Not so surprisingly, as one might think, the History Channel chose a bestselling novelist and award-winning comic book author, Brad Meltzer, rather than a traditional historian to host its investigation television series Decoded. In the show, Meltzer and his team of intrepid investigators; Scott Rolle, a U.S. Army Reserves Major and trial attorney, Buddy Levy, an English professor and journalist, and Christine McKinley, a mechanical engineer, crisscross the country with Mission Impossible-esque continuity to uncover “the truth behind history’s most provocative secrets”.

As New York Times writer Ginia Bellfante noted in her mostly negative review of the show’s mix of education and entertainment; “The best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer leads a team of investigators in exploring mysteries of American history - 'Decoded', though, at least returns the History Channel to history”. Her comment immediately brought to mind another history medium, George Mason University's web-based History News Network [HNN] and its sounds-like-Shakespeare slogan, “Because the past is the present, and the future, too." [The Bard of Avon, of course, wrote in Act 2, Scene 1 of The Tempest the words “What’s past is prologue”].

Rediscovery Is Not Always Welcomed

Less than a decade ago, HNN, claiming that “We have a responsibility to the history-reading public beyond our guild” played host to what it labeled the HNN Debate: The Lincoln Murder Mystery, that in many ways, came across as a combination of an Old West-type trial held in a saloon and a KKK-style backwoods lynching of Len Guttridge and Ray Neff, the authors of Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians and Booth Conspirators that led to Lincoln’s Death. Appearing on their behalf was Dr. David E. Vancil, Department Head and Librarian, Rare Books and Special Collections, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, which is the repository for the Neff-Guttridge Collection of the Lincoln Era, the documentation Messrs. Guttridge and Neff based their book upon.