Letters To The Editor: Comparative And Historical Perspectives

Description

This book provides an account of current work on letters to the editor from a range of different national, cultural, conceptual and methodological perspectives. Letters to the editor provide a window on the reflexive relationship between editorial and readership identities in historical and international contexts. They are a forum through which the personal and the political intersect, a space wherein the implications of contemporaneous events are worked out by citizens and public figures alike, and in which the meaning and significance of unfolding media narratives and events are interpreted and contested. They can also be used to understand the multiple and overlapping ways that particular issues recur over sometimes widely distinct periods. This collection brings together scholars who have helped open up letters to the editor as a resource for scholarship and whose work in this book continues to provide new insights into the relationship between journalism and its publics. Front Matter ....Pages i-xix Introduction (Allison Cavanagh, John Steel)....Pages 1-7 Regular Letters-Writers: Meanings and Perceptions of Public Debate (Marisa Torres da Silva)....Pages 9-23 Speaking as Citizens: Women’s Political Correspondence to Scottish Newspapers 1918–1928 (Sarah Pedersen)....Pages 25-47 Letters to the Editor in the Chicago Defender, 1929–1930: The Voice of a Voiceless People (Stephynie C. Perkins, Brian Thornton, Tulika Varma)....Pages 49-67 Letters to the Editor in Colombia: A Sanctuary of Public Emotions (Marta Milena Barrios, Luis Manuel Gil)....Pages 69-88 Letters to the Editor as a Tool of Citizenship (Allison Cavanagh)....Pages 89-108 The Struggles and Economic Hardship of Women Working Class Activists, 1918–1923 (Jane L. Chapman)....Pages 109-127 Readers’ Letters to Victorian Local Newspapers as Journalistic Genre (Andrew Hobbs)....Pages 129-146 The Possibilities and Limits of “Open Journalism”: Journalist Engagement Below the Line at the Guardian 2006–2017 (Todd Graham, Daniel Jackson, Scott Wright)....Pages 147-169 Back Matter ....Pages 171-181