Researching how Ida B. Wells led the fight against lies told about lynching victims

This presentation will examine how Ida B. Wells and other Black journalists confronted the lens through which white-owned newspapers viewed African Americans as brutes who were prone to assault white women in the 1890s. Starting in 1892, and emboldened by Wells s reporting, the Black press began to forcefully counteract the white press s narratives. Professor Mindich will discuss the debate that emerged between the white and Black newspapers that used differing conventions of journalism, dueling tropes, and disputed facts to carry the battle to the public.

Attendees should be advised that this talk will contain explicit and disturbing content about horrific acts of lynching.

Dr. Mindich is a professor in the journalism department, where he served six years as chair. Before becoming a professor, Mindich worked as an assignment editor for CNN and earned a doctorate in American Studies from New York University. He has written articles for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wilson Quarterly, Columbia Journalism Review and other publications. He is the author of Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism (NYU Press, 1998); Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News (Oxford University Press, 2005), a book Walter Cronkite called "very important....a handbook for the desperately needed attempt to inspire in the young generation a curiosity that generates the news habit"; and The Mediated World: A New Approach to Mass Communication and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019 and 2024).