2025 Theses Doctoral

Re-Discovering the news: how the black press and black reporters reshaped American journalism in the first part of the 20th century until the early 1970s

Brahmi, Amel

This dissertation investigates how the black press and black reporters fundamentally reshaped American journalism from the early 20th century through 1972.

The central problem addressed is the persistent narrative—advanced by mainstream newsroom leaders both publicly and inside the secret of the organization—that black reporters were both rare and underqualified, a belief that justified their exclusion from mainstream newsrooms and contributed to their symbolic erasure from the professional field. This study challenges that narrative by examining the actual presence, qualifications, and influence of black journalists, and by analyzing how their exclusion and later integration reflected a profound shift in the practice of journalism.

Crucially, the dissertation argues that black reporters, beginning with Ida B. Wells and continuing through the early 1970s, pioneered and normalized an adversarial, truth- telling approach to journalism—one that would later become central to the mainstream press. The study argues that the hires of black reporters and their denial of opportunities or recognition, reflected a desire to transform while owning the revolution black journalism had initiated.

The research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining extensive archival research, statistical analysis, and oral history. Primary sources include institutional archives, journalism school alumni records, press association membership lists, obituaries, memoirs, and oral history collections. The study analyzes over two hundred biographies of black reporters who broke into mainstream newsrooms, as well as a large sample of black press reporters. Quantitative data on educational attainment and newsroom demographics are supplemented by qualitative interviews with pioneering black journalists, providing both statistical and lived-experience perspectives. The study is grounded in Michael Schudson’s scholarship on the rise of journalistic norms. Theoretical frameworks from Pierre Bourdieu (field, habitus, symbolic revolution), Antonio Gramsci (common sense), and Daniel C. Hallin (concept of multiple spheres) guide the analysis of discourse, organizational practices, and the shifting boundaries of legitimacy within the journalistic field.

The findings demonstrate that black reporters were neither rare nor underqualified; in fact, they were often more highly educated than their white peers, and the black press was a vibrant, influential institution with national reach. The exclusion of black journalists was not based on objective criteria but was a product of institutionalized racism and symbolic erasure, maintained through pathologizing, classification, and ghettoization within news organizations.

The study further shows that the integration of black reporters into mainstream newsrooms in the 1950s and 1960s catalyzed a "symbolic revolution" in American journalism, as adversarial, truth-telling norms pioneered by the black press were gradually adopted by the mainstream. However, this transformation was accompanied by the continued marginalization and under- recognition of black journalists’ contributions. The dissertation calls for a reassessment of the history and sociology of American journalism, recognizing the black press and black reporters as foundational to the profession’s evolution toward accountability, autonomy, and public interest.