The Forgotten Man Who

Transformed Journalism in
America
Lowell Thomas was the first host of a TV
broadcast news program, and adopted a number
of other new technologies to make his mark in
the 20th century

Despite being largely forgotten today, Lowell Thomas was a pioneering journalist of the
20th century who reshaped news media. (Wikimedia Commons)

By Lorraine Boissoneault
smithsonian.com
June 22, 2017
By the time Lowell Thomas turned 25, hed already worked as a journalist, earned
multiple degrees, and found a place on the faculty at Princeton University. But
seizing a rare opportunity during World War I changed him from youthful
overachiever to media heavyweight. During that conflict he met T.E. Lawrence,
soon-to-be famous as Lawrence of Arabiaand Thomas played a large part in
giving Lawrence that fame. The encounter launched Thomas into the media
stratosphere with a groundbreaking multimedia presentation that captivated
millions.

But while Lawrences work ended abruptly with his untimely death, Thomas went
on to live a long, remarkable life. He traveled Europe, the Middle East, India,
Afghanistan, New Guinea and Tibet, even meeting the Dalai Lama. He made fans
out of Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill and led a prolific career in the
news, making reports by print, radio, and TVand reshaping them all into more
formal, serious mediums.

Yet for a man with such a hyperbolic life, his legacy has been largely forgotten.
Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at New York University, set out to
remedy that lapse in public memory with his new biography, The Voice of
America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism.
Smithsonian.com talked with Stephens about his book, and why Thomas still
matters today.

Sensationalism was a major part of journalism in the early 20th century, but
Thomas helped reshape this. How did he manage that?

The early 20th century was a time when a lot of people improved stories. It was
a less fact-obsessed world than the one we live in and therefore a less accurate
world. Lowell was a pretty sensational journalist in Chicago himself. Lowell got
caught making something up in Chicago, but he learned a lesson.

When he got his great gig, hosting what at the time was a network radio newscast,
he was aware of the responsibilities that went with it. He helped pioneer a more
sober style of journalism. Lowell quickly realized that there were people among
his hundreds of thousands and then millions of listeners who would write letters
and complain to his network if he got things wrong. Because [the radio broadcast]
had so many listeners and he was such a dominant figure, what happened there
also spread to other iterations of radio, then TV, then newspapers. Lowell
contributed to the fact obsession that journalists have today.

The other aspect [that Thomas helped change] was non-partisanship. Journalism
in the United States has historically been an extremely partisan enterprise.
Horace Greeley, the great 19th-century newspaper editor, was one of the
founders of the Republican Party. Lowell Thomas, who was a Republican,
realized he couldnt make his newscast a Republican newscast because he
would lose too many listeners. He wanted to be listened to by Republicans and
Democrats and this became the way broadcast news was done in the U.S.
Thomas is maybe best known for making T.E. Lawrence famous, but he also
doesnt seem to have understood him.

Lawrence was a man with a very tangled inner life, probably gay at a time when
you werent allowed to be. He had a really complicated attitude towards fame. In
one sense he pursued it, in one sense he hid from it. Lowell was the opposite.
Lowell lived very comfortably on the surface, was very comfortable with himself,
with the fame he eventually achieved. So they were an odd combination.
Lawrence was disturbed by this crass American fame that this journalist was
bestowing on him, fame to the point that people were chasing him down the
streets. Lawrence was one of the first media-made stars. That was very difficult
for a man of his complications and his difficulties, his fissures and fractures.

Something else that comes up with both World Wars is the thin line between
journalism and propaganda. How did Thomas navigate that line?

The line between journalism and propaganda was not well drawn early in the 20th
century. Lowell sent himself over to cover World War I shortly after the United
States entered it because he was always the man who wanted to be where the
action was. He was there in part to publicize and build support for the war
something that we would not want to find journalists doing today. He had the
support of the United States government, and when he went to cover events in
the Middle East he had the support of the British government. Journalists today
do have to work with military and government officials, but he didnt distinguish
between supporting the war and covering it. He was a patriot and didnt hide that.

In some ways that was important during World War II whenby my calculation
maybe one of every five adults in the U.S. were getting news from this one man.
It was a reassuring voice in a very scary time, when a lot of Americans were dying
overseas.

Another element of his success is his willingness to adapt to new

technologies.

The most important medium for his career was a then-new media, radio. People
in America were just buying their first radio sets when Lowells voice was heard
on them.

We think of this as an age of new technology, of journalists on Twitter, using

Reddit and Snapchat and Instagram and so on, but in some ways Lowell was
more advanced in his use of technology 100 years ago than any of them. He was
early to use a typewriter, he was early on radio, he was one of the first to combine
voice with film before sound film had really caught on. And then when sound film
did catch up, he was host of the dominant newsreels that were shown in movie
theaters twice a week when most Americans would go to movie theaters every
week.
He was early up in airplanes. He was the first to take real documentary footage
of war. He was early in getting into automobiles, though he was a terrible driver.
And then in the start of the 1940s, when television had just been invented and
NBC was doing its first experiments in television, who did they get to host what
was definitely the first regular TV newscast and probably also the first regular
television program of any sort? Lowell Thomas.

His wife Fran traveled with him for much of his work and tried to write her
own books, but never succeeded. What was their relationship like?

Like most women at the time, she suffered from the various extant forms of
sexism. She was a very bright woman, an educated woman, and there wasnt
much for her to do with that. She went into the career that many bright women
went into and became a schoolteacher, but she got swept away on Lowells magic
carpet. She found himself with him in London, India, Singapore, Malaysia,
Australia, New Zealand. She had quite an exciting life surrounded by famous
people, but she didnt really get to use her talents. She made some effort [to write]
and Lowell did try to help her but she was unsuccessful.

What can we learn from Lowell Thomass story today?

We miss a voice that is known and trusted by such a large percentage of

Americans. Lowell was the first of those voices. Walter Cronkite, Edward R.
Murrow, and later Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings followed him in
that role. There is no one that has that status today. Theres no one trusted by as
many people, on both sides of the political spectrum. Theres no one whos nearly
as well known as Lowell Thomas. He was one of the most famous men in
America. Thats not true of Anderson Cooper; its not true of Lester Holt. And
theres nobody that cant be dismissed by one side or the other as a partisan.

Some of this is good. We get a lot more voices in the news. Lowell Thomas was
a white male from a very traditional American background. Now there are a lot of
points of view available. Thats mostly a good thing, but we miss this trusted and
extremely well known, expected voice.
The History of American
Impeachment
Theres a precedent that its not just for
presidents

Vice President-designate Gerald Ford holds up a copy of Evergreen Review, a magazine

which Ford described as obscene. One of Ford's charges against Douglas was that he had
allowed an article he had written to be published in Evergreen. (AP Photos)

By Kenneth C. Davis
smithsonian.com
June 12, 2017

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-you-need-know-

about-impeachment-180963645/#YhseVYQLMqckTMiF.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
In April 1970, Congressman Gerald Ford provided a blunt answer to an old
question: What is an impeachable offense?

Ford, then the House minority leader, declared, An impeachable offense is

whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given
moment in history. At the time, he was leading the charge to impeach Supreme
Court Justice William O. Douglas, a staunch liberal he accused of financial
impropriety.

Fords memorable definition may not be textbook, but it certainly sums up the
spirit of American impeachmentsjudicial and otherwise. But what does the
Constitution itself say about impeachment?

As the Constitutions framers sweated and fretted through the Philadelphia

summer 230 years ago, the question of impeachment worried Benjamin Franklin.
Americas elder statesman feared that without a means to remove a corrupt or
incompetent official, the only resort would be assassination. As Franklin put it,
this result would leave the political official not only deprived of his life but of the
opportunity of vindicating his character. Perhaps he had Julius Caesar and the
Roman Senate in mind.

Ultimately, the framers agreed with Franklin. Drawn from British parliamentary
precedent, impeachment under the Constitution would be the legislatures
ultimate check on executive and judicial authority. As the legislative branch,
Congress was granted the power to remove the president, vice president, and
all civil officers of the United States from office upon impeachment and
conviction.

There was some debate about which crimes would be impeachable, but the
framers left us with Treason, Bribery or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Though the first two are pretty clear-cut, the rest of the definition leaves
considerably more wiggle room. But the Constitution offers much more clarity on
the process itself.

There is, first, an important difference between impeachment and conviction. It is

the basic distinction between an indictmentbeing formally charged with a
crimeand being found guilty of that crime.

The process begins in the House of Representatives, which has the sole power
to impeach. In modern times, impeachment proceedings begin in the House
Judiciary Committee, which investigates and holds hearings on the charges. The
committee may produce an impeachment resolution that usually contains articles
of impeachment based on specific charges. The House then votes on the
resolution and articles, and can impeach by a simple majority.

Then comes the trial. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the sole power to
hear the case, with House members acting as prosecutors. Attorneys for the
accused can present a defense and question witnesses. The accused may even
testify. If the president or vice president has been impeached, the Chief Justice
of the United States presides over the trial. In other cases, the vice president or
the president pro tempore of the Senate is the presiding officer.

At the end of the hearing, the Senate debates the case in closed session, with
each senator limited to 15 minutes of debate. Each article of impeachment is
voted on separately and conviction requires a two-thirds majority67 of the 100
senators.

To date, the Senate has conducted formal impeachment proceedings 19 times,

resulting in seven acquittals, eight convictions, three dismissals, and one
resignation with no further action.

Gerald Ford knew how high that bar was set. In 1970, he failed in his attempt to
impeach Douglas. The FDR-appointed liberal justice had already survived an
earlier impeachment attempt over his brief stay of execution for convicted spy
Ethel Rosenberg. This time, the supposed offense was financial impropriety, but
Ford and others also clearly balked at Douglass liberal views. The majority of the
House disagreed, and Douglas stayed on the bench.

So far, only two American presidents have been impeached and tried in the
Senate: Andrew JohnsonLincolns successorand Bill Clinton. Both were
acquitted. Richard Nixon would certainly have been impeached had he not
resigned his office in August 1974.

Of the other impeachment cases since 1789, one was of a senatorWilliam

Blount of Tennessee, case dismissed in 1799and one a cabinet officer,
Secretary of War William Belknap, who was acquitted in 1876. Most of the other
impeachment cases have involved federal judges, eight of whom have been
convicted.

Among those impeached judges was Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. In
1805, the Senate acquitted Chase after a trial notorious for its partisan politics.
Vice President Aaron Burr, who presided over the Senate proceedings, was
praised for his evenhanded conduct during the trial. Of course, Burr had recently
killed former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He returned
to Washington to oversee the Chase trial while himself indicted for murder in New
York and New Jersey. Never arrested or tried in Hamiltons death, Burr escaped
impeachment when his term expired.

After Nixons close encounter with impeachment in the summer of 1974, Gerald
Ford secured another spot in the history books as the first man to become
Commander in Chief without having been elected president or vice president. He
set another precedent with the pardon of his disgraced predecessor. Fords bare-
knuckles dictum about the politics of impeachment still reflects the reality of
Washington.
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of Dont Know Much About History, Dont Know
Much About the American Presidents and, most recently, In the Shadow of
Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black
Lives. His website is www.dontknowmuch.com.
Cave Dragons ExistAnd
Saving Them Could Be Key to
Protecting Drinking Water
New DNA techniques are letting researchers
track down the largest, strangest cave animals in
the world

The olm, or cave dragon, is the largest cave-adapted animal in Europe. These strange
creatures spend their entire lives in caves, and face threats from pollution runoff from
agriculture and chemical plants on the surface. (Photo by Gergely Balzs, The Proteus
Project)
By Joshua Rapp Learn
smithsonian.com
June 22, 2017
In 2015, Gregor Aljani almost died chasing cave dragons.

The head of the Tular Cave Laboratory, run by Slovenia's Society of Cave
Biology, was diving in the underground passages of Planina Cave when he got
trapped in a small air pocket. Nearly a mile underground, his oxygen dwindling,
he made his best guess on the direction to safety. By a stroke of luck he ended
up in another air pocket. Nearly four hours later, he found his colleaguesjust
before rescuers had arrived.

The only reason hes alive now is he found an air pocket in one of the crevasses
and that kept him alive and he slowly worked his way back, says Stanley
Sessions, a biology professor at Hartwick College in New York state who has
studied cave dragons with Aljani in the Balkans. It is just by the grace of
proteusthe great olm in the skythat he is alive today.

The blind cave dragon, as it is called, has long endeared biologists with its
unparalleled weirdness. These snake-like amphibians sport small limbs, antler-
like gills set back from their long snouts and translucent, pinkish-white skin that
resembles human flesh. At up to 12 inches long, they are thought to be the world's
largest cave animal. They live up to 70 years, the entirety of which they spend
deep underground in the Dinaric Alps, which includes parts of Slovenia, Italy,
Croatia and Herzegovina.

Im fascinated about their exceptional adaptation to the extreme environment of

the caves, says Gergely Balzs, a cave biology PhD student at the Etvs
Lornd University in Budapest who explores the caves where these dragons live.
And they are baby dragons, for Gods sake.

Well, not exactly. In the past, on the odd occasion that flooding would wash one
up to the surface, locals believed the unusual amphibians to be baby dragons
hence the nickname. One of the creatures other monikers, proteus, stems from
an early Greek sea god who had the ability to change shape. And while the origins
of the German name (olm) are uncertain, the Slovenian name (loveka ribica)
translates roughly to "human-fish."
A 19th century image of a blind dragon, otherwise known as the olm or proteus. (19th
era 2 / Alamy )

You might think the obscure habitats of these legendary creatures would put them
safely out of reach of human destruction. But their watery ecosystems collect the
runoff from whatever drains down from the surface, meaning they still face habitat
destruction due to development and hydroelectric projects which drain and
reroute underground water supplies. Today they face increasing threats of
pollution from agricultural runoff, not to mention the legacy of chemical waste
plants.

Karst is one of the most vulnerable landscapes on the planet, Aljani says,
referring to the sinkhole- and cave-riddled limestone landscapes beneath which
cave dragons make their homes. Moreover, focusing more effort on proteus
conservation can also conserve water for Slovenians and for those in neighboring
countries, he adds. After all, the same water that trickles down to the olm world
is the source of drinking water for 96 percent of Slovenians.

If they pollute the water and kill these guys off, it will be the biggest catastrophe
of all time, says Sessions.

Moreover, proteus are just the top of a diverse underground food chain that could
also be killed off by pollution. The caves in Slovenia are like tropical forests. They
are biodiversity hotspots in terms of the number of species, says Sessions. And
the species are cave-adapted so they are very, very strange.

To help save a dragon, you first have to find it. That's a tall order when your
subject lives in a vast underground maze of limestone passages. In an effort to
simplify the search for dragons and increase scientists abilities to detect them,
Aljani and his colleagues are now using new environmental DNA sampling
techniques, which pinpoint tiny traces of genetic material in water to figure out
where the creatures hide without the need for cave diving.

Olms underground isolation has protected them from some of the major threats
to amphibians of the few decades, such as human-influenced climate
change and invasive fungal diseases. But now, it seems that the problems of the
world above have reached the world below. We need to know more about
proteus and its habitat if we want to keep them both intact in future, Aljani.
New approaches in monitoring techniques such as eDNA (will) not only reduce
the need of risky caving or cave diving, but even increase the quality of data
collected in nature.

Aljani and his colleagues recently published one of the most

extensive surveys of cave dragons to date, for which they sampled water
downstream from hidden cave systems to identify a number of new populations
in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first ones known in Montenegro. To
do so, they used a refined DNA technique that allows them to pinpoint
proteus DNA strands mixed among a myriad of other genetic material in water.
The technique also allowed them to detect proteus with a rarer black color in
southern Slovenia, and to double the known range of this variety.

Juvenile cave dragons have eyes, but they eventually regress during the amphibians'
development and are covered by a flap of skin. Still, they retain some sensitivity to
light. (Photo by Gergely Balzs, The Proteus Project)

Despite the threats they face, proteus numbers can be vast. Sessions tells a story
about biologists who were exploring some of the back recesses of the
massive Postojna Cavea famous Slovenian tourist attractionwhen they came
across an enormous underground cavern. They found this big lake with echoing,
dripping water; the only thing that was missing was Gollum, he says. The lakes
bottom was entirely white, but as they approached, the color suddenly dispersed.

It turned out that the bottom of the lake was completely carpeted with olms,
Sessions says. This gives you an idea of how many of these things are out
there.

Cave dragons sit atop a complex cave food chain, which includes cave shrimp,
spiders, arthropods, wood lice-type creatures and more. The predatory dragons
will eat almost anything that fits in their mouth, but that doesnt mean they always
have an appetite, due in part to a very low metabolism; Sessions says that some
researchers recently stumbled upon evidence that a captive individual had gone
for a decade without eating.

Sessions, who was not involved in Aljanis recent study, says the new eDNA
technique is a good way to detect proteus. This study is taking a really non-
invasive, non-destructive approach just sampling environmental water for
fingerprint DNA, he says. The technique is especially useful for finding proteus
genetic traces in water, Balzs adds. It can help in situations where murky water
makes it difficult for divers like him to see. If you are just banging your head into
rocks and you cant find the way, its not fun, he says. And you dont see the
animals either.

Science is all about the how and why, Balzs continued in a follow-up email.
We need to know how strong the population is. Are they healthy? Can we find
juveniles? ... We have no information what they do in real life, in nature. Its really
hard to observe.

So will Aljani and teams advances in using environmental DNA to detect

detection soon make cave diving obsolete? Not likely, says Balzs, who
was involved in a tagging study of the animals in 2015. After all, eDNA is a useful
and affordable tool, but it only gives biologists a rough idea of where there be
dragons. Divers still need to hunt them down.

To do so, Balzs has squeezed through nearly 50 cracks in the karst and
underwater tunnels, chimneys and caves in what he calls a labyrinth of
restriction of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the better part of 15 years. While cave
diving purely for the sake of exploration can be difficult, he says, cave diving to
search for proteus is even harder since the snake-like creatures can take refuge
in tiny, cracks in the rock difficult to access by humans.

Yet matter how much we find out about them, it's likely that cave dragons will still
fill us with mystery and wonder. They do nothing, says Balzs. They live in
strange places, not moving for years.