An analysis of five journalism books published between 1867 and 1911 provides journalism and mass communication educators and textbook authors with insight into what their earliest predecessors considered important. Strong arguments exist for each of the following five books to receive consideration as the first or oldest news reporting textbook…

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a national catastrophe and the major news story of the year, was the first national labor strike in U.S. history. Because of the ideological bias of the press, specifically its implicit commitment to capitalism and to objectivity (itself a "myth" of social order), newspapers of the period could be…