PORTLAND, Maine — It was while teaching journalism to college students in China, a nation notorious for its suppression of the free flow of information and ideas, that Ken Ellingwood was inspired to write a book about a crusader for a free press.
“Elijah Lovejoy came up during a segment on the press and the anti-slavery movement,” Ellingwood writes in his new book, “First to Fall.” “My students were fascinated and moved by the story of Lovejoy—a white newspaper editor on the American frontier of the 1830s who insistently raised his pen against slavery and, when enemies circled, raised it again to defend his right to print.” Lovejoy’s unyielding views enraged pro-slavery readers, and he would become the first journalist in the U.S. to be killed for his work.
Ellingwood felt a certain kinship with his subject. Like Lovejoy, he grew up in rural Maine and went into journalism, working as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, San Diego, Mexico City and Jerusalem. The rights and responsibilities of a vigorous press are not something he takes lightly. “I’ve worked as a journalist in countries where the press isn’t free, where there’s censorship, where journalists are killed or jailed, where there isn’t this notion that of course we have the right to publish what we want. It’s one of the things that makes America an ideal, a model around the world.”
The idea that a free press is worth fighting for is why the story of Elijah Lovejoy still resonates. “But I also want to remind Americans,” Ellingwood says, “that freedom of the press didn’t pop out of the box fully cooked. It wasn’t made at the time of the founders. It had to be fought for and expanded, and Lovejoy is an example of the sacrifices made.”