According to the
Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Erik Barnouw was born in
The Hague in the
Netherlands, the son of Adriaan (a history teacher), and Ann Eliza Barnouw (who tutored English). The Barnouws came to America in 1919, after the end of
World War I when his father became one of the editors of the
Weekly Review and later was the Queen Wilhelmina Professor at
Columbia University. Erik attended
Horace Mann School in New York City. Thereafter Barnouw attended
Princeton University where he was an editor of the
Nassau Literary Magazine. After the success of his play
Open Collars, which he wrote for Princeton's Theatre Intime and which spoofed undergraduate life at the university, Barnouw collaborated with
Joshua Logan on the
Princeton Triangle Club's musical play
Zuider Zee. In the spring of his junior year, he and fellow Princetonian
Bretaigne Windust, together with Harvard juniors Charles Crane Leatherbee and Kingsley Perry, contributed $100 each toward founding the
University Players, a summer stock company in
West Falmouth on
Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Over the course of five summers on Cape Cod and two winter seasons in
Baltimore, Maryland, the company gave the professional start to the acting careers of such future stars as
Margaret Sullavan,
Henry Fonda,
Joshua Logan,
Myron McCormick,
Kent Smith,
James Stewart, and
Mildred Natwick. Prior to becoming a professor at Columbia University in 1946, Barnouw spent the mid-1930s writing, producing, and directing a number of radio shows for the
CBS and
NBC radio networks. He also taught Writing for Radio at Columbia on a part-time basis. During
World War II he oversaw the
Armed Forces Radio Service's education division, based in Washington, D.C. He won a
Peabody Award in 1944, for a documentary series, "Words at War." In 1949, Barnouw worked with the
United States Public Health Service on the
V. D. Radio Project, a series of programs created to combat
syphilis. The V. D. Radio Project featured a variety of programming—PSAs, interviews with doctors and patients, soap operas, and "ballad dramas"—and enlisted the efforts a wide variety of famous men and women in producing those programs, including
Alan Lomax,
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,
Hank Williams Sr.,
Jinx Falkenburg, and
Henry Fonda. Barnouw was elected chairman of the
Writers Guild of America in 1957 and also served on the Board of Governors of the
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1978 he became chief of the
Library of Congress's newly created Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He is best known for his history of U.S. radio and television, a three volume series first published in 1966. Volume 1, "A Tower in Babel," covered radio until 1933; the second volume, "'The Golden Web," covered broadcasting until the 1950s; the final volume, "The Image Empire," discussed the rise and growth of television.
The New York Times Book Reviews (28 November 1971, p. BR 59) praised Barnouw's work as "continually readable and sharply observant." Written at the invitation of Oxford University Press, the three volume series "anchored his reputation as the foremost scholar of broadcasting." According to media historian Christopher H. Sterling, before the publication of this trilogy "broadcasting history was then largely restricted to a few popular picture books." Barnouw's publications "added hugely to the legitimacy of broadcasting as an academic subject for study, research, and teaching." He was a friend to the magician
John Mulholland. While in high school, Barnouw catalogued Mulholland's books on magic. Since 1983, the
Organization of American Historians has awarded the
Erik Barnouw Award for films about American history. In 2001, Barnouw died of an inoperable cancer in
Fair Haven, Vermont.
The New York Times quoted
Sheldon Meyer, his former editor at Oxford University Press, "...Barnouw had an eye for the scoundrels, and the fakes, and the dangerous people. His genius reached generations of Americans across the radio airwaves, on the television screen and in the classroom." Upon reading
Media Lost and Found, published only months before Barrow's death,
Ken Burns stated, "Barnouw is our keenest observer of the frighteningly complicated world of media. No one has seen more, no one sees more, no one understands more than Barnouw. I am a huge admirer." ==Selected writings==