By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Dr. David E. Sumner, a professor emeritus of journalism at Ball State (1990-2015), is currently a full-time author and working on his eight book. He recently wrote Fumbled Call: The Bear Bryant-Wally Butts Football Scandal that Split the Supreme Court and Changed American Libel Law.
Q: Describe the focus of your book.
A: Using a narrative structure, the book tells, first, what happened behind the scenes preceding Butts v. Curtis Publishing libel trial against the Saturday Evening Post in 1963 by Wally Butts, the ex-coach of the University of Georgia football team. The case is historically significant because the Post appealed the case to the Supreme Court in 1967, which redefined and expanded the definition of “public figure” in a 5-4 divided decision.
The Post article “The Story of a College Football Fix” accused Butts of giving away inside team information to Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in a telephone conversation to help Alabama win 35-0 in the season’s opener. (Bryant filed a separate libel lawsuit and settled out of court after the Butts trial.) The University of Georgia president, two assistant coaches, and four faculty members of the Athletic Board testified against Butts. The book presents several facts that suggest perjury by the coaches to cover up what they said in their telephone conversation. Butts could have been motivated by revenge because he had been fired as coach but remained athletic director with access to team information. The first eight chapters tell how the story originated, and the last eight chapters give a day-by-day account of arguments and witness testimonies.
Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
A: My academic and teaching specialty at Ball State was magazine journalism. This topic interested me because I think it is one of the most significant libel and copyright cases against magazines in the twentieth century, which I wrote about in The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900 (Peter Lang, 2010). Later, I came across two books arguing that the conventional wisdom about Butts v. Curtis Publishing was wrong. I repeated the conventional wisdom in The Magazine Century, which perhaps was a mistake, so I wanted to correct the historical record. The conventional wisdom (simplified) is that a ne’er-do-well insurance salesman named George Burnett overheard the Butts-Bryant telephone conversation (because of a telephone company glitch) and shopped around a fictionalized story to the highest media bidder.
Q: What archives or research materials did you use?
A: I made a total of five trips to the University of Georgia Archives, Emory University Archives and National Archives and Records Administration branch in Morrow, Georgia. I did not visit the University of Alabama Archives because a Paul “Bear” Bryant biographer told me he had visited there and that all of Bryant’s papers related to the game-fixing scandal had been expunged. I found valuable “gold” in the papers of the former university president and a former Post managing editor at the UGA Archives. I also found “gold” in the papers of the former Post editor-in-chief at the Emory Archives. The National Archives contained the complete 1,500-page federal court trial transcript and thirty-five depositions. Finally, I used the Newspapers.com database, which contains complete issues of 16,300 newspapers dating back to the 1700s.
Q: How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?
A: It is most useful as a case study in media law or history courses to demonstrate the evolving definition of “actual malice.” The divided Supreme Court decision (5-4) occurred only two years after New York Times v. Sullivan, when the definitions of “public figure” and “actual malice” were still slippery. Using today’s definition of “actual malice,” the Post would have probably won because the editors published the story in good faith believing it to be true. The same conclusion was reached by James Kirby, a Vanderbilt University law professor, who witnessed the entire trial and wrote about it in 1989.
Q: What advice you have for other historians working/starting on book projects?
A: First, choose a person or historical event that was controversial or remains disputed in books and articles. This will define the guiding research question. Looks for way to uncover fresh information that relies on primary sources. Another way to choose a topic is find an older book that needs an update. Fumbled Call met both criteria. Be cautious of any subject that has never had a book written about it. If no one has written about it, then probably no one wants to read it, and you will have trouble convincing an editor that a market exists.
Second, choose a topic that really interests you and will sustain your motivation through sometimes tedious and boring research. As a former football player, I discovered how much I enjoyed writing about football from a media history angle. Sometimes I spent dozens of hours poring through boring documents before I stumbled upon “gold.”
Third, look for primary sources at an archive within driving distance (unless you have a fortune to spend on travel). Atlanta was a day’s drive from where I live in Indiana. I chose my dissertation topic at the University of Tennessee partly because I found considerable archival material at Vanderbilt University, which was a four-hour drive from Knoxville.
Fourth, and this may be obvious, but try to present papers or speak at conferences that will give your book publicity before it’s published. My biggest break was an invitation to speak on a panel at the 25th annual Media and Judiciary Conference sponsored by the Georgia Bar Association. Some members of the audience had first-hand knowledge of the libel case and volunteered primary sources that I cited in the book. I also presented papers at the 2014 AEJMC Conference in Toronto, the 2014 Joint Journalism Historians Conference in New York, and the 2015 North American Society for Sport History conference in Atlanta.
Fifth, if possible, find an editor who believes in you and will support your work. A major university press canceled my first contract because of an obscure one-sentence clause. So, I had to find another publisher. My editor at McFarland Books had to fight to get Fumbled Call accepted because his superiors were skeptical. After these obstacles, the most satisfying part of writing the book has been seeing positive reviews in five academic journals: Sport History Review, Journal of Sport History, Journalism History, Communication Booknotes Quarterly, and the Journal of Magazine Media.
Finally, plan to do most of your own publicity and marketing. I think most academic publishers do little more than publish a book in their catalog and on their website. Be aggressive in locating book reviewers, getting on talk shows, managing your own social media, and sending out press releases. The Ball State media relations office wrote a story and sent out hundreds of press releases. Your university’s media relations office is the first place to look for help.
David E. Sumner taught magazine journalism at Ball State University from 1990 to 2015 and is former head of the AEJMC Magazine Division and the division’s “Educator of the Year” in 2007. He is a co-author of Magazines: A Complete Guide to the Industry (Peter Lang, 2005) and Feature and Magazine Writing: Action, Angle and Anecdotes (Wiley, 2013). Email: Sumner@bsu.edu.