In the Beginning ...: The Roots of the College
If anyone asks you when communications education began at Penn State, you might reasonably point to the years 1910-1912, which saw the introduction of individual courses in journalism, advertising and wireless telegraphy, the precursor to broadcasting. It was not a focused “Big Bang” kind of start. The classes were dispersed across the campus. Journalism instruction was offered in 1911 as a Rhetoric course, “Rhet. 14: Journalistic Writings.” The advertising class, “Econ 19: Advertising and Salesmanship,” was adopted in 1912 as part of a new economics curriculum. And the Department of Electrical Engineering launched “EE 13: Wireless Telegraphy” in 1910.
Further expansion of the curriculum would, moreover, come slowly. While Journalism added a second class in 1914, it then held at just two for a decade. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that growing interest in the profession would culminate, by decade’s end, in the creation of a full Department of Journalism with advertising courses of its own. And it would be many years before broadcasting became a subject outside of engineering. But while only that initial journalism class would serve as the direct ancestor of today’s Bellisario College, taken together the three early courses constituted Penn State’s recognition of the growing social role of media, in all its forms, and the academic needs that were so clearly implied.
This essay traces these Bellisario beginnings, from the founding of The Farmers’ High School in 1855 to the 1929 creation of Penn State’s Department of Journalism and its first few years of operation. It weaves themes of social, cultural and technological change, considering convergences that led to growing national interest in communications education, especially journalism, and it reviews Penn State’s response to those changes as the institution itself expanded and matured.
This history begins with a 19th century preface, looking at pre-curricular activities at Penn State, including the founding of the first student newspaper, class yearbook, and at broad social and technological changes that paved the way for the emergence of communications education in the early 1900s. It then considers the first two decades of the 20th century and the development of a liberal arts program that would be the seedbed for Penn State’s first communications classes. Finally, it looks at the pivotal 1920s when the journalism program blossomed from two courses into a full Department with a menu of more than 20 classes in subjects ranging from copy editing to ethics and research.
The 19th Century Prologue
The earliest mention of journalism in Penn State’s history dates back to 1857 – two years after the chartering of the Farmers’ High School – when the Board of Trustees was reported to have “recommended to the State Legislature. . . that education for journalism be made an integral part of the institution’s curriculum.”[i]
A 1930 article in the Penn State Collegian also reported that the school’s first President, Evan Pugh, had specified in the 1850s that “writing for the press” be one of the College’s objectives.[ii] In fact, “journalism was in the blood” of Penn State’s founding leader, according to university historian Roger Williams.[iii]
In his teens and early twenties, as he studied chemistry and became a school headmaster, the Chester County, Pa., native had become an inveterate journalist, contributing articles and reports in county newspapers. He wrote reports of teachers' meetings, a trial of runaway slaves in Baltimore, and numerous human interest and travel sketches. In 1852, he covered Pennsylvania's first women's rights convention in West Chester. Leaving in 1853 to pursue a scientific education in Germany, Pugh sent numerous dispatches of his observations back to American newspapers.[iv] Hearing of reports to establish the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, he outlined what the institution should be and should do, adding that "the school should establish a newspaper, publishing the results of its research for the benefit of the farmer.[v]
Such recommendations were certainly in keeping with the school’s founding mission, which included providing information and outreach on modern agricultural practices to the state’s farmers,[vi] but it would be many decades before Penn State expressed those sentiments in the classroom.
Students Set the Stage: The campus nonetheless did see some significant communications-related activities in the 1800s, not the least of which was the appearance of the College’s first student newspaper. Just months after the opening of classes in 1859, the students petitioned for the creation of a literary society and were in fact granted two, organized as The Washington Literary Society and The Cresson Literary Society. In fits and starts each began circulating occasional papers and small publications.[vii] On November 14, 1873, for example, the two-page Cresson Annual appeared as “the first printed paper ever published at the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania.”[viii] A subsequent 1874 Cresson Annual prompted a response from the Washington Literary Society, which published its own 24-page paper, The Photosphere, that same year. Neither became regularly appearing periodicals, however.
Then, in February 1887, the Cressons issued The Students’ Miscellany, which included a call to the general student body for the creation of a regularly published campus newspaper. The two literary societies formed a joint committee to answer their own challenge and on April 1, 1887, Penn State’s first true student newspaper began circulation. The inaugural edition of The Free Lance opened with some mild self-chastisement for the delay in creating the paper and a humble pledge of conscientious journalistic practice:
If there be anything in the history of this institution that admits of reproach, it is the lamentable fact that the students, notwithstanding their creditable rank in so many other respects, have never exhibited sufficient enterprise to publish a journal. . . .With this our first issue we are not altogether free from embarrassment lest we be found wanting in the proper discharge of the duties assigned us. Nevertheless, it shall be our aim to sedulously represent to our readers the status of our college, an institution which enjoys, against a sometimes faulted past, a prosperous present and the assurance of a most successful future.
(A note to the reader: time spent reviewing the 16 pages of that first edition will be well rewarded. Easy access at: https://panewsarchive.psu.edu/lccn/sn85054901/1887-04-01/ed-1/seq-1/ )
Two years later, with the student body numbering about 100, the first edition of La Vie was published. A project of the junior class until 1930, the inaugural editors declared:
Without a precedent and without that dearest of all attainments, experience, [the Class of Ninety] has undertaken to erect a monument to itself by publishing a Class Book which will show, without the usual adornments both sides of life at our institution. The desire has been to enlighten as well as entertain, and having labored to accomplish this end, the class submits the first volume of LA VIE for the inspection of its friends, to whom this, its first work is dedicated.[ix]
The College also organized “The Students’ Press Club” in 1893. It was primarily a reading room kept stocked with current magazines and newspapers, aimed at encouraging literary engagement. Penn State historian Wayland Dunaway noted, however, that “With its journalistic flavor, this organization smacked somewhat of a publicity department for the College.[x]
Student activity was not just confined to the print media. Electricity came to campus in the 1880s. Old Main installed electric lights in 1887 and a new program in Electrical Engineering introduced a class in “Telephone and Telegraph” in 1891. Those new media were among the technological marvels of the age and within short order EE students had set up clubs[xi] and wired the Old Main dorms[xii] for both.
Carnegie Hall: More relevant, perhaps, to most of today’s graduates, the building that would eventually become the home of the Bellisario College also arose at the turn of the century. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie was a member of the Board of Trustees and held a deep respect for the value of education, books, and libraries. (He funded more than 2,500 libraries worldwide). In 1899 he offered to pay for the construction of a library building at Penn State on the condition that the state legislature provide an annual appropriation for its maintenance. The state legislature refused, but the Board of Trustees and President Atherton promised that the College would create the necessary funding line and in 1904 Carnegie Hall was formally dedicated. It served as the College library until 1940, when the new Pattee Library was opened. Carnegie Hall was renovated and the journalism program, which was originally housed in Old Main, moved in 1942.
It is an interesting sidenote that Carnegie Hall was built on the site of Penn State’s original Campus Barn, the first building erected for the new Farmers’ High School in 1856 (seven years before Old Main was finished). It served as a working barn for both educational and practical purposes (students were required to labor a minimum of three hours a day on the school farm) until 1889 when it was moved to West Campus, where it burned down in 1891. In consequence, anyone standing today in the lobby of Carnegie Building is standing on the site of Penn State’s very first structure.
Social and Technological Foundations: In like manner, the foundations of a program in communication education at Penn State were being laid though the late 1800s and early 1900s, although the forces at work there were global and profound. Fueled by technological change, population growth and economic expansion, the 19th century was a period of immense transformation in the United States, transformation that touched nearly all elements of society including, dramatically, mass media.
In journalism, the rotary press, introduced in the 1840s, significantly decreased the cost of newspaper production. A daily newspaper, selling for a penny a copy and funded by a newly emerging advertising industry, was available to the millions in the expanding working-class. Rising literacy rates made possible by public schooling also helped make newspaper reading a daily routine in more and more US homes.
Instantaneous wired communication, first the telegraph in the 1830s then the telephone in the 1870s, revolutionized business and eventually social life. Photography was introduced in 1830s, then moving photography, or film, in the 1870s. Marconi’s first experiments with radio, “wireless telegraphy”, closed the last decade of the 19th century.
At the same time, waves of European immigration fed the country’s growing industrial machine. US population more than doubled, from 31.4 million in1860 to 76.3 million in 1900 and then swelled to more than 106 million by 1920. A concomitant rise in the public’s hunger for news and information channeled tremendous resources into the new media businesses.
Entering the first decades of the 20th century, then, mass media in all its forms became a central element in the lives of most Americans and, as the media industries grew, an increasingly attractive career option for many younger citizens. This had obvious implications for professional education nationally and, in short order, for Penn State.
Penn State at Century’s Turn
Population growth and an expanding economy had one broad impact on higher education nationally – increasing student numbers. At Penn State, the College listed 84 undergraduates in 1886-87, a number that grew steadily through the end of the century: 181 students in 1893-94, 281 in 1899-1900, 637 in 1904-05, and more than 1,000 by 1908-09.[xiii] At the same time, students’ educational interests reflected the nation’s changing industrial landscape, and what had originally been envisioned as an agricultural college gave way to an institution dominated by engineering. Penn State historian Michael Bezilla observed that of the 181 students in 1893-94, 128, about 70%, were engineering majors, a ratio that held steady into the early 1900s.[xiv]
The Rise of Liberal Arts: The curriculum, in consequence, was primarily technical and scientific through the 19th century. Among the nine defined “courses of study” in 1888, seven were technical, including agriculture. One “General Science” curriculum constituted the College’s option for students seeking “a sound and liberal education.” It included study in math, science, history, philosophy, political science and modern languages. A companion sequence, the “Latin Scientific Course,” substituted Latin for modern languages.
In the mid-1890s, however, the curriculum slowly began diversifying. By then, the College’s reputation for technical education was well established, and President George Atherton was, according to Bezilla, “eager to amplify instruction in the liberal arts,” seeing it both as intrinsically valuable for a well-rounded education and as a means of appealing to a new cohort of students not drawn to engineering or agriculture, including an increasing number of women. Atherton declared:
Not all students wish to become engineers or chemists. The demand for extended instruction in biology, history, language and literature, economics, and the whole range of political and social science is active and urgent among our students, and the number desiring to take such courses leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts increases every year.[xv]
He concluded that the technical curriculum should now be held “at its present level” and the College should “concentrate on developing liberal arts subjects.”[xvi] In 1895, he reorganized the administrative structure of the College, creating seven schools: Agriculture; Engineering; Mathematics and Physics; Mines; Natural Science; History, Political Science and Philosophy; and Language and Literature. And the following year, the College began adding to its non-technical offerings, beginning with a course of study in philosophy. One of the goals, however, was the creation of a program of courses that was, in contrast to Latin and Philosophy, non-technical but also eminently practical, and attractive to the diversifying interests of the student body. Toward that end, in 1903, the College launched a curriculum in Modern Languages and Literature fashioned for those students seeking “a preparation for teaching, journalism, law, the ministry, and like professions.”[xvii] It was Penn State’s first nod to the possibility of journalism education.
To the extent that Atherton was supportive of an enhanced liberal arts element in the college catalogue, Edwin Sparks, who became president of the College in 1908, was an enthusiastic promoter. With a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, he was a life-long educator, and like Atherton, sensed a growing demand for non-industrial degrees. In 1909, he consolidated the School of History, Political Science and Philosophy with the School of Language and Literature creating a new School of Liberal Arts. According to Bezilla, the new school “took on a distinctively practical orientation over the next few years” adding curricula in education, psychology, pre-law and commerce and finance (the forerunner of business).[xviii]
Journalism Begins: The new School of Liberal Arts now advised “students intending to enter the profession of journalism” to take “the Course in Classics or in Modern Languages,”[xix] and in 1911 it introduced the College’s first journalism class. Titled “Journalistic Writings” it was offered within the Rhetoric curriculum, the long-time home of English Composition. The new journalism course was, in fact, part of a general expansion in Rhetoric, which introduced classes in several writing styles including “The Short Story.” “Journalistic Writings” was designated as Rhetoric 14 and described in that year’s course catalog as:
A study of the character and qualities of editorials, reports, special articles, dramatic, literary, and artistic criticisms, book-reviews, and correspondence with constant practice in the writing of weekly and bi-weekly themes based on approved models. Lectures, discussions and criticisms of practical examples from current papers and periodicals.[xx] [add link]
The pre-requisites were the basic and advanced composition classes, Rhetoric 1 and 5.
It could not have hurt journalism’s fortunes that President Sparks had worked during his undergraduate years as a “cub reporter” for the state agricultural press. But it was more likely rising student interest that prompted Liberal Arts in 1914 to split the journalism course in two, creating “Rhet. 13: Journalism” and a revised “Rhet. 14: Advanced Journalism” [add links]. Signaling the transition to ever-more practical course work, the new classes jettisoned the scholarly examination of “the character and qualities” of “Journalistic Writing”; they were, instead, sharply professional. Rhet. 13 was “a course in news collecting and news writing” with “training in covering stories and interviewing” and the “development of ‘news sense’.” Advanced Journalism offered “practice in headline writing,” “demonstrations of make up” and instruction on the “law of libel, slander and copyright as they affect newspapers.” Underscoring the professional nature of the new curriculum, the pre-requisite for Advanced Journalism was Rhet. 13 or “a year’s experience on a newspaper staff.” In addition, the two courses were, for the first time, listed in the college catalogue under a “Journalism” heading separate from the other Rhetoric listings (although they remained Rhetoric courses).[xxi]
In concert with the splitting and the professionalization of the journalism course, the College hired its first dedicated “instructor of journalistic writing,” Albert Ogden Vorse.[xxii] (Up to this point, the “Journalistic Writings” course probably would have been taught by one of the two faculty in Rhetoric, Associate Professor A. Howry Espenshade or Assistant Professor George K. Pattee.[xxiii]) Vorse had Bachelor of Science (1905) and Master of Science (1911) degrees from Bucknell University and had newspaper experience with the Philadelphia Evening Ledger and the Philadelphia Press. He also had earned an MF in Forestry from Yale University and worked in that field for a year or two before coming to Penn State.
Vorse additionally served as the director of the new College Department of Publicity, which Sparks had created to help promote Penn State’s reputation across the Commonwealth. The new department itself was a formalization of the College’s public information and public relations activities that had, in fact, been robust for decades. As Penn State historian Lee Stout explained, “the board, the president, faculty and administrators in general were highly conscious of how the state press wrote about the college and gradually they wrote more about the College for the press.. . . Atherton wrote pieces defending the College’s status as a public institution which were published, and a formal alumni publication began to appear in this period as well.”[xxiv] The College, in other words, was acutely aware of the utility and importance of the press, an awareness that could only serve as a supporting institutional context for the eventual development of a collateral curriculum in Liberal Arts.
Advertising: Liberal Arts was also the first home to an emerging program of studies in business. Until 1908, the smattering of courses that touched on economics were housed in history (“English Industry and Economics”) or political science (“Political Economy”). That year, political science introduced “Poli Sci 14: Principles of Economics” and “Poli Sci 21: Money & Banking.” Student interest in business training was, along with the economy, soaring in the early 1900s, and the College responded in 1912 by creating a new Bachelor of Arts degree in the subject. The “Commerce and Finance,” program, “designed especially for students who intend to enter business vocations,”[xxv] included several new courses, among them “Econ. 19: Advertising and Salesmanship”. It was Penn State’s first advertising course. According to the college catalogue, instruction was to be divided between the two named topics:
The first part of this course deals with the theory and psychology of advertising; the use of advertising in modern business; a comparison of the various types of advertising mediums and methods; the preparation of advertisement copy. In the second part of the course the fundamental principles and problems of salesmanship will be considered, the psychological principles governing the salesman and the buyer, modern methods of opening new territory, with an analysis of goods to determine their selling points.[xxvi]
Telecommunications: The first decade of the 20th century saw the continued development and practical application of over-the air or “wireless” telegraphy – the radio transmission of Morse Code dots and dashes -- and it was natural for Engineering, in 1910, to add a class on the subject (EE13, “Wireless Telegraphy”). Concurrent with the course was the construction of a wireless receiving and transmitting station, call sign “8XE,” which quickly found use outside the classroom. “The first official messages directed to the Pennsylvania State College wireless station” [xxvii] in November 1911 were reported to be the quarter-by-quarter football scores from the away game against the University of Pennsylvania (Final: State 22, Penn 6). The station was used for football reportage, as well as instruction and research, until World War I when the government shut down all the nation’s private wireless facilities.
The second decade of the new century, in summary, saw the birth of communications education at Penn State. It was a modest start, and little more would happen until after the war, when journalism, driven by the continued growth of the newspaper industry and resultant student demand, took the strong lead in curricular development.
A Roaring Start – The 1920s
The United States came out of World War I as a global power, with a booming industrial economy and a culture diving headfirst into modernity. It was “The Roaring 20s,” the “Jazz Age,” a period of seismic change in popular music, literature, art and architecture. There was new wealth, although it was far from evenly spread, with the upper classes and to some extent the growing middle class enjoying most of the bounty. But from these, and from many in the working class as well, came a surge of young people to America’s colleges and universities. Penn State historian Dunaway labelled 1926, “The College at Flood Tide,” stating, “The country was experiencing a wave of economic prosperity, and everywhere throughout the land students were flocking to colleges and universities as never before in the history of American education.”[xxviii] At Penn State, enrollment soared from about 1,000 in 1909 to 2,900 by 1920 and almost 4,400 by 1931.[xxix]
Advances in communications technology and the growing influence of media in popular culture also held significant implications for higher education. The 1920s saw the rise of the motion picture, from the Golden Age of Silent Film to the start of the “talkies”. It was also the decade that saw the dots and dashes of wireless telegraphy become radio broadcasting, the transmission of voice and music, and move toward becoming the country’s dominant form of entertainment in the 1930s.
Penn State participated, to some extent, in the radio boom of the ’20s. With the end of the war, 8XE was allowed to restart operations in January 1920, primarily as a teaching and research tool. In late 1922, a group of Pittsburg alumni gave Penn State the equipment necessary to make the dramatic leap from telegraphy to voice broadcasting and the station -- with its new call letters, WPAB-- went on the air in May 1923. Programming was sporadic at first, occasional evening broadcasts of student music, faculty lectures and local news. Unsurprisingly, the most popular programs appeared to be play-by-play broadcasts of the football team’s away games. While Electrical Engineering oversaw technical operations, programming was run by the College’s Department of Public Information, which used it, in part, as a state-wide public relations tool to help advance Penn State’s first major fund-raising campaign, initiated in 1921 by the College’s new president, John Thomas And while Engineering offered an extension course in home radio operation, it would take many years for broadcasting, or film, to become significant components of the university’s non-technical curriculum. Not so journalism.
Journalism Education Takes Root Nationally: The newspaper industry, already well developed before WWI, grew in size and influence during and after the War. The country had relied heavily on the daily press as its chief source of information in the tense War years and the industry only expanded its readership through the 1920s, in part as a consequence of what was known as Jazz Journalism, a concoction of salacious crime and sex news (preferably combined), sensationalistic photography and a tabloid format. Daily gossip columns that followed the lives of Hollywood stars and the social elite were eagerly awaited staples, along with sports news and even the daily comic strips. In an era before the near ubiquitous spread of radio in the 1930s, newspapers were not only the country’s primary source of news, they were one of its major forms of entertainment. Newspapers were also the principal form of advertising in the emerging consumption economy.
The circulation of daily newspapers, in consequence, swelled from around 15 million in 1900, to 33 million in 1920, and 41 million in 1930.[xxx] More tellingly, given the parallel rise in population, subscriber penetration numbers did the same. In 1900, the number of papers sold in the US was just shy of the number of households, about 16 million. In 1920, daily circulation exceeded the number of US homes by almost 10 million (a penetration ratio of about 1.37), and in 1930 by more than 10 million (a penetration ratio of 1.42). In other words, on average, every home in the country was receiving a daily paper and millions were getting two or more, typically a morning and afternoon edition. The daily newspaper, in short, became a national habit, and for increasing numbers of young people, a possible, even an attractive, career path. Collegiate journalism programs arose nationally, therefore, in part out of a growing awareness of the profession and the interest born of that familiarity.
University training in journalism was not without some industry controversy, however. On the one hand, some observers saw a college education as a possible remedy to the sensationalistic excesses of the tabloid press. Better educated editors, went the argument, would elevate the quality and tone of reporting. But a college degree was far from required as preparation for a job in journalism at the time and many older journalists saw it as a waste of time and money, declaring that the best education for a reporter came in the trenches of the newsroom. Despite these skeptics, the industry voices seeking social legitimation through professionalization grew, and argued that the path to that goal ran through a university. A journalism education should, they additionally proposed, encompass not just the crafting of a lede and the layout out of a front page but also provide a solid grounding in history, political science and economics. It should, they believed, be a broad liberal arts education.
In practice, isolated courses in journalism had been offered in colleges around the country even before the turn of the century and by 1900 could be found at institutions such as Cornell, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. The first Bachelors of Arts degree in journalism was introduced in 1908 at the University of Missouri, with significant support from the state’s newspapers. Other programs followed at public and private universities, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Columbia and Northwestern. By 1916, according to journalism historian Jean Folkerts, “175 journalism teachers were instructing 3,500 students enrolled in fifty-five colleges” across 30 states, numbers that grew to 430 instructors and 5,526 students by 1928.[xxxi]
Journalism educators at the same time began to organize. In 1912 a group of instructors formed the American Association of Teachers in Journalism. Five years later, program faculty and administrators created the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism. It listed 10 members by 1920.
Journalism Blossoms at Penn State: Penn State was not among those trail-breaking institutions, but the forces that drove the national trends were slowly making their presence felt at the College. Institutional conditions for journalism education were particularly advanced by President Thomas who sought to make the college the state’s preeminent institution of higher education. The fund-raising drive noted above was part of this grand vision, which called for expansion of student enrollment to 10,000 and a name change to Penn State University. His campaign, which included a state-wide public relations effort harnessing an array of promotional publications, pamphlets, and newspaper editorials, along with the new radio station, did not achieve all of its objectives, as Thomas unsuccessfully crossed political swords with Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot and resigned in 1925. Much was accomplished during his tenure, however, including work that helped create institutional space for a journalism program. Thomas in particular “Championed a strong school of the liberal arts as the heart of any institution of higher learning,” according to Dunaway.[xxxii] And the Liberal Arts School, journalism’s seedbed, thrived in the following years, more than doubling its enrollment, from 420 in 1920 to 1007 in 1930.[xxxiii]
Liberal Arts had done little with its slim journalism offerings through the war years. Vorse left Penn State in 1919 to return briefly to Bucknell as a publicity manager, before moving on to public relations jobs in state government and eventually becoming a clerk in the US District Court. The School did eliminate its Rhetoric classification in 1920 and relabeled the two journalism course as English. The next year, it moved all of its writing courses into a “Composition” sub-category of English. They included the two journalism classes, now Engl. 13 and 14, along with “Composition and Rhetoric,” “Advanced Composition,” “The Short Story,” plus two new courses in “Play Writing.”
By 1924, however, the larger national trends in journalism education were becoming manifest on campus. Burgeoning student interest was signaled, for example, in May of that year when members of the boards of the Penn State Collegian and the humor magazine Froth formed a campus chapter of the journalism honorary fraternity, Pi Delt Epsilon, with hopes it would “aid in the progress of journalism on Penn State’s campus.”[xxxiv] At the same time, the Liberal Arts school, blossoming under Thomas, moved significant new resources into area. The two existing journalism courses were reformatted, and four new classes were added to the curriculum. The basic course, Engl.13, became “Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence,” and Engl. 14 became “The Special Feature Article.” A new course in ”Editorial Writing and Policy” (Engl. 21) was introduced, along with a class in “The Community Newspaper” (Engl. 23). Significantly, and in keeping with a philosophy of adding depth and critical perspective to the professional program, the College created its first course in “The Ethics of Journalism” (Engl. 24), as well as a course in “The History of Journalism” (Engl. 23). The ethics course considered “Newspaper ideals and ethics; the newspaper’s service to the community” and legal topics including libel, privacy and copyright. [add links to course descriptions]
The precise timing of the introduction of the enlarged roster is unclear. The new classes appeared in the College’s 1923-1924 General Catalogue, but a Collegian article reported the launch of what it described as a new “major course of study” in journalism in January 1925, noting “previous to this semester two courses were offered in news writing.” What does seem to be clear is the reason for the expansion -- student demand. Increased enrollment in the two original courses "led the Department of English to widen the field," explained the Collegian.[xxxv]
It was only the start, however. In 1926, Ralph Dorn Hetzel took over as president of the University, with an understated administrative style but a continued emphasis on College expansion. In Liberal Arts this was expressed, in part, by the reorganization in the fall of 1927 of the English Department, which was split into two divisions, “English Literature” and “English Composition and Journalism.” And the following year (fall 1928), another four journalism courses were introduced. Moreover, the English prefix was dropped, with all the classes, for the first time, labelled as “Journalism”. The four new subjects were “Journ 15: Copy Reading,” “Journ 25: Advanced Reporting,” “Journ. 27: Agricultural Journalism,” and, significantly, “Journ 26: Writing of Advertisements,” the first appearance of an advertising course in the journalism program. (The Commerce course in advertising, Com. 20, continued for many years.)
Again, student pressure was key to the expansion. “Rapid increase in demands for instruction in journalism in recent years at Penn State has assisted in establishment of this department combined with English composition. Upwards of two hundred students now enroll for courses in news writing each year. . .” reported the Collegian.[xxxvi] The College, moreover, was beginning to take a place among other journalism programs around the country. In January 1928, Journalism enrollment at Penn State ranked 13th on “a list of more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States offering a similar course of instruction.”[xxxvii]
The next major step in the evolution of communications education at Penn State would be the creation of an independent Journalism Department within Liberal Arts. It would occur in 1929 and, perhaps as much as increasing student demand, owed its achievement to the efforts of one man, Franklin Banner.
A Founding Father: In the early 1920s, the journalism instructors of record were William F. Gibbons, a 1902 MA from Bucknell, and Howard Baker, with an MA from Washington and Jefferson College. Gibbons, an assistant professor of English, taught the basic journalism courses plus, upon expansion, Community Newspapers and Newspaper Ethics. Baker, joining the faculty in 1923 as an instructor in English, taught editorial writing and journalism history. Both, said the Collegian, were “men with years of practical newspaper experience behind them and [were] well qualified to teach the subject.”[xxxviii]
In 1926, Baker apparently left Penn State (he was no longer listed among the faculty beginning that year). In his place, the College hired Franklin C. Banner, an experienced journalist and journalism professor. Banner had earned his BA and MA in Journalism from the University of Missouri, worked for a number of small and large city papers, and for three years directed the journalism curriculum at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Traveling abroad, he earned a Graduate Diploma of Journalism at the University of London, returning to join the editing staff at the Chicago Daily Journal.
Banner’s national and international experience gave him a view of journalism education beyond the halls of Penn State. He was already a member of the still-young American Association of Teachers of Journalism when he joined the faculty, and he had a special interest in working with the Commonwealth’s newspapers, which conveniently were in the process of creating an organization of their own. Newspapers nationally were forming associations and trade groups during this period. The American Society of Newspaper Editors organized in 1922 (and almost immediately created a Committee on Schools of Journalism). Three years later the newspapers of Pennsylvania followed suit, consolidating three existing groups to form the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association (PNPA).
The state association was only about a year old when Penn State reached out. President Hetzel had more than a passing familiarity with and appreciation of the press. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin he was editor of the school paper, the Daily Cardinal, for two years. In 1926, he issued an invitation to the PNPA to hold a June “summer outing and meeting” in State College, with tours of campus and a golf tournament at Centre Hills Country Club.[xxxix] It is unclear whether Gibbons or Banner, who would formally join the faculty in the fall semester, were involved in arranging the gathering, but it came at a propitious time. The College had just enhanced its journalism offerings and would soon elevate the program to co-division status in the English department. The summer event appeared to be a success and Banner and the College soon began cultivating a strengthened relationship with the publishers. It was an effort that paid multiple dividends. In November, 1928, Pennsylvania newspapers took a highly public position endorsing improved state funding for the College, pledging support for those in state government acting toward that end.[xl] Even more directly to the interests of the journalism program, Banner initiated conversations with the PNPA to create a Penn State Journalism Advisory Committee, designed to help advance the interests of the program and, in the long term, the interests of the industry. The association signed on to the idea at a meeting in January 1929. For Banner, it was a pedagogically substantive achievement, as well as an organizational one. He very much believed:
. . . that if the teaching of journalism was to succeed on a professional plane, the friendly cooperation of editors and publishers was indispensable. Through closer contacts and consequent easier access to the ever changing problems of the press, not only would student placement problems be facilitated, but the quality of instruction would be improved.[xli]
It was also a shrewd internal political move. Banner wasted no time in leveraging his alliance with the press -- one of the state’s most powerful political institutions at the time -- in Old Main. In February he penned a letter to President Hetzel listing the names of the Pennsylvania publishers and editors sitting on the journalism program’s new advisory committee. And he offered a not-so-subtle observation on the utility of the relationship:
I feel very confident, Doctor Hetzel, that you can see better than I the importance of getting and holding for the College the interest of these men who control papers with a combined circulation of more than four millions daily and who are part of the largest regional press association in the world.[xlii]
It was unlikely that President Hetzel missed the point, and the support of the state’s primary news and information industry could only have accelerated the already in-progress organization of a journalism department within Liberal Arts.
A Department is Born: In May 1929, the PNPA advisory committee held its first meeting, in State College, and announced the creation of a placement bureau for Penn State journalism graduates and students interested in summer internships. It also created a Speakers Bureau to bring the state’s reporters and editors to campus. And when those speakers arrived that fall, they stood before students in College’s newly created Department of Journalism. The catalogue copy describing the new Department declared:
The Journalism Curriculum is designed for those students who plan to enter the newspaper profession, to write for popular and technical magazines, or to enter the field of periodical advertising.[xliii]
It became one of only three Bachelor of Arts degrees conferred by Liberal Arts, along with Arts and Letters and Commerce and Finance. The Collegian greeted the new department on page 1: “Establishment by the College of a separate department of journalism this fall has resulted in 152 students enrolling for the various courses offered.”[xliv] Banner was effusive about the support of the PNPA: “The Pennsylvania publishers and editors have begun a pioneering movement in the history of journalistic education by establishing active committees to supervise the work of the Department of Journalism at Penn State.”[xlv] It would not always be a friction-free relationship as the professional contingent in later years would seek a more controlling role in the operation of the program, often to the discomfort of the faculty. There is little doubt, however, that at the start, the PNPA committee was critically useful.
Creation of the Department of Journalism was a landmark moment in the history of the Bellisario College of Communications, but it was far from the culmination of work in this period. The curriculum as it then existed was seen by the faculty and the professionals to be insufficient for the needs of the new unit. The task of revising and enlarging the course offerings was a tall order, however, for a department with only two instructors. The solution, it turned out, was to assign the job to the PNPA committee. As early as the start of the fall 1929 semester, Philadelphia Bulletin editor Fred F. Shedd, a member of the committee, was in talks with Banner and Gibbons about the shape of the new program, and a PNPA sub-committee, headed by Shedd, set to work drafting a new curriculum. The proposal for a revised and expanded set of courses was presented to the administration at the end of that semester and approved by the Board of Trustees in early 1930. It was installed in the fall of 1930. [add link to the full roster].
The plan was ambitious. It more than doubled the size of the program, adding 11 new subjects and 15 new classes. The existing courses were kept, although a few, including history, ethics and advertising, were renumbered. A foundational, year-long survey course was inserted as “Journalism 1 and 2,” both “Principles of Journalism.” Advanced reporting and copy reading classes were created along with two laboratory courses. Special attention was given to advertising. Newspapers and radio had helped give birth to the modern advertising industry, and the consumer culture, after World War I. Reflecting those changes, the journalism program added two more advertising courses, “Newspaper Practices in Advertising” and “Selling of Advertising.”
The new curriculum also included a “Research in Journalism” course required of all seniors in the program. At one credit, it had students write a major paper “revealing serious and original work concerning some newspaper problem of special local or state importance.” Some of the new courses, such as “The Arts of Printing and Engraving” and “Printing Cost Accounting,” would not endure. Some, such as “Law of the Press” (added in 1931), are still being taught today.
And while the new program was the fruit of industry collaboration, it was far from a trade school curriculum. It was nested in a set of Liberal Arts requirements that mandated course work in political science, economics, history, literature, art, biology and foreign languages. And these were in addition to the freshman year Liberal Arts classes that added math, social science, physics and hygiene.
It was also the product of Banner’s personal philosophy of journalism education, which he articulated in a 1929 opinion piece in Journalism Quarterly. Drawing on his then recent experience in shepherding the creation of the department, Banner’s stated aim in the article was to offer advice on methods for advancing the interests and status of journalism departments within the university setting. In addition to maintaining “sincere, open, honest dealings” with colleagues across campus, he stressed the importance of hiring the highest quality faculty, the ideal candidate possessing strengths as teacher, scholar and journalist. Embedded in the article, in addition, was a manifesto on the ideal nature of a journalism education.
[The] well planned curriculum. . . maintains high scholastic standards for all students and insists, sometimes even at the expense of the journalism courses, upon a thorough study of the humanities, social science, languages, history, et cetera, in the hope that the student will receive the full benefit of an academic education along with his professional work.[xlvi]
Furthermore, the goal of such an education was pointedly not the teaching of “cub reporting” which could be achieved on the job “with an awkward, gaping high school lad in three months.” He stated:
Our chief aim, I'm sure the majority of you will agree with me, is to give the American newspaper what it most needs, men who have broad backgrounds of college education, wide international sympathies, well defined predilections for the best in literature, art, and science, coupled of course with the simply rudimentary knowledge of the mechanics of journalism.
[link to full article]
Expansion Within and Without: With such goals in place, the new Department at Penn State then looked to hire additional instructors, finding its first very close to home. Banner and Shedd appeared to have developed a close working relationship as they constructed the program and in 1930 Shedd was hired as a lecturer to teach the new Journalism 1 course. He drove up to State College on Mondays for the once-a-week lecture. In addition, Herbert Hofford, a veteran of Shedd’s Evening Bulletin, with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Brown University, was appointed as an assistant professor teaching the new advertising courses.
An even more important personnel move was the naming of the new department head. Gibbons had been selected as acting head of the department upon its creation, but the permanent post went to Banner in July 1931 when he was also promoted from associate to full professor. (Gibbons had been promoted to full previously.)
Its initial pedagogical work completed, the PNPA then moved to a more material agenda and began lobbying for additional funding for the program. In May 1930, it recommended that the University include in its annual budget request to the state an earmark of $250,000 for the construction and outfitting of a dedicated journalism building. Assorted state publishers and editors sent letters of support. The timing however, given the onset of the Great Depression, was not good. President Hetzel was diplomatically respectful in his responses, detailing the long list of similar requests from other constituencies and reporting the expectation of a budget decrease that year.[xlvii] Undaunted, the PNPA had a special bill introduced into the legislature in March 1931 for the quarter-million dollar allocation. Gov. Gifford Pinchot responded, with regret, that the money was unavailable at that time.[xlviii]
The program had more success in other venues. Banner became active nationally in journalism education. He was elected vice president of the American Association of Teachers of Journalism in 1930 and named co-editor of Journalism Quarterly, the leading publication of the academic field.
He also organized a conference in 1931 with representatives of the nation’s major newspaper and journalism education associations, one designed to take the Penn State-PNPA model of partnership to the national level. The groups included the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism, the American Association of Teachers of Journalism, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the National Editorial Association. They formed a joint committee with the stated objective of improving cooperation between industry and educators. “We look forward to the day when every newspaper will make it its business to know what the schools of journalism are doing and when every school of journalism will go out of its way to know what the newspapers are doing,” they declared.[xlix]
The group recommended that their respective parent organizations take “steps toward having a study made on the standards and methods of the schools of journalism and of the requirements on the part of newspapers from the product of these schools.”[l] It was an effort that helped set the stage for what would eventually become today’s accreditation standards for the nation’s journalism programs. Banner, naturally, was one of the AATJ representatives at the conference. Joining him, as a representative of ASNE, was Fred Shedd, who in addition to being a member of the PNPA advisory committee, was then president of the national editors’ group.
About the same time (late 1930), Penn State’s new Department of Journalism was accepted into membership in the Association of American Schools and Departments of Journalism. And the curriculum continued to expand, adding courses in “Newspaper Columns” (Journ. 22), “School Publications” (Journ. 30), and “Advertising Layout” (Journ. 42), over the next few years. “Sports Reporting” (Journ. 35) was added in 1937.
The students were equally industrious. In 1930, the women journalists at Penn State formed the professional fraternity, Alpha Theta Epsilon, to foster “the profession of journalism among Penn State women” and “assist its members to further accomplishments in the field.”[li] The following year, another campus journalism fraternity, Alpha Beta Sigma, was accepted as a chapter in the national journalism honor society, Sigma Delta Chi. The Professional Society of Journalists – Sigma Delta Chi (SPJ-SDX) and the campus chapter remain active today.
At the close of 1931, the College reported 81 majors enrolled in the Department of Journalism and more than 400 students in journalism classes. Some might call it a good beginning. The Collegian, while perhaps biased, saw great things ahead for the program, writing, even before the formal departmentalization:
With a larger faculty and the necessary equipment, a School of Journalism will gradually evolve with the growth of the College. But not even such development will denote the limits of journalistic activity at Penn State. The entire state of Pennsylvania will in due time turn to the college as a center for newspaper publishers and editors.[lii]
It was a prescient observation, although patience was required. The School of Journalism became a reality 27 years later and today’s College of Communications 30 years after that. To steal from the first edition of the Freelance, the Department was then, as the College is now, “an institution which enjoys, against a sometimes faulted past, a prosperous present and the assurance of a most successful future.”
ENDNOTES
[i] De Forest O’Dell, The History of Journalism Education in the United States. New York City: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1935, p. 1.
[ii] “Journalism Curriculum Fulfills Founders’ Aim,” Penn State Collegian, Sept. 26, 1930, p. 1.
[iii] Personal correspondence with Roger Williams, August 9, 2023.
[iv] Personal Correspondence, August 9, 2023; and Roger L. Williams, Evan Pugh's Penn State: America's Model Agricultural College. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2018, pp. 7-8.
[v] Ibid., p. 44.
[vi] See, Erwin Runkle, The Pennsylvania State College, 1853-1932: Interpretation and Record, University. Park: The Pennsylvania State College, 1933, p. 56.
[vii] Runkle, p. 332-333.
[viii] Runkle, p. 333.
[ix] La Vie, 1890, p. 13.
[x] Wayland Dunaway, History of The Pennsylvania State College, The Pennsylvania State College, 1946, pp. 181 – 182.
[xi] See, La Vie 1890, p. 86.
[xii] Dunaway, p. 174.
[xiii] Enrollment figures from Michael Bezilla, Penn State: An Illustrated History. University Park, PA.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985.
[xiv] Bezilla, p. 36.
[xv] Atherton’s President’s Report for 1894, quoted in Runkle, p. 301.
[xvi] Dunaway, p. 140.
[xvii] Penn State Catalogue, 1903-04, p. 50.
[xviii] Bezilla, p. 79.
[xix] Penn State General Catalogue, 1909-1910, p. 196.
[xx] Penn State General Catalogue, pp. 239 – 240.
[xxi] Penn State General Catalogue, 1914-1915, p. 262.
[xxii] Penn State General Catalogue 1914-1915, p. 25.
[xxiii] The very first offering of Journalistic Writings would likely have been taught by Espenshade as Pattee was on leave that year.
[xxiv] Personal correspondence.
[xxv] Penn State General Catalogue, 1912 – XXX?, p. 228.
[xxvi] Penn State General Catalogue 1911-1912, pp. 256 – 257.
[xxvii] “Returns By Wireless,” Penn State Collegian, Nov. 9, 1911, p. 3.
[xxviii] Dunaway, p. 234.
[xxix] Bezilla.
[xxx] Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition Online. Table Dg253-266. Cambridge.
[xxxi] Jean Folkerts, “History of Journalism Education,” Journalism & Communication Monographs, Vol. 16, no. 4, Winter 2014, p. 235.
[xxxii] Dunaway, p. 223.
[xxxiii] Dunaway, p. 335.
[xxxiv] “Froth And Collegian Secure Charter From Journalism Fraternity,” Penn State Collegian, May 6, 1924, p. 1.
[xxxv] “Journalism – A Major Subject,” Penn State Collegian, Jan., 27, 1925, p. 2.
[xxxvi] “Pattee Requests Department Split,” Penn State Collegian, Sept. 13, 1927, p. 1.
[xxxvii] “Journalistic Classes Rank 13th,” Penn State Collegian, Jan. 24, 1928, p. 3.
[xxxviii] “Journalism – A Major Subject,” Penn State Collegian, Jan. 27, p. 2.
[xxxix] “Editors of State To Convene Here,” Penn State Collegian, June 4, 1926, p. 1.
[xl] “Newspaper Editors Urge State Help in College Expansion.” Penn State Collegian, Nov. 23, 1928, p. 1.
[xli] “Journalism: The Press and Schools of Journalism,” 1949, 1, Box: 121. Pennsylvania State University, College of the Liberal Arts records, 00574. Eberly Family Special Collections Library, p. 2.
[xlii] F. Banner letter to President Hetzel, Feb. 16, 1929, “Journalism Operation, 1930-1931,” 1, Box: 120. Pennsylvania State University, College of the Liberal Arts records, 00574. Eberly Family Special Collections Library.]
[xliii] Penn State General Catalogue, 1930 – 1931, p. 173.
[xliv] “152 Students Register in Journalism Courses,” Oct. 29, 1929, p. 1.
[xlv] “Newspaper Editor Lauds Penn State, Penn State Collegian, Jan. 24, 1930, p. 2.
[xlvi] Banner, “The Academic Community,” Journalism Quarterly, vol. 6, issue 2, June 1929.
[xlvii] See, “Journalism Operation, 1930-1931,” 1, Box: 120. Pennsylvania State University, College of the Liberal Arts records, 00574. Eberly Family Special Collections Library.
[xlviii] “Publishers Propose Journalism Building,” Penn State Collegian, March 3, 1931, p. 1.
[xlix] “News Notes,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 8. Issue 2, June 1931.
[l] Ibid.
[li] “Alpha Theta Epsilon Effects Organization,” Penn State Collegian, Oct. 7, 1930.
[lii] “Penn State And Journalism,” Penn State Collegian, Feb. 3, 1928, p. 2.