{"id":910,"date":"2017-02-28T05:03:30","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T05:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=910"},"modified":"2025-03-30T18:11:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T22:11:51","slug":"anna-d-jaroszynska-kirchmann-the-polish-hearst-ameryka-echo-and-the-public-role-of-the-immigrant-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2017\/02\/28\/anna-d-jaroszynska-kirchmann-the-polish-hearst-ameryka-echo-and-the-public-role-of-the-immigrant-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna D. Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann. The Polish Hearst: Ameryka-Echo and the Public Role of the Immigrant Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna D. Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann.\u00a0The Polish Hearst: Ameryka-Echo and the Public Role of the Immigrant Press<\/em><\/a>. University of Illinois Press, 2015. 304 p. ISBN 9780252039096. US $60.<\/p>\n

In 1936, Pawel Maloposki published a letter in the \u201cCorner for Everybody\u201d section of his local Polish-language newspaper, writing: \u201cif you once drop by this \u2018Corner,\u2019 it is not easy to leave it\u2014so it is not surprising that I too made my home here, and since I did, I want to contribute to its benefit\u201d (151). These lines illustrate Maloposki\u2019s sense of loyalty to a discourse community located within the pages of the newspaper Ameryka-Echo<\/em>, which is the primary focus of Anna D. Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann\u2019s groundbreaking book, The Polish Hearst: Ameryka-Echo and the Public Role of the Immigrant Press<\/a>.<\/em> Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann places letters like Maloposki\u2019s in a series of broad contexts, alternately focusing on such letter writing\u2019s significance to individual readers and writers, on Ameryka-Echo\u2019s<\/em> rhetorical function as a site for epistolary communication in American Polonia, on the newspaper\u2019s role within the larger ethnic press, and on its status as the business venture of one particularly ambitious Polish immigrant.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s early chapters offer a fine-grained biography of Antoni A. Paryski, founder and owner of Ameryka-Echo<\/em>, giving particular attention to his rise to prominence in the American publishing world. Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann points out that the editorial, political, and personal pressures Paryski faced at the helm of Ameryka-Echo<\/em> shaped his desire to maintain the newspaper\u2019s separation from the \u201cimmigrant fraternal organizations\u201d on the one hand, and the \u201creligious or nationalist Polonia press\u201d on the other hand, which required him to chart a delicate course between competing alliances (39). This was a highly unusual path that put him at odds with other publications within the larger ethnic press of the period, which is a dynamic Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann outlines with clarity and precision.<\/p>\n

In later chapters, Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann shifts her attention to the social, cultural, and political functions of Ameryka-Echo<\/em>, and particularly to what she calls the \u201ccommunity of readers-writers\u201d who were active in the newspaper\u2019s \u201cCorner for Everybody\u201d over the course of the newspaper\u2019s 72-year run. In fact, a particular strength of this book is its treatment of these reader-produced pages not as merely a record of public sentiment, but also as a negotiation of meaning and power between editors and readers. Arguing that the uniquely \u201cparticipatory character of the Polish-language press\u201d in the United States was founded on the practice of publishing reader-produced materials, Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann traces the contours of a print-based public sphere in which individuals variously debated social issues, shared personal memories, dispensed advice, articulated a sense of shared diasporic identity, and positioned themselves both within and against a larger American community (139). In fact, Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann\u2019s argument that Ameryka-Echo\u2019s<\/em> promotion of a wide range of reader-writer activities resulted in a \u201cbond between the newspaper and its readers [that] made the relationship appear more personal,\u201d forms the heart of this study\u2019s contributions to existing scholarship on the ethnic press, American immigration, and early twentieth-century print culture.<\/p>\n

Finally, it is crucial to note that The Polish Hearst<\/em> constitutes a massive scholarly undertaking. More than a decade\u2019s worth of painstaking archival research is represented in the pages of this book, and Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann\u2019s analysis relies on the translation of thousands of letters and articles from their original Polish into English. This translation project opens up the potential for substantial new scholarship in the future, as five hundred of the letters are reproduced in their entirety in a companion volume, Letters from Readers in the Polish American Press, 1902-1969: A Corner for Everybody<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rachel Collins
\nArcadia University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna D. Jaroszy\u0144ska-Kirchmann.\u00a0The Polish Hearst: Ameryka-Echo and the Public Role of the Immigrant Press. University of Illinois Press, 2015. 304 p. ISBN 9780252039096. US $60. In 1936, Pawel Maloposki published a letter in the \u201cCorner for Everybody\u201d section of his local Polish-language newspaper, writing: \u201cif you once drop by this \u2018Corner,\u2019 it is not easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888,1887],"tags":[1929,1930,1942,1947,1953,1955],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-reviews","tag-epistolary-culture","tag-europe","tag-north-america","tag-periodicals-news","tag-publishing","tag-reception"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2573,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/2573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}