How to organize your J387 History’s Truths paper Fall 2006

Three sections would correspond nicely to the grading criteria:

1. The interview

2. The documents (newspaper and magazine coverage)

3. Analysis (the comparisons between the interviewee’s memories and the actual coverage)

Subheads would be very useful, not only because it will help the reader but also because it will help you organize your thoughts.

The best way to start your paper is with a description of your interview. Make it interesting! Be conversational but not slangy. Use first person; it’s okay for you to be in the “story” as long as the story is about someone else. Make sure to include all the relevant dates, names and ages.

Next, describe your documents—the other “historical evidence” about the event.

Finally, compare and contrast what you found talking to your interviewee and what you found in the documents. You may not have a perfect match; that’s okay. Your interviewee may have remembered everything perfectly, and that’s okay too! Do your best to analyze your own research experience and to suggest how it might apply to historical research in general.

Here are some hypothetical examples of how your paper might be organized: Remember, because this is written for HTML, the presentation style is different from what you will need to use in your paper (Double space, indented first line, no extra space between paragraphs, 12-point type, etc. See the instructions. and your MLA Stylebook.)

The interview

[Example 1.]

When my grandfather was 38, the United States sent men to the moon. He remembers every detail of the landing itself, which he watched on television along with millions of others around the world on July 21, 1969. Because of what he saw, he sold his business and became a television news reporter.

My grandfather’s name is John Edward Beauchamp, and he is 73 years old. He is my mother’s dad and in 1969, their family lived in Indiana. He had a photography studio there, so naturally he was very interested in the pictures from the moon landing ….

When the newspapers came out the next day, Grandpa said, the photographs were a big disappointment. When I interviewed him by e-mail on Jan. 13, he told me that he ….

[Example 2.]

On December 3, 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard did the world’s first successful heart transplant surgery in South Africa. The surgery was very big news in the United States, especially to Lenore Stephenson, my mother’s closest friend.

In our family, we called her Aunt Nora. She is now 63 years old and she had a successful heart transplant herself 15 years ago. She was born with a heart defect, and she says she knew even back then that her heart would not last forever. When I interviewed her on Jan. 16 by telephone, Aunt Nora told me that she went out to dinner near her house in Fresno, California, to celebrate the big news after she heard about it on television. Even when Dr. Barnard’s patient died 18 days after the surgery, Aunt Nora was still excited. She remembers ….

The documents

[Example 1.]

The moon landing was the biggest news in the world on July 21, 1969. For my first document, I looked at The New York Times for July 22, 1969. The front page of the New York Times had three stories on the front page but only one small photograph. The stories emphasized the scientific achievement of the moon landing and ….

My grandfather doesn’t remember seeing The New York Times on that day; he thinks he probably saw the pictures in the Indianapolis Star. However, the pictures were exactly the same in all the newspapers because they were taken from NASA, so I will use The New York Times for my analysis ….

For my second document, I looked at TIME Magazine. The pictures in TIME were ….

[Example 2.]

For my first document, I looked at the newspaper coverage in the Los Angeles Times, because that newspaper was very popular in California. The story of the heart transplant was on Page 1 at the bottom. There was only one story on the surgery and it didn’t talk about how other people might be excited to get their own heart transplants in the future….

For magazine coverage, I looked at LIFE magazine for the week of December 15, 1967. A picture of Dr. Barnard and the patient was on the front cover and there was a long story inside that described ….

Analysis

[Example 1.]

It was very interesting to compare my grandfather’s memories of the photos of the moon landing to the actual photos that appeared in the newspapers and magazines. There were differences between the news coverage and his personal recollections, including the kinds of photographs. This doesn't mean that one version of the event is necessarily more valid than another, but it does show how perceptions of historical "truth" can be differ among different people who were alive at the same time.

This project also has given me a better understanding of how “big” events can affect everyday people. The media didn’t cover my grandfather’s decision to change jobs, but it was a huge event in his life ….

[Example 2.]

When I looked at the news coverage of the first heart transplant surgery, I was surprised to find that it didn’t contain stories about people like Aunt Nora. Most of the stories focused on the medical technology and such….

From talking to Aunt Nora, I have learned that historians also need to listen to the stories of people whose lives were changed …..