john maxwell hamilton,journalist and author, is the
Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at Louisiana
State University and a senior scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.Headlines in his newspaper blared, “How Do
You Like the Journal’s War?”
Looking Outward
When the war ended a little over three months
later, McKinley was a hero. The victorious
Americans acquired Cuba, the Philippines,
Guam, and Puerto Rico from Spain. The short
war made the United States a global power as
Spain retreated from the world stage.
“The past few months have witnessed one
of the most remarkable developments of public
opinion observed in this or any other country,”
wrote a contemporary observer of this expan-
sionist burst. “A year ago we wanted no colonies,
no alliance, no European neighbors, no army, and
not much navy... Today every one of these prin-
ciples is challenged, if not definitely rejected.”
The Spanish-American War similarly was a
watershed in news coverage. It led to an expan-
sion of foreign news reporting befitting a world
leader. The level of professionalism improved.
But James Creelman thought journalists’ perfor-
mance in Cuba had been fine as it was. The war,
he said, “justified the instrumentalities which
produced it.”BOOKS
Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American
Foreign News Reporting
John Maxwell Hamilton, LSU Press, 2009.Learn moreAAAIIexperiment, he set out to create a corps of American
foreign correspondents. The experiment was so
successful, Lawson syndicated his “foreign service” to
newspapers across the country. The New York Times, the
Christian Science Monitor, and others followed Lawson’s
example of extensive, systematic coverage of world
news. But none was better prepared to cover World
War I when it broke out in 1914. The Chicago Daily News,
said Editor & Publisher, scored “more beat on the war in
its special foreign service than perhaps any other paper
in the world.” The legacy of these journalistic giants
endures today: Hearst’s empire survives, Pulitzer has
his prizes, and Lawson left the standards against
which all the rest would be measured.NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 89MARY EVANS/AGE FOTOSTOCK