History Division Mentorship Program – Deadline June 15

The AEJMC History Division is pleased to once again offer its mentorship program this year and we’re seeking participants. Prior mentors and mentees have found the program highly beneficial, with many choosing to continue their relationships informally after their year has ended. The program is very loosely structured. It’s up to the mentee and mentor to determine what works best for them.

If you’re looking for help with your teaching (ex: assignment ideas, classroom management tips, prepping a new class), research (ex: what journals/conferences to target, feedback on a potential journal/conference submission), or career (ex: tenure & promotion, searching for jobs, work/life balance), sign up as a mentee. Whether you’re a grad student, assistant professor, associate professor, or other, our division’s mentorship program is open to you.

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Palmer (University of Wisconsin) Wins 2025 Covert Award

Headshot of Dr. Catherine L. Covert

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) congratulates Dr. Lindsay Palmer (University of Wisconsin-Madison) as winner of the annual Covert Award for best mass communication history article, essay, or book chapter published in the previous year.

The award memorializes Dr. Catherine L. Covert (right), professor of journalism at Syracuse University, the first woman professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the AEJMC History Division, in 1975.
Dr. Covert died in 1983. The award has been presented annually since 1985.

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A Word from the Chair: May 2025

A headshot of Brian Creech
Dr. Brian Creech

I’m writing this on the last day of exams, before graduation here at Lehigh, and am struck by just how much has happened this year. First off, my gratitude to a fantastic leadership team and to our membership for remaining a dynamic, supportive, and generally fantastic scholarly community.

As the summer starts, we usually spend time catching up on things, usually responsibilities, that need to be done. But, as you close the book on this year, I’ll ask you to start thinking about next year, and how you might like to give back to AEJMC, the History Division, and your broader scholarly community.

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

Portraits of Drs. Gwyneth Mellinger and Ying Qian
Drs. Gwyneth Mellinger and Ying Qian

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected two books as winners of its award honoring the best journalism and mass communication history book published in 2024.

The two books are Dr. Gwyneth Mellinger’s Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024) and Dr. Ying Qian’s Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia University Press, 2024).

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

Headshot of Dr. Janice Hume
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

Catherine L. Covert
Catherine L. Covert

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.

Head shot of Kim Voss
Kim Voss

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 headshot of Brian Creech

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

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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