By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu
Lillie Fears
Where you work: School of Media & Journalism, Arkansas State University
Where you got your
Ph.D.: University of Missouri School of Journalism
Current favorite class: Mass Communications in Modern Society
Current research
project: I am working on a project
that examines coverage of the historic Memphis-based Universal Life Insurance
Company in African American print media.
Fun fact about yourself: I have always enjoyed organizing information and edited three self-help books about health in the 7th grade.
By Kruthika Kamath, Ph.D. student at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A former deejay, music director, and radio consultant, Dr. Donna Halper switched tracks after three decades in broadcasting to become a professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a strong supporter of the Media Ecology school of thought and guides her students with her extensive knowledge of popular culture, media history, and media effects. Her research interests include how women and minorities are represented in media, early baseball history, and unsung heroes and heroines in the history of broadcasting. Moreover, not only is she the author of six books and numerous articles, Halper is also a blogger and a freelance writer.
Dr. Donna Halper is a professor at Lesley University.
This helped guide a conversation about her more recent work, specifically her current inspirations, how she ties her research interests to the evolving field of mass media, and advice for new scholars.
By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Dr. Ron Rodgers, an associate professor and graduate coordinator in the department of journalism at the University of Florida, recently wrote a book titled “The Struggle for the Soul of Journalism: The Pulpit versus the Press, 1833-1923.”
Q: Describe the focus of your book.
A: Broadly speaking, my book explores the implications of religion’s powerful critique of the
press during the rise of the modern, mass-appeal media beginning with the penny
press in the 1830s. It looks at the effect of the critique on the shaping of
the norms of journalistic conduct and content leading to the notion of the
social responsibility of the press – most notably formalized in the ASNE’s
Canons of Journalism in 1923. This critique had many forms. And it came from the
pulpit in alliance with politicians, social scientists, educators, members of
the Progressive movement, and journalists themselves.
The one major impulse for this critique was
religion’s growing acquiescence to a new reality – that in an increasingly
complex modern society – and especially with the tsunami of demographic changes
of the era – it no longer held power over public opinion as it once did. That
now belonged to the newspaper with its growing influence on society. And if
that was the case, religious critics believed the increasingly commercialized
newspaper needed to take over that responsibility. It sought to do so to
protect what it defined as the true mission of journalism from the modern
world’s toxic influence of secular market and ideological constraints on
journalistic conduct and journalistic content – the news.
And at the core of this effort was the pulpit’s challenging the notion of journalistic objectivity grounded in commercialism. Instead, it sought to redefine news as interpretive and advocatory in order to comport with a journalistic ideal grounded in the gospel.
The History Division of the Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication invites applications for editor
of Journalism History.
Adopted as the official journal of the History
Division in 2018, Journalism History is well respected as the
oldest peer-reviewed journal of mass media history in the United States.
Continuously published since 1974, this scholarly journal is a
quarterly publication that features excellent scholarship on media history.
The division seeks an editor to start in August 2020 as an apprentice to the current editor until the new editor’s three-and-a-half-year term commences in August 2021. The term is renewable.
Dr. Jinx Broussard is a professor at Louisiana State University.
The AEJMC History Division is pleased to announce the creation of the Jinx Coleman Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History.
The History Division officers unanimously voted to name the award after Broussard with the support of the full leadership team.
“I am unbelievably honored to have my name associated with this award,” Broussard said. “I hope to continue inspiring students, teachers and scholars of media history to uncover the past and make sense of the role media have played and the impact they continue to make in our world.”
By Will Mari, Louisiana State University, Vice Chair/Program Chair, wmari1@lsu.edu
Teri and I are excited to announce the results of the panel competition for AEJMC 2020. We received a number of very worthy and interesting panel pitches (nearly 20!), but had to pick just six to bring forward to our sibling divisions for negotiation as cosponsors, with AEJMC’s chipping system. After a lot of back and forth, we’re proud to continue partnerships and add new and important ones, for the division:
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication History Division is soliciting entries for its annual award for
the best journalism and mass communication history book. The winning author
will receive a plaque and a $500 prize at the August 2020 AEJMC conference in San
Francisco, California. Attendance at the conference is encouraged
as the author will be invited to be a guest for a live taping of the Journalism
History podcast during the History Division awards event. The
competition is open to any author of a media history book regardless of
whether they belong to AEJMC or the History Division. Only first editions with
a 2019 copyright date will be accepted. Edited volumes, articles, and monograph-length
works published in academic journals will be excluded because they qualify for
the History Division’s Covert Award. Entries must be received by February 1, 2020. Submit four hard copies
of each book or an electronic copy (must be an e-Book or pdf manuscript in
page-proof format) along with the author’s mailing address, telephone number,
and email address to:
Lisa Burns, AEJMC History Book Award Chair Quinnipiac University 275 Mount Carmel Ave., CE-MCM Hamden, CT, 06518 Lisa.Burns@quinnipiac.edu
The Journalism History podcast team: Will Mari, Nick Hirshon, Teri Finneman and Erika Pribanic-Smith.
The Journalism History podcast celebrated its first birthday earlier this month and recognized it with a cake at AJHA. The podcast has been downloaded in 47 states and 49 countries and has officially reached 4,000 downloads.
By Teri Finneman, University of Kansas, History Division Chair, teri.finneman@ku.edu
The History Division officers and the staff of our Journalism History journal are working this year on a marketing campaign to better promote the journal and journalism history more broadly.
By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Lillie Fears (Arkansas State) was named coordinator of the Multimedia Journalism Program in the School of Media and Journalism at Arkansas State University.
Teri Finneman (Kansas), Candi Carter Olson (Utah State) and Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State) discussed suffrage history at the Bob Dole Institute of Politics in September during the launch event for KU’s celebration of the 19th Amendment.
Nick Hirshon (William Paterson) learned that the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists that he founded and advises was named the Outstanding Campus Chapter in the northeastern United States, placing above every other student chapter in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, central and eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The distinction placed the William Paterson Society of Professional Journalists among ten finalists under contention for the most Outstanding Campus Chapter in the nation.
Julie Lane (Boise State) published a book chapter titled, “”Cultivating Distrust of Mainstream Media: Propagandists for a Liberal Machine and the American Establishment.” The chapter is featured in Oxford University Press’ News on the Right: Studying Conservative News Cultures, edited by Anthony Nadler and A.J. Bauer.
Jon Marshall (Northwestern) had an op-ed, “Like Watergate All Over Again? In Some Ways, Yes, but There Are Stark Differences,” published Sept. 25 in the Chicago Tribune.
Historians and scholars who presented research at the symposium included (l-r in picture): Kathy Roberts Forde, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Kristin Gustafson, University of Washington-Bothell; Razvan Sibii, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina; Blair L.M. Kelley, North Carolina State University; Sid Bedingfield, University of Minnesota; and Brian Bowman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Symposium participants not pictured: Alex Lichtenstein, Indiana University; Douglas A. Blackmon, Georgia State University; and Robert Greene II, Claflin University.
The Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota hosted a symposium in September for scholars contributing to an edited collection on journalism and the rise of Jim Crow in the New South. The book project, co-edited by Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield, examines the various ways newspaper editors and publishers exerted influence and shaped outcomes in the South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Forde says the book will “document the substantive role of the white press in actively building, nurturing, and protecting the white supremacist political economies and social orders that emerged in the region.” The book will also highlight the struggle by black leaders who used the tools of mass media to fight these oppressive new regimes. “We envision this collection as part of the growing effort among historians to reconsider the political role of news media during times of change,” Bedingfield said. “Historians rely on news outlets as sources of information about political change, but they frequently ignore the specific and substantive roles that journalists and other media figures played in fostering that change.”
