By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Matt Cecil (Minnesota State University, Mankato) was named Interim Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs on Jan. 13, 2020.
Continue readingBy Perry Parks, Membership Co-Chair, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu
Sid Bedingfield
Where you work: I’m an Associate Professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Where you got your Ph.D.: I earned my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 2014.
Current favorite class: We have a wonderful “case studies” course at the Hubbard School that allows instructors to focus on journalism and mass media during a particular historical period or event. I use it to teach a course on mass media and the African American struggle for equality, from the antebellum period to the present. The Fall 2020 version could not be timelier.
Current research project: Fellow History Division member Kathy Roberts Forde and I are co-editing and contributing chapters to a book called Journalism and Jim Crow: The Making of White Supremacy in the New South. We have a strong lineup of historians from a range of subfields working with us on the project, which is under contract at the University of Illinois Press. With a little luck, it should be out in 2021.
Fun fact about yourself: As a failed jock, I tried out for my college baseball team just for fun. I was a pitcher, and during one practice, I struck out a star player who was later drafted by a major league team (he swung at a ball over this head). For the next few years, I tracked his progress through the minor leagues, eagerly awaiting the big day when he made it to “the show” and I could say, “I struck out an actual major league batter.” Unfortunately, he only got to Double AA. Saying I struck out a guy who made it to the high minors just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Continue readingBy Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Dr. Mike Conway is an associate professor of journalism at Indiana University’s Media School. He recently wrote Contested Ground: “The Tunnel” and the Struggle Over Television News in Cold War America.
Q: Describe the focus of your book.
A: A 1962 documentary on a Berlin Wall tunnel escape brought condemnation from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The strong reaction was not limited just to the topic, but for the medium itself. The Tunnel was produced for American network television.
The Tunnel controversy and the rise of television news reveal a critical juncture in American journalism and media history as the Cold War entered one of its most dangerous periods. The surprisingly fast ascendance of television news as the country’s top choice for information signaled the public’s acceptance but threatened the self-defined leadership role of print journalism as well as the implicit cooperation among government officials and reporters on Cold War issues.
NBC’s Reuven Frank is at the center of Contested Ground as producer of The Tunnel and creator of the most popular journalism source of the period, NBC’s nightly newscast, “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.” The production and reception of the documentary, and all of television news, bring into focus a major upheaval in American news communication and the boundary work involved as government leaders, journalism competitors, and other groups fought over the shifting media landscape.
Contested Ground has been named the 2020 winner of the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation Broadcast Historian Award. The book is also one of three finalists for the 2020 AEJMC Tankard Book Award.
Continue readingBy Teri Finneman, Chair, University of Kansas, teri.finneman@ku.edu
The officers have been working mission control with 500 cups of coffee like you wouldn’t believe for days now, and I just feel a need to tell you all how absolutely amazing our division is.
In a pandemic, we had 47…..47….paper submissions. And all of our reviewers had their content back in within 24 hours of our deadline.
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Natascha Toft Roelsgaard and Mike Sweeney of Ohio are the winners of this year’s History Division Top Paper Award.
They will receive plaques and a $100 cash prize for their paper, “Capturing ‘The Real Thing’: James Ricalton Brings the Russo-Japanese War to American Parlors.”
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Carolina Velloso of the University of Maryland is the winner of the History Division’s 2020 Diversity in Journalism History Research Award.
Velloso, a Ph.D. student who also won the division’s top student paper award, won for her paper, “‘A True Newspaper Woman’: The Career of Sadie Kneller Miller.”
Continue readingBy Teri Finneman, Chair, University of Kansas, teri.finneman@ku.edu
With the approval of the History leadership team, Will, Cayce, and I decided that all graduate students with accepted History papers in the student competition will have their AEJMC registration fees paid this year.
Continue readingBy Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Gregory Borchard (University of Nevada Las Vegas) is editing the second edition of SAGE’s Encyclopedia of Journalism.
Continue readingBy Kruthika Kamath, Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Equipped with “an enthusiasm that spreads like wildfire”, Dr. John P. Ferré has been a fixture in the Department of Communication at the University of Louisville, Kentucky since 1985. He is known for his interdisciplinary background, with specializations in religion, divinity, and communications, and has written/edited books on a range of topics—composition (Rhetorical Patterns in 1981 and Merrill Guide to the Research Paper in 1983), religion and media (A Social Gospel for Millions in 1988 and Channels of Belief in 1990), and ethics and media (Public Relations and Ethics in 1991, Good News in 1993, and Ethics for Public Communication in 2012). To top it off, Professor Ferré has also served for eight years as the College of Arts and Science’s Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and for two years as Interim Dean.
By Perry Parks, Membership Co-Chair, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu
Elizabeth Atwood
Where you work: Hood College, Frederick, MD (associate professor)
Where you got your Ph.D.: University of Maryland
Current favorite class: Introduction to Media Writing (I enjoy seeing students learn a new form of writing and gain appreciation for how journalists work.)
Current research project: I have just completed work on the biography of Marguerite Harrison, a Baltimore Sun reporter who was a spy for the Military Intelligence Division in the early 1920s. The book, The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison, America’s First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent, will be published by Naval Institute Press in September.
Fun fact about yourself: I met my husband in Moscow when the Baltimore Sun sent its co-ed softball team to Russia in 1990 to teach Russian journalists how to play softball. That anecdote shows how much money newspapers used to have and how naive we were as we watched the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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