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Collage of BuzzFeed logo and people using electronic devices.

They Did It for the Clicks

How digital media pursued viral traffic at all costs and unleashed chaos.
by Aaron Timms via The New Republic on April 18, 2023
A box of explosives removed from the murderer's home

America’s First Plane Bomber, and His Intended Victim

A mass murderer of 1955.
by Nathan Munn via Popula on April 5, 2023
Cattle in Nevada, 1973 (and a UFO)
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The 1970s Cow Mutilation Mystery

When ranchers began reporting incidents of mutilated cattle, the ensuring panic fed both conspiracy theories and a growing cynicism about the government.
by Livia Gershon, Michael J. Goleman via JSTOR Daily on March 17, 2023
Sign for the Hong Kong Restaurant

The Rotten Science Behind the MSG Scare

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.
by Sam Kean via Distillations on March 2, 2023
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) points to a newly installed sign above his office after he was elected in 15 rounds of votes.
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What Lessons Can the House Draw From 1923’s Speaker Battle?

The House speaker fight was eerily reminiscent of 1923 — but the differences between the two will drive what comes next.
by Christopher McKnight Nichols, Maxine Wagenhoffer via Made By History on January 9, 2023
Illustration of Samuel Adams writing a document, with images of the American revolution behind him.

How Samuel Adams Helped Ferment a Revolution

A virtuoso of the eighteenth-century version of viral memes and fake news, he had a sense of political theatre that helped create a radical new reality.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 24, 2022
Handwritten sign that says, "We know more than our doctors."

Doctors Who?

The history of DIY transition offers one path toward what might come after, or in the place of, state-sanctioned care.
by Jules Gill-Peterson via The Baffler on October 4, 2022
A person holds up a "Don't Tread on Florida" poster at an August rally in Tampa featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio.
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The ‘Florida Man’ is Notorious. Here’s Where the Meme Came From

The practice of seeing Florida’s people, culture and history in caricature form is deeply rooted in the state’s colonial past.
by Julio Capó Jr., Tyler Gillespie via Made By History on September 14, 2022
"Napalm Girl" Photo from Vietnam War

Myths Distort the Reality Behind a Horrific Photo of the Vietnam War and Exaggerate Its Impact

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians.
by W. Joseph Campbell via The Conversation on June 2, 2022
Josh Hawley at Senate confirmation hearing

Stranger Dangers: The Right's History of Turning Child Abuse Into a Political Weapon

Josh Hawley’s attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are part of a long, sad tradition.
by Paul M. Renfro, Ali Breland via Mother Jones on March 28, 2022
Mrs. Frank Leslie

‘Mrs. Frank Leslie’ Ran a Media Empire and Bankrolled the Suffragist Movement

A new book tells the scandalous secrets of a forgotten 19th-century tycoon, Miriam Follin Peacock Squier Leslie Wilde, also known as Mrs. Frank Leslie.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on March 28, 2022
Class photo, Geyer, Ohio, 1915
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Lessons from the History Textbook Wars of the 1920s

A century ago, pundits, special interests, and politicians weighed in on what should and shouldn't be taught in history and social studies courses.
by Bruce W. Dearstyne via HNN on February 20, 2022
Newspaper headline "Crossword mania breaks up homes"

Wordle: The New York Times Hated Crossword Puzzles Before It Embraced Them

Long before the Wordle mania, there was the crossword puzzle craze. And newspapers condemned them as a dangerous menace to society.
by Louis Anslow via Big Think on February 15, 2022
Screen frame from the television program Home Improvement, depicting parents chastising their teenage son.

In the ‘90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to Weave “Anti-Drug” Messaging Into Their Plot Lines

These storylines portrayed those addicted to drugs and alcohol as lunatics whose only cure can come from punitive measures, abstinence, and “tough love.”
by Gabe Levine-Drizin via The Column on December 27, 2021
Shoppers and security guards in a mall.
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The Retail Theft ‘Crisis’ Isn’t What You Think It Is

The recent panic over retail theft reveals tensions at the heart of American consumerism.
by Sean H. Vannatta via Made By History on December 15, 2021
Black and white photo of Fatty Arbuckle

Fatty Arbuckle and the Birth of the Celebrity Scandal

A murder charge, a media frenzy, a banishment, and accusations of sexual abuse in Hollywood. What can the Arbuckle affair, now 100 years old, teach us today?
by Michael Schulman via The New Yorker on September 30, 2021
Nellie Bly.

The Lost Legacy of the Girl Stunt Reporter

At the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of women rethought what journalism could say, sound like, and do. Why were they forgotten?
by Katy Waldman via The New Yorker on April 29, 2021
Black and white photo featuring eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys with NAACP representatives Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Laura Kellum, and Dr. Ernest W. Taggart—was taken inside the prison where the Scottsboro Boys were being held.

Who Were the Scottsboro Nine?

The young black men served a combined total of 130 years for a crime they never committed.
by Alice George via Smithsonian Magazine on March 23, 2021
Map of D.C showing where the murder took place

Where Is Dorsey Foultz?

When the D.C. Metropolitan Police failed to catch a murder suspect, white residents criticized and mocked. Black residents worried.
by Sarah A. Adler via Contingent on January 9, 2021
A newsboy holding a bag of papers.

Popular Journalism’s Day in ‘The Sun’

The penny press of the nineteenth century was a revolution in newspapers—and is a salutary reminder of lost ties between reporters and readers.
by Batya Ungar-Sargon via New York Review of Books on December 15, 2020
Political cartoon depicting the menace of monopolies and trusts (1899)

Degeneration Nation

How a Gilded Age best seller shaped American race discourse.
by Adam Morris via Lapham’s Quarterly on December 14, 2020
A television news reporter in a segment from the 1990s on juvenile crime

Superpredator

The media myth that demonized a generation of Black youth.
by Carroll Bogert, Lynnell Hancock via The Marshall Project on November 20, 2020

Don’t Look For Patient Zeros

Naming the first people to fall sick often leads to abuse.
by Scott W. Stern via The New Republic on April 8, 2020
The title page of Life and confession of Ann Walters, the female murderess.
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How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.
by Dawn Keetley, Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on March 25, 2020

The Grey Gardens of the South

A very real story of southern degradation and decay that made national headlines in the fall of 1932.
by Karen L. Cox via Southern Cultures on January 23, 2020
Trump through a television camera.

How TV Paved America’s Road to Trump

“A brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box”: a TV critic explains the multimedia character Trump created.
by Sean Illing, James Poniewozik via Vox on November 7, 2019
Cathy Gillies, Kitty Lutesinger, Sandy Good, and Brenda McCann, of the Manson Family, kneel on the sidewalk outside the Los Angeles Hall of Justice on March 29, 1971.

The Manson Family Murders, and Their Complicated Legacy, Explained

The Manson Family murders weren’t a countercultural revolt. They were about power, entitlement, and Hollywood.
by Aja Romano via Vox on August 7, 2019

Escaped Nuns

Why some antebellum reformers thought convents were incompatible with "true womanhood."
by Pete Cajka, Cassandra L. Yacovazzi via Religion in American History on June 17, 2019

Trumpism Is the New McCarthyism

Just as as McCarthyism did decades ago, Trumpism conceals the Republican Party’s long-term program to dismantle the public sector.
by Ellen Schrecker via The Nation on May 21, 2018
James Baldwin.

The Forgotten Baldwin

Baldwin demands that the Atlanta child murders be more than a mere media spectacle or crime story, and that black lives matter.
by Joseph Vogel via Boston Review on May 14, 2018
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