Changes to research paper acceptance rates, the launch of a new teaching competition, streamlining our co-sponsored conference in New York, and the continued transition of Journalism History were among the news items discussed at the 2018 business meeting.

Research paper acceptance rates: Erika Pribanic-Smith reported on the division’s five-year assessment by AEJMC. The division was told its student paper acceptance rate was lower than it should be.

Historically, the division has mixed together the student papers and faculty papers in the AEJ paper competition and judged them all equally, Pribanic-Smith said. Other divisions have done this as well, resulting in more than 50 percent of faculty papers being accepted and less than 50 percent of student papers.

However, AEJMC wants to see 50-50 acceptance rates, and the Council of Divisions encouraged all divisions to separate faculty and student papers to judge them separately and accept 50 percent of each.

As a result, more student papers and fewer faculty papers will be accepted in future years than have been in recent years.

Teaching: Teaching Chair Kristin Gustafson plans to launch a special competition highlighting best practices in history pedagogy and/or scholarship of teaching and learning. More details to come soon.

Joint Journalism conference: Doug Cumming updated members on a meeting between the officers of the AEJMC History Division and AJHA. The two organizations co-sponsor the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference in New York every March.

In recent years, each organization provided one representative to organize and host the conference with Elliot King. However, the growth of the conference prompted the most recent representatives to suggest a number of changes to reduce the burden on the junior faculty serving in these roles and to streamline the conference.

The officers agreed to provide two representatives each to provide more support for the research chair, event planning, and social media tasks. Furthermore, AJHA will take over the conference’s finances on behalf of the organizations and a new conference submission site is being explored. The conference will also establish research awards, with the top award honoring King.

The History Division has appointed its two representatives: Brian Creech, Temple University, and Carrie Teresa, Niagara University. Pam Walck will serve as one of AJHA’s representatives. The other AJHA rep is pending.

Journalism History: The leadership team continues to work on final details of securing an academic publisher for Journalism History. The transition to new editor Greg Borchard, with the help of Mike Sweeney, has gone well. A new website, social media pages, and podcast will also launch this year to support the journal.

The full meeting minutes are below:

Minutes of the 2018 AEJMC History Division Business Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Outgoing Chair Doug Cumming (Washington & Lee) called the meeting to order at 6:45 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2018.

The membership accepted the minutes from last year’s meeting as reported in the Fall 2017 Clio.

Conference Awards

The following authors received awards for their work: John Armstrong, Furman, “The Amateurs’ Hour: South Carolina’s First Radio Stations, 1913-1917” (top faculty paper); Erin Coyle (with Elisabeth Fondren and Joby Richard), LSU, “The War Council: Editors’ Publicity Campaign for Louis D. Brandeis’s 1916 Supreme Court Nomination” (second-place faculty paper); Wendy Melillo, American, “Winning Women’s Votes: Dotty Lynch and the Gender Gap in American Politics, 1972-1984” (third-place faculty paper).

Madeleine Liseblad, Middle Tennessee State, “Driving and Restraining Forces Toward the Marketization of Broadcasting in the UK in the 1990s” (first-place student paper, tie); Perry Parks, Michigan State, “Textbook News Values:  A Century of Stability and Change” (first-place student paper, tie); Kelli Boling, South Carolina, “’We Matter’: The Launching of a Counter-Narrative Black Public Affairs Program in Columbia, S.C.” (third-place student paper).

The division provided six graduate students with travel grants of $200 each.

Covert Award

Andie Tucher, Columbia, received the Covert Award for best mass communication history article for “I Believe in Faking: The Dilemma of Photographic Realism in the Dawn of Photojournalism.” She said she became interested in fake news long before Donald Trump. The article was published in Photography & Culture.

Sweeney Award

New Journalism History Editor Greg Borchard presented the division’s first Michael S. Sweeney Award (https://aejmc.us/history/cressman-wins-first-sweeney-award/) for best article in Journalism History. Dale L. Cressman, associate professor of communication at Brigham Young University, won for his article, “News in Light: The Times Square Zipper and Newspaper Signs in an Age of Technological Enthusiasm.”

The other nominees for this first award were Juanita Darling, for “Jewish Values in the Journalism of Alberto Gerchunoff”; Michael Fuhlhage, for “To Limit the Spread of Slavery: A Boston Journal Correspondent’s Multiple Roles in the Kansas Free State Movement”; and Debra Reddin Van Tuyll, for “Protecting Press Freedom and Access to Government Information in Antebellum South Carolina.”

Book Award

This year’s book award winner was Fred Carroll, Kennesaw State, for Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the 20th Century (University of Illinois Press). Book Award Chair John Ferré (Louisville) said there were 29 entries this year. Selection committee judges were Fred Blevens, Kathy Roberts Forde, and Linda Steiner. Ferré said the competition is tough. He described Race News as a comparison of the black commercial press with the black radical press and called it “an important read, and I would highly encourage you to read it.”

Lisa Burns (Quinnipiac) is taking over duties as book award chair for the 2019 competition after Ferré’s nine years of service.

Carroll advised scholars to respect the historiography of a subject and look from the beginning as to what is available and how a topic can be built upon. He also advised questioning and broadening definitions after realizing he was originally trying to apply a definition of who a journalist was “using the very same standards that white journalists had used to exclude the black journalists I was studying.”

5-Year Assessment

Vice Chair Erika Pribanic-Smith reported on the division’s five-year assessment by AEJMC. The assessment went well, but a few areas were noted for improvement. AEJMC wants to see divisions split activities evenly among research, PF&R, and teaching. The division has been too heavy on research in the past few years, due in part to the adoption of Journalism History, which took a lot of time, she said. Pribanic-Smith said the division will make the adjustment to balance activities and had already started to do so.

AEJMC also advised the division that its student paper acceptance rate was lower than it should be. Historically, the division has mixed together the student papers and faculty papers in the AEJ paper competition and judged them all equally, Pribanic-Smith said. Other divisions have done this as well, resulting in more than 50 percent of faculty papers being accepted and less than 50 percent of student papers.

However, AEJMC wants to see 50-50 acceptance rates, and the Council of Divisions encouraged all divisions to separate faculty and student papers to judge them separately and accept 50 percent of each.

As a result, more student papers and fewer faculty papers will be accepted in future years than have been in recent years.

Joint Conference

Cumming updated members on a meeting earlier in the day between the officers of the AEJMC History Division and AJHA. The two organizations co-sponsor the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference in New York every March. In recent years, each organization provided one representative to organize and host the conference with Elliot King. However, the growth of the conference prompted the most recent representatives to suggest a number of changes to reduce the burden on the junior faculty serving in these roles and to streamline the conference. The officers agreed to provide two representatives each to provide more support for the research chair, event planning and social media tasks. Furthermore, AJHA will take over the conference’s finances on behalf of the organizations and a new conference submission site is being explored. The conference will establish research awards, with the top award honoring King.

Chair Reports

Research: Pribanic-Smith reported that the division received 50 total submissions, of which one was disqualified and two were not designated as student or faculty and were both rejected. Of the 32 faculty submissions, 20 were accepted for a rate of 62.5%. There were 15 student research paper submissions, with six accepted for a rate of 40%. There were 71 judges this year, with two papers per judge and three reviewers per paper. Overall, the acceptance rate was 53%.

Teaching: Teaching Chair Kristin Gustafson reported on three teaching panels at the conference:  “Contextualizing Media Credibility in 2018,” “Innovating ideas that foster a community and its history,” and “Remembering, Forgetting and Nostalgizing 1968: The Year that Rocked Our World.” Her goals and activities are focused on four pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and justice. She plans to launch a special competition highlighting best practices in history pedagogy and/or scholarship of teaching and learning.

PF&R: PF&R Chair Melita Garza reported that the division supports an AEJMC statement on hate speech spurred by the incident in Charlottesville and endorsed the American Historical Association’s statement condemning the Polish law banning discourse about Polish complicity with the Nazis. The PF&R panel this year was “Connecting Industry and Ivory Tower: Advertising, Journalism and P.R. Executives Tell Professors How to Matter.” Garza said she’s written columns about Hispanic and Native American journalists, saying “the minority journalist brings a perspective that is so important, and I think it’s also important in our research as educators.” Garza also encouraged the division to avoid all men on panels, an issue that came up on social media as a broader critique of AEJMC panels.

Membership: Amber Roessner and Will Mari discussed the mini profiles and collection of member news in Clio this year. Graduate student recruitment and the transition of Clio to the membership chairs are priorities in the coming year. AEJMC data noted the division saw a 15-percent decrease in membership from February 2013 to February 2018, or a decline of 315 members to 268. The division remains the fourth-largest in AEJMC, however.

Journalism History

Roberts Forde noted the task force to transition Journalism History to the division worked for two-plus years to obtain authorization for adoption of the journal, an increase in dues, the hiring of an editor, and the search for an academic publisher. Greg Borchard of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was hired for the editor job this year and has been working with Mike Sweeney to implement the editor transition. The next steps are to get more help with the journal, create a publications committee, and secure the academic publisher. Taylor & Francis is interested, but the division must secure the copyrights for prior Journalism History articles now held by UNLV, Ohio and UCalNorthridge.

Roberts Forde also read a resolution to honor Frank Fee for all of his work on behalf of the task force. The full resolution, which had unanimous approval, can be found here: https://aejmc.us/history/history-division-resolution-honors-frank-fee/

Borchard also spoke and thanked the division for its support. He reported significant progress and the continued publication of the journal without interruption. He said Mike Sweeney has been unbelievably helpful in keeping in contact. The journal’s online presence now includes a page on the History Division website. Pribanic-Smith and Kate Roberts Edenborg will work on a stand-alone website and social media presence. Teri Finneman and Will Mari have taken on a project to develop podcasts on behalf of the journal and division.

Dave Bulla helped develop a statement of ethics and malpractice for inclusion in our public materials, which will help raise our visibility once we established connections with sites that can list us in their citation databases. Materials are already under review with Scopus for possible listing in their abstract and citation database.

Borchard also appointed assistant editors Bulla with Augusta University and Kevin Stoker at UNLV (the director of the Journalism and Media Studies School) and updated the corresponding editors list. He said most people indicated they’d like to continue, but a few have retired. At last count, there are 68 corresponding editors, which some have suggested is too many, but Borchard said he’d much rather have too many than not enough.

Garza was re-appointed as book review editor. Borchard also established a schedule for forthcoming issues with Sweeney, who plans to mail the remaining issues in Volume 44 from Ohio. Borchard will assume responsibility for publishing and distributing Volume 45 and beyond.

Finneman reported that she, Will Mari, and Nick Hirshon will work on launching a podcast later this fall. The podcast will include original interviews as well as recorded sessions from conference panels. She and Mari are signed up for a Knight Center MOOC on how to grow a hit podcast.

Cumming reported the division bylaws will include reference to the publication committee. The Publications Committee shall recommend an editor to be appointed by the division’s officers. If for any reason the editor’s appointment is not renewed at the end of a term, or the editor resigns during a term, the committee shall issue a call for applicants and then evaluate applicants. The process normally involves interviews with promising candidates. The committee’s other responsibilities include working with the editor during the editor’s term to ensure the highest possible standards for the journal as well as developing plans to encourage quality submissions. The committee will consist of five members. The division officers are working on forming a committee to recommend to the membership, keeping in mind diversity of appointments.

Clio

There were three PDF issues of Clio this year and three e-newsletters of Clio. Finneman reported the transition was made for two main reasons: simplification and engagement. A number of prior Clio editors had no InDesign experience and were having to assign the division role to someone else to complete. She said the e-newsletter is easier and quicker to put together, aligns with current industry standards and what other history organizations are doing, and also allows for more frequent communication with members who can more easily share the content on resumes and social media.

Cumming reported that the duties for Clio are now being transferred to the membership chairs rather than the secretary/newsletter editor.

After discussion for and against the change, the membership agreed to continue the e-Clio experiment for another year. The executive committee will analyze analytics of Clio content in December and discuss proposed changes to try in 2019.

Constitution and Bylaws

Cumming reported some of the leadership role changes made in the bylaws (some of which already referenced above). Going forward, the vice chair will be responsible for panels/program chair and the second vice chair will be research chair. This move aligns the division with other AEJMC divisions to provide a ladder approach and prevent confusion from other divisions of whom to contact in the History Division. The updated version can be found on the division website, https://aejmc.us/history/.

Garza motioned to approve the bylaws with Gustafson seconding. The vote was 32-2.

Elections

The membership confirmed the appointments Mari (Northwest University) as incoming second vice chair, and Julien Gorbach (University of Hawaii at Manoa) as co-membership chair. The membership made no nominations from the floor. [NOTE: The following additional appointments were made after the convention: Colin Kearney, University of Florida, Graduate Student Co-Liaison; Bailey Dick, Ohio University, Graduate Student Co-Liaison; Brian Creech Temple University, Co-Coordinator, Joint Journalism & Communication History Conference; Carrie Teresa, Niagara University, Co-Coordinator, Joint Journalism & Communication History Conference].

Pribanic-Smith’s goals as chair include continuing the transition of Journalism History to the division’s publication, a more active student committee to boost involvement of young scholars as a foundation for the division’s future, streamlining the Joint Journalism conference, and recognizing media history teaching with a competition.

Next Conference

The division voted on the conference city for 2022. The options were Detroit, Chicago, and Indianapolis. The division voted for Detroit.

Announcements

David Mindich reminded members about the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression. The three-day conference in Chattanooga, is Nov. 8–10, 2018.

Tim Vos reminded members about the journalism history series started by the University of Missouri Press. Two books are now out: Before Journalism Schools: How Gilded Age Reporters Learned the Rules by Randall Sumpter and The Struggle for the Soul of Journalism: The Pulpit versus the Press, 1833-1923 by Ronald Rogers.

David Bulla said submissions are being accepted for the former Atlanta Review of Journalism History, now named the Southeastern Review of Journalism History.

The meeting adjourned at 8:25 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Teri Finneman, 2017-18 secretary

Erika Pribanic-Smith (University of Texas-Arlington) is the new chair of the History Division, assisted by vice chair Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) and second vice chair Will Mari (Northwest University).

Pribanic-Smith will have more details about her goals for the division in her chair column next month, but here’s an early look at some of the new leadership team’s priorities for the coming year.

• Recruit and engage graduate students and early career scholars.

• Launch a new website, social media pages and podcast for Journalism History. Pribanic-Smith and Kate Roberts Edenborg are spearheading the website and social media, while Finneman, Mari and Nick Hirshon are focusing on starting the podcast.

• Finalize our transition with Journalism History by securing a publisher contract and naming a publication committee.

• Streamline the successful Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference in New York that we co-sponsor with AJHA each year.

• Enhance our efforts with diversity and inclusion. Melita Garza, Rachel Grant, Elisabeth Fondren and Maddie Liseblad are interested in working on this initiative.

• Support Kristin Gustafson in the launch of a new division teaching competition.

• Work with the Commission on the Status of Women to create plans for celebrating the 100^th anniversary of suffrage during the 2019 and 2020 AEJ conferences. The committee includes Pribanic-Smith, Finneman, Candi Carter Olson, Carolyn Kitch, Linda Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Rachel Grant, Kelli Boling and Jane Singer.***See the September Clio for more information on the division’s AEJMC business meeting and a full chair column.

The History Division saw a 15-percent decrease in membership from February 2013 to February 2018, according to data from AEJMC headquarters. The division’s membership roll dropped 47 members from 315 to 268 during this time.

“While the downward trend is disturbing, we still have a solid core of dedicated, energetic members,” said Erika Pribanic-Smith, incoming head of the History Division. “Another source of encouragement is our place as fourth-largest division in AEJMC.”

Data provided in August 2018 indicated an uptick to 280 members for the division. History’s five-year membership decline was moderate compared to other groups. Communication Technology (-36%), Participatory Journalism (-31%), Electronic News (-28.5%), and Magazine (-27%) saw the biggest five-year membership percentage drops. The interest groups for Sports Communication (49%) and Graduate Students (41%) had the biggest gains.

The membership data was provided to members of an AEJMC president’s task force aimed at discussing membership trends. About 52 percent of AEJMC members do not belong to any division or interest group, according to AEJMC past president Jennifer Greer.

History Division Vice Chair Teri Finneman is on the president’s task force, which provided the recommendations listed below to the AEJMC board of directors.

“Regarding the History Division, specifically, I think it is very important for the division to be more active as a community throughout the entire year, not just at the conference, in order to be more enticing for members to join,” Finneman said.

Pribanic-Smith and Finneman hope their initiatives in the coming year will help, including an emphasis on young scholar recruitment, the launch of a Journalism History podcast, an increased social media and web presence, and monthly division newsletters.

“My goals include nurturing and maintaining our existing member base while enlarging it with more early-career faculty and student members,” Pribanic-Smith said. “Young history scholars will enable our division to continue thriving for many years to come.”

Preliminary recommendations for AEJMC from the Strengthening Our Community Task Force are:

• Dedicate a section of the website to resources just for members that is password protected. This provides opportunities to provide exclusive resources to members and to help them find resources that are currently available but not well known. For instance, being able to download papers from All-Academic.  You can do it -but few people know that, it is not intuitive how to do that, and requires that you have an account set up through All Academic.  Using your member login would assist in streamlining access to this information.
• New member packet – this would be electronic and would be sent to all new members from the president of the organization with the members’ login information. Specifics would be details about divisions/interest groups/commissions, competitions, conferences, teaching resources, organizational map, etc.
• Have AEJMC membership include membership to one division/interest group/commission. This is done with other organizations. There are multiple ways to pay for this and encourages people to choose a group and this allows them to learn about what the divisions/interest groups/commissions do with little risk.
• Rethink the DIG (divisions and interest groups) fair. Work closely with COD to organize. Assist COD members to participate, make it interactive, publicize it more, perhaps have It located in the exhibit hall to get more exposure.  Suggest each division/interest group/commission record and post a short video about the specific group and its mission, etc.
• Review materials that are available from central office that outline expectations/best practices for division/interest group/commission management. Suggested topics might include membership tools (communications, social media), leadership succession plans, the importance of bylaws, organizational memory (history, etc). Work with COD leadership.
• Work with President-elect Marie Hardin’s graduate student initiatives to further develop information/resources specifically for graduate student members/recruitment.
• Maintain a list of emeriti faculty, senior scholars, past presidents, past COD chairs, past division/interest group/commissions chairs to promote leadership opportunities, editorial board appointments, committee work, task forces, etc – as a means to keep them engaged.
• Improve website membership forms to include pop-ups that explain more about each division/interest group.
• Develop webinars for members – to use throughout the year. AEJ 101 webinar for new members, graduate students, etc BEFORE the conference, preparing for tenure, tips for non-tenure faculty, how to navigate the job search/job hub at the conference, getting your research published, editorial philosophy of journals, etc.
• Have more personalized communication coming from the organization. Have dedicated email addresses for the president, vice president, heads of standing committees, COD, etc and have the information about the organization coming from these email addresses rather than coming from HQ. Make these more personalized with usable information, not just registration is open, the app is available, etc.
• Use Facebook group to post JMC news from the industry, topics that can be used immediately in the classroom, new websites, videos, books, etc.
• Work with PFR standing committee of the organization and from the divisions/interest groups to post relevant news topics and resources on the AEJ website throughout the year.

Melita M. Garza
Professional Freedom and Responsibility Chair
Texas Christian University
melita.garza@tcu.edu

For Capital Gazette staffer Chase Cook’s determined words, “we are putting out the damn paper tomorrow,” I offer this translation: the free press lives. On Thursday, June 28, 2018, Cook, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, was on a day-off when a murderer took a shotgun to the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, killing five of Cook’s colleagues. In a blink of an eye, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith, all dedicated to truth telling and community journalism, were gone.

The violence leveled against the Capital Gazette is still a relative rarity in the United States compared to many other countries, even in an era of increasingly strident anti-media rhetoric. Nonetheless, the issue of journalists’ safety was top of mind for me when these five Capital Gazette employees were slain. Just two days before the shooting, I was at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., attending an awards ceremony honoring freelance conflict journalist James W. Foley, a Medill and Marquette graduate who was murdered in 2014 by ISIS in the Raqqa region of Syria. The awards’ ceremony, put on annually since his death by the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, is one way the organization honors the storytelling of intrepid reporters and highlights its own work to insure the safety of journalists, whether working at home or internationally.

Tellingly, the keynote speaker, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews, turned first to journalism history to provide some context to discuss the dangerous life that Foley and other journalists often face. Matthews mentioned “people like Ernest Hemingway on the way back from covering the Civil War in Spain; Ernie Pyle, who told the life of the average GI in World War II and was killed telling that story, (and) Neil Sheehan, who exposed the great shining lie of the Vietnam war.” There are of course, others he might have mentioned, including Dickey Chapelle, the brilliant war photographer who was killed in Vietnam in 1965, or Ruben Salazar, the Spanish-language KMEX TV reporter and former Los Angeles Times staff writer killed in 1970 by a law enforcement officer while covering a Chicano Vietnam war protest, or the five Vietnamese immigrant journalists assassinated in the United States between 1981 and 1990, whose murders remain unsolved. There are more recent examples, among them Marie Colvin, an American journalist working for the Times of London who was killed covering the Syrian Civil War in 2012, and Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach, who was killed in 2017 while documenting murders in her home state of Chihuahua.

And while Matthews might have added more in the way of historical background, he did note, however, the important distinction between conflict journalists and war correspondents. “Unlike the war correspondent” conflict journalists “are not only reporting behind enemy lines, there are no lines,” he said. In retrospect, as the events at the Capital Gazette have reminded us once again, there are no lines, even for domestic reporters. Truly there never were. In the United States, the murder of abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837 in Alton, Illinois, may have been the earliest such effort to violently silence the voice of journalism.

Beyond history, Matthews added much from a perspective rarely brought to the table in the journalism field. Matthews spoke about a central element he had in common with Foley: a Jesuit education. Both he and Foley grew up knowing the lives of the Saints, “especially the martyrs who endured the unimaginable at the ends of their lives,” Matthews said. “James knew the dangers of reporting war in Libya and Syria. Then he went back again and again knowing those dangers. When he met his end, squarely, in the face, he replaced the dashing face of the foreign correspondent with the stoic face of moral courage.”

To draw the face of moral courage, Matthews once again turned to Hemingway, this time taking a page from For Whom the Bell Tolls. He reflected on the heroic character of Robert Jordan, the American dynamiter fighting in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. “Robert Jordan said he could spot a traitor… He said he could always spot a traitor because they had a sadness that comes before the sellout—sadness in their face.” This emotion, Matthews said, was not visible in Foley.

“When I look at my wallet, at a picture of James Foley, I don’t see sadness,” Matthews continued. “I don’t see what Hemingway knew and was worried about. I see the opposite. In the many times I have looked at that picture— at that young man’s face…. I see a stoic resolution. It says to me:  I will not show fear. I will not show defeat. I can see that you are taping all this. That my captors are going to use all this. I know it will find its way home to my country, to my friends, to my mom and dad. I am going to be strong and resolute and loyal every second of this. Loyal to what brought me here, to this dangerous land, to these captors, to this dire fate. I’ll be true to what I was brought up to be. And true to what brought me here and I wanted to do—to find and show the truth.”

While most of us have not confronted, and will likely never face, such harrowing situations, there is still much that we can do. The issue of journalists under siege needs a more prominent spot on our research, teaching, and professional collaboration agenda. During the 2018 AEJMC Conference in Washington, D.C., the Commission on the Status of Women and the AEJMC Council of Affiliates sponsored the research panel: “Under Attack: Threats, Challenges, and Gender Bias Facing International Female Journalists.” At pre-conference—the time of this writing—the scheduled speakers were Carolyn M. Byerly of Howard University; Celeste González de Bustamante of the University of Arizona; Kimberly Adams, a senior reporter with Marketplace; Hannah Allam, a national reporter with Buzzfeed; and Suzanne Franks, a journalism professor at the City University London.

The topic had one other prominent place on the AEJMC program, courtesy of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which scheduled a breakfast for conference participants to learn about and offer feedback on the foundation’s Journalists’ Safety Guide.

Moral courage, though, has no standard guide. Therefore, we can and should emphasize that journalism is not only a craft, but also a calling and a spirit. Journalism is not entirely alone as a field offering more than a mere job. Matthews noted this at the close of his Newseum speech when he held Foley up as a role model. “I want my children to be this stoic, to possess this moral courage. Because years ago, in all those years of Catholic school, of studying the martyrs, I read of such heroic souls as his.”

Two days after Matthews said these words, the Capital Gazette’s Chase Cook, in the face of the horror that took the lives of five of his colleagues, exhibited his own form of journalistic stoicism when he tweeted with moral certainty that an assassin’s bullets wouldn’t stop the presses.

Left to right: Mike Boettcher, war correspondent, OU Gaylord visiting professor, Alexandra Stratton, OU Gaylord 2017 grad and Bloomberg reporter, Gloria Noble, OU student; Melita M. Garza, TCU professor; Hannah Allam, OU Gaylord 1999 grad and Buzzfeed national reporter; John Schmeltzer, OU Gaylord professor; Madeline Roper, senior, OU Gaylord

On March 8, 1913, an above-the-fold, front-page article in the Chicago Defender informed readers that “the Modern Joan [of] Arc,” Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), had marched in the inaugural Woman Suffrage Parade in Washington despite the protests and the “scorn of her Southern sisters.”[i] Robert S. Abbott’s Chicago Defender celebrated Wells-Barnett as both the greatest “race … leader among the feminine sex” and an individual of the “highest type of womanhood.” “She is always to be found along the firing line in any battle where the rights of the race are at stake,” the Defender’s correspondent concluded. On this day, Wells-Barnett was hailed as a conquering heroine.

That was far from the case more than fifty years earlier, on July 16, 1862, when Ida Bell was born to Elizabeth “Lizzie” and James “Jim” Wells of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Still six months prior to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the arrival of a firstborn child to the Wells family received little communal fanfare and no notice in the press of a region that was ravaged by Civil War.[ii] Born into slavery, Ida struggled to survive that first year as Confederate and Union forces fought over the strategic supply post en route to Vicksburg, Mississippi. But survive she did. She would soon come to thrive.

Known most prominently as a daring anti-lynching crusader, Wells-Barnett worked tirelessly throughout her life as a political advocate for the rights of women, minorities, and members of the working class. Until the 1970s, Wells-Barnett’s story was relegated to the footnotes of American history. Since that time, scholars have begun to place the life of Wells-Barnett within the context of the social, cultural, and political milieu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Political Pioneer of the Press seeks to extend the discussions that these scholars cultivated over the last five decades. This edited collection weighs in on the full range of communication techniques—from lecture circuits and public relations campaigns to investigative and advocacy journalism—that Wells-Barnett employed to combat racism and sexism and to promote social equity in her transnational social justice crusade. It also explores her legacy in American culture and her potential to serve as a prism through which to educate others on how to address lingering forms of oppression in the twenty-first century.

Editors: Lori Amber Roessner & Jodi Rightler-McDaniels.

Contributors: Jinx Coleman Broussard, Chandra D. Snell Clark, Kris DuRocher, Kathy Roberts Forde, Norma Fay Green, Joe Hayden, Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, Lori Amber Roessner, Patricia A. Schechter, R. J. Vogt.

Lori Amber Roessner is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism & Electronic Media. In fall 2012, Roessner launched the Ida Initiative, a public history initiative designed to promote the study of the life, work, and legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett through experiential learning projects at the undergraduate level and through research initiatives in the academy. The public history initiative contributed to the organization of Ida B. & Beyond, a one-day conference held at the University of Tennessee on March 26, 2015, featuring research on the life, work, and legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and other like-minded social justice crusaders.

[i] “Marches in Parade Despite Protests,” Chicago Defender, March 8, 1913, 1.

[ii] Based upon a Chronicling America search, records of only three area newspapers exist in the summer of 1862—the Memphis Daily Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), the Macon Beacon (Macon, Mississippi), and the American Citizen (Canton, Mississippi). Various newspapers serving Holly Springs and Marshal County since 1838 (i.e., the Marshall County Republican, the Southern Banner and the Holly Springs Gazette) had ceased publication by the outbreak of the Civil War.

A Tribute Resolution Commending Professor Emeritus Frank Fee
for His Selfless Work Establishing Journalism History
as the Journal of the AEJMC History Division

Whereas Journalism History is the oldest peer-reviewed journal in the United States dedicated to the publication of high-quality original historical research on mass communication and media;

Whereas the History Division is one of the founding divisions of AEJMC;

Whereas members of the AEJMC History Division have published their scholarship in Journalism History across the 43 years of the journal’s existence;

Whereas Journalism History has been independently published by three universities and multiple professor-editors across its existence;

Whereas changes in the finances and work structures of higher education and academic publishing made the existing publication model for Journalism History unsustainable;

Whereas the Scripps School at Ohio University, the current publisher, and Professor Mike Sweeney, the current editor, of Journalism History have been excellent stewards of the journal and proposed in 2016 that the AEJMC History Division study whether to assume the journal;

Whereas Professor Frank Fee, a longtime and highly respected member of the AEJMC History Division and distinguished scholar of press history, served as the head of an ad hoc task force assigned to study the viability of and procedures for moving the journal to the ownership of the AEJMC History Division;

Whereas Professor Frank Fee has worked tirelessly, selflessly, and effectively during his retirement for three years to shepherd the process of the AEJMC History Division’s adoption of Journalism History as its journal;

Whereas the AEJMC History Division membership voted affirmatively to adopt Journalism History as the division’s journal in 2016;

Whereas Professor Frank Fee worked collaboratively with the AEJMC History Division leadership team and an ad hoc editor search team to solicit a call for a new journal editor and to select Greg Borchard as the journal’s incoming editor in 2018;

Whereas Journalism History will begin its existence as the journal of the AEJMC History Division beginning in Fall 2018, now, therefore, be it

Resolved, that the AEJMC History Division, on behalf of its members:

Acknowledges and celebrates the tireless, generous, effective leadership and commitment to service and the welfare of Division members demonstrated by Professor Frank Fee in his three year effort to shepherd Journalism History into its new status as the journal of the AEJMC History Division.

Mover: Kathy Roberts Forde, Former Chair of the History Division and Member of the Journalism History Ad Hoc Task Force

Seconder: Doug Cumming, Current Chair of the History Division

Approved unanimously: AEJMC History Division Business Meeting, Annual Conference, Washington D.C., Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Jon Bekken (Albright College) was promoted to full professor of communications. His entry on “Unions of Newsworkers” is forthcoming in the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. His article on “Incorporating Class into the Journalism and Mass Communication Curriculum” appears in the new issue of Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication 8(1), and his “Toward a Democratic Journalism” will appear in the next The American Historian as part of a special section on journalism and democracy.

Melita M. Garza (Texas Christian University) was featured on CSPAN Book TV, in June discussing her new book They Came to Toil Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression.

Jennifer Moore (University of Minnesota-Duluth) was selected to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholars program, Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath, a two-week summer institute (July 9-20, 2018) in New York City. The instituted focused “on the era’s array of visual media—including the fine arts, ephemera, photography, cartoons, maps, and monuments—to examine how information and opinion about the war and its impact were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of and before and after the conflict,” according to the NEH website. Participants engaged in lectures by noted historians, art historians, and archivists and attended hands-on sessions in major museums and archives.

Randall S. Sumpter’s (Texas A&M) Before Journalism Schools: How Gilded Age Reporters Learned the Rules recently was published by the University of Missouri Press. Sumpter’s volume uses a community of practice model to describe and to organize the many ways used by late nineteenth century reporters to master the basics of journalism.

Carol Terracina-Hartman (Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania) recently was honored with AEJMC’s magazine division’s top paper award for “Love Your Mother: How One Magazine Defined and Refined Environmental Journalism.” She also presented “News and Numbers: Big Data Reporting on a College Campus,” at the College Media Association’s National Conference in Dallas, Texas, where she was a top-three finalist for the College Media Association’s Award of Distinction. Terracina-Hartman also co-authored “Policy, economic themes dominate ethanol headlines” published in Newspaper Research Journal 38(1): 119-133.

With the AEJMC national conference in Washington, D.C. coming up next month, the History Division has created a guide to help separate the division’s activities from the larger conference program.

Designed by Vice-Chair/Research Chair Erika Pribanic-Smith, the History Division Program Guide provides a schedule of all paper presentations, including the titles and authors of all papers to be presented (on pages 1-3). It also includes a listing of all panels that the division is sponsoring (on page 4).

Furthermore, the guide features previews of the History Division Business Meeting (on page 3) and all of the special events that the division has planned (on page 4). Follow the orange hyperlinks in the document for more information, such as directions from the hotel to off-site activities.

We hope our members will find this guide helpful as they plan their time in Washington, D.C. We also encourage you to save the PDF to your phone or print it out to consult on site. Click here for the conference guide

(Photo: Nicolas Raymond | CC by SA 3.0)