Chair Rachel Grant (Florida) offered a welcome to the 35 members in attendance. Minutes from last year’s division business meeting were approved unanimously.
Leadership presented an overview of the division’s work during the past year: updating the AEJMC Community page for the division, maintaining the website minus a web administrator, continuing to expand international reach and membership, and celebrating 50 years of Journalism History, the division’s journal. There were no questions. Maddie Liseblad voiced the need for a website administrator.
The History Division welcomes panel proposals for the 2025 AEJMC conference in San Francisco, Calif., August 6 – 10. The theme for next year’s event is “Leading in Times of Momentous Change: Individual and Collective Opportunities.” Panel proposals can be submitted via this link.
The History Division is one of the original divisions of AEJMC, having been established in 1966, and supports research into a variety of topics related to the journalism and mass communication industry, including but not limited to:
the newspaper industry (newspapers, editors, publishers, and reporters)
the broadcasting and cable industry (individual networks, stations, anchors, and reporters)
public relations ( agencies, corporations, campaigns, practitioners, techniques and tactics)
media technologies (computerization, emerging digital technologies, and the early Internet)
Some History Division members focus on the history of media relationships with the government and other power-wielding entities, and some members focus on the histories of technologies from the printing press, the telegraph and the typewriter, to the Internet, while others focus issues of culture, power, and longstanding inequities around race.
The History Division generally accepts and hosts or co-hosts three types of panel proposals each year: Professional Freedom & Responsibility (PF&R), Teaching, and Research.
The annual conference in Philadelphia was a success! I was extremely happy with the community and atmosphere of research, teaching and professional development in our sessions. Thank you to everyone who gave their time and support to the History Division.
Rachel Grant is the outgoing chair of the Media History Division
As the outgoing chair, I have enjoyed my time serving as a leader and truly appreciate everyone. We have had a great journey this year. I appreciate your willingness and dedication to our community. I know incoming chair Brian Creech will bring new perspectives and ideas to make the division better. His insight has always been helpful to me. Also, I am proud of Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen and Autumn Linford as they step into leadership roles. We are moving in the right direction, but society’s need for the understanding history’s impact is still a concern.
We continue to see historical moments and events unfolding with our election season. Hopefully, this election will inspire new projects, panels and collaborations for next year’s conference in San Francisco. History is meant to be chronicled and studied. I end my last chair column with the same words I wrote in the first one— “I encourage our members to explore aspects of diversity, inclusion, and equity — not only in their work but also from the framework of social justice as an everyday practice.”
Matthew is a professor emeritus in the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on social and cultural history, and his most recent book isThe Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine (University of Illinois Press, 2024).
What is the primary focus or central question(s) of your history research?
My new book The Krebiozen Hoax focuses on an alleged cancer treatment of the 1950s and 1960s that was rejected by doctors and medical agencies but embraced by many cancer patients and people in good health. The treatment’s rise and fall took place against the backdrop of America’s never-ending suspicion of educational, scientific, and medical expertise. The book explores how people readily believe misinformation and struggle to maintain hope in the face of grave threats to well-being.
In early 2024, Marcus Collins (Loughborough University, UK), Otávio Daros (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), and Ed Timke (Michigan State) were awarded diversity microgrants by Journalism History. Since then, all three have made significant progress on their research.
Assistant Professor of Journalism, Auburn University
What is your favorite class to teach?
Journalism history! I’m even more thrilled than usual, because next fall I have been approved to teach a Women in Journalism History course to be cross listed with the Women and Gender Studies department!
What is your current research project?
I am currently finishing up a book about newsgirls and papergirls. The book, Extra! A History of America’s Girl Newsies, is in peer review now and should (hopefully!) be out sometime in 2025.
Fun fact about yourself?
I don’t really believe in soulmates, but if I did, mine would be my extraordinarily large dog named SunSpot. He’s a Briard (a French sheepdog), he has fluffy long blond hair, and it’s like he was built in every way to be mine. I bring him with me everywhere I am legally allowed.
Lisa is an assistant professor at Indiana University
Lisa D. Lenoir (Indiana) received Indiana University’s Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellows Program award to advance her research on the life and career of The Chicago Defender’s Mattie Smith Colin. The fellows program supports IU faculty with promise to be national and international leaders in their discipline. Lenoir’s research focuses on media discourses surrounding journalism, activism, and identity, and consumer culture.
The 2024-2025 fellowship features a $50,000 grant, which allows her to host scholars and to conduct archival and oral history work to bring Colin’s work to the forefront, focusing on the journalist’s career from 1950-2002. Colin is known for covering the return of Emmett Till’s body from Money, Mississippi to Chicago, a critical moment in the long Black civil rights struggle. In addition, the journalist worked as a food and fashion editor. Lenoir knew Colin during her tenure in Chicago, while working as a fashion editor for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Mattie Smith Colin Project has been generously supported by grants from AEJMC’s Commission on the Status of Women and the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA).
Tom is a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University
Tom Mascaro (Bowling Green) has co-authored a revised edition of William Porter’s 1976 classic, Assault on the Media: The Nixon Years, Updated with Analysis of 21st Century Threats to Democracy (University of Michigan Press). The expanded version includes several new chapters, additional Documents of Significance, several key analyses of First Amendment issues, and a critique of the role of academe in the pursuit of rampant authoritarianism.
Do you have member news to share? Send your updates for the next Clio to Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen at caitlinc@uidaho.edu.
Rachel Grant is the chair of the Media History Division
We are less than a month away from this year’s conference in Philly. So much work and dedication happened behind the scenes, and I want to thank all the executive members of the History Division leadership. I especially want to thank our vice-chairs Brian Creech (program chair) and Melissa Greene-Blye (research chair) for organizing our panels and research competition. Also, thank you to everyone who submitted and reviewed submissions. Our division has the most dedicated members who continue to help elevate the importance of historical research.
We have an exciting schedule this year and we have an included abbreviated schedule of all our division’s sessions in this issue of Clio. For a full schedule of AEJMC events, check out the program online.
Ford is a distinguished professor in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Ashley is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University. The two recently published the book How America Gets the News: A History of US Journalism(Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).
1. What is the primary focus or central question (s) of your history research? Explain.
Ford is a distinguished professor journalism at Penn State University
While our individual research is focused on two separate subjects—Ford examines Civil War era journalism and Ashley researches women’s media history—we are both broadly concerned with questions surrounding media production and media consumption.
Our coauthored book, How America Get the News: A History of U.S. Journalism, is a concise history of American journalism—including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and digital—and introduces readers to the news media from the first colonial newspapers to today’s news conglomerates and the rise of the digital media.
Where are you currently getting your Ph.D. and/or what is your current position?
I am finishing up my dissertation at the University of Missouri, which I will defend in the Fall. In addition to finishing up my dissertation, I will start as an assistant professor at in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis this Fall.
What brought you to grad school?
As a young undergrad student, I grew a love of research through the McNair Scholars program. Engaging with my mentors in the program showed me what I wanted to do with my career. Entering grad school, my goals were reaffirmed by learning from the faculty at Ohio University. From there, I decided to return to my undergraduate alma mater to finish my PhD and once again learn from the faculty that first encouraged me in my journey.
