Introduction Herbert J. Strentz’s doctoral dissertation, A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947–1966 (Northwestern University, 1970), remains one of the earliest substantial scholarly examinations of the UFO...
moreIntroduction
Herbert J. Strentz’s doctoral dissertation, A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947–1966 (Northwestern University, 1970), remains one of the earliest substantial scholarly examinations of the UFO phenomenon, viewed through the lenses of journalism, public communication, and institutional behavior during the Cold War.
Written at the close of the United States Air Force’s Project Blue Book period and during the final years of the University of Colorado UFO Project, directed by physicist Edward U. Condon, the dissertation emerged from a unique historical moment when public fascination with “flying saucers” intersected with scientific controversy, military secrecy, media sensationalism, and growing public concern about institutional credibility.
As Strentz explained in the dissertation’s preface, the project emerged from several intersecting concerns: the lack of an organized or trustworthy body of literature on UFO press coverage; widespread public awareness of the phenomenon; and persistent criticism of news reporting from both skeptics, who accused the media of manufacturing the “flying saucer” phenomenon, and researchers such as J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald, who believed the press had trivialized and mishandled serious reports. Partially supported by the University of Colorado UFO Project, the dissertation was begun independently before the Colorado study was organized in 1966. It sought to analyze these tensions systematically rather than ideologically.
Strentz also served as a research assistant with the University of Colorado UFO Project and is acknowledged in Appendix X of the final Condon Report. However, his own research pursued a somewhat different line of inquiry than the Colorado study's predominantly physical-science orientation. Rather than focusing primarily on the ontological status of UFO reports, Strentz examined the social, journalistic, and institutional dimensions of the controversy itself.
Trained as a journalist and later a longtime professor and dean of journalism at Drake University, Strentz approached the UFO controversy neither as a partisan advocate nor as a dismissive skeptic. Instead, he examined how newspapers, wire services, government agencies, scientists, and the public collectively shaped the social reality surrounding unidentified flying objects from 1947 to 1966. His broader work in journalism and media studies included News Reporters and News Sources, a study later published internationally by the United States Information Agency.
The dissertation was unusual for its time, both in scope and methodology. Drawing on extensive newspaper and wire-service analysis, public opinion surveys, Air Force records, interviews, and statistical content analysis, Strentz explored questions that now seem strikingly contemporary: the role of ridicule in shaping witness testimony, the relationship between media framing and public belief, how military institutions manage anomalous information, and the tension between scientific uncertainty and public curiosity.
Long before contemporary discussions of UAPs, stigma, and institutional transparency entered mainstream discourse, Strentz recognized that the UFO controversy encompassed far more than unexplained aerial reports. It also exposed important tensions within modern systems of communication, authority, and public trust.
What distinguishes the dissertation even today is its restraint. Strentz neither sensationalized nor dismissed his subject. Instead, he treated the UFO phenomenon as a historically and sociologically significant episode in modern American culture, one worthy of careful, methodical study. In doing so, he anticipated later scholarship in media studies, sociology, Cold War studies, and the history of information systems.
In later years, Strentz reflected with characteristic humility on some of the limitations of early UFO research, while also recalling how much he had genuinely enjoyed the intellectual experience of engaging the subject during a uniquely formative moment in American media and Cold War history.
The dissertation also documents an important transitional moment in UFO research history, linking the early Air Force investigations of Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book with the more academically oriented inquiries that emerged in the late 1960s. Its discussions of press coverage, institutional policy, witness credibility, and public information management remain valuable to researchers interested not only in UFO history but also in the broader relationship among media, government, uncertainty, and modern public culture.
Related materials include a later pedagogical compilation prepared by Strentz for classroom use, Reading Notes and Selected Chapters from A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947–1966 (compiled after 1995), and a 2019 oral history interview conducted by Thomas Tulien and Jan Aldrich for the Sign Oral History Project.
— Thomas Tulien
