Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Blog

Don't Blame Katie Couric -- The First Sole Female Anchor Is Not the Cause of the Low Ratings at CBS Evening News

In 1983 TV Guide asked, “Why Are There Still No Female Dan Rathers?” And if Katie Couric steps down as the anchor of CBS Evening News, we still won’t have any “female Dan Rathers.”

When Couric took over at CBS Evening News, the press was quick to add her salary and new title: a five-year contract, a fifteen million dollar salary, Managing Editor, Katie Couric was heralded as the one who would reshape CBS Evening News. CBS executives were hoping that Katie Couric would build a bigger audience, including more women and younger viewers. Now that the newscast’s ratings have tanked, the media is pouncing on Couric – and the underlying theme is that “because she is a woman”-- her anchoring stint was unsuccessful. Katie Couric made history as the first woman anchor she is also being marked as the first woman anchor to fail. John Dickerson of Slate.com, and son of former pioneering correspondent Nancy Dickerson, said that it has taken women over thirty years to get to the anchoring position because “men have always run the networks and it takes time to convince men that women can handle the task. But it’s also the audience. Networks are risk averse and putting a woman in the anchor chair is a change for viewers and advertisers who fund that crucial hour of television. People took time to get used to a female face in the position of authority.”

And it would seem like they still aren’t ready, if we jump on the bandwagon and blame the low ratings of CBS Evening News on Katie Couric’s gender. Truth is, the failure of CBS Evening News is much more complex than that.

Sure, Katie Couric fell prey to the usual intense focus on her appearance, as most women on television do. It is true that the focus on Katie Couric’s appearance was a debilitating factor, but nothing new to women in the media. As Katie Couric readied herself for her new job as evening anchor on CBS, the media was filled with speculation on how effective she would be in the job and mostly, what she would wear and how she would style, and tint her hair to move from “perky” to the gravitas personality needed to deliver the weighty evening news. A story appeared on NBC News about how a publicity photo for CBS Evening News, featuring Katie Couric, had been airbrushed to make the new anchor appear slimmer. The caption on the screen, while the anchor told the story, read “Can CBS News Be Trusted?” The controversy spurred the debate about the standards of appearance for women in television and how they differ from the standards for men. And no one ever mentioned that a photo of Charlie Gibson has been re-touched to make him appear more fit and trim to anchor the news. If anything, the press seems to dote on Gibson’s “avuncular” average man appeal. When Harry Smith, (who by the way is missing a lot of his hair – but no one seems to comment) co-host of CBS The Early Show interviewed Katie Couric about her new position and pointed to the fact that so much hype about her appearance and qualifications, Katie Couric commented, “I think there is some residual sexism, and I think women are sort of judged by different standards. But I try not to get too preoccupied by that. I think that I feel very confident in who I am as a person and as a professional.”

Other factors that contributed to the low rating of CBS Evening News include the format of the broadcast, which was radically different than viewers were used to. There was a “free speech” section that featured people commenting “op/ed” style about issues of a topic nature, and longer interviews conducted in a more relaxed, homey atmosphere Unusual for network anchors, Katie Couric offered personal asides during the broadcast. In addition, CBS also strove to create a larger web presence for the broadcast, and this effort never gained traction.

Before she made her September 5, 2006 debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News Katie Couric went on a "listening tour" of six cities. Of the listening tour, Katie Couric noted “I think face-to-face conversations with people and really getting a sense of where they are and their likes and dislike, their frustrations, is invaluable.” In addition to meeting her CBS audience in person, Katie Couric also spent her time on the road raising money for cancer awareness. Many of us who follow women in leadership and media wanted her to be a resounding success. But it sounds as though, even if she ultimately leaves the CBS Evening News before her five year contract is up, Katie Couric, has been successful. Before starting her new job, Katie Couric said that she would have regretted not taking advantage of the opportunity to be anchor more than she would regret taking it. So before you quickly write off the first woman anchor of a major network, think about the many factors that go into being successful, and resist blaming it on gender.

Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University at Lehigh Valley and is author of Seen and Heard: The Women of Television News (Lexington Books) and Paving the Way for Madam President (Lexington Books).

Get to Know Your Local Record Store: Celebrate National Record Store Day on April 19th

By Alan O'Connor

With National Record Store Day fast approaching, I was reminded when I first stumbled across punk about 1984. As usual it was through friends because by that time the scene had mostly disappeared underground. Some roommates, who actually wanted nothing to do with me because I went to school, dressed in faded colors and played strange music on the house record-player. It was a real mix from New Order and the Smiths to local punk bands that were scared of Ronald Reagan’s joke about starting a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. “We begin bombing in five minutes...”

So I took myself off to the punk record store in Toronto. It was called the Record Pedlar. Of course I had the usual problem of bins full of records by bands with strange names. On the first trip I came home with twelve-inch records by the Dicks and Dead Kennedys. Sex and politics. And soon after that The Clash, Sandinista! triple album because I was a huge supporter of the revolution in Nicaragua that President Reagan hated so much.

The Record Pedlar moved around a few times, but today it no longer exists.

Independent record stores have always been important in punk scenes. They’re places to hang out, to learn, to sell used records when you’re desperate and to buy them when you’re not. There’s posters for shows, fliers to take away, and notices for “band with recording needs drummer must be willing to tour”. Record stores often have fanzines that you can’t find in magazine outlets. I bought my copy of Smash the State: A Discography of Canadian Punk (the book came with a 7") in a record store.

I traveled all around the USA in the Summer of 2006. My fifteen year-old Honda Civic died in the Arizona desert and a marvelous Mexican-American mechanic put new life into it. I went from Long Island to Florida, Austin, San Diego and Portland. And in every city, I stopped off in the independent record store to flip through vinyl, pick up flyers for shows, and most likely find the coolest part of town and somewhere to eat. It would be impossible to list them all and unfair to mention a only few. But the death of the indie and punk record store has been somewhat exaggerated. It is sad that the Record Pedlar and other like it are no longer with us. But most places still have a record store that sells music on independent record labels. You’ve just got to find it.

Alan O'Connor is associate professor in the cultural studies program at Trent University in Canada. He is the author of Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy: The Emergence of DIY.

Issues Raised by Writers Guild of America Strike

by Vincent Mosco

The strike of the Writers Guild of America captured a lot of attention because it deprived millions of their favorite television programs. But the issues it raised will persist long after people comfortably settle into new episodes of CSI. Here are some observations to consider.

The strike demonstrated the importance of new media for old media industries and especially for their workers. After all, a central issue in the strike was the distribution of revenues from new media uses of traditional television programming. What, if any, compensation should writers receive for work that is increasingly repackaged for the digital world, especially the internet? With the producers proposing to end the system of residuals and develop new forms of compensation, and the writers determined to press for expanded residual payments, it came as no surprise that the WGA took to the picket line on November 1, 2007. The strike, which lasted three months and cost Hollywood an estimated $2.5 billion, was resolved with a deal that promised writers a stronger foothold in the online world. In the first two years of the three-year contract, writers would get a maximum flat fee of about $1,200 for programs streamed online. In the third year, however, they would receive two percent of a distributor’s gross, a key union demand. Other provisions include increased residual payments for downloaded movies and TV programs.

No one is sure what the size of the revenue stream will be from streaming and downloading, but it should be clear to anyone familiar with research on labor, especially in the communication industry, Hollywood workers would benefit from greater solidarity among its many unions. With separate unions representing directors, writers, actors and technicians, it is difficult for them to speak with one voice against increasingly integrated media conglomerates that dominate both old and new media. The Communication Workers of America which represents journalists, telephone workers, media technicians, and high tech workers has benefited from solidarity. But attempts to bring together the Hollywood unions have failed, often on very close votes. There are many reasons for this but a narrow craft consciousness and a guild, rather than a union, culture have been especially difficult to overcome. In essence, they have failed to match technological and industry convergence with the labor convergence that would provide Hollywood workers with the resources to defend their interests.

Finally, as a communication scholar, it was disappointing to observe how few researchers in the field commented on the strike to offer the historical background and context for the events. Academics, especially those working on the issues swirling around new media and the internet, need to spend more time on the labor dimension. It is not enough to ask: What will be next new thing? We also need to ask whether media workers of the world will unite.

Vincent Mosco is professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society at Queen's University and co-author with Catherine McKercher of Knowledge Workers in the Information Society.

Michael Mann Directs a Nike Commercial

By Steven Rybin

The phenomenon of noted film directors helming television commercials is hardly a new one; everyone from Martin Scorsese to Jean-Luc Godard have made advertisements during their careers, and even the recently deceased paragon of the European art cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni, once lensed an ad for Renault. So the fact that news comes of Michael Mann (the director of Ali, The Insider, and Heat, among other notable films) having directed a slate of new commercials for Nike’s new Zoom product line should come as no terrific surprise. The commercials themselves, which come with the tagline “Quick is Deadly” and which feature high-profile professional athletes such as LaDainian Tomlinson and Steve Nash, are reminiscent of the cinematography and cutting used in the boxing sequences of the director’s biopic Ali: the camera is dropped into the middle of the action, in between defenders and offensive linemen, generating a sense of tension before Tomlinson runs for a touchdown. This sequence is intended to give the viewer a sense of complete immersion in an exciting NFL play – and, of course, a sense that one should run out and buy Nike shoes.

These Nike ads follow the Mercedes advertisement the director made a few years ago, and commercial directing was a part of Mann’s apprenticeship before directing his first film in 1979. But Mann’s recent return to commercials after establishing credibility among cinephiles as well as his own place in the Hollywood industry is somewhat ironic. Many of the director’s initial films, such as Thief (1981) and Manhunter (1986), were compared – derisively – with the superficial patina of commercials and music videos made during the 1980s. Indeed, Mann’s Nike ads remind one of what the French critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret, in a perceptive essay entitled “The Aquarium Syndrome,” once pointed out about Mann’s work in television during the 1980s, when Mann served as executive producer of the popular and visually novel Miami Vice television series. Thoret suggested that commercial television offered the director (who did not actually direct a single episode of Vice, but who closely controlled the visual and sonic sheen of the series in his role as producer) the opportunity to experiment with style before confirming the results with a feature-length film for cinema screens. Perhaps Mann is just using the commercial format to toy with sound and vision until his next proper film begins production.

But given his industry success, Mann hardly needs this sort of template anymore, and given that, except the plug for the shoes, the “Quick is Deadly” series is largely derivative of Mann’s cinema work, it is debatable whether or not this return to television functions in quite the same way as Thoret claimed Mann’s earlier televisual work did. Instead of providing Mann with the room to experiment with image (I know of more than a few people in academia who would bristle at the thought of commercials as a site for any kind of meaningful experimentation), the making of these commercials seems more like the sharpening of already well-honed filmmaking skills.

Mann’s commercials also bring to mind the always tenuous balance held between commerce and art in the realm of Hollywood. Although an idea of the filmmaker-as-author has arguably existed for as long as the cinema itself, modern studies of film authorship were more or less initiated in the 1950s when the film critics which became the future directors of the French New Wave school (Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, among others) argued that Hollywood directors (whom they called ‘auteurs’), although working in a highly regimented and standardized studio system, were able to “smuggle” in their own personal visions in a studio system that, on the face of it, was inimical to the very idea of individual personality. This particularly romantic conception of authorship – sometimes called “the cult of personality” – doesn’t hold much weight in academic circles anymore, partially because of the very tension between commercial interests and artistic vision that much of Mann’s own filmmaking suggests. After all, these days, the words “a Michael Mann film” are nearly as much a part of the marketing apparatus of Hollywood as the presence of Tom Cruise or Will Smith in one of his films.

But these commercials, like the director’s films, suggest that Mann himself probably doesn’t buy into the cult of personality anymore than film academics do; unlike the recent series of American Express commercials directed by Scorsese, Wes Anderson, and M. Night Shyamalan, Mann’s commercials do not make use of the director’s on-screen presence, and despite the familiarity of his name, it is at any rate unlikely that most filmgoers could pick him out of a lineup (unlike celebrity directors such as Scorsese, Woody Allen, or Clint Eastwood). Although Mann has claimed in interviews that he could never have operated as an anonymous figure in the classical Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 40s, his own work (relying as it does upon the framework of familiar genres) suggests that he is comfortable enough with such anonymity, letting the style itself speak for the absent presence of the director. In terms of his film work, style speaks powerfully: in The Insider, a dramatization of 1990s television journalism, Mann was able to use style to reflect upon his own agency (or lack thereof) within contemporary image-making. Such reflection is not really possible within the form of the commercial, which suggest that Nike CEO Phil Knight could just as well be an auteur as could Mann, something that Godard and Truffaut probably would not have been able to predict in the 1950s.

 

Steven Rybin teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University and is the author of The Cinema of Michael Mann published by Lexington Books.

More Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: How did the newspaper cover slavery? 

A: Freedom’s Journal exposed the cruelties of slavery and the ways that enslaved people fought their oppression. Articles by the editors and contributors countered common proslavery arguments and the assumptions—scriptural, economic, and political—on which they were based. A significant number of articles explored judicial decisions that considered slavery’s reach onto “free” soil when slaves accompanying traveling masters to non-slave states sued for their freedom, from the 1772 British Somerset case to cases from various regions of the United States that explored the power of slavery throughout the nation and set the stage for more well later known decisions such as the Dred Scott case. 

Q: Did the newspaper help free slaves?

A: For obvious reasons, Freedom’s Journal did not publicize specifics about the underground channels for assisting fugitives. However, Russwurm offered help in the newspaper to runaways by notifying them about locations where they would be unsafe because of slave hunters, the devious methods used by those who would capture them, and the names of captors and their accomplices. Freedom’s Journal also publicized efforts by individuals and organizations who aided free African Americans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery or whose loved ones had suffered this fate, allowing African Americans and white allies to seek assistance in specific cases and free particular victims. Slaves could also be freed through the controversial (but sometimes effective) method of purchasing their freedom, and such initiatives were publicized in the newspaper, such as the campaign to free the children of Reverend George Erskine, a Presbyterian minister and former slave who had been manumitted in 1815, and the poet George Moses Horton. (Although at least some of Erskine’s children obtained freedom, the effort to buy the liberty of Horton failed.)

Q: How did Freedom’s Journal influence American abolition and the history of American journalism? 

A: Freedom’s Journal established connections among African-American leaders in different cities; created a force of writers and activists whose impact on American abolition was crucial, such as David Walker and Samuel Cornish, who went on to edit other newspapers and served on both the Board of Managers and the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and publicized the arguments against colonization and slavery and for black freedom and civil rights that convinced white reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison to support abolition. Because one of the goals of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> was to encourage debate on important subjects, we discover in the pages of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> discussions of issues that white abolitionists did not take up until subsequent decades, such the role of women role in reform and in the public sphere, the use of physical resistance and extralegal action, and the reliance on or rejection of political institutions. 

Q: What is the significance of Freedom’s Journal for African-American newspapers of today?

A: Freedom’s Journal established the power of the black press as a tool in building community and fighting oppression. Numerous newspapers can be considered the legacy of Freedom’s Journal, from Frederick Douglass’s North Star, which began publication in 1847, to the Chicago Defender, which from 1905 to today has played a key role as a source of information and a forum for discussions of issues relating to people of color. As various historians and journalists have noted, the issues raised in Freedom’s Journal have been discussed in the African-American press in various forms since its publication, and the principles upon which it was founded remain relevant. As did Freedom’s Journal, African-American newspapers continue to report stories that are ignored in the mainstream white-dominated media, to interpret news in ways that make it relevant to people of color, to educate and empower, and to critique the nation and challenge it to live up to its ideals.

Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: When, how, where, and why was Freedom’s Journal founded?

A: In 1827, at a gathering of African-American leaders in New York, the idea for Freedom’s Journal was created, and two men were chosen as its editors: Samuel E. Cornish, a Presbyterian pastor; and John B. Russwurm, born in Jamaica to a black woman and a white plantation owner, who was the third black college graduate in the United States. (After six months, Cornish resigned and Russwurm became the newspaper’s sole editor.) Although some historians have argued that the impetus for the newspaper was the white oppression of the 1820s, particularly vile attacks on African Americans in white newspapers, it is reductive and inaccurate to cast Freedom’s Journal as simply a response to white society. The newspaper was a self-directed effort of African Americans themselves and grew out of the organizational structures already in place in free black communities—churches, mutual aid and literary societies—and the awareness in the late 1820s among African Americans of the crucial power of writing as a tool of freedom. 

Q: Who financed the paper and who promoted it?

A: Both African Americans and whites provided financial support, and the paper had black and white subscribers and readers. Freedom’s Journal was promoted in various cities by agents, including many prominent figures, such as Bostonian David Walker, author of the 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (a forceful, uncompromising condemnation of slavery and colonization) and John Remond, a successful hairdresser and community leader in Salem, Massachusetts, whose children, Charles Lenox Remond and Sarah Parker Remond, became lecturers with the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

Q: Who were the readers of Freedom’s Journal?

A: The newspaper’s readers included African Americans throughout the north and south, including slaves as well as white reformers such as Gerrit Smith and, likely, William Lloyd Garrison. Those who could not read often had Freedom’s Journal read to them. It is estimated that the number of subscribers was at least 800, which would make its circulation close to that of other weekly papers of the time. However, because copies were often shared at this time, the audience was greater than this figure indicates.

Q: What subjects were covered in Freedom’s Journal, and what types of material appeared in its columns.

A: Cornish and Russwurm described the newspaper's content broadly: In short, whatever concerns us as a people, will ever find a ready admission into the Freedom's Journal. True to their word, they published articles about a variety of issues of concern to African Americans such as colonization, slavery, education, self-improvement, women's and men's ideal roles in the home and in society, law, religion, and history. The paper contained domestci and foreign news, frequently reprinted from other newspapers; correspondence and essays by both well-known leaders such as Philadelphian Richard Allen, on of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and unknown and even annamed African Americans who contributed letters and essays; transcriptions of speeches given on various occasions; literary and historical excerpts from published works; editorials and essays offering diverse opinions on differenct topics; poems and short stories; announcements; and advertisements.   

Democrats Getting Religion, but Doing It the Wrong Way

by Mark Ellingsen

Good to see the Democrats are finally getting religion, according to Time Magazine (in its July 23 cover story). But if the account is accurate, Democratic leadership and the first-tier Presidential candidates are doing it the wrong way, making the same mistakes that the Right has in manipulating religion for its political purposes. The Time article also doesn't have the whole story. Typical of most media accounts, along with its 'experts' it concentrates only on Evangelical voters, when in fact a coalition of a mainline Protestants, African-American Christians, and Catholics far outnumbers Evangelical voters by 2.5 to 1.

Here's the deal: Republicans have succeeded in getting the religious vote by linking their policies to Puritan dispositions (those of the Mayflower Pilgrims) which have dominated religious life and the way in which most religious Americans of influence view religion. Among these Puritan dispositions, inherited from the movement's origins in 17th-century England include high standards of conservative individual morality, openness to the free-market and aversion towards the poor, as well as the belief that Christian values should directly impact society. By simply speaking of religious values shaping their politics and even implying that the values of faith should impact American society, the old Puritan-like way of the Right, the Democrats not only run the risk of losing their secular and Jewish base as well as of being dismissed by the secular media for violating First Amendment suppositions. More seriously, using such Puritan-like rhetoric just plays into the conservative strategies of developing legislation that favors a free-market, individual accountability approach. It will be heard that way by the public and implemented that way by most American political leaders, because, immersed as they are in Puritan dispositions, most Americans hear religious rhetoric as values to foster individual accountability and the free market. The new Democratic version of religion will just undergird the Neo-Conservatism which has influenced American politics since the Reagan era.

It will take a new/old way of doing religion in politics. The heritages of the African-American, Lutheran, and Catholic churches offer a way to go. Until the Reagan era these three branches of American religion voted Democratic, and at least the first of them still do. What is different? In part it relates to the historically ethnic character of these bodies, a sense that their faith was about all the members of these churches so that politics rooted in these traditions was aimed at upbuilding the community, not just individuals. Also, especially in the case of Lutherans and Catholics, as well as the heritage of the Civil Rights Movement, faith was brought to bear on politics, not so much by appealing to distinct Christian principles, but by appealing to the common morality shared by all human beings and embodied in America's founding documents. Such an approach will appeal to a broad constituency of Americans, will not alienate the Democrats secular base. It will also lead to a progressive politics, because study of the way traditional Christianity has interpreted humanity's common morality (expressed in the final Commands of the Ten Commandments) reveal that the most ancient versions of these faiths believe we kill and steal if we are not helping our neighbors with the basic necessities of life.

This is how the Democrats need to get religion. It will help them keep the good will of a broad constituency, and allow religious claims to be heard as supporting a progressive politics. And if the Democrats combined this with a strategy of building a mainline Protestant, Catholic, Black church coalition, the voice of religious conservatives who could not buy into progressive politics for whatever reason would not matter much (as the numbers of religious conservatives are small compared to this coalition).

Mark Ellingsen is an active speaker at seminaries, churches, and conferences where he is sought out as an expert and spirited champion of authentic Christian faith and politics. Ellingsen is associate professor at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. His new book When Did Jesus Become Republican?: Rescuing Our Country and Our Values from the Right is publishing this month.

 

Motherhood, the Media, and the Marine Corps

By Robin R. Cutler

On October 13, 1907, a 22-year-old marine from Portland, Oregon died during a fight with his fellow student officers in Annapolis, Maryland. The young men immediately claimed Lieutenant Sutton committed suicide; within 36 hours a swift and efficient naval investigation confirmed their story. But then something astonishing happened. Three thousand miles away in Portland, Oregon, the dead lieutenant's mother saw a "vision" of her son who denied the charge, and asked her to clear his name. Fueled by her Catholic faith, Rosa Brant Sutton would spend the next three years trying to redeem her son from the stigma of a mortal sin and learn the real truth about his death. Within a few months her spiritual battle became a political one — in the summer of 1909 a new naval investigation took place that was unprecedented.

The Sutton case became a national sensation as reporters, editors, members of Congress, high-ranking military officials, attorneys, doctors and ultimately the Cardinal of the Catholic Church were caught up in the question of what had really happened to Lieutenant Sutton. There was no question of friendly fire — this fratricide might have been homicide. In 1909, big-city papers in San Francisco and across the country put this case in their headlines for months as Americans from all walks of life acquired a stake in its outcome. Today, this mother's cause célèbre — a civilian seeking truth from military power — is a familiar story, a fact that is both instructive and sobering.

We might learn from the timeless language used by Major Harry Leonard, the savvy judge advocate in the Sutton court: "The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are great many military reputations at stake in this hearing." The accused marines' attorney, Arthur Birney, echoed this theme: "We know what an officer's honor is to him. It cannot be stained without the same kind of injury which is done to a woman's honor when it is stained . . ."

What really happened to "Jimmie" Sutton became less important than his mother's right to know. The case became a battle between protagonists who fought hard for their own versions of the truth. Today, America's journalists follow several families whose military sons died under questionable circumstances. Their efforts to learn the truth have been eerily similar to Rosa Sutton's both in their language and the hurdles they face. The soldiers' mothers, overwhelmed by a very private grief, have turned to the media unwillingly — and as did Rosa Sutton, Patrick Tillman's mother, Mary, has insisted on a congressional investigation of her son's mysterious death.

Misleading information — even blatant lies — may only be fully comprehensible over time. The whole truth (in so far as it can ever be known) about an alleged cover-up may come to light when the conflicting testimony surrounding cases such as these is analyzed years from now. Evidence will be weighed in the context of how military leaders function, what private battles individual officers and enlisted men faced, what allegiances they had and what personal debts witnesses owed. Only then will we understand why the exact same language used at the beginning of the twentieth century about misleading and inaccurate information from one of the armed services appears on the front pages of newspapers in 2007.

Robin R. Cutler has spent most of the past two decades as a public historian both at the National Endowment for the Humanities and as president of two nonprofit organizations. She is the author of A Soul on Trial: A Marine Corps Mystery at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Ten years ago she discovered the extraordinary primary sources that make it possible to explore the century-old case of Jimmie Sutton's death for the first time. You can visit her website at http://www.RobinRCutler.com/

 

July 19th to August 18th marks the 98th anniversary of the unprecedented naval investigation of Lieutenant James L. Sutton's death.