As the current president of the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA), Ross Collins of North Dakota State University has long dedicated himself to the advancement of journalism history and stressed its importance to university journalism and communications programs. In his position as president, he has worked to raise the profile of AJHA and encourage more journalism history scholarship.

Recently, Ross provided insight into his approach to journalism history, offered advice for junior faculty members, and explained why all journalism historians need to think internationally.

Q: What is the most recent historical research project you have worked on?

A: I took a look at American volunteers during World War I who served in France before the United States joined the war. Because I’m a journalism historian I was particularly interested in how the French press used these Americans as a propaganda tool to boost morale.

Q: How did you come to your area of scholarship?

A: I began as many of our members did—I was a professional journalist. But I also had a minor in French and a master’s in European cultural history, emphasizing French and German history at the beginning of the last century. When I decided to try for a Ph.D., I thought, why not combine all those? My Ph.D. was in French history, emphasizing journalism.

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By Erika Pribanic-Smith, History Division Chair, University of Texas-Arlington, epsmith@uta.edu

The History Division has had a busy year, and the incoming leadership aims to continue the momentum we’ve built. To that end, the membership has a lot to discuss during our annual member business meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Aug. 9 at the AEJMC conference in Toronto.

To make sure meeting attendees have enough time for discussion, the meeting format will be different from what we have done in recent years. For one, we will not have a lengthy recap of the previous year’s activities. Although we view the work we’ve done as important and we are proud of what we have accomplished, we have done so much that we simply do not have time to go over everything in detail. Instead, after voting on whether to approve last year’s minutes, I will give a brief summary of the highlights to start the meeting. Those interested in the full review of our activities are encouraged to read the 18-page (single-spaced) annual report that we submitted to AEJMC Headquarters. Clicking this link will download the report as a PDF. We also will have a few copies available in Toronto.

Next on the agenda, the membership will discuss several items up for a vote.

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W. Joseph Campbell (American University) presented research in May at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in Toronto. Campbell’s presentation, “Myths of Political Polling,” addressed such misperceptions as the notion that pollsters ended their fieldwork weeks before the “Dewey defeats Truman” election of 1948 and that the Literary Digest‘s demise was caused by the magazine’s failed polling about the 1936 election.

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Elisabeth Fondren (Louisiana State University) will be joining St. John’s University in New York as an assistant professor of journalism in September 2019. 

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By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, rlgrant6@gmail.com

AEJMC History Division member Carrie Teresa, an assistant professor and chair in Communication and Media Studies at Niagara University, recently authored Looking at the Stars: Black Celebrity Journalism in Jim Crow America, and we recently had a chance to chat with her about the process of researching and co-authoring this thought-provoking manuscript.

Q: Describe the focus of your book. 

A: Looking at the Stars focuses on an analysis of the entertainment pages of Black press weeklies from 1900 to 1940. It charts the development of celebrity reporting in those pages, and it analyzes the discourse journalists used to discuss famous black performers in theatre, radio, film, and sports. The book argues that early Black celebrities fulfilled three important social functions. First, they constituted what ordinary black citizens deemed “positive representations” of the race, though that definition changed by decade and, I think, continues to evolve today. Second, they worked tirelessly to give back to the communities from which they emerged. And finally, they proudly defined black identity on its own terms, confronting and dismantling racist ideologies along the way. Ultimately, the book argues that early coverage of the popular culture celebrities of the Black press set the stage for the work of modern “entertainer-activists” such as Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and Colin Kaepernick.

Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?

A: This work began as my dissertation project for Temple’s Media and Communication program. My interest in the Black press was first sparked in Carolyn Kitch’s Journalism History course, and my interest in celebrity culture and representation developed after I watched Ken Burns’s documentary on the first Black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, called Unforgiveable Blackness. Johnson’s position as a polarizing celebrity in the early 1900s prompted me to think about how other Black celebrities might have been framed as representations (or not) of the race, especially against the backdrop of rapidly changing technological, political, and social conditions during the early twentieth century.

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Where you work: I’m an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Whitworth University, where I’ve been since 2015. From 2009 to 2015, I taught in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

Where you got your Ph.D.: Indiana University (2009). I received my M.A. from the University of Utah in 1993. In between those two degrees, I was working in journalism before being drawn back to academia.

Current favorite class: Definitely my Media History course. I also enjoy teaching International Media Systems, a class that allows me to tap into my passion for talking to students about journalism across borders.

Current research project: I have recently wrapped up a research project on the German-American press during World War I (article forthcoming). I am now exploring my next direction in my research areas of history of foreign-language journalism and Cold War-era journalism.

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