History and the New Media

Rob Townsend's Clio Wired Home Page

Assignment 1

A Review of Hi$toryChannel.com

History Channel.com (http://www.historychannel.com) Created and maintained by the History Channel (a Division of Arts and Entertainment Television). Reviewed September 9, 2001-September 12, 2001

A year ago staff at the History Channel told me they aspired to make their web site a portal for history. By that measure the History Channel.com is a failure. As it now stands, the site only provides a sad example of the corporatization of history, by largely avoiding controversial topics and judgments, devoting most of its resources to military history, and subordinating good design judgement to dubious business decisions.

Figure 1: Busy-ness in pursuit of business

As Figure 1 demonstrates, the home page suffers from an overly busy 4-column layout, which makes it difficult to quickly identify the general organization of the page. Exacerbating this problem, the photo for “This Day in History” is the only graphic element on the page that isn't there to serve as a sales tool. The supremacy of corporate interests over the interests of history and the reader are typified by the decision to allow the History Channel's own logo (in the upper right) to be dwarfed by a banner ad for credit cards.  And the close connection between the topics listed and items for sale provides a clear indication of why the site's designers felt compelled to cram so many links onto the front page. As a result of these decisions, it takes the first-time viewer some time just to orient themselves in the home page.

Once oriented, it quickly becomes apparent that the the topical selection is largely devoted to boys and their toys—six of the 22 topical areas on the home page are devoted to war, two others are devoted to crime and violence, and another is dedicated to automotive history. All but three of the rest are devoted to the promotion of shows on the network. Whatever aspirations they might have had to provide a portal site have now clearly been subverted to a narrow audience and the commercial interests of the network.

Figure 2: The link to the "exhibit" on women's history takes the reader to this site, which refers to Women's History Month (in March) in the present tense.

This neglect of historical topics beyond a narrow band of subjects extends throughout the site. At first glance, the section of “exhibits” seems to offer a wider view of past—only 7 of the 37 sections were devoted to military topics and there are specific links to sections on women, African Americans, and sex. However, these links lack any real depth. The link for women’s history, for instance, only takes the reader to a page celebrating Women’s History Month six months ago (Figure 2). Similarly, the “exhibit” on sex is essentially a promotion for their video on the topic, with only a few links to related topics and external sites. The only link with a substantive scholarly component goes to a sophisticated (though dated) essay on homosexuality by John D’Emilio, which is reprinted from the 1991 Reader's Companion to American History. The neglect in these sections stands in sharp contrast contrast to the attention devoted to military topics, which show substantial effort by a large team of writers and graphic artists.  The section on Pearl Harbor, for instance, offers a wide variety of maps, graphics of the event, sound and video clips from political and military leaders, and deeply layered pages describing the event in detail.

The electronic discussion forums on the web site clearly reflect the biases of the larger site. Their discussions on “war” (with individual lists for most major conflicts) have elicited 161,398 messages over the past two years, compared to just 17,419 messages for the discussions on “world” history (with undifferentiated lists for Asia, Africa, Middle East, C. and S. America, and Europe). Given the limited offerings on the site, it is difficult to imagine why a reader with wider interests would come to the site, much less feel engaged enough to offer an opinion.

Quite apart from the problems in topical selection, the type of history does little to engage the reader beyond their most prurient interests. Given the emphasis on serving its audience, it comes as no surprise that the site does little to challenge a readers’ presuppositions or worldview. With only a few exceptions—which  could only be accessed through the site search utility—the history contained on History Channel.com offers little interpretation, and only rudimentary assessments of causality. The scholarship of the past 25 years is essentially absent from the site, as they focus on large events and specific individuals (either great or simply unusual) and leave larger issues and trends off to the side.

And for a site devoted to history, it proves remarkably present minded, as well. This is particularly evident in the “This Day in History” portion of the site, which is given particular prominence on the home page. Each item, offers a focused description of a particular event in history in about 700 words. However, a review of the past month’s “General Interest” selections betrays a TV news producer’s view of history. One-third of the items were about events that have occurred within the past thirty years, and almost half occurred within the lived experience of the Baby Boom generation. And in keeping with their limited view of what is important in history, more than a third of the events dealt with military topics, and another third dealt with the deaths of celebrities or military figures.

Even where these essays touch on other topics—such as passage of the 19th Amendment, or King’s “I Have A Dream” speech—the journalistic inclinations of the site’s designers undermine their value as a springboard to historical exploration. The essays are written as if from contemporaneous newspaper articles with little context and almost no information that could not be attached to a specific date. In the essay on the 19th Amendment, for instance, the movement for women’s suffrage is essentially reduced to a string of meetings and resolutions. Given the centrality of this section to the site, it is particularly disappointing that the items reviewed provide the reader with little or no occasion to think more deeply about the subject. The absence of any citations—or even suggestions for further reading—reinforce this problem, by offering no guidance to those who would like to explore the topic further.

In the end, this oversight suggests the problems with the entire site. By failing to dig deeper, focus more widely, and challenge the reader to explore these topics in greater depth, the site is simply a squandered opportunity. But for those with a serious interest in history, the site provides a valuable reminder of the doleful effects of placing the pursuit of money over the pursuit of history.