By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Mike Conway’s (Indiana University) book, Contested Ground: The Tunnel and the Struggle Over Television News in Cold War America has won the 2020 Library of American Broadcasting Foundation Broadcast Historian Award. Conway will be receiving the award and talking about the book at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) annual conference in Las Vegas in April.
Continue readingBy Perry Parks, Membership Co-Chair, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu
Matt Cecil
Where you work: Minnesota State University, Mankato is a 15,000-student regional comprehensive university about an hour southwest of the Twin Cities.
Where you got your Ph.D.: I received my Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in 2000. #GoHawks!
Current favorite class: I currently serve as Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs here, so unfortunately, I’m no longer in the classroom. I have been an administrator for the past 11 years, serving in positions ranging from department head to dean to provost. My favorite class was the large lecture survey course I taught every semester from 2000 to 2015, Introduction to Mass Communication.
Continue readingBy Erika Pribanic-Smith, Past Chair, University of Texas-Arlington, epsmith@uta.edu
The AEJMC History Division is starting the second year of its Mentorship Program, intended to provide practical advice to our members by connecting them with more experienced members of the division.
Continue readingBy Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Dr. Kevin Lerner, an assistant professor of Communication/Journalism at Marist College, wrote a book titled Provoking the Press: (MORE) Magazine and the Crisis of Confidence in American Journalism.
Q: Describe the focus of your book.
A: Provoking the Press: (MORE) Magazine and the Crisis of Confidence in American Journalism examines the last real challenge to the ideal of objectivity among the mainstream American press in the 1970s. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Women’s Liberation, the student free speech movement, and youth culture in general began to erode confidence in the institutions of American life, and the press was among these. Amid this turmoil, a young Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist named Tony Lukas began to question whether or not the institutional pose of objectivity could adequately cover everything that was going on. He founded the journalism review (MORE) with his friend Dick Pollak and William Woodward, who brought the money to support this new magazine. (MORE) covered American journalism from 1971 to 1978, pushing back on many of the assumptions of the hidebound institutional press. (MORE) pushed these institutions to adapt to new cultural and political atmospheres, and at the same time chronicled the rise of the corporate press that would dominate the 1980s. Provoking the Press tells the story of this group of journalists, their often funny, often angry journalism review, and the “Counter-Conventions” they held a half dozen times in the seventies, which drew names such as David Halberstam, Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, Katharine Graham, Mike Wallace, and Carl Bernstein. It is a book about the power (and limits) of press criticism to change the practices of journalism, and also one about alternatives to the dominant model of journalism in the U.S.
Continue readingBy Teri Finneman, Chair, University of Kansas, teri.finneman@ku.edu
It’s officially halftime in my time as your chair, so I wanted to recap the division initiatives that have occurred in the past six months.
Our primary goal has been to vastly improve our outreach to key target audiences this year. Here is a breakdown of what we’ve been working on:
Continue readingCampaign Brief: Why Journalism History Matters
The clients: The AEJMC History Division and American Journalism Historians Association.
Founded in 1966, the History Division is primarily comprised of nearly 300 journalism and communication professors who conduct research related to the history of mass communication, including the newspaper industry, the broadcast industry, photojournalism, advertising, and public relations. https://aejmc.us/history/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AEJHistory Journal: https://journalism-history.org/ Podcast: https://journalismhistorypodcast.podbean.com/
Founded in 1981, the American Journalism Historians Association seeks to advance education and research in mass communication history. Through its annual convention, regional conferences, committees, awards, speakers, and publications, members work to raise historical standards and ensure that all scholars and students recognize the vast importance of media history and apply this knowledge to the advancement of society. https://ajha.wildapricot.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJHAsocial Journal: http://www.american-journalism.org/
The problem: Journalism schools increasingly do not believe that journalism history classes are relevant or necessary. Students accustomed to social media and cellphones tend to think that history is boring or not applicable to their lives.
Continue readingBy Ashley Walter, Ph.D. student at the Pennsylvania State University
Ohio University professor, Marilyn Greenwald, began her journalism career in the late 1970s working as an entertainment editor and copy editor in Painesville, Ohio. She went on to report business and news for the Columbus Dispatch before starting an academic career. Her research examines media history, arts criticism, biographical writing, non-fiction book publishing, and women in journalism. She has written several books and academic articles, including A Woman of the Times: Journalism, Feminism, and the Career of Charlotte Curtis.
