Beyond Tintin and Watergate. On the forgetting of important journalists

In her presentation on Ruth Lovrien Conner (1906–1989), Theresa Russell-Loretz (Millersville University) emphasized how this woman, her grandmother, became active as a news worker for the regional press in Minnesota in the 1920s thanks to her certificate as a linotype operator. Regarding the need for ‘material media histories,’ the contribution of Joël Langonné (Université Catholique de l’Ouest) was also notable: he spoke about Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, which at the beginning of the 20th century made ship newspapers with international news possible via telegraph operators aboard transatlantic steamships.

Most contributions chose a purely biographical approach, each time focusing on the life and work of one forgotten (pioneer) journalist. The historiography of journalism often concentrates on a handful of iconic names in each nation. Major figures from investigative journalism and international reporting remain popular in the public imagination. Think of Carl Bernstein (born 1944) and Bob Woodward (born 1943), who uncovered the Watergate affair, or the French grand reporter Albert Londres (1884–1932), the model for Hergé’s Tintin. But behind those famous names lie countless others whose work is forgotten today.

The Frenchwoman Élisabeth Sauvy (1897–1966), better known as Titaÿna, was also a grand reporter, but one who has now completely vanished from collective memory. The life and work of Titaÿna were discussed in a dual presentation by Isabelle Hare (Université Lyon) and Claire Blandin (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord). Hare and Blandin used the possibilities of Retronews, the advanced newspaper interface for the digitized newspaper collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, to map out Titaÿna’s journalistic oeuvre.  

At the intersection of ‘digital humanities,’ Florence Le Cam and Brecht Deseure (CAMille/Center for Archives on Media and Information) explored how both distant and close reading of digitized Belgian press collections can make female journalists from the first half of the twentieth century visible again. In this way, researchers connected to CAMille succeeded, for example, in literally and figuratively bringing into view the journalistic oeuvre of Alice Bron (1850–1904)—mostly remembered for her decision to go to South Africa as a nurse during the Boer War.

Élisabeth Sauvy/Titaÿna.

A decentralized perspective, however, is not only about gender and the experiences of newsroom workers on the floor but also about geography. Several contributions addressed the importance of ‘oral history’ in historical research that, from a ‘decentralized’ perspective, focuses on forgotten journalists who were not active in the Western bloc during the Cold War. For example, Nina Žnidaršic (University of Ljubljana) mapped the professional experiences of journalists from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia who were active in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1963–1992). Likewise, Chloé Nejma Rondeleux (Université Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne) demonstrated with her research on Keltoum Staali (b. 1960) — a journalist for the Algerian weekly Révolution Africaine in the 1980s — the value of oral sources and interviews in uncovering the room for maneuvre journalists had in socialist one-party states.

Even within the Western world, we see many geographical gaps emerging in the historiography. While prominent French and American traveling reporters and investigative journalists remain somewhat known, their colleagues from smaller countries like Belgium or the Netherlands fall into oblivion much faster. Michaël Auwers (Cegesoma–General State Archives) showed how the Belgian Alain de Prelle de la Nieppe (1922–1955), member of a noble family, with his adventurous reports during the early Cold War, perhaps resembled a real-life Tintin the most. Yet today, his name rings a bell for few Belgians. In the mid-1940s, de Prelle de la Nieppe began his journalistic career. As a ‘journalist engaged to adventure,’ he sold his reports to both Belgian and foreign newspapers and magazines. He covered many geopolitical hotspots that characterized the first turbulent years of the Cold War: the Greek civil war, the first waves of decolonization in North Africa and the Middle East, the independence struggle in the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, the war in Korea…

The traveling journalist Mary Pos (1904–1987), a Dutch reporter who, like Titaÿna, interviewed Mussolini, is even more absent from the historiography of journalism in her own country than Titaÿna in France. She was central to the contribution by Babs Boter (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). In their presentations, Boter, Hare, and Blandin did not overlook the political and ideological aspects in the work of both Titaÿna and Pos—elements that, within a contemporary context, at the very least make it less obvious to present these two women as feminist role models today. For example, Pos openly showed sympathy for Mussolini and defended Hendrik Verwoerd, nicknamed the “father of apartheid” in South-Africa, while Titaÿna expressed nationalist and sometimes antisemitic views and collaborated during the Second World War.

A central question during the colloquium was therefore: how is it that the eminent journalists highlighted by speakers from various parts of the world — despite their significant work and pioneering roles — have fallen into oblivion within the societies in which they were active? Six overarching explanations emerged from the presentations, based on the historical cases presented. These six elements invite broader reflection on the mechanisms, institutions, processes, and cultural contexts that — still today — help determine who is given a place in the history of journalism, and who is not.

Mary Pos.

A first reason why certain important journalists fall into oblivion is the persistent focus on radical voices from the big cities. This causes provincial journalists, who sometimes had greater social impact, to remain underexposed. The presentations by Jeffrey Tyssens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Ross Collins (North Dakota State University) deliberately did not zoom in on the Parisian press, but on regional voices within French press history.

Tyssens highlighted the life and work of Charles-Alcée Campan (1800–1877), an Orleanist journalist from Bordeaux who lived in Brussels as a political refugee during the Second Empire and, between 1866 and 1873, wrote opinion pieces under a pseudonym for the Belgian liberal newspaper Étoile Belge. Collins shared his fascination for Ferdinand Cottalorda (1873–1954), who wrote for half a century in Marseille for the leftist daily Le Petit Provençal. During both presentations, it was striking how the use of pseudonyms (‘un vieux libéral’ for Campan and ‘Camille Ferdy’ for Ferdinand Cottalorda) sometimes turns research into forgotten journalists into real detective work.

The tendency to shift focus beyond the major press cities also reappeared in other contributions. For example, Leon Atkinson-MacEwen (University of Tasmania) spoke about Gilbert Robertson (1794–1851), a radical journalist in what is now Tasmania and publisher of The True Colonist (1834–1844). Although Robertson—born in Trinidad as the son of a free woman of colour and a Scottish planter—arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1822 as a ‘free settler,’ he was imprisoned several times for libel as editor and owner of The True Colonist. With his lecture, Atkinson-MacEwen made clear that contemporary historians in Tasmania unjustly underestimate Robertson’s legacy as a radical journalist—heavily influenced by the ideas of like-minded individuals in Scotland and England.
 

Theresa Russell-Loretz (Millersville University) consciously brought the story of her grandmother, Ruth Lovrien Conner, to draw attention to the often-forgotten historiographical domain of rural American newspapers in the Midwest. Conner was never able to fulfil her dream of writing for a metropolitan newspaper but did succeed in founding the Des Moines News in 1956 with her husband.

Charles-Alcée Campan.

A second reason for oblivion lies in the status of the journalistic genre in which someone was active. Genres such as lifestyle journalism, film journalism, and sports journalism are often considered less prestigious than investigative journalism or political reporting. Balázs Sipos (Eötvös Loránd University) indicated that Hungarian female journalists who did ‘society reporting’ around 1900 rarely considered themselves professional journalists — a consequence of prevailing gender norms.

The American Mary Bacon Ford (1859–1948), as became clear from the presentation by Juliette De Maeyer (Université de Montréal) and Dominique Trudel (Audencia Business School), who published in Cosmopolitan and The Illustrated American, did not follow those gender norms. She went through a painful divorce and sought and found her own voice in art criticism around the turn of the century. Eline Batsleer (Ghent University) highlighted the forgotten but confident women who shaped the content of the Italian women’s magazine La Donna from 1904 onwards, including the Brussels-born Fanny Zampini Salazar (1853–1931). Carlo Bovolo (University of Turin) shed light on Ines Piacenti (1875–1961), who with her children’s magazine Vita Gioconda (1906–1943) played an important role for Protestant children in Italy but never received the recognition she deserved.

Photojournalism has long been undervalued within ‘journalism studies,’ even though photography plays a crucial role in depicting armed conflicts. While the Spanish Civil War is usually associated with the work of the Hungarian Robert Capa (1913–1954), Teresa Ferré Panisello (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) drew attention to local Spanish photojournalists who captured the Spanish Civil War with a Leica camera in hand. The Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909 was an early key moment in the history of Catalan photojournalism, during which horror and violence were powerfully captured in photos.

When women are active in undervalued fields such as film or sports journalism, they often become doubly invisible. The keynote by Marie-Ève Thérenty (Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier) showed that women between the two world wars were more active in the film sections of French newspapers than previously thought. These women were often young aspiring actresses and reported in French dailies on shoots or gossip — work rarely recognized as full-fledged film criticism. Yet postwar icons like Françoise Giroud (1916–2003) and France Roche (1921–2013) also had their roots in this world.

In the field of sports journalism, female presence remains very rare: Nick Richardson (University of Melbourne) showed how unfair it is that the Australian Patricia Jarrett (1911–1990) was only recently recognized as a pioneering journalist for popularizing women’s cricket in Australia.

Patricia Jarrett (on the right, next to two players of the English women’s cricket team, 1934).

A third reason for being forgotten is simply the fact of being a woman. Due to long-standing gender norms, women were often not recognized for their journalistic work. Sometimes they were completely overshadowed by their male partners, especially if those men were themselves known as journalists or held other prominent roles.
 

For example, Laura Calkins (Texas Tech University) spoke about Charlotte Ebener (1918–1990), an American who worked during the early Cold War as a reporter for the International News Service in Asia and the Middle East, from China to Indonesia. Although she, like Alain de Prelle de la Nieppe, witnessed historical events up close, she was mocked by colleagues and political leaders for her appearance. Her work never emerged from the shadow of her husband, Pulitzer Prize winner George Weller (1907–2002). While George Weller’s archive is preserved at Harvard University, only a small collection of Ebener’s letters can be found in the Milwaukee public library. Her memoirs, No Facilities for Women (1955), remain a unique source allowing historians like Calkins to highlight her story as well.

Carrie Adell Strahorn (1854–1925) also wrote her memoirs in 1911 about her travels, this time in the expanding ‘Wild West’ of the United States during the last quarter of the 19th century. She wrote for newspapers and magazines about her journeys alongside her husband Robert E. Strahorn (1852–1944), a railroad builder and former journalist. In obituaries, she was mostly remembered as the wife of Robert, who helped map the frontier through his reports on agriculture and mining. Carrie’s own texts, in which she attempted to culturally describe the frontier, are from a social-historical perspective at least equally interesting.

Robert and Carrie Adell Strahorn.

When it comes to war correspondents who found themselves in the thick of the fighting during both World Wars, a fourth reason for oblivion emerges: the fact that some journalists did not fit the classic profile of the white, male, adventurous war reporter. Female correspondents during the First World War and African American war journalists during the Second World War are examples of such categories of outsiders.

Stephanie Seul (University of Bremen) introduced the audience to Avis Waterman (1882–1939), the only female war correspondent for The Times, working from Milan starting in 1915. Waterman made several escorted but dangerous visits to the Italian front. Her compatriot Elisabeth Shepley Sergeant (1881–1965) covered the war from Paris for The New Republic, but was seriously injured in 1918 during a visit to the front near the Marne. Her literary account of her recovery in an American hospital in Paris was central to the presentation by Patricia Loughlin (University of Central Oklahoma).

With regard to the Second World War, James Mueller (University of North Texas) put the African American journalist Trezzvant Anderson (1906–1963) in the spotlight. Anderson wrote about the 761st Tank Battalion, an African American unit whose heroic actions he closely followed and documented. Also, Suzanne Laroche (1906–1992), a female photojournalist who captured the liberation of Paris, does not fit the classic image of a war journalist. Her work is receiving a leading role for the first time in the research of Louise Francezon (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).

A fifth reason why some promising journalists were forgotten lies in the premature end of their careers, often due to a tragic death. Alain de Prelle de la Nieppe died at the age of 32 in a car accident in Morocco. The social commitment of Herbert H. Denton Jr. (1943–1989) and the promising South African journalist Nat Nakasa (1937–1965), both of whom died young, were central topics in presentations by Jaron Murphy (Bournemouth University) and Benji de la Piedra (Library of Congress).

Denton was one of the first African American editors at The Washington Post. In the late 1960s, he wrote insightful pieces about educational programs affecting African American communities, and as a versatile journalist in the 1980s, he also reported on the Lebanese civil war. Had Herbert H. Denton Jr. lived longer—he died at 45 from AIDS—he might have become the first African American executive editor of The Washington Post. Denton’s homosexuality only became widely known among those close to him after his death in 1989 in Toronto, where he had spent several years reporting on Canadian politics and society for The Post.

Herbert H. Denton Jr.

Nat Nakasa wrote for the South African magazine Drum in the late 1950s and early 1960s. After receiving a prestigious Nieman Fellowship, he left for the United States. There, he found himself in a hopeless situation: as a “native of nowhere,” he could not return to South Africa, while his U.S. visa was about to expire. At the age of 28, he took his own life. Nakasa had the talent to become a leading literary journalist.

Nat Nakasa.

The Belgian journalist Roger van de Velde (1925–1970), discussed in the presentation by Nathan Lauwers (Liberas), was another gifted writer who exposed social inequality. Yet in 1960, as a product of his time and in the context of the Congo Crisis, he portrayed the Belgian colonizer as the victim. In his coverage of the post-independence chaos in Congo, he resorted to racist stereotypes that are difficult to reconcile with the rest of his work, which is marked by empathy and moral commitment to social injustice. Van de Velde died at 45 from an addiction to painkillers that had previously led to repeated stays in prisons and psychiatric institutions. Like Nakasa, Van de Velde is remembered today more for the symbolic weight of his tragic death than for the substance of his work.

The lives and work of Denton, Nakasa, and Van de Velde — each of whom has been largely excluded from the journalistic canon of their respective countries — deserve recognition within journalism education in the United States, South Africa, and Belgium. Their writings and life stories offer critical insights into journalism as an intellectual practice, one in which social engagement and literary ambition were not mutually exclusive. Moreover, their biographies serve as powerful entry points for making the historical contexts of racism in 1960s Belgium, the United States, and South Africa known to a broader audience.

Roger van de Velde.

Finally, the colloquium addressed a sixth reason why certain journalists have fallen into obscurity: the political shadow cast over their work and legacy by the Cold War and anti-communism, often beyond their own control. When Nakasa left for the United States as an anti-apartheid writer and journalist, the South African government was on the verge of branding him a communist, effectively ending his journalistic career. At the same time, a literary magazine Nakasa used in 1963 to provide a platform for emerging African writers received CIA funding — without his knowledge. That funding was part of broader American efforts to strengthen Western cultural influence in the Global South by supporting pro-Western African elites.

From the perspective of the United States as a driving force behind the cultural Cold War in newly independent non-aligned African states, a moderate figure like Nakasa — described at the time as a “coconut” (“black on the outside, white on the inside”) — was seen as a strategic asset in countering feared communist influence on the African continent during decolonization. In a similar vein, Western journalists who — through the International Federation of Journalists, founded in 1952 — were engaged in training programs in the Global South, found themselves in 1967, despite their sincere intentions and without their knowledge, entangled in a CIA funding scandal. This was demonstrated in the presentation by Christoph De Spiegeleer (Liberas) on forgotten actors in educational internationalism within journalism training during the Cold War.

For the first time since 2002, Reporters Without Borders reports that journalists in 2025 must work under unfavorable conditions in half of all countries. Although the colloquium primarily looked back, it also built a bridge to current mechanisms that still contribute to the invisibility of vulnerable news workers today. In particular, the roles of fixers — local contacts who assist foreign reporters — and stringers — freelancers paid per assignment — have recently been receiving increased attention.

World Press Photo recently suspended the name attribution for the iconic 1972 photo of the ‘Napalm Girl,’ an image that became world-famous for capturing the horrors of the Vietnam War. A documentary suggested that the photo may not have been taken by Nick Út (who worked for the Associated Press), but by Nguyen Thành Nghi, a local freelancer. While the question of authorship is not insignificant from a cultural perspective, the historical relevance lies above all in the fact that the likely true photographer was a local freelancer — someone who did not enjoy the same institutional protection as correspondents working for agencies such as the U.S.-based Associated Press.

The need to acknowledge the stories of these invisible contributors behind contemporary Western reporting on conflicts and revolutions — especially in regions such as the Middle East — was the focus of the colloquium’s third keynote lecture. Noah Amir Arjomand (University of California) spoke about the role of fixers in contemporary journalism. Between 2014 and 2016, he conducted ethnographic research in Turkey on these often-overlooked information brokers. He interviewed and observed journalists, fixers, producers, and editors, and at times actively participated in the news production process —both as a fixer and as a journalist.

To protect the anonymity of his sources, Arjomand used composite characters. Central to his lecture was Orhan, a fictional Turkish fixer who assisted foreign journalists reporting on —among other events ­ — the 2014 Soma mine disaster. Orhan relied on his own network of local contacts—sub-fixers. His character was drawn from real testimonies of Turkish fixers. Arjomand offered a critical reflection on how European and American journalists sometimes knowingly accept — or even enable through financial incentives — unprofessional practices by local fixers. This allows them to gather quick, marketable news while maintaining the appearance of objective, “clean” Western journalism.

Given the current relevance — rising violence in the Middle East, divergent media narratives, and further dismantling of the rule of law under Erdogan’s regime — Arjomand’s lecture was recorded. It is available online via the Liberas YouTube channel.