Monthly Archives: November 2022

Call for Papers: the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium

Proposals are due December 12, 2022, for the 48th annual AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, held March 2–4 , 2023 at Middle Tennessee State University.

Conference registration includes a data analytics preconference in the School of Journalism & Strategic Media’s Social Insights Lab, the keynote address by Dr. Kathy Roberts Forde, co-editor of the award-winning book, Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (edited with Dr. Sid Bedingfield, Foreword by Alex Lichtenstein), a Friday night reception, optional activities in Murfreesboro, and multiple days filled with scholarship, advice, and networking.

Call for Proposals: the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference

The Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference—co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the AEJMC History Division—provides a forum for innovative research and ideas from all areas of journalism and communication history and from all time periods. The deadline for proposal submissions is February 15, 2023. More information, including the proposal call, is available here.

The free one-day interdisciplinary conference offers participants the chance to explore new ideas, garner feedback on their work, and meet colleagues from around the country interested in journalism and communication history in a welcoming environment.

Funding Opportunity: Virginia Museum of History and Culture

Applications for Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowships for the Virginia Museum of History and Culture are due January 27, 2023. The fellowships support research on Virginia and American history in the following general categories of study, but are not limited to:

Political, constitutional, religious, military, and Black studies
Business history, economic history, and labor relations
Gender, women’s, and LGBTQ+ studies
Social, cultural, and literature studies

More information on the fellowship program and application process is available here.

Call for Papers: IAMHIST Conference 2023, “The Future of Archives”

The deadline for submissions for the 2023 IAMHIST Conference is January 16, 2023.

This conference aims to revisit these archival transformations by bringing into focus archives’ blind spots, notably in relation to their accessibility and ecological dimensions. How do existing archival institutions, associations or private collectors and archivists address technology and media transformations? What are the current and future challenges of archive research? Use? Configurations? What type of ‘new’ archives can be imagined and created in relation to technology and media transformations?

The IAMHIST Conference will be particularly interested in proposals dealing with media archives (film, radio, video, television, Web, photographs, etc.) but also warmly welcomes archives that use media and technology institutionally (museums, associations, vernacular archives etc.). For more information, view the full call for papers here.

Call for Proposals: Media Building: New Perspectives on Journalism, Mass Communication, and the Built Environment

A new collection, Media Building: New Perspectives on Journalism, Mass Communication, and the Built Environment, is soliciting abstract proposals for an upcoming edited volume. The collection will bring together scholars to interrogate the enduring and evolving relationship between journalism, mass communications, and the built environment. From the emergence of the first newspapers, media creators have intuitively understood the importance of connecting place and content. This has centered on the media building – most powerfully rendered through iconic headquarters such as the Tribune tower in Chicago and the Daily Express building in London.

Abstracts of 350-500 words, alongside a short position statement explaining how you envision your chapter contributing to the collection as a whole, to be submitted by January 10, 2023. Editors are Will Mari, LSU; Carole O’Reilly, Salford; E. James West, Northampton.

Member News: Brooke Kroeger, Yong Volz

Brooke Kroeger, professor emerita at New York University, has a new book coming out in May 2023 from A.A. Knopf. Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism is a representative history of American women who ignored every impediment put in their way to do journalism’s most valued work and of the collective fight for equity in the profession throughout the 180-plus years since mass media began.

Yong Volz, associate professor and Roger Gafke Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism, is the 2022 recipient of the School’s O.O. McIntyre Professorship in recognition of teaching excellence. Volz is the 35th recipient of the award, which has been given annually since 1987.

Remembering David Sachsman

David Sachsman, the George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, died on October 4, 2022. He was 77.

Beginning in 1993, Sachsman organized the annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression. The Chattanoogan’s obituary discussed Sachsman’s legacy and role in shaping the annual event: “Dr. Sachsman was particularly proud of how the symposium fostered new scholars, with many first attending as graduate students and then continuing to participate in the conference as their career progressed. Since 2000, work from the symposium has been published in eight books edited by Dr. Sachsman, as well as dozens of other publications created by symposium attendees.”

A Word from the the PF&R Committee: What do we as media historians owe the current moment?

“It’s tricky to point at a lack. But in journalism, what’s left unsaid — whether it was overlooked or ignored — can be as corrosive as a falsehood.”

A searing truth written by Brendan Kiley as part of the The Seattle Times’ A1 Revisited Project which seeks to reexamine the paper’s past coverage of historical events to address harm caused by how some events were covered.

In this case, Kiley is writing about the paper’s coverage of Native American protests at Fort Lawton in March 1970. Kiley informs today’s readers that there was a profound disconnect between the newspaper and the community it was trying to cover, “In missing the context, we missed the story.”

I think about the New York Times’ 1619 Project which sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” This project was criticized by some historians who argued it put ideology before historical understanding and accuracy.

Author Q&A: Will Mari, Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet

Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet: A Short History of Disruptive Technologies, 1990 – 2010 (Routledge, 2022).

Describe the focus of your book.

It is a (very brief) history of the impact of the internet on the news industry and on news workers. It is a sequel to my earlier book on the history of newsroom computerization, A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies: 1960-1990, which was published in 2019.

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

Toward the end of my research for my first book for Routledge, I read a number of reports in trade publications such as Editor & Publisher, some of them breathlessly optimistic, others more circumspect, on the arrival of the civilian internet in the early 1990s. The promise and peril of that moment inspired me to write a follow-on book to my newsroom-computerization history, and Bob Franklin, my generous editor for the “Disruptions” series, encouraged me to do so.

Membership Q&A: Robin Sundaramoorthy

Where you are currently getting your Ph.D.?
Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland (UMD)

What brought you into grad school?
I’ve always wanted to get my Ph.D. in journalism. I seriously considered getting it immediately after I completed my master’s degree at Michigan State University, but I was offered a job at a local TV station and decided to pursue a career instead. I spent 20 amazing years working in TV news, and when it was time to move on, I didn’t think twice about applying to UMD. I want to teach and conduct research, and my professional experiences have taught me some valuable lessons that I can share with others.