Hnn.us is an online portal for history news

Title

History News Network

Description

Mission Statement

Even those who profess utter indifference to history are beholden to it. History is inescapable. Who we are and how we react to events depends, to a great extent, on our past. As Eugene O'Neill has a character in Long Day's Journey into Night exclaim, at a critical juncture, "The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us."

Journalism is said to be the first draft of history. But journalists traditionally have had little use for historians. The list of occasions on which journalists feel compelled to call upon historians is short. Though a select number of historians recently have become media stars, the fact remains that few are publicly quoted, and hardly any are given the public platform regularly awarded economists, political scientists or pollsters. The last historian trusted to take a large and visible role in a national administration was Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and that was forty years ago.

Given how public opinion is shaped today, whipsawed emotionally on talk shows this way and that in response to the egos of the guests, the desire for ratings by the hosts and the search for profits by media companies and sponsors, historians are especially needed now. They can help remind us of the superficiality of what-happens-today-is-all-that-counts journalism.

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Languages

English

Contact

Rick Shenkman
Seattle WA
United States 98109
+1.2062284386

Additional Information

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