AEJMC History Division Announces Book Award Winners: Gwyneth Mellinger and Ying Qian

AEJMC History Division announces Janice Hume as winner of 2025 Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award

Dr. Janice Hume

March 26, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication has selected Dr. Janice Hume as the 2025 recipient of the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award. A prolific and accomplished scholar whose work has focused on journalism history and public memory, Dr. Hume is currently the associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she has taught since 2001 and holds the Don E. Carter Chair for Excellence in Journalism.

Established in 2020, the Shaw award honors a scholar who has a record of excellence in media history that has spanned a minimum of 15 years, including division membership. It is named in honor of the pioneering journalism theoretician, distinguished journalism historian and former head of the History Division, who taught for almost half of a century at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

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2025 Covert Award Call for Submissions

AEJMC’s History Division announces the 41st annual competition for the Covert Award in Mass Communication History for entries published in 2024.

The Covert Award recognizes the author of the best mass communication history article or essay published in the previous year. Book chapters in edited collections published in the previous year are also eligible. The AEJMC History Division has presented the award annually since 1985.

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Mentorship Q&A: Kim Voss and Josie Vine

Kim Voss (Professor, University of Central Florida) and Josie Vine (Senior Lecturer, RMIT University, Australia) are current participants in the History Division’s mentorship program, which pairs junior scholars with a senior scholar mentor who can offer advice and support on all aspects of academic life, from teaching to research to work/life balance. Voss and Vine discuss the benefits of the program in this Q+A.

Why did you decide to apply to participate in the mentorship program?

Voss: I decided to participate because I have had such good mentors. I now appreciate helping others. This is my third year in the program and I have enjoyed each experience. It’s been a great reminder of the joys and challenges from previous years. I look forward to the emails and phone calls.

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A Word from the Chair: March 2025

There’s a lot going on, no? I was in a meeting during the second week of the semester with other department chairs and our provost to talk specifically about all the ongoing threats to higher education, and the provost ended the meeting blithely remarking that that the chaos of the past several weeks felt eerily like the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that many of our junior colleagues have largely only known the ebb and flow of chaos over the past several years. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the role of professional organizations, like AEJMC, and the stability and community we have strived to cultivate in the division, especially over the past several years. Successive leaders and officers in the division have worked to sharpen the focus on diverse experiences in media history in our conference programming and in our publications while also clarifying the value engaging with the division offers. As our campuses reckon with whatever instability the future brings, as administrators strategize about the language they may use to refocus academic missions away from DEI, as they make hard decisions about budgets in the face of changes to the federal funding landscape, I remain hopeful for the way scholarly community can provide a sense of stability and that the ongoing work of producing and evaluating knowledge continues.

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MICROGRANT WINNERS SELECTED FOR JOURNALISM HISTORY AND AMERICAN JOURNALISM DIVERSITY RESEARCH

Five media historians will receive funding supporting their research related to diversity and media history. The microgrants are sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s History Division and the American Journalism Historians Association. It’s a collaborative effort to stimulate more diversity research in their journals, Journalism History and American Journalism.

“The microgrants program reflects a unified commitment by our journals to support the unearthing and amplification of underrecognized voices and experiences from media history,” said Journalism History’s Editor Perry Parks. “The more of these stories we are able to tell, the richer all of our histories will be.”

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JOURNALISM HISTORY ANNOUNCES MAURINE BEASLEY AS 2025 REILLY AWARD WINNER

Maurine Beasley, Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, is the 2025 Reilly Award Winner. Beasley was selected for her long, dedicated service to Journalism History, and in particular her many years as an article reviewer.

The Reilly Award is named after Tom Reilly, Journalism History’s founding editor. Previously, the award had been given to the most downloaded article on the journal’s website. With the academic publishing model evolving, Journalism History’s Publications Committee decided to change the award’s focus to the unsung heroes of the publication process: the reviewers. Without reviewers, academic publishing would not work. They receive no payment and put in hours of work for each article.

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AEJMC HISTORY DIVISION ANNOUNCES BAILEY DICK IS 2025 SWEENEY AWARD WINNER

Bailey G. Dick of Bowling Green State University has won the 2025 Michael S. Sweeney Award for her article, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Women: Benevolent Sexism in Historical Studies of Women Journalists, 1974–2023.”

The Sweeney Award, presented by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), recognizes the outstanding article published in the previous volume of the scholarly journal Journalism History. The Division’s Publications Committee selected the article from among five finalists provided by Journalism History’s current Editor Perry Parks and immediate past Editor Pam Parry. In addition to receiving a plaque and cash prize, Dick will be honored during the History Division’s awards gala at this year’s AEJMC conference in San Francisco.

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Research Q&A: Seven Questions with Lisa Burns and Teri Finneman

Names: Lisa Burns and Teri Finneman

University Affiliations: Quinnipiac University, University of Kansas

Research Focus: U.S. First Ladies

1. What is the primary focus or central question (s) of your history research? Explain.

Lisa Burns, associate professor of media studies, Quinnipiac University

Lisa: My motivation is recovering the stories of women whose contributions have been either minimized in our collective memory or forgotten entirely. This often happens with presidential spouses. I was excited to work with Teri on The Cambridge Companion To U.S. First Ladies because we’re taking a different approach to telling these women’s stories. Instead of the typical biographical approach focusing on individual women, this book is a collection of thematic essays examining the first lady institution and the political, social, and cultural influence of the women who’ve served in this role. The result is a more nuanced understanding of how these women have built upon each other’s work to shape the first lady institution and the expectations associated with the position.

Teri: Lisa and I are very focused on public education with our work. We created this book knowing we would do a fair share of speaking about it to the general public. Also, I created a podcast called The First Ladies to tie into the book for that reason. There is a strong niche audience for first ladies and presidential studies, so a key focus was creating content that they would find new and interesting to learn.

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Award Call: Jinx Coleman Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History

The Broussard Award, presented annually, honors innovative, original, tested, and transformative teaching of media and/or journalism history. Applicants for the award may submit one of the following types of pedagogical approaches, including (but not limited to): entire courses, units, individual lessons, classroom activities, assignments, assessments, and/or teaching strategies.

Teaching ideas should be original, tested, and transformative pedagogies that have been used by the author. In alignment with the Division’s belief in the importance of teaching journalism/media history across the curriculum, submissions can include ideas used either in a course dedicated entirely to media and journalism history, or as part of other courses in media and journalism. The teaching idea should be transferrable, in that it can used by other instructors or institutions and should help instructors address one or more of the following concepts: diversity, collaboration, community, or justice.

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