Alex WellersteinVerified account

I thought my footnotes amounted to due diligence, but I never gave much thought to how many names get cut by the time the show airs. Clearly, I should have. 8/17

We historicize the news. When I write these preps, my thoughts are haunted by the people affected by those news stories. I thought of our listeners when I wrote those preps, because I believe public history is a powerful tool for advancing justice and equality in our world. 9/17

But now we are a news story, and it brings home the fact that there needs to be justice for historians too. The academy, the media, and the broader public history realm need to develop a common consensus and code for citing scholarship across platforms. 10/17

This will not be a simple process. To be effective, it will need to cross professions. Those professions currently have different standards, in part because they have different goals and histories. 11/17

It will also be difficult because - there are a lot of historians! This was a clear-cut case because Dr. Milov’s work was central. But sometimes the preps I write cite twenty historians for a segment that gets whittled down to >10 minutes. 12/17

These historians don’t all come from academia. I also draw on public scholarship written by archivists and museum professionals. They deserve credit too. I myself have done primary source work for BackStory, and you won’t hear my name on air either. 13/17

I could easily see the common consensus becoming a citation of the “biggest” book when we talk generally about broad topics like Reconstruction. But the most famous books are more likely to be written by privileged members of the academy. 14/17

Furthermore, history books themselves are actually a reflection of hundreds of other scholars, the community of ideas we draw upon. So how do we also honor the work of historians who don’t get big book deals? Historians who aren't in the academy? 15/17