Wire Services and Carrier Pigeons

Over the last few years, I’ve spent time learning about the larger history of journalism in order to understand Sigrid Schultz in context. The growth of the wire services was an important part of that story. The services were predecessors to the foreign news bureaus that developed after World War I and then their competitors.…

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Nansen Passports

Passports, visas, residence and work permits, and journalists’ overseas accreditations have been a recurring thread in my work for the last few years*—the inevitable result of writing about an American journalist who spent much of her life in Europe. Working her way through bureaucratic red tape to be sure she had the correct permissions to…

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And Speaking of X-rays….

Several of you responded to my recent post on the subject with interesting information about the early use of x-rays.* This story caught my imagination for several reasons that will be obvious to those of you who are regular visitors here on the Margins: When World War I broke out in 1914, Marie Curie (already…

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