Michael J. Socolow | |
---|---|
Born | December 19, 1968 |
Relatives | Melvin Krulewitch (grandfather) Sanford Socolow (father) |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Alma mater | Phillips Exeter Academy |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Journalism |
Institutions |
Michael J. Socolow (born December 19,1968) is an American media historian and former broadcast journalist who teaches in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine.
He was raised in Washington,D.C.,and New York City,and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1987. He earned his bachelor's degree at Columbia University in 1991, [1] and was awarded his doctorate in history from Georgetown University in 2001. He has taught at Brandeis University and the University of Maine. [2] [3]
Socolow worked on the assignment desk in the Los Angeles bureau of the Cable News Network (CNN),where he became an assignment editor in 1994. He worked on stories such as the O.J. Simpson trial,the first Michael Jackson molestation trial,and the 1994 Northridge earthquake,for which the CNN Los Angeles Bureau was awarded a Cable Ace Award for Extended News or Breaking News coverage in 1995. [4] [5]
He also worked as an information manager for the host broadcast organizations at the 1992 Barcelona,1996 Atlanta,and 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. [6]
Socolow has written op-eds,essays,and commentary for the New York Times , [7] Washington Post , [8] Boston Globe , [9] Chicago Tribune , Slate , [10] Politico , [11] The Conversation ,and numerous other publications.
Socolow,often working in collaboration with Jefferson Pooley,has written several articles (both scholarly and popular) dispelling the myth of The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama) mass panic. [12] Their collaborative work argues that the panic was "almost non-existent" and significantly overstated by contemporaneous sensational press reporting,and,later,in academic scholarship. In a 2013 interview with Gizmodo ,Socolow denied the idea that he and Pooley originated this mass panic revisionism,citing at least four previous scholars who arrived at the same conclusion about the mass panic being largely a myth. [13] Yet Pooley and Socolow's scholarship has been cited by Snopes , [14] Time , [15] National Geographic , [16] and others to dispel the "War of the Worlds," mass panic myth.
In 2010,in Journalism &Mass Communication Quarterly ,Socolow published a history of the New York Times Op-ed page that explained how the Op-ed concept came in to being and detailed the new feature's immediate success. His research on Op-ed has been cited in journalism scholarship and referenced in The Washington Post , [17] the Columbia Journalism Review , [18] Politico , [19] and elsewhere.
Socolow's 2016 book,Six Minutes in Berlin:Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics, [20] chronicles how the German government invented global broadcast spectacle by developing new radio relay technologies. [21] The book uses one specific Olympic triumph as a case study of the new effects of global Olympic broadcasting:the victory of the University of Washington eight-oared crew. The book also shows how,ironically,the Nazi government made Jesse Owens one of the world's first global athletic superstars. [22] In 2018,Socolow was awarded the Broadcast Historian award by the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation and the Broadcast Education Association for Six Minutes in Berlin. [23]
Socolow was a Fulbright Research Scholar at the News &Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra,in Australia,in 2019. [24]
In July,2020,Socolow was named the Director of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center at the University of Maine. [25]
Socolow is married to Connie A. McVey, [26] and lives in Bangor,Maine. He is the grandson of U.S. Marine Corps Major General Melvin Krulewitch,and the son of Anne K. Socolow and Sanford Socolow,the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. [27]
The Radio Research Project was a social research project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to look into the effects of mass media on society.
The 1936 Summer Olympics,officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad and commonly known as Berlin 1936,were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin,Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona at the 29th IOC Session on 26 April 1931. The 1936 Games marked the second and most recent time the International Olympic Committee gathered to vote in a city that was bidding to host those Games. Later rule modifications forbade cities hosting the bid vote from being awarded the games.
Howard Kingsbury Smith was an American journalist,radio reporter,television anchorman,political commentator,and film actor. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.
"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30,1938 over the CBS Radio Network. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place,though the scale of panic is disputed,as the program had relatively few listeners.
Thomas John Brokaw is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of The Today Show from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley,then as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for 22 years (1982–2004). In the previous decade he served as a weekend anchor for the program from 1973 to 1976. He is the only person to have hosted all three major NBC News programs:The Today Show,NBC Nightly News,and,briefly,Meet the Press. He formerly held a special correspondent post for NBC News.
Mildred Elizabeth Gillars was an American broadcaster employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate Axis propaganda during World War II. Following her capture in post-war Berlin,she became the first woman to be convicted of treason against the United States. In March 1949,she was sentenced to ten to thirty years' imprisonment. She was released in 1961. Along with Rita Zucca she was nicknamed "Axis Sally".
An op-ed piece,short for "opposite the editorial page",derives its name from originally having appeared physically opposite of the editorial page in a newspaper. Today,the term is used more widely to represent a column that represents the strong,informed,and focused opinion of the writer on an issue of relevance to a targeted audience. It is a written prose piece which expresses the opinion of an author or entity with no affiliation with the publication's editorial board. The New York Times is often credited with developing and naming the modern op-ed page.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a United States government-funded private non-profit news service that broadcasts radio programs and publishes online news,information,and commentary for its audiences in Asia. The service,which provides editorially independent reporting,has the stated mission of providing accurate and uncensored reporting to countries in Asia that have poor media environments and limited protections for press freedom and freedom of speech.
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service,Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what became a CBS radio team of journalists known as "Murrow's Boys". He became known for his broadcasts from Berlin,from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1939–1940). Along with Murrow,he organized the first broadcast world news roundup,a format still followed by news broadcasts.
Bernard Shaw was an American journalist and lead news anchor for CNN from 1980 until his retirement on March 2,2001. Prior to his time at CNN,he was a reporter and anchor for WNUS,Westinghouse Broadcasting,CBS News,and ABC News.
Elie Abel was a Canadian-American journalist,author and academic.
Bret Louis Stephens is an American conservative journalist,editor,and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for The New York Times in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017.
John Bertram Oakes was an iconoclastic and influential U.S. journalist known for his early commitment to the environment,civil rights,and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympics featured seven events,for men only. The competitions were held from 11 to 14 August on a regatta course at Grünau on the Langer See.
William Ernest Slater was an American military officer,educator,sports announcer,and radio/television personality from the 1920s through the 1950s,hosting the radio shows Twenty Questions and Luncheon at Sardi's. He was the great uncle of actor Christian Slater.
Joie Chen is a Chinese American television journalist. She was the anchor of Al Jazeera America's flagship evening news show America Tonight,which was launched in August 2013. In January 2016,the channel announced it would close on 12 April 2016.
The Press-Radio War in the United States lasted from 1933 to 1935. Newspaper publishers were concerned to maintain their own dominance of the news market in the face of the emerging radio networks. The Press induced the wire services to stop providing news bulletins to radio broadcasters,which then developed their own news-gathering facilities. In response the press launched political,economic and legal campaigns to prevent news being broadcast on radio,culminating in The Biltmore Agreement by which major networks were compelled to heavily restrict radio news coverage. However,broadcasters soon developed ways to subvert the terms of this agreement,including the use of newly established news agencies such as the Transradio Press Service.
Sanford Socolow was an American broadcast journalist who worked at CBS News from 1956 to 1988. He was executive producer of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite from 1978 to 1981.
The men's eight competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics took place at Grünau Regatta Course in Berlin,Germany. The event was held from 12 to 14 August,and was won by a United States crew from the University of Washington. There were 14 boats from 14 nations,with each nation limited to a single boat in the event. The victory was the fifth consecutive gold medal in the event for the United States and seventh overall;the Americans had won every time they competed. Italy repeated as silver medalists. Germany earned its first medal in the men's eight since 1912 with its bronze. Canada's three-Games podium streak ended.
The year 1938 was marked,in science fiction,by the following events.