff.
Further, despite College attempts to alter journalism courses or require general
commulnication theory courses for journalism majors, such attempts were
generally short-lived. In 1957, for example, Sabine said that “no one yet has
squeezed very much intellectual activity into or out of a course in Typography,”
adding that he would “seek some way” to reduce its part in the journalism
program. In fact, the course remained a requirement until the retirement of E.E.
McCray in 1967 and, as if a reminder of when the program was more closely
aligned with the small town, the class continued to include sessions on handsetting type and the arrangement of type in the printer's case. In addition, the
College, in 1956, instituted a requirement that all Communication Arts students
take a three-course core of general communication arts courses. By 1963, that
requrement had been reduced to a one-term introductory course, and even that
was eventually dropped. The long-term future of the journalism program within
the College of Communication Arts awaited a new generation of journalism
faculty and College administrators.
It is not surprising that the new College, given its view of communication,
would, in the short run, have only a limited impact on the journalism program.
That program had, in fact, been evolving for nearly five decades and, in that
time, had learned to live within other departments and divlisions with interests
other than its own. The College, too, would need time to evolve as it moved
from language in a grant proposal to a functioning academic unit that would
accommodate faculty and students. More than th a t, if the College had no clear

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definition of itself, it was because it was the product of several diverse

influences: the request by the MPA to meet the practical needs of a growing
program -- a building to house the Journalism Department; the idealism of
Russell Nye and the committee of MSC administrators who saw an expanded
communications program as enhancing the quality of all departments at
Michigan State; and the mass communication theorists who offered journalism
educators ways of doing academic research.
Regarding the Michigan Press Association, the four-year period from the
day Meredith Clark and his colleagues had appeared before the College
Board to the establishment of the communications college had left the
membership with most of what it had hoped for. Although there was to be no
new building, the Association had succeeded, at least, in securing a renovated
building well-equipped to teach newspaper journalism. Further, in an era
when an expansion in radio and television news organizations threatened their
livelihood, and communication theorists challenged any emphasis on
"practical” courses, the MPA could feel it had retained some influence within
the MSC journalism program. “MSC credits the Michigan Press Association
with initiating the idea for a School of Communication Arts," an MPA memo
said.420 In addition, the new acting chairman of the School of Journalism was a
former newspaper reporter. “The dean is anxious to attract staff members who
have actual newspaper experience as well as necessary academic
backgrounds," the Press Association informed its membership. To strengthen
relations with the press, in fact, Sabine announced an “open house each
Saturday of a home game at the Journalism Building” for "all newspaper
people and former journalism students."42' In addition, from mid-July to
Thanksgiving, Sabine “paid a call upon each of the state’s 351 daily and

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weekly newspaper publishers in his home office. These visits were intended

as general MSU (not merely journalism) public relations."422
Despite the apparent harmony between the editors of Michigan’s weekly
newspapers and the new dean of the new College of Communication Arts, the
orientation of the journalism programs under the direction of Gordon Sabine
and Albert Applegate were likely, though it may take many years, to be as
different as the men themselves.
Sabine, with his doctorate in mass communications, was a product of an
academic era when, as Milton Muelder suggested, "communication," not
weekly journalism, was a major buzz word, not merely in journalism schools
but throughout entire universities. If Sabine had a vision for the new college, it
was probably best expressed in a brief history that appeared in the first annual
report of the College of Communication Arts. “One dream” of the MSC
communications committees, he said, “was to fashion an integrated
communications education program.” “These committees had known that
somethino was stirring in communications, and even though they didn’t
completely agree on just what it was, or precisely what should be done about it,
they correctly figured that Michigan State must be a part of this new ferment.
Another dream was that of communications thinkers the nation over - the
academicians and theorists, the practitioners and professionals. Many of them
had been groping for a gathering-together of communications thinking and
education. The fact of communication, the method of communication, the
content of communication, the impact of communication -- all these they knew
deserved more study and research than yet had been concentrated at any
educational institution in the world. Cautiously but hopefully, they applauded
the MSU move.”423

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Applegate’s “vision" and “dream," as expressed at his retirement dinner,

had been to make the MSC Department of Journalism, the “best in the country,”
a goal with which Sabine would have agreed. Applegate, however, had been
a product of another journalistic time and place, of a master’s program at the
University of Montana in the mid-1920s and of small towns -- including his
birthplace of Atlanta, Illinois -• where the newspaper editor served as
community booster, watchdog and storyteller -- and set those stories in type. If
Applegate had not "been groping for a gathering-together of communications
thinking and education,” he had his own mission, as expressed in his 1936
address to the South Dakota Press Association: “It is as newspaper men we
shall be judged.”
“Bringing in Sabine to the School of Journalism was like putting a
skyrocket on a covered wagon,” Elmer White, a former Applegate student and
secretary of the Michigan Press Association said. “Applegate was like the girl
next door: plain, wholesome, down to earth. Sabine was like the girl you’d
meet on summer vacation: all flash and sparkle. Gordon came into meetings
with organization charts, scheduled eight o’clock classes, and when he talked
about a new communications building, he mentioned hanging a mammoth
globe, complete with emeralds, in the lobby. He seemed in a hurry to do
everything - and with lots of style, too."424
Jack Bain, who joined the Speech faculty in 1954 and served as College
dean from 1967 to 1972, said the departure of Applegate and the arrival of
Sabine marked the beginning of a long-standing battle between the “bean
counters” ( mass communications theorists with little practical experience in
journalism) and “the green eye shades” (former newspaper reporters and
editors) in the College of Communication Arts at Michigan State.

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ul think Applegate was viewed as a nice old guy who had created a lot of

good will for the school by working with Michigan newspapers," he said, “but,
once the door was closed behind him, he was a non-person in the
communications college here."
“The difference was that Applegate might call the editor of the Vermontville
Echo and see how the new printing press was working. If it wasn’t, Applegate
would tell him how to fix it. If Sabine called someone, it was more a matter of
public relations.”425
Milton Muelder, a long-time friend of Albert Applegate, said Applegate had
“given wonderful service to Michigan State through his concern with students
and his work with the weekly newspapers of Michigan." The concept for a
College of Communication Arts, Muelder said, “was probably not his cup of
tea." “There was much talk of communication theory, and Applegate was a
practical man.”428
The new orientation of the journalism program became apparent in the fall
when Sabine hired Paul Deutschmann to teach journalism and head a newlycreated Communications Research Center.427 Deutschmann, one of the first
students to earn a doctorate in Stanford University’s mass communication
research program, would become the acting director of the School of
Journalism in 1956. Under Deutschmann, the College would attempt to
remedy a situation that Sabine had mentioned in his first annual report: “No
one on the entire College faculty is engaged in any very significant
research.”428
By then, research of all types proved a significant way for universities to
acquire money from the federal government. In 1940, for example, the federal
government had allocated only $15 million in grants and contacts to

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universities and colleges with a major portion going to Agricultural Experiment
Stations of land-grant institutions. By 1960, federal agencies provided $462
million (over thirty times as much) for research to be conducted by colleges and
universities, exclusive of agricultural experiment stations and federal contract
research centers administered by universities.428
That Michigan State University might select communications researchers
to guide the School of Journalism is not surprising. That is, the journalism
program had, once again, tailored its needs to those of the university. In the
days of the Michigan Agricultural College, agricultural journalists had
explained the work of MAC experiment stations through farm bulletins or
articles in newspapers. Later, when MSC land-grant mission expanded to
include many vocations other than farming, the school built close ties with the
Michigan Press Association as a way of helping train and secure employment
for future journalists who would, presumably, promote the interests of the
College.
The reason for journalism’s many roles is easy to understand. Although
the journalism program at Michigan State had an enrollment of 283 students in
a College of 21,295 during Albert Applegate’s final year, its percentage of the
entire student population - a little more than 1 percent -- was roughly the same
as when Thomas Blaisdell’s first class in agricultural journalism met in 1910.
For that reason, the history of the Michigan State journalism program is the
story of a subject seeking both identity and survival within departments,
divisions and, finally, a college much larger, and with different interests, than
itself.
That journalism instruction had survived for nearly five decades as part of
agricultural, English, publicity and business programs was a testament to its

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ability to adjust to changing times. Whether journalism, most recently wed to
the interests of weekly newspapers, could thrive in its newest environment -- a
college seeking a national reputation for communications research -- would
provide perhaps the strongest test of its adaptability as the university entered
its second century.

There were two major currents in the early history of journalism education.
The first viewed the press as primarily a social and political force. According to
that approach, the purpose of journalism education was to teach future
practitioners how best to understand those forces and, by applying their skills,
to describe, interpret or influence the events that those forces shaped. That
theme may be traced from the founding of a certificate program at Cornell
University through the establishment of courses at the University of
Pennsylvania and several Midwestern schools to the opening of the Pulitzer
School of Journalism at Columbia, the school which epitomized that approach.
The second, the one that shaped MAC, was the philosophy of the agricultural
colleges. Underlying that current was the idea that journalism education could
teach students to apply their skills in a more narrowly-defined way -- toward the
understanding of agriculture -- and, in so doing, aid the schools in their major
mission of assisting farmers. According to that philosophy, the role of the press

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was not to serve so much as a critic but as a community booster, particularly of
the small town.
MAC offered its first journalism course in 1910. During the next 25 years the
journalism program grew from that single course to a Department of Journalism
and Publications. As it grew, the program continued to serve the citizens of
rural Michigan even while it redefined its role. The first course, a class in
agricultural journalilsm, was intended to educate agricultural students who
would, in turn, educate the farmer. From there, journalism education at MAC
evolved from being merely journalism for the farmer to journalism for the small
town. Most significant in that development was the building of formal ties with
the rural weekly press. A convention of rural edlitors called on MAC to open a
department of rural journalism (in 1918). The establishment of an on-campus
office in 1931 for the Michigan Press Association, the representative of rural
newspapers, made the commitment formal and helped assure that it would last.
College administrators encouraged the arrangement as part of their effort to
gather support in rural Michigan through newspaper publicity for MAC’S
expanding programs and mission. Faced with the need to hire a new
department chairman when department chairman Albert H. Nelson died in
1935, the college confimed Michigan State’s rural journalism emphasis and
promised its continuation by selecting Albert A. Applegate from South Dakota
State College, where the bulk of his experience had been as a teacher of
journalism, publicist for the school and adviser to small-town editors in South
Dakota.
The leadership of Albert A. Applegate marked the journalism program at
Michigan State College from 1936 to 1949. Under his guidance, that program,
which became the Department of Journalism in 1943, expanded in students,

191
faculty and courses. As it grew, the department continued to promote the
intestests of rural journalism, a commitment which can be traced from the
conference of weekly editors in 1918 and which Applegate had previously
followed at South Dakota State College. The Department strengthened its ties
with the Michigan Press Association, the representative of the state’s small­
town newspapers. The orientation toward the small town remained strong
through the mlid-1940s. As the college enrollment nearly doubled following
World War II and as the journalism curriculum evolved in size and diversity,
however, that direction began to change. The trend away from small-town
journalism became apparent in the hiring of faculty members with
backgrounds on metropolitan newspapers and magazines. In 1949, the
department, with a faculty that had increased during the Applegate years from
three to 18, was accredited by the American Council on Education for
Journalism for its news-editorial sequence. As the 1940s ended, questions
arose as to whether, and how, the program’s role in serving the state and
serving the college would continue to change in the upcoming decade.
That the program’s role did change during the 1950s was laregly due to
influences outside the Department of Journalism. The culmination came in
1955 with the creation of the College of Communication Arts and the upgrading
of the Department to a School of Journalism within the College. The earliest of
those influences was the Michigan Press Association which called for a
building to house the growing journalism program. A second was the
introduction of the concept of “communication” and academicians’ search to
define the term, a quest that was altering journalism education at other
universities. During the early 1950s, then, the journalism faculty, other faculty
members and MSC administrators re-evaluated the Department at MSC, partly

192
to determine the role journalism and communication might play in a larger,
intergrated program. The re-evaluation, too, weighed the value of a
Department still tied largely to serving the newspapers of rural Michigan
against a broader program that would strive for national prominence in
communications research. The most significant re-evalulation occurred when
President John Hannah took the future of the communications program out of
the hands of the faculty and placed it in the hands of a five-member committee
of MSC administrators. In writing a grant application to the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation, the committee outlined plans for a communications college and a
building for that college. Although denied, the proposal gave impfetus to the
establishment of the College of Communication Arts and, despite continued
misgivings by the journalism faculty toward the communication theorists and
their potential roles in the future of the program, the placing of the journalism
program within the College. Prior to the creaton of the College, in spring 1955,
Albert Applegate retired from the Department after 19 years as chairman. He
was replaced by Gordon Sabine who assumed the roles of chairman of the
School of Journalism and dean of the College July 1 upon the creation of both.
The history of journalism education at Michigan State University, then, points
out a number of themes to which the historian of higher education should be
alert.
This history illustrates several issues about how professional education
emerged in an American institution of higher education more typical than the
Harvard’s or Stanford’s. Future historians need to investigatge whether these
issues appear in similar institutions and in other professions:

193
1. Conflicts within professional education are often understood as
emerging between “academic" and “practical” interests. This work suggests
that those terms are really stand-ins for conflicting interests more correctly
defined as “cosmopolitan” and “local.” The Michigan Press Association’s call
for practical courses in journalism was a request that the College teach skills
that would prepare students for careers on small-town newspapers. In so
doing, the Association was urging that professional education be adapted to
meet specialized “local” needs and values. That approach stood in contrast to
“cosmopolitan" interests as reflected by the needs of metropolitan newspapers
and the corresponding values of urban communities.

2. This study points out that there is much to learn about the competition for
control over professional education in a field with no licensing or ability to
restrict access. Too much of the vision of professional education rests on the
medical school model. More study is needed on the lesser professions that
better typify the growth of American higher education. Historians should be
alert to the role trade organizations, like press associations, play in
professional education. Events leading to the College of Communication Arts
suggest that the way competing professional and academic interests reach
accommodation in the formation of new programs is also worthy of study.

3. This history suggests further study on the the way in which a professional
curriculum may thrive in relation to its contribution to the university. Journalism
at Michigan State survived, in part, because of its public relations value to the
school.

In its early days, and later as a Department of Journalism and

Publications, the program nutured the image of the university through

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chairmen who directed the school's publicity efforts and by building a
curriculum geared to the needs of Michigan’s small towns. It is crucial that
future studies recognize the dual role of professional education within the
university.

ENDNOTES

Chapter 1

1Albert Sutton, Education for Journalism (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1945), 39, 90.

2De Forest O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States
(New York: Columbia University Bureau of Publications, 1935), 86.
3S.N.D. North, The Newspaper and Periodical Press. Department of the
Interior, Office of the Census (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884),
27.
‘ Theophilus Abbot, “Agricultural Education,” 1875, Abbot Presidential
Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
5Paul L. Dressel, College to University: The Hannah Years at Michigan
State. 1935-1969 (East Lansing, Michigan: University Publications, 1987), 21.
* O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 5.
7Ibid., 60.
4Ibid., 95.
* Charles F. Wingate, Views and Interviews in Journalism (New York: F.B.
Patterson, 1875), 15.
10Ibid., 77.
" Ibid., 130-131.
,2O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 22-23.
’* Ibid., 25.
195

196
14Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1962), 166.
15O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 25.
14Ibid., 36.
" “Evening Session." Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the
Michigan Press Association. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1892, 8, Library of the State
of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan.
" Calendar of the University of Michigan. 1890-91. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 54.
14Proceedings of the Board of Regents. 1906-1910. The University of
Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1911), 673.
20O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 41.
21Report of the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania from October 1892
to June 1894 (Philadelphia: Avil Printing Co.), 24.
22James Melvin Lee, “Instruction in Journalism in Institutions of Higher
Education,” Bulletin No. 21, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office: 1918), 10.
23O'Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 47.

25O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 50.
24Ibid., 60.
27“A University School of Journalism,” Columbia University Quarterly. 5
(September 1903): 446.
24O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 60.
24Henry James. Charles William Eliot, vol. 1 (New York: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1930), 362.

197
“ Ibid.
*• O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 82.
32Ibid., 93-94.
M Outlook. 34 (22 August 1903): 968-969.
34Horace White, “The School of Journalism," North American Review 178
(March 1904): 25.
“ “The College of Journalism," North American Review 178 (May 1904):
655.
“ Sutton, Education for Journalism. 19.
57O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. 69.
" Merle Curti and Vernon Cartensen, The University of Wisconsin: A History.
1848-1925 (Madison. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1949),
327.
34Walter Williams, “The College of Journalism," The World To-Day.
December 1908,1232-1233.
40Proceedings of the Board of Regents. 1906-1910. The University of
Michigan. 673-675.
41“College Journalism Travels from West Eastward," University of Michigan
News-Letter. 18 April 1910,36.
42Madison Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years (East Lansing,
Michigan: The Michigan State University Press, 1955), 45.
43S.B. McCracken, “The Press of Michigan - A Fifty Years’ View." Michigan
Historical Collections Vol. XVIII (Lansing. Michigan: Robert Smith and Co.,
1892), 385.
44Compendium of the Enumeration of the Inhabitants and Statistics of the
United States (Washington: Thomas Allen Printer, 1841), 94.
43Ibid.

198
44Nelson Antrim Crawford and Charles Elkins Rogers, Agricultural
Journalism {New York: F.S. Crofts & Co., 1931), 16-17.
47Albert Lowther Demaree, The American Agricultural Press 1819-1860
/New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 13.
44Ibid., 17.
49Michigan Agricultural College, Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan: W.S. George
& Co., 1870), 64.
“ Demaree, The Agricultural Press. 382.
41Ibid.
MCatalogue of the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United
States Compiled from U.S. Census Statistics of 1850 (New York: Livingston,
1852), 21.
45Alan I. Marcus, Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy (Ames,
Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1985), 16
54Demaree, The American Agricultural Press. 49.
44Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1873), 333.
54Demaree, The American Agricultural Press. 51 -54.
47Marcus, Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy. 18.
* Lew Allen Chase, Rural Michigan (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1922), 332.
4

48Demaree, The American Agricultural Press. 113.
40Marcus, Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy. 16.
*' Dressel, College to University. 391.

199
"Joseph Williams, Toledo, Ohio, to C.S. May, Battle Creek, Michigan, 10
May 1853, Williams Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives,
East Lansing, Michigan.
“ Kuhn. Michigan State: The First Hundred Years. 50.
** Michigan Agricultural College, Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing,
Michigan: Thorp and Godfrey, 1885), 47.
“ Michigan Agricultural College, Twenty-Third Annual Report of the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing: W.S.
George and Co., 1884), 307.
“ Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture.
47.
47Michigan Agricultural College, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report of the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing,
Michigan: Darius Thorp, 1889), 68.
“ Marcus, Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy. 7.
“ Ibid., 8.
70William W. Potter, “Fifty Years of Michigan Progress.” Michigan History 8
(October 1924), 432.
71Abbot, “Agricultural Education.”
" J.H. Brown, “How We Got the RFD," Michigan History 6 (October 1922):
442.
73Willis F. Dunbar and George S. May. Michigan: A History of the Wolverine
State fGrand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1980), 568.
74Ibid., 574.
75Brown, "How We Got the RFD," 442.

200
74Roy V. Scott. The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension To
1914 (Urbana. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 138.
77Kuhn. Michigan State: The First Hundred Years. 138.
74Earl W. Hayter, “Mechanical Humbuggery Among Western Farmers, 186090." Michigan History 34 ( March 1950),13.
79Ibid., 14.
40Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years. 139.
4' Ibid.
82 MAC Record. 28 January 1896, 2.
“ Michigan Agricultural College, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan: W.S.
George & Co., 1896), 57.
44 Ibid., 62.
44Ibid., 62-63.
44 Ibid., 68.
47 MAC Record. 11 June 1901, 2.
44W.J. Beal, “What Have the Agricultural Colleges Done for the Farmer?”
MAC Record. 20 September 1898, 2.
44 MAC Record. 22 May 1906, 2.
40 Jonathan Snyder, “What Can and Should Be Done To Increase the
Interest and Appreciation for the Agricultural Side of Technical Education,"
1902, Snyder Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East
Lansing, Michigan.
41 MAC Record. 4 August 1896, 4.

201
“ Michigan Agricultural College. Fortv-Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing. Michigan:
Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1910), 104.
” MAC Record. 26 June 1900, 4.
84 MAC Record. 26 July 1896. 4.
* MAC Record. 1 October 1907,2.
88“About Campus,” MAC Record. 26 February 1901, 4.
87“The Michigan Farmer and the College," MAC Record. 27 July 1897, 2.
" Howard Edwards, MAC Record. 13 October 1901,2.
“ “Farmers’ Club," MAC Record. 16 October 1906,2.
,0° "Historical Sketch of the Michigan Press Association,” Report of the
Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Michigan Press Association. Lansing,
Michigan 1881, 4, Library of the State of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan.
,0'"The Business Meetings," Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of
the Michigan Press Association. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1892, 78, Library of the
State of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan.
102“State Press at the MAC," Lansing State Republican. 15 March 1901, 3.
,M“State Press Association Entertained." MAC Record. 19 March 1901,2.
,MIbid., 2-3.
105“The Weekly." Editor and Publisher. 11 (18 February 1911): 7.
"’“ ‘Farmers’ Club,” MAC Record. 16 October 1906,2.
,07F.W. Beckman, Harry O’Brien and Blair Converse, Technical Writing of
Home and Farm (Ames. Iowa: Journalism Publishing Company, 1927), ix.

202
,MW.H. Glover, Farm and College; The College of Agriculture of the
University of Wisconsin. A History (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1952), 270.
1MHarry D. Smith, “Teaching Industrial Journalism." The Writer. 25 (July
1911): 97-99.
"° “Making Agricultural Editors,” MAC Record. 6 April 1909,3.
M.G. Kains, “Agricultural Journalism,” MAC Record. 2 January 1912, 1.
1,1 O’Dell, Education for Journalism. 34-35.
m Holcad. 10 June 1910, 8.
Michigan Agricultural College, Catalogue of the Michigan Agriculture
College of Agriculture and Applied Science (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop,
Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1909), 130.
"‘ Thomas Blaisdell, unpublished biography of Jonathan Lemoyne Snyder,
1946, 23, Snyder Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives,
East Lansing, Michigan.
MAC Record. 11 August 1896,2.
117Michigan Agricultural College, Fifty-First Annual Report of the Secretary
of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing. Michigan:
Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1912), 153.
“Students Will Become Editors," Lansing State Republican. 9 April 1910,
6.
"* Holcad. 10 June 1910,8.
,ao“The Agricultural Press,” MAC Record. 14 June 1910, 2.
’’’ idfilcad, 14 April 1910, 8.
,a MAC Record. 14 June 1910, 2.
Michigan Agricultural College, Forty-Ninth Annual Report. 104.

203
124Michigan Agricultural College, Fiftv-First Annual Report. 90.
123 “Announcement." Holcad. 26 February 1912, 6.
,2i“The Penman Club,” Wolverine. 1911,192.
127“The Penman’s Guest.” MAC Record. 11 February 1911,1.
,2* Ibid., 2.
,2* “Penman," MAC Record. 18 April 1911,3.
130Ibid.
121Dressel, College to University. 21.

Chapter 2
132Paul L. Dressel. College to University; The Hannah Years at Michigan
State. 1935-1969 (East Lansing, Michigan: University Publications, 1987),
305.
133Michigan Agricultural College. Fiftv-Second Annual Report of the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing,
Michigan: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1913), 32.
'34Michigan Agricultural College, Fiftv-Third Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing. Michigan:
Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1914), 41.
135Ibid., 150.
,3* Loretta Goodwin, “The Origin and Development of Journalism Education
at Iowa State University (Master of Science thesis, Iowa State University,
1984), 36.
137Editorial, Holcad. 14 April 1910, 8.
,3* “Is It Practical?” Holcad. 3 October 1910,5.

204
Iowa State College Catalogue 1912 to 1913 (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State
College Press, 1912), 131.
,46UNews and Comment," MAC Record. 27 April 1915, 5.
Michigan Agricultural College, Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan:
Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1915), 128-129.
’** Ibid.
,w Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Secreta_ry_Qlthe Board of Agriculture.
94.
144 Goodwin, “The Origin and Development of Journalism Education at Iowa
State University,” 12.
,4SW.H. Glover, Farm and College: The College of Agriculture of the
University of Wisconsin. A History (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1952), 270.
144“Earl R. Trangmar,” MAC Record. 24 April 1917, 4.
147Michigan Agricultural College, Fifty-Seventh Annual Report of the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Fort Wayne,
Indiana: Fort Wayne Printing Company,1918), 163-164.
144Ibid., 165.
"• Ibid., 181-182.
,M“Support from the Country Editor,” 30 August 1918, 4.
,5' Earl R. Trangmar to Michigan rural editors and publishers, 6 July 1918,
Kedzie Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
“Conference of Rural Editors Aug. 1-3,” MAC Record. 8 July 1918.
,5J“Crisis of War is at Council Table." Lansing State Journal. 2 August 1918,
12.

205
154William Allen White, “The Country Newspaper,” Harper's Magazine 132
(May 1916): 891.
George E. Mowry and Blaine A. Brownell, The Urban Nation. 1920-1980.
2d ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 3.
154Samuel Eliot Morrison, Henry Steele Commager, William E.
Leuchtenburg, A Concise History of The American Republic. 2d ed. (Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press, 1983), 588.
,57Mowry and Brownell, The Urban Nation. 1920-1980.275.
,5, Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The Twenties (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1935), 94.
’5* “Support from the Country Editor,” 4.
,4° Ibid.
'4' Ibid.
UJ Ibid.
Ibid.
444“Crisis of War is at Council Table," 12.
145Michigan Agricultural College, Fiftv-Sixth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Fort Wayne Printing
Company, 1917), 126.
,4‘ Madison Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred-Yeats (East Lansing,
Michigan: The Michigan State University Press, 1955), 260.
,47“The Michigan Agriculturist.” Michigan Agriculturist 6 (October 1927): 6.
144Goodwin, “The Origin and Development of Journalism Education at Iowa
State University,” 60.
,MGottfried C. Graff, interview with author, by telephone, 13 March 1991.

206
170“Medill School of Journalism Is Started," news release by Greater
Northwestern University News Service, October 1920, Medill School of
Journalism Papers, Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois.
,7’ Ibid.
172“Dedicatory Exercises of the Joseph Medill School of Northwestern
University," official program, 8 February 1921, Medill School of Journalism
Papers, Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois.
Ibid.
174James B. Hassleman to Earl C. Richardson, 14 May 1959, excerpts
printed in “Agricultural Information Service Programs at Michigan State
University,” Madison Kuhn Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East
Lansing, Michigan.
175“Farm Journalists Join Record Staff." MAC Record. 30 November 1917,
1- 2 .

174Michigan Agricultural College, Fiftv-Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan:
Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1920), 97.
,77White County Historical Society, Standard History of White Countv. Vol. II
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1915), 847.
,7' Catalog of the Michigan Agricultural College. 1920 to 1921 (Lansing.
Michigan: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1920), 102.
,7’ “Home Economics Divided Into General and Technical." MAC Record. 15
April 1921, 8.
,MIbid.
Catalog of the Michigan Agricultural College. 1924 to 1925 (Lansing,
Michigan: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck, & Crawford Co., 1924), 24.
1,2 Ibid.
"* Albert H. Nelson, “Advertising Agricultural Products." Michigan
Agriculturist 5 (April 1926): 6.

207
MAC Record. 16 April 1920,1.
“A Course in Advertising,” MAC Record. 7 May 1920,6.
'“ Catalog of the Michigan Agricultural College. 1924 to 1925.150-151.
'•7Catalog of the Michigan State College. 1925 to 1926 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1925), 168-169.
'"Merideth Clark, Interview by author, Vicksburg, Michigan, 6 June 1990.
'•’ Ibid.
Michigan State College, Sixty-Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan: State of
Michigan Printer, 1930), 89.
’•' Ibid.
'” “Hasselman is Made Professor." State News. 22 February 1929,1.
'" “A Start,” State News. 22 February 1929, 2.
,MSixtv-Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. 89.
1,5Catalog of the Michigan State College. 1929 to 1930 (East Lansing,
Michigan: The Michigan State College Press, 1929), 97.
'“ Frank S. Kedzie to Earl Trangmar, 20 December 1918, Kedzie
Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
” 7Michigan State College, Seventieth Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan. (Lansing, Michigan: State of
Michigan Printer, 1931), 133.
'••James B. Hasselman to Earl C. Richardson, 14 May 1959.
’•• Michigan State College, Seventy-First Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing. Michigan: State of
Michigan Printer, 1932), 64.

208
800Michigan State College, Seventy-Second Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan ( Lansing, Michigan: State
of Michigan Printer, 1933), 41.
801Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years.341.
808Leland W. Carr, “Judge Carr’s Report," The Grand Jury Investigation (East
Lansing, Michigan: The Michigan State College Press, 1933), 11.
805“Dean at MSC and Two Others Forced to Quit." Detroit Free Press. 26
November 1932,1.
804Peter Fagan, “Out 3 MSC Teachers for Criticisms." Detroit Times. 26
November 1932,1.
805George Alderton, interview with author, by telephone, 31 October 1989.
804Notes from the papers of President Robert H. Shaw, undated, Shaw
Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
807Newspaper editors to President R.H. Shaw and The Board of Agriculture,
18 November 1932, Shaw Presidential Papers, Michigan State University
Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
804“State Renews MSC Inquiry." Detroit Free Press. 25 November 1932,3.
804“Craft Chatter " Michigan RijMgtjn 50 (April 1933): 3
8.0Seventy-Second Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of
Agricu lt u r a l.
8.1“30,” State News. 18 October 1935, 2.
8.8Gregg Smith, interview by author, Boyne City, Michigan, 6 October 1989.
8.8Ibid.
8,4
Michigan State College, Seventv-Third Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing, Michigan: State of
Michigan Printer, 1934), 71.

209
2.2“A.A. Applegate Resigns," Milbank (South Dakota) Herald Advance. 19
December 1935,4.

2.2Roberta Applegate to Ruth B. Laird, 10 September 1976, South Dakota
State University Journalism Department Records, Brookings, South Dakota.
2,7
George Phillips, unpublished history of the South Dakota State University
journalism program, 1989, p. 5, South Dakota State University Department of
Journalism and Mass Communication, Brookings, South Dakota.
2.2Ibid.
212The Highmore fSouth Dakota) Herald. 19 December 1935, 4.
220The Aberdeen (South Dakota) American. 13 December 1935, 6.
“Directory of Teachers of Journalism in Colleges and Universities in the
United States.” Journalism Quarterly 13 (June 1936): 226.
222Lawrence W. Murphy, “Professional and Nonprofessional Teaching of
Journalism." Journalism Quarterly 9 ( March 1932): 47.
222Eric Allen, “Journalism as Applied Social Science." Journalism Bulletin 4
(November 1927), 59.
224Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, “What Schools of Journalism are Trying to Do,”
Journalism Quarterly 8 (March 1931): 39.
225Report of the President. 1929-30 (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan
State College Press, 1930), 10.
222Kenneth E. Olson, “Schools of Journalism and the Press," Journalism
Quarterly 16 (March 1939): 32.
227“News Notes,” Journalism Quarterly 12 (June 1935): 235.
222“News Notes,” Journalism Quarterly 13 ( March 1936): 119.
222Eric Allen, “Research in Journalism,” Journalism Quarterly (March
1931),159.
2,0 Dressel, College to University. 410.

210
231 Ibid.
232Ibid.

Chapter 3
231“Says Weekly Predominates Newspaper Field Today." Michigan Bulletin
58 (June 1936): 5.
234Oscar Theodore Barck, Jr. and Nelson Manfred Blake, Since 1900: A
History of the United States in Our Times (New York: The MacMillan Company,
1965), 592.
235Ibid.
23‘ Ibid.
237 Catalog of Michigan State College. 1936 to 1937 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1936), 158-159.
233 Norval Neil Luxon, “Trends in Curricula in A.A.S.D.J. Schools,"
Journalism Quarterly 13 (September 1936): 353-360.
232Elmer White, interview by author, 21 July 1989, East Lansing, Michigan.
240 Michigan Bulletin 41 ( August 1934): 4.
241“Plans Contest for Michigan Weeklies." Michigan Bulletin 43 (September
1936): 5.
242Michigan State College, Seventy-Sixth Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan. 1936-1937 ( East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1936), 77.
243John A. Hannah. A Memoir (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State
University Press,1980), 127.

211
244Ernest M. Banzet, “Social Change in a Rural Community as Retlected in a
Weekly Newspaper" (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State College, 1941), 9-10.
245Ibid., 10.
248C.R. Hoffer, “Interests of Rural People as Portrayed in Weekly
Newspapers,” Special Bulletin 298, Michigan State College Agricultural
Experiment Station, February 1939, 5.
247“News Notes," Journalism Quarterly 14 (September 1937): 318.
248 Luxon, Journalism Quarterly. 359.
242Catalog of Michigan State College. 1937 to 1938 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1937), 158-159.
^Norval Neil Luxon, “Trends in Curricula in A.A.S.D.J. Schools,"
Journalism QuarterJy 14 (September 1937): 353.
251“News Notes,” Journalism Quarterly 11 (June 1934): 227.
252“Proposals for a Department of Journalism," undated, Medill School of
Journalism Papers, Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois.
253Interview with Elmer White.
254Confidential Bulletin of the Michigan Press Association. 16 February
1937,14, Michigan Press Association, Lansing, Michigan.
“ ‘ Roberta Applegate to Ruth B. Laird, 10 September 1976, South Dakota
State University Journalism Department Records, Brookings, South Dakota.
“ * Norman Rumple, interview by author, by telephone, 15 November 1990.
287Catalog of Michigan State College. 1938 to 1939 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1938), 168-169.
254David Braendle, “A Brief History of The Michigan Interscholastic Press
Association," Fiftieth Anniversary Program of The Michigan Interscholastic
Press Association. May 1971,18.
252“Nearly 2,000 Attend Journalism Day." Michigan State College Record.
November 1948, 6.

212
240Albert A. Applegate, interview by J.E. Yantis, 1959, School of Journalism
Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
241 Seventv-Sixth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture
of the State of Michigan. 1936-1937.76.
242Paul L. Dressel, College to University: The Hannah Years at Michigan
State. 1935-1959 (East Lansing, Michigan: University Publications,1987), 25.
243“Graduate Shortage - Problem for Publishers." Michigan Publisher 62
(April 1955): 3.
264Catalog of Michigan State College. 1938 to_1939. 168-169..
245Michigan State College, Seventy-Eighth Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (East Lansing, Michigan:
Michigan State College Press, 1938), 88.
244"News Notes,” Journalism Quarterly 16 (September 1939): 425.
247Seventy-Eighth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture
of the State of Michigan. 1938-1939.90.
244 Kenneth E. Olson, "Schools of Journalism and the Press,” Journalism
Quarterly 16 (Winter 1939): 35.
244Ibid., 36.
270Arthur T. Robb, “Education for Journalism - One of Its Problems,”
Journalism Quarterly 18 (March 1941): 35.
271 Ibid., 36.
272Wesley Maurer, interview by author, 10 August 1990, St. Ignace,
Michigan.
273Loretta Goodwin, “The Origin and Development of Journalism Education
at Iowa State University” (M.S. thesis, 1984), 12.
274Catalog of Michigan State College. 1929 to 1930 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1929), 181.

213
278Catalog of Michigan State College. 1938 to 1939.186.
271Ibid., 187.
277Catalog of the University of Michigan. 1938 to 1939 (Ann Arbor, Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, 1938),163-164.
274F.W. Beckman, Harry R. O’Brien and Blair Converse. Technical
Journalism ( Ames, Iowa: The Collegiate Press, 1937), 8.
274Curtis D. MacDougall, Interpretative Reporting. Fourth Edition ( New York:
The MacMillan Company, 1963), 5.
2,0 Ibid., 14.
241 Ibid.
242Ibid., 84.
245Ibid., 96.
244Ibid.
245Geraldine King, interview by author, 19 November 1990, East Lansing,
Michigan.
244Ibid.
247Dorothy Anderson, interview by author, 4 December 1990, East Lansing,
Michigan.
244Earl Brigham, interview by author, 22 July 1989, Lansing, Michigan.
244Ibid.
240Albert A. Applegate, interview by J.E. Yantis.
241 Michigan State College, Seventv-Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (East Lansing, Michigan:
Michigan State College Press, 1939), 116.

214
2.2Catalog of Michigan State College. 1949 to 1951 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1949), 347-350.
2.3“Business Administration Graduates are Making Good Money." Michigan
State College Record. December 1947, 4.
244Catalog of Michigan State College 1946 to 1947 (East Lansing, Michigan:
The Michigan State College Press, 1946), 299.
243Interview with Earl Brigham.
244Michigan State College, Eightv-Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan 1944-1945 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1944), 92.
247Douglass Miller, “News Notes." Journalism Quarterly 21 (September
1944): 353.
” • Ibid.
244“War and Education for Journalism -- An AATJ Committee Report,"
Journalism Quarterly 20 (Winter 1943): 107.
300“Suggestions to College Teachers of Journalism On Adjusting Instruction
to Wartime Needs." Journalism Quarterly 19 (September 1942): 307.
301“Impact of the War on Curricula Of Schools and Departments of
.Journalism " .Journalism Quarterly 20 (March 1943): 99=
362Minutes of the Board of Trustees, 17 December 1942, Michigan State
University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
“ 3“M.S.C. Changes." Michigan Publisher 50 (January 1943): 9.
304Madison Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years (East Lansing,
Michigan: The Michigan State University Press, 1955), 424-425.
“ ’ “Reminiscences of Colonel Dorsey Reed Rodney,” unpublished memoirs
recorded in 1954, Colonel Dorsey Reed Rodney Papers, Michigan State
University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.

215
304Dorsey Reed Rodney, “A Letter from the Dean." Michigan State College
Record. January 1949, 2.
307John A. Hannah, speech to the Michigan Press Association, 28 January
1944, Hannah Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East
Lansing, Michigan.
303Douglass Miller. “News Notes." Journalism Quarterly 51 (June 1944):
178.
304Ibid.
3,0
Albert A. Applegate, "Pictures, Radio." Michigan Publisher 51 (April
1944): 1.
3” Ibid.
312Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years. 443.
3.3Ibid., 444.
314Catalog of Michigan State College 1945 to 1946 (East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1945), 265.
3.3Warren C. Price, “News Notes." Journalism Quarterly 25 (Fall 1948): 466.
3'eWarren C. Price, “News Notes," Journalism Quarterly 26 (September
1949): 517-519.
3,7 Warren C. Price, “News Notes." Journalism Quarterly 25 (September
1948): 473.
3.4Elmer F. Beth, “News Notes."Journalism Quarterly 22 (September 1945):
302.
3.4Douglass W. Miller, “News Notes.” Journalism Quarterly 23 (March 1946):
91.
320“Journalism Schools Announce Faculty Appointments," Journalism
Quarterly 25 (March 1948): 107.
” “Join Staff at MSC," Michigan Publisher 24 (January 1947): 13.

216
422“69 Additions to Faculties Are Reported in Journalism," Journalism
Quarterly 25 (September 1948): 471.
421“Four Newcomers." Michigan Publisher 56 (November 1949): 10.
424“MSC Wins Rating." Michigan Publisher 56 (September 1949): 7.
425“Too Many Schools?” Journalism Bulletin 1 (June 1924): 61.
424Edwin Emery and Joseph P. McKerns, “AEJMC: 75 Years in the Making,"
Journalism Monographs. Number 104, November 1987,13.
427Ibid., 11.
424“Journalistic Education in the United States,” Journalism Bulletin 3
(November 1926): 5.
424Ibid.
440Emery and McKerns, “AEJMC: 75 Years in the Making,” 19.
Ibid., 20.
442Albert A. Sutton, Education for Journalism (Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1945), 57.
444“Emery and McKerns, “AEJMC: 75 Years in the Making,” 20.
444Sutton, Education tor Journalism. 51.
444Ibid., 28.
444“The AASDJ Accepts New Accrediting Policy." Journalism Quarterly 23
(March 1946): 34.
447Ibid., 40.
444“Statement of Policy of the Accrediting Committee, American Council on
Education for Journalism, Journalism Quarterly 25 (March 1948): 88.
“ 'Ibid., 90.

217
340Ibid., 88.
341"First List of Accredited Schools of Journalism Issued by ACEJ,"
Journalism Quarterly 25 (September 1948): 317.
348 Ibid., 317-318.
343“Seven Schools Apply for ACEJ Accrediting." Journalism Quarterly 26
(March 1949): 116.
344“Journalism Department Gets National Recognition." Michigan State
College Record. September 1949, 3.
345“Summary of Joint Sessions." Journalism Quarterly 26 (September
1949): 508.
344 Ibid.
347Norval Neil Luxon, "Views on Professional Education for Journalism,”
Journalism Quarterly 25 (September 1948): 380.

Chapter 4
348Earl English, “What We Have Learned from The Accrediting Program,"
Journalism Guarien> 26 (September 1343): 436.
“Hall of Fame," Michigan Publisher 58 (June 1951): 1.
350Madison Kuhn. Michigan State College: The First Hundred Years (East
Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1955), 441-442.
331“Backbone of America,” American Press. August 1952, 20.
352Statement by the Michigan Press Association Committee on Journalism
Schools, 1951, The Michigan Press Association, Lansing, Michigan.
333Professor A.A. Applegate, “Journalism Building Sought at M.S.C.,”
Michigan Publisher 58 (February 1951): 7.

218
344Ibid.

344“School Committee." Michigan Publisher 58 (September 1951): 1.
344Meredith Clark, interview by the author, 6 June 1990, Vicksburg,
Michigan.
547Ibid.
“ ‘ “News Notes." Journalism Quarterly 30 (March 1953):120.
344Confident:::1Memo of the Michigan Press Association. 29 December
1952, 3.
346Kuhn. Michigan State College: The First Hundred Years. 442.
Ibid., 443.
343Interview with Meredith Clark.
183Minutes of the Board of Trustees, 9 August 1951, Michigan State
University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
344Minutes of the Board of Agriculture, 29 November, 1951, Michigan State
University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
3.3Statement by the Michigan Press Association Committee on Journalism
Schools, 1351, The Michigan Press Association, Lansing, Michigan.
3.4 Ibid., 2.
347Ibid., 3.
“J Building Proposed for MSC." Michigan Publisher 59 (January 1952):
3.
Statement on Journalism Schools,” 4.
370Arthur T. Robb, “Education for Journalism -- One of Its Problems,”
Journalism Quarterly 18 (March 1941): 38.

219
971Mitchell V. Charnley, “Requirements for a Basic Course in Television
News,” Journalism Quarterly 29 (June 1952): 331.

972Television Report, James H. Denison to Prof. Baccus and Dr. Paul, 2 May
1950, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
979John A. Hannah. A Memoir fEast Lansing, Michigan: Michiganversity
Press, 1980), 127.
974George Phillips, interview by author, Brookings, South Dakota, Aug. 28,
1989.
975“Friends Praise Applegate at Recognition Dinner." Michigan Publisher 62
(June 1955):10.
976Michigan State College, Ninetv-First Annual Report of the Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan (Lansing. Michigan: State of
Michigan Printer, 1952), 144.
977E.E. McCray, “State J-School Gets News Quarters." Michigan Publisher
59 (July 1952): 11.
979“Journalism Students Look to Security,” Michigan Publisher 60 (January
1953): 6.
972Ibid.
990Ibid.
" “Ibid.,7.
992Paul L. Dressel, College to University: The Hannah Years at Michigan
State (East Lansing, Michigan: University Publications, 1987), 87.
999Catalog of Michigan State College. 1952_to.1953 (East Lansing,
Michigan,: College Press, 1952), 113.
994Ibid.
995 Michigan State College Record. 15 September 1952, 6.
999"Editor’s Program.” Michigan Publisher 69 (March 1952): 1

220
447H.R. Jolliffe, “Journalism at Michigan State College," December 1953,
Madison Kuhn Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
444Ibid.
444Ralph D. Casey, “What Lies Ahead In Education for Journalism,”
Journalism Quarterly 22 (March 1945): 55.
540Ibid., 56.
491Ibid., 60.
444Ralph D. Casey, “The Challenge to Journalism Education,” Journalism
Quarterly 32 (March 1955): 40.
* Ibid., 41.
444Dressel, College To University. 412.
444Ibid.
444Hannah, A Memoir. 127.
4,7 T.K. Cowden letter to John Hannah, 30 December 1954, Hannah
Presidential Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
494"Proposal For Communication Arts,” Madison Kuhn Papers, Michigan
State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
4,4 Hannah, A Memoir. 103.
440Milton Muelder, interview by author, East Lansing, Michigan, 30 January
1991, East Lansing, Michigan.
^ Ibid.
404“Proposal For Communication Arts,” unpaged.
404Ibid.

221
404“Statement on Journalism Schools," 4.
405Interview with Milton Muelder.
404Ibid.
407Elwin E. McCray, “Typography in the Curriculum: How Many Graduates
Use It?" Journalism Quarterly 30 (March 1953): 221.
401“Friends Praise Applegate at Recognition Dinner." Michigan Publisher 71
(June 1954): 10.
409Audrey Llewellyn, “Testimonial Dinner Honors Applegate." State News. 1
June 1954, 2.
4.0Ibid
4" Memo to Michigan Press Association Board, 30 April 1954, The Michigan
Press Association, Lansing, Michigan.
4,2Confidential Memo of the Michigan Press Association. 9 January 1942,1.
4.1Emory W. Morris letter to John Hannah, 25 March 1955, Madison Kuhn
Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
4.4Report of the Communications Committee Meeting, 19 April 1955,
Madison Kuhn Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing,
Michigan.
4.5T.K. Cowden letter to President J.A. Hannah, 12 May 1955, Madison
Kuhn Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
4.4“MSC Journalism Course Under New Dean." Michigan Publisher 72
(July 6 1955): 1-2.
417Gordon Sabine letter to author, 29 April 1991.
4.4Special Member Service Bulletin, 23 June 1955, Michigan Press
Association, Lansing, Michigan.
4,9Minutes of the Board of Trustees, 20 May 1955, Michigan State University
Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.

222
420Confidential Memo of the Michigan Press Association, 26 May 1955,1.
441Minutes of Michigan Press Association Board of Directors meeting, 16
September 1955, Michigan Press Association, Lansing, Michigan.
422Annual Report of Communication Arts, 1955-1956, Madison Kuhn
Papers, Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing, Michigan.
425 Ibid.
444Elmer White, interview by author, 21 July 1989, East Lansing, Michigan.
425Jack Bain, interview by author, 24 January 1991, East Lansing, Michigan.
424Milton Muelder interview.
427Annual Report of Communication Arts, 1955-1956.
424Ibid.
422Milton Muelder, notes of Speech to College of Communication Arts, 31
January 1974.

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