The Struggle for the Soul of Journalism: The Pulpit versus the Press, 1833–1923 by Ronald R. Rodgers (review)

The "soul of journalism" is the elusive subject of Rodgers' exploration of Protestant criticism of the press. By soul Rodgers means the principles that animate news organizations beyond the profit motive. The book is a rhetorical and philosophical analysis of commentary by mainstream Protestant thinkers gathered from almost a century of their writing. Rodgers offers what he calls an "originalist" interpretation of their criticism, claiming at the end to have penetrated to its core meaning. The soul of journalism wants news professionals to be "free moral agents," "prophets," "teachers," and "citizens" who work for "human welfare" and "social justice" beyond market constraints (200). Rodgers hopes that this mission, which was first defined more than a century ago, can remain vital today: "Before we continue to transform our present news ethic in the midst of contemporary digital-driven disruption, we need to understand the past in order to discover and save what is fundamental about the mission of journalism" (200).

Rodgers places the Protestant discourse about the press within the specific historical context of the commercialization and industrialization of news. Market forces encouraged a variety of sins in newspapers, which critics identified as giving the people what they want instead of what they need. Professionals within the news industry responded to criticisms of sensationalism and irresponsibility by crafting an ideology of political neutrality, which came to be known as objectivity in the twentieth century. For Rodgers and the critics that he admires, objectivity ate away at the soul of journalism.

The critics that he admires most identified themselves with the Social Gospel movement. Five ministers—Lyman Abbott, Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong, Charles Sheldon, and Walter Rauschenbusch—plus the economist Richard T. Ely elucidated a coherent criticism of the modern daily press that will remind specialists of the more familiar Progressive-era critiques of Will Irwin and Upton Sinclair. Strong, in particular, noted how the industrial daily press allowed millions of people to experience a sense of simultaneous awareness, an insight that anticipates Benedict Andersonʼs argument in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1983). All of these critics shared a notion of an organic society and considered the press the nervous system of the social body. They also shared a quasi-Marxist critique of the "capitalistic" nature of press organizations and the way that they ignored the working class while exploiting their own workers (49).

Much of the language of these critics seems to have been adopted by reformist movements within the news media. Rodgers notes the ways in which the codes of ethics of organizations like the early professional group Sigma Delta Chi and the American Society of Newspaper Editors reflect this battle for the soul of journalism. Indeed, when working journalists try to address the ethics of a situation, as they often do, the terms in which they discuss it are deeply informed by this older tradition. Rodgers deserves credit for recovering this neglected discourse and arguing for its continuing relevance.

The book could have explored in more detail the transatlantic nature of this discourse; many of the texts that Rodgers cites are British. It could also have explored in more detail the relationship of the Protestant discourse to changes in the news workplace. During the period under discussion, "reporters," "correspondents," and "editors" came to think of themselves as "journalists," a term that was rarely used at the beginning of the period. Underlying this change in nomenclature was a great change in both the arrangement of newsrooms and the operation of national and international news systems.

Readers might also notice some absences in the cast of characters. Much more could have been said about women and their specific struggle for journalismʼs soul. Rodgers mentions the Womenʼs Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in passing but could have written much more about its active press organization. Likewise, more...