Nominations are open for the AEJMC History Division’s 2025 Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award. This division honor will recognize an individual for excellence in research on the history of journalism and mass communication. Nominees must have a minimum 15-year academic career and a record of division membership. To submit a nomination, please compile a single PDF file with the following items:
Cover letter that explains the nominee’s research contributions
Minimum of two letters of support
Nominee’s current C.V.
Self-nominations, with the accompanying supporting materials, are welcome. Nomination packets should be sent to committee chair Matthew Pressman at matthew.pressman@shu.edu. The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2025.
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.
Dr. Gwyneth Mellinger and Dr. Pam Parry are the recipients of the History Division’s 2024 Exceptional Service Award. This important award is given by the division’s chair and vice chair to members who have provided stellar service.
Gwyneth MellingerPam Parry
Mellinger is a professor at James Madison University. Parry is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University.
Both Mellinger and Parry have provided critical services to the History Division.
Mellinger has chaired the division’s Book Award Committee for several years. She is the author of the book Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action. Mellinger is the winner of the 2019 Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Award in Media and Civil Rights History for her research on Charles S. Johnson, an African American newspaper columnist in the 1940s.
Parry has served as the editor of Journalism History since 2021. Under her leadership, she and her staff produced the commemorative issue celebrating 50 years of the journal. She is the 2020 winner of the Best Podcast Guest Award from Journalism History. Parry is the author or co-editor of eight academic books.
“It is a tremendous task to lead the book award and Dr. Mellinger handles all the behind the scenes work of receiving, distributing and seeking the best books in our field,” said Rachel Grant, chair. “The division appreciates all the work she has done to honor her fellow scholars. Serving beyond her term, Gwyn has stayed on through several transitions and we appreciate her time and commitment. Her kindness and leadership is an inspiration to us all.”
“There is so much unseen work that goes into managing a journal, and Journalism History is the cornerstone and legacy of the History Division’s scholarly community. Dr. Parry has stewarded the journal artfully during her tenure,” said Brian Creech, vice chair. “The journal has grown in scope and prominence during her editorship, but also retains an attention to detail and care for prose that makes publishing in the journal a genuinely meaningful experience for junior and senior scholars alike. From an expanded essay series, to facilitating research microgrants, to a rich, critical engagement with the content of scholarship in the journal over its history, Dr. Parry has led the journal in a way that best reflects the breadth and depth of our subfield and pushes the project of Journalism History and journalism history forward.”
Parry and Mellinger will be honored during the History Division’s annual Awards Gala on Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Philadelphia.
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is pleased to announce that Autumn Linford of Auburn University has won this year’s Top Faculty Paper Award.
Autumn Lorimer Linford
She will receive a plaque and a $100 cash prize for her paper, ‘“Is This an Evil Practice?”: Newspapers and Newsgirls.’
The second-place faculty paper award goes to Ashley Walter of Saint Louis University for “After the Gauntlet: Sex Discrimination Lawsuits at The Washington Post, 1972-2003.”
Third place faculty paper goes to Eric Freedman, Michigan State University, Joshua Duchan, Wayne State University , Vladislava Sukhanovskaya, and Finn Hopkins, Michigan State University. This co-authored paper is “Extra! Extra! Sing All About It: Portraying Newsies in 19th and 20th Century Sheet Music.”
In the student paper competition, the top award winner is Hannah LeComte of George Mason University for “Radical or Assimilatory? The Fight for Family Life Education by Virginia’s Gay Press, 1977-1998.” She will receive a plaque and a $100 cash prize.
The second-place student award goes to Joey Mengyuan Chen of University of Maryland for “Dancing with Shackles on: The Consulted New Woman in the Exchange of Letters in Linglong Magazine.”
Third place in the student paper competition was won by Diana Krovvidi of University of Maryland for her paper “How Ethnic Press in the US Urged the Diaspora to Preserve the Ukrainian Language (1893-1914)”
The History Division also awards a top extended abstract award, which will go to the University of Pennsylvania co-authors, Anjali DasSarma and Valentina Proust. Their abstract is titled ““We Want Entire Freedom”: The New Orleans Tribune and the Foundation of Counterpublics Through Affective Discourse.”
The top faculty papers and student papers will be presented together at the division’s top papers panel during AEJMC’s 2024 conference in Philadelphia on Friday, August 9 at 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Fordham University associate professor Beth Knobel has won the 2024 Diversity in Journalism History Research Award for her conference submission, “Breaking Barriers: Ed Bradley’s Early Years in Radio.”
Presented by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the Diversity Award recognizes the outstanding paper in journalism or mass communication history submitted to the annual paper competition that address issues of inclusion and the study of marginalized groups and topics. Knobel will receive a cash prize during the division’s awards gala on August 7 at the AEJMC National Convention in Philadelphia, PA.
The judges for the History Division’s Diversity Award recognized the richness and depth of Knobel’s primary research and her compelling storytelling ability.
“We had a very strong, and very competitive, group of Finalists for this year’s award. ‘Breaking Barriers’ stood out for being richly embedded within this year’s conference theme, connected to its location, and the ways it wove oral history, archival broadcast media, and traditional print journalism sources into a vivid narrative of overcoming structural inequality in the radio industry.”
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected A.J. Bauer, Erin Coyle, Michael Fuhlhage, and John Vilanova as the winners of this year’s Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching of Media History.
This sixth annual award recognizes transferable, original, tested, and creative teaching ideas, especially those that engage with diversity, collaboration, community, or justice.
This year’s winners will present their teaching practices this August at AEJMC’s National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and will be honored at the division’s awards gala.
Bauer, an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, detailed an archival research methods activity aimed at showing students how historians develop narratives from archival materials and encouraging them to engage with archival documents in a tactile way. Bauer’s award submission described “sharing that sense of wonder and uncertainty” of archival work with students, and centered teacher-student collaboration, writing, “we are all trying to make sense of history, together.”
Coyle, an associate professor at the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, was named a Broussard Award winner for an interactive, candy-based classroom activity that encourages students to question their own perceptions, biases, and their impact on journalistic and historical writing. Coyle’s M&M sorting activity, paired with Wesley Lowery’s “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists,” engages both students’ present biases and the continued impact of decades of white news leaders’ values in mainstream media.
Fulhage, an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University, shared an activity for students to examine a major daily newspaper’s historical treatment of communities of color and to assess that coverage to determine whether the paper should offer an apology to those groups. Fulhage said the project brings “students of different races into dialogue about the significance and appropriateness of apologies by news organizations for their complicity in systemic racism.”
Vilanova, an assistant professor of Journalism & Communication and Africana Studies at Lehigh University, was awarded for his “critical fabulation” activity. In this teaching idea, Vilanova encourages students to research and construct a new reality from archival silences and violences, which “fuses the creative and the historical, recuperating lives and stories of people unacknowledged by the choices of the archivists.”
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected Ken J. Ward as winner of its award honoring the best journalism and mass communication history book published in 2023. Ward is the author of Last Paper Standing: A Century of Competition Between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (University of Colorado Press).
A panel of three distinguished media historians chose Last Paper Standing from a diverse field of entries. Judges cited Ward’s engaging narrative, the depth of his scholarship, and the book’s relevance for contemporary media issues.
One judge praised Ward’s book as an example of “long-form historical writing deeply grounded in primary sources.” The book tells the story of the fierce competition between the two Denver newspapers, which paralleled the trajectory of the American newspaper industry and culminated in the closure of the Rocky Mountain News in 2009.
The judge added that Ward’s book “is significant to both media historians and contemporary journalism critics. His exploration of the state of the Denver newspapers from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries explains so many of the economic factors that led to the ills of the news industry today.”
Judges also praised Shepperd’s Shadow of the New Deal for its effective use of primary sources and its contribution to the media history literature. Reading this scholarship, one judge said, brought “a sense of discovery.”
“Shepperd’s book is a fresh, deeply researched entry to the canon,” the judge added. “It is rich in archival sources and nuanced in its interpretation of the birth and evolution of public broadcasting.” Another judge said the book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars studying the history of broadcasting in this country.”
Wardis assistant professor of multimedia journalism at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, and a former reporter for the McPherson Sentinel. His research has appeared in Journalism History, the Journal of Media Law and Ethics, and the Journal of Media Ethics, and he has received the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Warren Price Award and the American Journalism Historians Association’s Robert Lance Memorial Award.
Shepperd is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the Sound Submissions Project at the Library of Congress.
Ward will receive a plaque and cash prize. Both honorees will be recognized during the division’s awards gala, Aug. 7, at the 2024 AEJMC National Convention in Philadelphia. Ward’s book will be discussed in future episodes of the Journalism History podcast.
This award is presented to the winners of the AEJMC History Division’s teaching competition. Members may submit an innovative teaching technique to the contest, which is judged by a committee each spring.
Teaching ideas should be original, tested, and creative techniques used by the author in teaching media history and could be used by other instructors or institutions. The competition welcomes a variety of teaching ideas, including those taught across a quarter/semester or taught as a module within an individual course. Of particular interest are teaching ideas that help instructors address one or more of these pedagogies: diversity, collaboration, community, or justice. The 2024 deadline for submissions is May 8.
The applications should be submitted as one document saved in a PDF format to aejmchistory@gmail.com using the subject line “Jinx C. Broussard Award” and should include:
Dr. Melita Garza won Journalism History‘s 2024 essay contest.
Dr. Melita Garza of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, won the 2024 essay contest sponsored by Journalism History.
Originally the brainchild of Dr. Erika Pribanic-Smith (University of Texas at Arlington), the competition first began in 2018 and has featured essays around specific themes. This year’s competition focused on civil rights with the impetus being the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A panel of judges assessed the submitted essay proposals, and selected Dr. Garza’s as the best. She will receive a $100 prize and have her essay published in the journal.
Anna E. Lindner, Michael Fuhlhage, D. T. Frazier, and Keena S. Neal are the winners of the 2024 Tom Reilly Award. Their article, “’If Ever Saints Wept and Hell Rejoiced, It Must Have Been Over the Passage of That Law’: The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in Detroit River Borderland Newspapers, 1851-1852” was the most popular research study on the Journalism History website in 2023.
While conducting this research, all four scholars were associated with Wayne State University’s Department of Communication and what is affectionately called “Fuhlhage’s Research Gang.” Dr. Fuhlhage is an associate professor and he has successfully collaborated with his students on several research projects. Lindner, Frazier, and Neal were doctoral candidates at the time.
