History News Network

• 1. Introduction

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  History News Network, usually shortened to HNN, is an online platform where historians comment on current events. Its stated aim is to take today's news and place it in a historical perspective. A headline rarely arrives with its backstory attached, and this site exists to supply that missing context. The listener may wonder who decided that working historians needed a public stage of their own. They may also wonder what happens when a site built on expert judgment invites its readers to vote on the worst history books ever published. And there is a quieter question about how a website lives on after its founder steps away, and which institutions end up keeping it running.

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• 2. The Founder's Network

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  Richard Shenkman is the author of Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History, and he founded the network. That book title hints at the temperament behind the site, a fondness for puncturing comfortable stories about the past. HNN is a non-profit corporation registered in Washington, D.C. Shenkman served as its editor until his retirement in 2019. Tony Field is the managing editor. Murray Polner was the long-time book editor, which put one person in charge of the reviews that give the network its bookish flavor. HNN also sponsored several history-oriented blogs. One was Liberty and Power, coordinated by David T. Beito. Another was written by Jim Loewen. Those blogs gave individual historians a regular place to argue their cases. The network's most memorable stunt, though, involved no blog at all.

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• 3. The Worst Books Contest

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  In 2012, HNN marked Independence Day with a contest to pick the worst books about American history ever published. It was an unusual way to celebrate a national holiday. The nominees were a mixed and provocative lot. They included David Barton's The Jefferson Lies and Michael Bellesiles's Arming America. They also included Gavin Menzies's 1421: The Year China Discovered America, and Richard G. Williams's 2006 book Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States made the list too. Over 1000 HNN readers took part in the vote. The nod went to Barton and Zinn, two authors whose politics and methods differ sharply. The result showed that readers were willing to judge history books by their own standards, not just accept a historian's verdict.

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• 4. A Website Changes Hands

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  George Mason University first hosted HNN. In 2017 the network moved to George Washington University. Shenkman's retirement in 2019 marked a turning point, because the George Washington University Department of History then assumed full responsibility for operating and editing the site. That arrangement lasted until December 2023, when the University of Richmond acquired History News Network. The university folded it into its Digital Humanities ecosystem, which is why Richmond is now named as the host. The vehicle for that integration is a public history project tool called Bunk, and it ties a site born around news commentary to a broader effort to bring history to a general audience.

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