Author Archives: Kathryn McGarr

Member News: Rob Wells, Owen V. Johnson, Teri Finneman, Pam Walck & Meg Heckman

Rob Wells joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism this spring as a visiting associate professor. He will be teaching a variety of reporting classes and is continuing work on data journalism and the history of business journalism. His second book, The Insider: How the Kiplinger Newsletter Bridged Washington and Wall Street, is due out in the Fall and will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Owen V. Johnson has published an essay in The Hill proposing that Fort Benning be renamed Fort Ernie Pyle to honor all the war correspondents who have covered US troops.

Teri Finneman, Pam Walck and Meg Heckman are hosting a News Desert University conference in October. The conference will have both in-person and Zoom components the evening of Friday, Oct. 21, and during the day Saturday, Oct. 22. Topics will include a deans panel, creating a syllabus for a news desert classroom, raising funds to start these ventures, building trust in communities, lessons from students, the logistics of running a news desert operation and a brainstorming hour. The University of Kansas J-School is sponsoring and hosting the event in Lawrence. Registration will be free. Anyone interested should join our Facebook group for further announcements as we continue planning the conference and getting our registration site up.

Q and A with Editors Sid Bedingfield and Kathy Roberts Forde

Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (University of Illinois Press, 2021)

Sid Bedingfield, Associate Professor, Hubbard School of Journalism, University of Minnesota

Kathy Roberts Forde, Professor, Journalism Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Describe the focus of your book.

KF: Journalism and Jim Crow is the first extended work to document the role of the white press in building white supremacist political economies and social orders in the New South—and the critical role of the Black press in fiercely resisting—from the end of Reconstruction through the first decades of the twentieth century. The tragic outcomes of this history are still with us and demand our attention.

SB: The book takes a fresh look at the rise of Jim Crow in the South by focusing on newspapers as institutions of power within their communities. The publishers and editors who ran these newspapers used the soft power of public discourse to undermine the Reconstruction project and spread the ideology of white supremacy in post-Civil War South. But they exerted hard power, too. They were political actors who worked closely with other institutions of power – the Democratic Party, obviously – but also with the railroads, mining companies, and other industries eager to take advantage of cheap labor in the emerging New South.  

KF: These editors and publishers planned political campaigns to wrest power from Black Republicans, white populists, and bi-racial coalitions. They spread anti-Black, anti-democratic disinformation and propaganda. And they even used the tools of racial terror—racial massacres, lynching, convict leasing—to build a near total world of white supremacy where Black Southerners were not able to vote, serve on juries, hold public office, receive equitable public education, and pursue economic opportunity without white sufferance.

SB: The Black press fought back — even in the South, where Black journalists worked under the constant threat of violence. But by the 1870s, white public opinion in the North, led by the elite white press, had turned against the Reconstruction project. And Black voices that challenged Jim Crow and struggled to build a pluralist democracy were overwhelmed by the popularity of the white supremacy ideology nationwide.

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

KF: I did an independent study with an undergraduate student on the connections between the convict leasing system and the white press in the South, research that eventually led to the book chapter on Henry Flagler’s use of newspapers to control public information about his labor practices used to turn Florida into a tourist empire. Sid and I always share our research, and we began to piece together instance after instance of white newspaper leaders using their power to create anti-Black, anti-democratic systems and policies, often using violence.

SB: My first book, Newspaper Wars, argued that Black and White newspapers had exerted more political influence in the struggle over civil rights in the mid-twentieth century that had been previously acknowledged. I had seen how the white, daily press had collaborated with politicians and business leaders in to resist Black equality. Kathy’s research on Flagler and his effort to control the press in Florida resonated with me immediately. At the same time, I was pleased to see the historians Julian Zelizer and Bruce Shulman, in their 2018 book, call for scholars to take mass media outlets more seriously as historical actors capable of shaping political outcomes. The influence of Fox News and its inextricable link to right-wing politics was clearly opening eyes about the substantive role mass media has played in American politics.

KF: We thought about writing the book ourselves, but there was just too much territory to cover and the subject felt urgent and timely. So we asked other historians to join us, and we all worked very closely together to develop the book’s themes and arguments. 

SB: Recruiting the contributors was one of the most satisfying aspects of the project. For example, I had always respected the book Right to Ride, Blair Kelley’s study of Black resistance to Jim Crow, but I had not met her. I reached out, and she grasped our concept immediately. As it turns out, we share a mentor, historian Patricia Sullivan. Her research on Black journalist J. Max Barber and the Atlanta riots of 1906 provides a poignant closing chapter in our book. 

KF: We held a book symposium at the Hubbard School at UMN, where Sid is on the faculty, and Blair suggested the book needed a chapter devoted to the Black press and its calling out of Grady and the white press in the New South project. Our group immediately thought of D’Weston Haywood, whom I had met a few years earlier at the Schomburg Center when he was finalizing research for his book Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement. He loved the project and joined us.

What archives or research materials did you use? 

SB: I returned to some old haunts in South Carolina — the Ben Tillman Papers at Clemson University, the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, and the South Carolina Historical Society archives in Charleston. I also made my first trip to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the nation’s first publicly funded independent state archives agency (as they are quick to point out). I snuck in just before the pandemic hit and spent time in the papers of former Montgomery Advertiser editor William Wallace Screws and several other political figures from the period. Unfortunately, one of our greatest gaps in historical evidence concerns the populist press in the South. This project has driven home to me the importance of the white and Black populist movements in the in the1880s and 90s.There were hundreds of colorful populist newspapers in Alabama and across the South at the time, but the overwhelming majority left no archival trace at all. It is a tragic loss.

KF: I worked in the Henry Flagler Papers at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, the Henry W. Grady Papers at Emory’s Rose Library, and the Joseph E. Brown Papers and the Alfred H. Colquitt Papers at UGA’s Hargrett Library. I consulted various books and materials at the Atlanta History Center. Bryan Bowman, who co-authored the Flagler/Florida chapter with me, and I did a very deep dive into the expansive Justice Department Peonage Files. When he was still an ungraduated student, Bryan took an independent trip to Jacksonville to work in the state convict lease records and microfilm of historical Jacksonville newspapers. Of course, I analyzed a massive amount of press material from the period, along with legislative records and U.S. congressional records. I also read across an incredibly broad range of historiography, digging into footnotes for important breadcrumbs to follow.

How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?

KF: We hope the broad public, teachers, students, and journalists will read Journalism and Jim Crow and learn about the importance of the press in political, social, and economic conflict and change in the past and in our own moment. Much is at stake. Journalists and news leaders today need to understand how white power and white normativity operate in their own newsrooms. We hope journalists across the country will discuss and learn from the ugly historical truth Journalism and Jim Crow lays bare: white journalists and mainstream journalism have too often served anti-Black, anti-democratic political purposes even as they claimed to be impartial, neutral, and objective.

SB: Kathy sums it well. I’ll just add this: I believe Fitz Brundage’s piece on lynching and the white southern press should be required reading in every newsroom and journalism school. His argument that lynching and white southern journalism were constitutive of one another is powerful and nuanced. It should be taught in classrooms nationwide.

What advice do you have for other historians that are working or starting projects?

SB: I’m not sure this applies to every project, but the impact of the symposium we held early in fall 2019 was a revelation to me. Kathy proposed we gather contributors to discuss the book. It would be costly, and I was initially skeptical. But I must say – the all-day symposium at the Hubbard School in Minneapolis moved the project forward in substantive and unexpected ways. The back-and-forth between contributors – and even some non-contributors like Alex Lichtenstein and Douglas Blackmon – enhanced the final product significantly. I have to thank the top brass at the Hubbard School and the Department of Journalism at UMass-Amherst for making it possible.

KF: Work with smart, generous partners—like Sid and everyone else on this project–who challenge you and do careful, rigorous work. And look for meaningful empty spaces in the historical record.

Journalism History Podcast Spotlight

Each month, Clio will highlight the latest episode of the Journalism History podcast and recommend a set of episodes from the archives. The podcasts — available on the website and through many podcast players — are excellent teaching tools, easy to add to your syllabi. Transcripts of each episode are available online. 

This month’s focus is on Women’s History Month, with episodes discussing newspaper coverage of women in politics; the stories of trailblazing female reporters; and the media relations activities of first ladies. 

Nellie Tayloe Ross, George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/2014709682/

Episode 96: Newspaper Coverage of Women in Politics In this episode, Tracy Lucht analyzes how five trailblazing women in politics of different races, ethnicities and regions were written about after the 19th Amendment was ratified. She is the co-author of “Gender, Race, and Place in Newspaper Coverage of Women ‘Firsts’ after the Nineteenth Amendment” in the December 2021 issue of Journalism History.

Episode 77: The Founding Mothers of NPR Journalist Lisa Napoli discusses her book about how four women – Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and Cokie Roberts – transformed journalism through their pioneering work on National Public Radio.

Episode 67: Media Relations and First Ladies Lisa Burns joins the podcast to discuss her book, Media Relations & The Modern First Lady: From Jacqueline Kennedy to Melania Trump, and the successes and failures of first ladies’ media strategies.

Sadie Kneller Miller

Episode 61: A True Newspaper Woman Carolina Velloso discusses the career of sports reporter, photojournalist and national magazine writer Sadie Kneller Miller, a trailblazing journalist at the turn of the 20th century whose story had been lost to history.

Additionally, make sure to check out the Journalism History Podcast’s excellent series from its first season that celebrated the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage with five episodes. These cover the historiography of suffrage media research; the press and the anti-suffrage movement; literary works in suffrage periodicals; Belle La Follette’s suffrage campaigns; and an episode exploring the creation of the website suffrageandthemedia.org.     

Finally, Andrew Stoner recently joined the podcast to discuss advice columnists and their impact on public opinion of homosexuality. He passed away in February. You can listen to the episode discussing his research here

Member Spotlight: AJ Bauer

AJ Bauer, Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama

Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism & Creative Media, University of Alabama

Where you got your PhD: New York University, Department of Social & Cultural Analysis (American Studies)

Current favorite class: History of Mass Communication

Current research project: I’m working on a book called Making the Liberal Media, which tells the history of conservative press criticism in the United States from the 1940s through the 1980s. It’s basically a history of the idea of “liberal media bias.” The book sidesteps the tired and (I believe) unresolvable debates over whether or not bias exists. Instead, my archival research shows how a conservative critical disposition toward the press emerged in response to theories of public opinion and media influence developed by progressive scholars and journalists during the Interwar period. These theories were codified in federal broadcast regulations and professional press standards in the wake of World War II and were used to dismiss right anti-communists and opponents of the New Deal as inherently susceptible to propaganda and beyond the pale of “responsible” political deliberation. As a result, modern conservatism became preoccupied with challenging the veracity of mainstream sources of information while developing conservative standards of news judgment. The book chronicles the role of media activists in building the post-war conservative movement in the U.S., foregrounding the efforts of American Business Consultants, Facts Forum, and Accuracy in Media. I’ve published preliminary findings from this project in American Journalism and Radical History Review.

Fun fact about yourself: I have a masked alter-ego who occasionally performs as a hype man with the Boston-based horror surf rock band Beware the Dangers of a Ghost Scorpion!

Call for Reviewers: AEJMC 2022

The History Division Needs You! Early Call for Reviewers

The History Division will need help reviewing papers for AEJMC 2022. If you are willing to review for the History Division’s research competition, please RSVP via this Google form by April 1 and indicate your areas of expertise and/or interest.

If you have any questions, please contact Division Research Chair Rachel Grant (University of Florida) at rlgrant6@gmail.com . We will need up to approximately 75 reviewers for the competition. Graduate students are not eligible to serve as reviewers and, in general, reviewers should not submit their own research into the competition. Thank you in advance for your assistance!

Getting Students Engaged

This is the second in a series of teaching columns by 2021–2022 History Division teaching committee chair Ken Ward.

I can be a little medium-centric in my teaching. In my last column, I explained one way that’s true—in my deemphasizing the textbook in my history course to focus on things like podcasts. It’s something I’ve had success with, but this focus on the medium definitely doesn’t suit everyone.

Elisabeth Fondren, for instance.

“I’ve always focused more on the content than the platform,” she told me recently during a conversation about teaching, “so I’m not one of the professors to switch and say ‘here’s a podcast, here’s a video.’”

Clearly she’s not as hung up on content delivery as I am. But Dr. Fondren, who is an assistant professor of journalism at St. John’s University in Queens, is absolutely finding her own novel ways to connect with the current generation of students in her journalism history course. While the textbook may be safe in her classroom, another mainstay of history courses has gotten her attention: long written assignments.

For Elisabeth, it’s a matter of being in touch with what’s useful to students and making sure they’re staying energized in the learning process, not just in terms of providing relevant information but also engaging projects. It’s too easy, she told me, to lose students in the transition from learning to application, especially when today’s students have so many extracurricular responsibilities, often including jobs.

“The demand on students is so high,” she said, “and it’s the professor’s responsibility to gauge and maybe event adapt your method of delivery and assessment. It’s not a one-way street.”

Deprioritizing written assignments like long research papers doesn’t mean lowering standards. Instead, it’s a matter of finding other ways to assess what Elisabeth is really after: deep, personal engagement with course concepts and critical thinking.

Sometimes this means asking students to craft video reflections and take place in online discussions. At others, it means learning to be critical and persuasive in a medium other than a term paper. For example, in one assignment Elisabeth’s students interrogate a primary source like a documentary and then tweet about it, structuring the assignment such that students learn to build a coherent argument in only 280 characters.

Crucially, behind these assignments is Elisabeth’s drive to make history relatable to students, to use the course to bridge things that happened “back then” to what we’re experiencing today.

Nowhere is this clearer than in an oral history assignment she assigns. In it, students find and interview someone at least two generations older than them about how they’ve used media throughout their lives and how those interactions have informed their worldview. In assignments such as these, she encourages people to research within their own families to uncover ways of relating to course concepts in deeply personal ways.

Because her students come from such diverse backgrounds and share in class what they find in assignments like these, the classroom becomes a place of both learning and sharing.

“I really try to focus on how the class can be as insightful as possible for the students,” she told me. And if that insight can be harnessed through something that students find more engaging than a long written assignment, perhaps it’s worth helping students connect with history by deemphasizing the role of the paper in assessing learning.

A Word From the Chair

Cayce Myers

Happy New Year! The year 2022 has started off with many initiatives by the History Division. Our members are doing extraordinary work, and it’s time for them to be recognized. There are several deadlines approaching for History Division awards. Please consider nominating someone, including yourself, for the following awards: the Jinx Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching Media History (February 15); the History Division Book Award (February 15); the Hazel Dicken-Garcia Award for Best Master’s Thesis (March 1); the Donald Shaw Senior Scholar Award (March 15), and the Covert Award for best article, essay, or book chapter (March 31). Similarly, AEJMC has a call for the 17th Annual Best Practices Teaching Competition

The History Division is also proud that we will continue the Joint Journalism Communication History Conference in 2022 in a virtual format. History Division member Dr. Matthew Pressman (Seton Hall) is the AEJMC History Division representative, and is working with the American Journalism Historians Association, our cosponsor, with facilitating the conference on May 13, 2022. Submissions for papers, abstracts, research in progress, and panels are open until March 1, 2022.

This issue, CLIO shows that our members are hard at work with research and teaching.  Please look at our member updates, the book Q&A, and our featured member profile on Autumn Linford. The chair of our division’s teaching committee, Ken Ward, has the first in a series of articles on teaching, this one about rethinking textbooks. With the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, there is also a special edition of American Journalism that focuses on investigative journalism history. Abstract proposals for the edition are due March 1 and should be submitted to americanjournalismeditor@gmail.com

Sadly, as many of you are aware, longtime history division member, former chair, and former editor of Journalism History Dr. Michael “Mike” Sweeney (Ohio University) passed away on January 15, 2022. His beautifully written obituary can be found here. Mike was a person who was a mentor, colleague, teacher, collaborator, and, most importantly, friend to many people in our division. Many of our members, myself included, have stories about how Mike inspired them and made them better historians.  Because of that, this edition of CLIO contains several remembrances of Mike by his former students, colleagues and friends within the division. Reading these thoughtful remembrances demonstrates that Mike’s impact on the division, and more importantly its members, was significant. -Cayce Myers

Remembering Mike Sweeney

Michael Sweeney

Mike Sweeney — a professor emeritus at Ohio University, a role model in the field of journalism history, the editor of Journalism History from 2012-2018, and division chair from 2016-2017 — died on January 15, 2022 at the age of 63. AEJMC History Division Members share their remembrances.


I send my thoughts and prayers for all who had the privilege to know Mike Sweeney and now mourn his passing from this life. Eternity just gained the brightest star! I lived in Logan at worked at USU during the Sweeney era. I am so thankful for my friendships with Carolyn and David and Angie as well. May our Good Lord bless and comfort all. I know his words and wisdom will live on forever. – Margaret Lubke

I first met Mike in 1993 when he moved to attend Ohio U. for his Ph.D. I was just completing my time at OU and Pat Washburn was my advisor. I helped Mike move into his apartment. Partly because he needed the help, and because I needed his boxes so I could pack to move to Texas which is where he just came from. Ever the reporter, Mike was grilling me about working with Pat Washburn. (BTW – working with Pat was a delight and a highlight of my academic career). That began a longtime friendship. Years later, Mike moved to Utah State, and a few years after that I moved from Texas to BYU. Whenever I taught the graduate history class, I would invite Mike to campus to be a part of the class. He loved engaging with grad students wherever they were. – Ed Adams

Michael Sweeney didn’t know how to conduct a dull meeting. In fact, he worked to make them both short and fun. I served on the AJHA board when he was president. In the past, board members were unable to attend the academic discussions because of all the business meetings. He figured how to put the business in context. When an issue came up during an annual conference, he’d contact each person to determine whether we needed a meeting and, when possible, take an informal vote without gathering in person. The meetings he conducted were serious, but he led with a light touch and a delightful sense of humor. He wasted no time. Like his students, we colleagues loved him. In his eulogy to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, former Vice President Walter Mondale said Humphrey taught us how to live and, with his cancer, he taught us how to die. I’ve thought about that comment so many times over the past several years as Michael Sweeney taught us how to live and how to die. He was always an inspirational role model. After his diagnosis, though, he continued teaching, attending academic meetings, publishing research, posting original paintings and sharing his medical progress on Facebook. RIP, Professor Sweeney. – Bill Huntzicker

Mike Sweeney, otherwise affectionately known as Sween Dog by the Ohio University graduate students, was the best educator, scholar, historian, and mentor. I was truly blessed to spend my years at Ohio University learning from him. His dedication to helping students and guiding those interested in historical research was unparalleled. He truly loved us grad students, and we loved him. In his classes, he taught us so much about life and the crazy world of academia. In my first year as a graduate student at Ohio University, he called me a badger concerning my research efforts in his Historiography class. It was the funniest interaction, considering he mentioned he has never told a female her research style resembled an animal. I will forever hold that nickname with pride. The fall semester of 2018 was thought to be his last time teaching Historiography, but as usual, he couldn’t stay away from teaching and returned the following fall. At that time, I struggled to find a final committee member for my master’s thesis. During a meeting with Aimee Edmondson, she told me that Sweeney was returning to teach and mentioned he wanted to be on my master’s thesis committee. The following phone call with my mother was filled with many tears and excitement on having the opportunity to learn from Sweeney again. The loss of Sweeney is so great, but he was such a warrior these past years, and man did he go out with a bang. – Claire Rounkles

There are people in this life, whom you meet and immediately feel they are a kindred spirit. Mike was certainly one of those people for me. Maybe it was the commonality of both having been newspaper people. Or that we both uprooted ourselves mid-career to return to graduate school. Our common love of teaching, journalism history, and a penchant for a good yarn certainly didn’t hurt. I remember the terrible trepidation I felt, during my first semester at Ohio University, when I sent him a draft of a conference paper I was working on as part of an independent study with him. The first thing I saw, in all caps, was “NICE ‘LEDE’ YOU WRITE WELL.” Those five simple words at the end of my first paragraph were such a reassurance that all the risks I had taken maybe weren’t all that risky after all. It was a balm to my reporter’s soul at a time when I was questioning whether I had made the right choice. This was part of Mike’s charm. He mentored you without you knowing it most of the time. He saw possibilities where self-doubt clouded one’s vision. And he was available. When you went to his office, he made you the center of his focus. Not the phone calls, or the emails, or the deadlines. Just you. – Pamela Walck

I was so surprised when I won the Tankard Award in 2013 in D.C. that I shouted, “Drinks are on me!” To my delight, Mike came to the hotel bar. It was such a validating moment to see Mike’s joy in celebrating my accomplishment. We shared dinner that night. I learned about Mike’s diagnosis, his mastery of Italian, and what a delightful raconteur he could be. That was my first real connection to Mike Sweeney—his eyes always reflected back to his audience the joy and appreciation of the moment and his true happiness for others’ success. – Tom Mascaro

Member News: Andie Tucher; Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, Teri Finneman, Meg Heckman & Pamela Walck; Gregory Borchard, Ray McCaffrey, Maddie Liseblad

Andie Tucher, professor at Columbia University, has a new book, Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History (Columbia University Press). Fake news has been part of the American media landscape for as long as there’s been an American media landscape. No history of American journalism is complete without an accounting of the many ways that the information system of democracy—the critical but unsecurable infrastructure of civic life–has been invaded and exploited over the years. But it’s not just the hoaxers, humbuggers, propagandists, puffers, partisans, blusterers, scandal-mongers, and fraudsters who have peddled fake news; it’s also the fake journalists, who appropriate the outward forms of journalism in an explicit effort to lend credibility to their falsehoods. The relationship between journalism and truth has always been more fragile than many of us realize.

Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho, recently published a chapter on the history of high school student newspapers in a new volume on the history of the high school. Drawing on early journalism textbooks, education journals, and student newspapers themselves, this chapter discusses the early structure of these publications—their production process, place within the curriculum, and acceptance within the high school.

Teri Finneman (Kansas), Meg Heckman (Northeastern) and Pamela Walck (Duquesne) recently had the article “Reimagining Journalistic Roles: How Student Journalists Are Taking On the U.S. News Desert Crisis” accepted in Journalism Studies. All three advised online publications created to serve news desert communities. They are also having a webinar at 11 a.m. Eastern Feb. 4 to discuss the opportunities and challenges of running a news desert publication with students. Register here.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism, edited by Gregory A. Borchard of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is set for publication this month. Journalism permeates our lives and shapes our thoughts in ways that we have long taken for granted. Whether it is National Public Radio in the morning or the lead story on the Today show, the morning newspaper headlines, up-to-the-minute Internet news, grocery store tabloids, Time magazine in our mailbox, or the nightly news on television, journalism pervades our lives. The Encyclopedia of Journalism covers all significant dimensions of journalism, such as print, broadcast, and Internet journalism; U.S. and international perspectives; and history, technology, legal issues and court cases, ownership, and economics. The encyclopedia will consist of approximately 500 signed entries from scholars, experts, and journalists.

The first recipient of Journalism History‘s Tom Reilly Award is Raymond McCaffrey of the University of Arkansas. His article, “From Baseball Icon to Crusading Columnist: How Jackie Robinson Used His Column in the African-American Press to Continue His Fight for Civil Rights in Sports,” was the most-read Journalism History article in 2021.

McCaffrey’s study explores how Jackie Robinson continued his fight for civil rights in sports using his newspaper column in the New York Amsterdam News and syndicated in African-American newspapers during the 1960s. A review of those columns reveals a side of Robinson not typically seen in official histories depicting him as too conciliatory and restrained in his approach to race relations. Robinson came to take almost militant stands, challenging oppression by calling for boycotts of sporting events and event sponsors years before such strategies were adopted by a younger generation of athletes.

Maddie Liseblad, an assistant professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been selected as an Alumni Spotlight Award recipient by Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, Calif. The award represents one of the highest honors presented to graduates on behalf of PLNU. Recipients are alumni who make a difference in unique and creative ways, and they are selected through news updates and recommendations from PLNU faculty and staff. Liseblad, the first journalism student to graduate with distinction from PLNU, will be honored at a ceremony during homecoming in February.

Several history division members are featured in the latest online issue of the journal Historiography in Mass Communication, which includes a roundtable discussion entitled “Reconceptualizing Journalism in an Age of Misinformation.” The panel comprises several esteemed journalism historians, raises questions about risks to democracy associated with attacks on the press, and considers brainstorming ideas built around Media Reform legislation.