Heywood Broun, Benjamin Stolberg, and the politics of American labor journalism in the 1920s and 1930s

Phelps, Christopher

Abstract

Between the First and Second World Wars, Heywood Broun (1888-1939) and Benjamin Stolberg (1891-1951) were labor journalists when the newspaper industry was consolidating into chains and industrial unionism was gaining in American society. A comparison of their lives and writings in the 1920s and 1930s illuminates the politics behind news coverage of labor. Suspicious of the Communist Party, Stolberg ultimately clashed with Broun, the quintessential Popular Front left-liberal, over the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The two were similar, however, in framing labor positively, unlike much of the rest of the press, while eschewing any journalistic ethos of “impartiality.”

Citation

Phelps, C. (2018). Heywood Broun, Benjamin Stolberg, and the politics of American labor journalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 15(1), 25-51. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-4288647

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 10, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 1, 2018
• Journal: Labor: Studies in the Working-Class History of the Americas
• Print ISSN: 1547-6715
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-1454
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 25-51
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-4288647
• Keywords: Labor; Labour; Journalism; thirties; Depression; unions; strikes; writing
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/841026
• Publisher URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article-abstract/15/1/25/133539/Heywood-Broun-Benjamin-Stolberg-and-the-Politics?redirectedFrom=fulltext
• Contract Date: Mar 21, 2017