Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age
Julie Golia
Abstract
Newspaper Confessions chronicles the history of the newspaper advice column, a genre that has shaped Americans’ relationships with media, their experiences with popular therapy, and their virtual interactions across generations. Emerging in the 1890s, advice columns became unprecedented virtual forums where readers could debate the most resonant cultural crises of the day with strangers in an anonymous yet public forum. The columns are important—and overlooked—precursors to today’s digital culture: forums, social media groups, chat rooms, and other online communities that define how present-da ... More
Newspaper Confessions chronicles the history of the newspaper advice column, a genre that has shaped Americans’ relationships with media, their experiences with popular therapy, and their virtual interactions across generations. Emerging in the 1890s, advice columns became unprecedented virtual forums where readers could debate the most resonant cultural crises of the day with strangers in an anonymous yet public forum. The columns are important—and overlooked—precursors to today’s digital culture: forums, social media groups, chat rooms, and other online communities that define how present-day American communicate with each other. This book charts the rise of the advice column and its impact on the newspaper industry. It analyzes the advice given in a diverse sample of columns across several decades, emphasizing the ways that advice columnists framed their counsel as modern, yet upheld the racial and gendered status quo of the day. It shows how advice columnists were forerunners to the modern celebrity journalist, while also serving as educators to audience of millions. This book includes in-depth case studies of specific columns, demonstrating how these forums transformed into active and participatory virtual communities of confession, advice, debate, and empathy.
Keywords:
advice,
advice columns,
advice columnists,
newspapers,
women journalists,
virtual communities,
Internet
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2021 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780197527788 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2021 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780197527788.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Julie Golia, author
Curator of History, Social Sciences, and Government Information, New York Public Library
More
Less
