Essay

Below is a list of 50 individuals who have had a profound impact both American culture and its media. Your assignment is to choose one of them as the topic for your POPC 1650 research essay. You are not limited to only those people listed here. If you choose to pick another subject, however, it must be approved by the Instructor.

1. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

2. Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)

3. Philo Farnsworth (Electronic TV)

4. John L. Baird (Electronic TV)

5. David Sarnoff (Radio/TV)

6. William R. Hearst (Newspapers)

7. Guglielmo Marconi (Radio)

8. William Paley (CBS)

9. Lee DeForest (Radio)

10. Edwin Armstrong (Radio)

11. D.W. Griffith (Cinema)

12. Shawn Fanning (Napster)

13. Winklevoss Twins (Facebook)

14. Edwin S. Porter (Cinema)

15. Reed Hastings (Nexflix)

16. Tom Anderson (Myspace)

17. Biz Stone (Twitter)

18. Steve Jobs (Apple)

19. Bill Gates (Microsoft)

20. Rupert Murdoch (Fox)

21. Walt Disney

22. Edward R. Murrow (Journalism)

23. Walter Cronkite (Journalism)

24. Alexander G. Bell (Telephone)

25. Samuel Morse (Telegraph)

26. Thomas Edison

27. Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google)

28. John Lasseter (Pixar)

29. George Lucas

30. Elvis Presley

31. Norman Lear (TV)

32. Joan Ganz Cooney (TV)

33. Mary Pickford (Film)

34. Al Neuharth (USA Today)

35. Ted Turner (CNN)

36. Dorothy Day (Journalism)

37. Helen Gurley Brown (Journalism)

38. Hedda Hopper (Journalism)

39. J.K. Rowling (Literature)

40. Stan Lee (Comics)

41. Siegel & Shuster (Comics)

42. Gloria Steinem (Journalism)

43. Julian Assange (Wikileaks)

44. Henry Luce (Time Magazine)

45. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)

46. Spike Lee (Cinema)

47. Woodward & Bernstein (Journalism)

48. Lucille Ball (TV)

49. Gordon Parks (Cinema/Photography)

50. Margaret Bourke-White (Photography)