Richard R. John

How Media Concentration in the Age of Radio Prefigured Today’s Big Tech Debate - ProMarket In the 1930s, staffers at the newly established Federal Communications Commission devised a novel rationale for limiting network power in radio, telephony, and the press. While much has changed since ...

Annals of anti-monopoly: This just dropped today. When did Americans start seriously worrying about media concentration? Hint: in the 1930s. How did this debate shape media coverage of the Second World War?

Crossed Wires: The Conflicted History of U.S. Telecommunications, from the Post Office to the Internet. By Dan Schiller How should we write the history of communications? In Crossed Wires, Dan Schiller provides us with one answer to this question. In a sprawling, often perce

Annals of anti-monopoly: Here is my review (critical yet appreciative) of Dan Schiller’s monumental history of 20th c. U.S. telecommunications policy — forty years in the making. Schiller is particularly suggestive on the FCC in the 1930s, a neglected topic, and on the efficacy of consent decrees.

Announcing an open search for a position in Columbia’s Ph. D. program in communications

“We are particularly interested in candidates pursuing pioneering research agendas in:  Science, Technology, and Society (STS); media law and policy; media history; global media….”

apply.interfolio.com/162364

Annals of anti-monopoly: “…the safer course…decentralization of power, [but] the uniform power to regulate these enterprises [eg railroads], if they partake in the least of a monopoly character, must be equally extensive with the territory they occupy.” Sterne, _Constitutional History_ (1882).

Annals of anti-monopoly: historian Shane Hamilton explains how shifts in the U.S. food distribution networks led to the blocked Kroger-Albertsons merger.

Annals of anti-monopoly:

“Plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship. When companies larger, wealthier and more powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our way of life."

Jonathan Kanter, antitrust head. DOJ, 2024

Thanks! Ellsworth’s son was patent commissioner in the 1830s. He backed Samuel Morse’s telegraph patent against British rivals. Morse fell in love with his daughter Anne and later covered the story up. Anne’s mother gave us the Biblical quote “What Hath God Wrought” that Dan Howe used as his title.

Agreed! Trust all is well in “the other place” — and the real world! :)

His fellow Virginian? I am confused?

The Kennedy assassination was the first historical event I remembered as well. My mother crying in front of the radio; the horses on TV during the funeral

Perspective | The Founders never intended the U.S. Postal Service to be managed like a business The post office is supposed to serve the public good — not worry about profit.

Annals of anti-monopoly…..in the news….

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020...

Annals of anti-monopoly: The meaning of monopoly has shifted over time. Pete Roady’s _Contest over National Security_ shows how in the 1930s and 1940s the related catch phrase “ national security” was stripped of its association with domestic reform.

wwwww.hup.harvard.edu/books/97806742…

Annals of anti-monopoly: how did lawmaker John Sherman (whose name is today linked with the famous federal anti-monopoly law) try to reign in “Big Tech”? What forgotten legislation did he craft? And…why did it matter? I explored these topics in a recent piece for HNN.

www.hnn.us/article/the-...

How Tech Giants Make History - ProMarket Richard R. John recounts how in the twentieth century the once-mighty Bell System, whose descendants include today’s Verizon and AT&T, waged a powerful decades-long public relations campaign, includin...

Annals of anti-monopoly: my piece on how 20th c. telephone publicists shaped the history books, and set up a major center for the study of U.S. history at Harvard. Can expertise be mobilized to promote the political agenda of Big Tech? History says yes.

www.promarket.org/2024/09/13/h...

Can I help Beth? Let me know

Congressional Briefings The AHA’s Congressional Briefings series seeks to provide Congressional staff members, journalists, and other interested parties with the historical background to topics of current concern.

Annals of anti-monopoly: I join Kathryn Brownell and Jeannette Estruth in Washington, D.C., on 6 June for a congressional briefing on federal media policy. My topic is federal regulation of the mail, the telegraph, telephone, and radio. Details below.

www.historians.org/news-and-adv...

Anti-Monopoly Roundtable Today— featuring Tim Wu, Bill Novak, Kate Andrias, Suresh Naidu, and…myself. Click below for the registration information — with the Zoom link. We will be discussing Crane and Novak, ed., _Antimonopoly and American Democracy_. events.columbia.edu/cal/event/even…

Agreed

Annals of anti-monopoly: “[Brandeis] wanted government action not only to destroy bigness but affirmatively to protect smallness—even, if necessary, at expense of competition.” Schlesinger, _Politics of Upheaval_p. 388.

David Donald developed his thesis in _Liberty and Union_, a stimulating, if neglected, survey of 19th c US public life that revealed the strengths AND the weaknesses of the justly criticized “party period” model, a legacy of Cold War-era assumptions about the essential coherence of US public life.

Rachel Sheldon’s fine new coauthored essay in the _JAH_ is helping 19th c. US historians to move beyond the “party period” synthesis (championed among others by my mentor David Donald). Party competition for Donald helped to promote unity (along with faith in the Constitution and popular oratory).

Very sad — a wonderful colleague and a nice guy

Ben: 8-10 is pretty normal for me. But I straddle two Ph.D. granting programs — so that might be a bit on the high end.

Annals of anti-monopoly: can the history of the remarkably successful regulation (municipal, state, and federal) of the Bell System provide insight into the Graham-Warren proposal for the regulation of Big Tech? Hint: yes. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Noble’s _Religion of Technology_ is eminently teachable — but I agree — there is much more to be done.

Carrier pigeons as a motive power for long distance communications…today!

Reframing the Monopoly Question This essay surveys the main currents of anti-monopoly thought in the period between the American Revolution and World War I, a timespan that has come to be known as the long nineteenth century. It mak...

Annals of anti-monopoly: Now in print. How we might reframe the monopoly question — anti-monopoly as a mode on inquiry (like liberalism, socialism, or republicanism) rather than a reflexive grievance: academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/...

Susie Pak had written on Morgan’s financial network; Jean Strouse is the go-to author for his cultural milieu; don’t overlook Vincent Carosso on his business activities

Now in print _Antimonopoly and American Democracy_, with essays by Richard White, Naomi Lamoreaux, Daniel Crane, Bill Novak, myself, and others. It high time we “reframed” the monopoly question to decenter consumer welfare and turn attention to democracy, freedom, and justice.

Annals of anti-monopoly: Horace Greeley, 1851: “Secure to each man so much land as one may use, and preserve the residue for the use and benefit of all….Savage improvidence and want of forecast are hardly more pernicious than civilized monopoly and exclusion; a wise policy would shun them both.”